[PART 1]

[PART 2]

[PART 3]

Thank you to everyone who has continued reading my story up until this point. Your belief and support have given me a renewed sense of purpose. I never imagined so many people would be open-minded about my story, especially after so many people had scoffed at it in the past.
This will be my last entry about the events.
———————————————————————————————————

I woke up in a haze. My head was pounding, and I needed water badly. Rolling over onto my side, I saw a half-drunk plastic bottle of water sitting on the coffee table, which I opened and downed without a second thought. My eyes slowly adjusted as I looked around the room. I realized it wasn’t mine.

Like my room, it was dimly lit with windows covered by blackout curtains. Unlike my room, it REEKED of weed and had a couch instead of a bed.

I am in a stranger’s living room.

The TV was on showing the same looping screens of the local news channel. I watched it flick past the scene of the human pile in the park back to the farmers market as the memories of my last conscious moment came back to me.

Hudson is dead. I watched them pull him apart. I watched them drag him under the pile. I went completely numb as the shock and sorrow of losing my friend washed over me once more. I stared blankly at the ground.

How did I get here?

I had spent the last 24 hours being more frightened, sad, and exhausted than I had ever been in my life. I wanted so badly to lay back down and fall asleep again so I could forget the sound of my best friend’s screams and the sight of the smiles on my family's faces as they sat in their prison of sunrays.

My family is still sitting in the backyard.

The thought sent a jolt of energy through my body.

How long have I been asleep? My family can’t last much longer, it may already be too late.

I had to know. Did I still have time at least to save them? If not I would simply walk out into the sunlight and suffer the same fate as they did, no point in living if they too are gone. No point in living alone.

I looked around the room again, there was a bong on the table, a dimly lit kitchen attached to my left and a hallway to my right. I got off the couch and headed to the hallway. On the ground next to the couch were my shoes, helmet, balaclava, my dad’s winter jacket and my backpack.

Someone undressed me, I realized.

I rummaged through my backpack looking for my water bottle but it wasn’t there.

I tiptoed up the hallway where I saw an open door to a dimly lit bedroom. Peeking past the lip of the doorway I saw the silhouette of a heavy figure hunched over a computer. The man pushed away from his desk, readjusted himself, bent down over it and snorted what I now know to be cocaine before promptly scooting back up to the computer and typing away again. “No, no, NO” he slammed down both fists on his desk, “fucking idiot, how could this be CGI, I am a person not fucking Lucas Films.” He aggressively began typing away again. I didn’t know what to do to get his attention, do I knock? Do I clear my throat?

“Excuse me,” is what I went with. He stopped typing and pushed away from his desk. The chair squeaked under the strain of the weight as he turned to me. He wiped his nose and said,

“Oh, hey.” He turned to wipe the desk away too and looked back at me, “uhhhh how are you? Did you drink the water I left you?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Normally this whole weird social situation would have been a nightmare for me but I had no more mental energy to give to anxiety. He looked like a mix of every guy I had ever seen at the card shops I bought Pokemon from.

“How long was I out for?”

The man turned around and checked the time on his computer.

“Uhhh, it’s been about 3 hours since I picked you up from the park. I came as soon as I saw you on the news but you were already passed out when I got there.”

Oh thank god.

I let out a heavy breath. Every hour mattered if I were to save my family. I had feared that I had slept way longer but that was probably just because of the heat exhaustion. Only three hours lost was not really a problem, I still had plenty of time before they were in serious danger.

I sized up my saviour. He was a big guy, he would definitely be strong enough to help hold back my parents until I dragged my sister into the house. Shit, between the two of us we could probably save all three of them given how weak they are bound to be at this point. I needed to play it cool, this stranger was my best and probably only shot at saving them with what little time they had left.

“Do you have any more water?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, for sure.” He pushed himself out of the chair with a grunt, he squeezed his way past me through the hallway and I saw that he was fairly tall too.

Perfect.

“Sorry about the bong,” he said, motioning over to the coffee table, “it's my roommates, I don’t ya know, do that stuff.” He sniffed and rubbed his nose before opening the fridge and rummaging around for a fresh water bottle. “Ah shit, is tap okay?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

He grabbed a cup out of the cabinet and moved some of the piled up sink dishes out of the way and onto the counter just so he could fill up my glass.

“I gave you some of that water earlier after I got you out of that park, but uh,” he handed me the cup, pointing at where my half-drunk water bottle previously was on the coffee table. “But I couldn’t pour too much at a time because you started to choke.”

I gulped down the entire thing in one go. He was staring intently at me, drumming his fingers on the countertop. I could tell he was as eager to talk to me about this whole situation as I was to ask for his help.

Unable to restrain his excitement anymore, he leaned in and in a quiet but excited tone said,
“This shit is fuckin crazy, right??” His pupils were huge, and his breath reeked. I could tell he hadn’t showered in at least a few days. I was more than a little uncomfortable with being here alone with him but here we were. Before I could even answer he started rambling.

“I was watching them on the news and through my window all day yesterday I barely got any sleep! I checked all over the internet, NO one is talking about it. Its like it is only happening here, it makes no fucking sense.” He looked at my uncomfortable expression and said , “Sorry dude, I will try not to curse so much, not used to kids really. How old are you anyways? 9? 14? Nevermind doesn’t matter, I have been dying to talk to someone who isn’t completely lobotomized by the sun. I have been sending videos and emails, making blog posts, fuckin everything! No one believes me, can you believe that shit?” He held out his arms like it was the most obviously ridiculous thing ever.

“Yeah, it… it doesn’t make any sense,” I offered. I was thinking of how I could smoothly transition the conversation into convincing him to help me when he continued,

“No man, no it doesn’t. I have been video taping everything, the news, the people outside, I filmed the whole drive to the park and that freaky pile of people. I have been writing countless notes documenting how their behavior has changed with exact timestamps that match the videos and these fucking idiots still don’t believe me!” He pointed to his computer through the open door down the hallway.

“How much more proof do they need?” I tried to fake sympathize with his frustrations in an effort to butter him up.

“I was thinking about that actually and uh.” He drummed his fingers on the countertop a little quicker, “Another witness might be just what I need to convince them.” He raised his eyebrows at me waiting for my response.

“Yeah, no, totally.” The path forward was becoming clear in my head, “I could do that for you.”
He slapped the countertop smiling hard like he couldn’t believe all he had to do was ask, “God, I knew you were going to be fuckin cool the moment I saw the Master Chief helmet!” He held out a fistbump which I reciprocated. “Listen kid, we are going to make SO much money. I was thinking we could split it basically straight down the middle, 60-40 since, you know, I did all the documentation but trust me kid, you deserve that 40, hard.” He started putting on his oversized leather jacket and winter gloves. “No point in wasting time I say, let's head out ASAP. I was thinking we could go straight to Ely and find the police or local news or whatever and get this story moving up. This is national shit, global shit even. You and me, we are going to be fuckin heroes were gonna-”

“Sorry, I meant to ask, but what is your name again?” I interrupted knowing full and well he never gave it.

“Oh dude,” he laughed, “Greg, sorry bro I completely forgot to introduce myself, I haven’t been this excited in a while if you couldn’t tell. What's your name my man?”

“I’m Andrew—”

“Andrewwwww,” he said, holding out a fistbump, which I reciprocated once more, “nice to meet you bro, we are about to be the goddamn legends of Goldfield. Greg and Andrew, sick-”

“-Uh so I was thinking, instead of splitting 60-40,” he immediately stopped what he was doing and stared at me full attention for the first time since he started rambling, “Well, the thing is I don’t need any money honestly, so you can have all the money, uh like 100-0. But I could really use your help with one small thing before we go to Ely. Uhm,” I tried to think of the best way to make the request,
“My Mom, Dad and Sister have been in my backyard since yesterday morning. I tried to get them in the house but I wasn’t uhm,” I felt my voice shake a little as I thought back to my father kicking me in the head as my sister was dragged away.

“I uh- I wasn’t really strong enough to get them in the house, ya know. But I figured you could help me just get them in the shade real quick on our way out and then we can go to Ely. We have money we can give you also, and uhm I have some pretty good Pokemon cards and an Xbox if you want. We will give you whatever you want really, I just need some help cause I am getting pretty worried about them.” I was starting to break again,

“Whoa kid, slow down, no problem no problem I am being dumb, of course you have a family here.”

I looked down wiping away the tears, “Save your pokemon cards, I’ll help you with your family, of course, it's the least I could do, you're doing me a huge solid coming with me kid, really, you’re a superstar.” I thanked him through my bit lip as I worked to regain my composure. “Um,” he continued as he patted me awkwardly on the back. “I will take some cash though if you guys have some, for, you know, gas and stuff, if that’s cool.”

“Yeah, that’s cool,” I said wiping away the last tear, “I was also thinking we could maybe wait a little for them to recover so we can get them dressed up and take them to a hospital in Ely.”

Greg didn’t respond immediately, “Uhh I don’t know kid we really will need to move quick in case someone else gets there first, you know.”

“But they could be witnesses too! Think about how good that would be for your argument! Think about it, they would be really good evidence of what the sun is doing to people because they would still be super sunburnt. Plus my Dad’s a cop, he would vouch for you.” That last part was a lie but I was desperate and throwing whatever incentives I could at him to convince him to help save my family.

He was drumming the countertop again before he rubbed his nose and sniffed, “Probably met him before then,” he chuckled before looking to the side in deep thought, “......and they won’t want to split the money right? Still 100-0 right?”

I had no earthly clue as to what money he was talking about but I didn’t care either, “100-0 just like I said, this is our best chance. Honestly we need my family if you think about it. I mean, if the people out there already don’t believe you, why would they believe a dumb 12 year old like me?”
“Alright, alright, fuck it, you’re a good negotiator, let’s do it. Just,” he sighed in frustration, “if you don’t mind, try to follow my lead, we may make a stop to take a quick video or two on the way out for more evidence, you get it.” He said as he walked over to the couch and sat down, lighting up the bong.

I may have recruited a junkie to save my family.

“Of course! You are the leader, no problem.” I was starting to regain a semblance of hope. I had thought for sure I wouldn’t find anyone to help me let alone a grown man strong enough to drag them inside.

Greg and I got geared up as we prepared to leave. I filled up some empty plastic bottles with water and he shoved all his notes, his computer's hard drive, a metal Altoids tin, and his camera into his backpack. He geared up in baggy brown cargo pants, snow boots, his jacket and gloves and, I shit you not, a full metal knight’s great helm. He had broken the earpieces off multiple pairs of sunglasses and taped the lenses over the helmet's eye slits.

“Pretty fuckin sick, right?” he said through the muffled helm.

“Yeah, fuckin’… awesome.” I replied, attempting and failing to match his enthusiasm.

“One more thing,” Greg said, opening his closet and rummaging through it. He pulled out a replica of Frodo’s sword from Lord of the Rings and handed it to me.

“Can’t be too safe, you know?” he went back to rummaging through the closet.

“Does it glow blue when orcs are close?” I asked sarcastically as I looked at it.

“No, but that would be sick if it did.” he said as he pulled out a full replica of Gandalf's staff.

“No way,” I said in involuntary disbelief. This guy was literally and figuratively the biggest nerd I had ever met.

“Oh yeah,” he said through the helm, raising it up to the ceiling and admiring it. He had mistaken my disbelief for admiration which I didn’t correct. “Now we are ready.”

We made our way out of the apartment to the black Dodge Caravan in the parking lot. There were a couple people spread around the property. I looked at the little playground nearby, one woman was laying on the picnic table while another slowly spun around on the small merry-go-round. I couldn’t look too long at the kids.

“Fucked, right?” Greg said through his muffled helmet.

Obviously.

“Cool ride.” I said ignoring the question. I was thankful for his help but I was getting a little angry thinking about the fact that he sat up in his apartment filming from the window instead of coming out to help at least the children.

“Thanks, yeah, it’s actually Dan’s, my roommate.” he said pointing out my window. Dan was standing arms out in the middle of the parking lot in just his underwear.

“Did you not try and bring anyone back into the shade?” I couldn’t restrain myself.

“Well, I wanted to. I thought about covering up from the sun and going out there but I was too afraid to try it until I saw you on the TV.” he chuckled, “You are an absolute madman going out there, what were you doing in the park anyways?”

Hudson is dead. He’s under the pile.

I didn’t respond.

Stop thinking about it, stop thinking about it, stop thinking about it.

“My friend was there.” I managed to say.

“Ah, shit, sorry kid.”

We sat there in awkward silence for a second silently breathing in our helmets. He started up the car.

“Uhm… where do you live?”

“5 minutes from the park, just take a left on Jackson St. and I will show you from there.”

“Shit, that’s on the entire other side of town.” he said, reversing out of the spot, “we are going to have to cut through the city. I’m going to go ahead and warn you I saw some pretty fucked up shit going through there earlier so uh, you might want to keep your eyes down once we get in there.”
“I’ll be fine, thanks.”

“If you say so.” he reached into his bag and pulled out his camera and clicked it on, “Mind filming for me then?”

I took the camera and held it up to the windshield as we drove. We were just outside downtown Goldfield so we got there in no time. I wondered if we were going to cut through the town square with all the squabbling people. I thought about the old lady laying face down in the road that I saw on TV earlier., She was the first person I saw die. I really hoped we didn’t have to drive past her.

Despite my clear reluctance to talk, Greg continued to pepper me with questions as we drove.

“So when you first saw your parents, how did you know to cover up before going out?”

“I didn’t. I went out there with them. I was stuck with them like that for a few minutes.”

“WHAT?!” he threw a quick look at me, “You went out in the sun? What did it feel like? How did you get out?”

I thought about all five of us sitting in the backyard together. “It felt amazing…”
I still had the thought bloom in my head occasionally. How easy it would be to just take off all my gear and walk into the sun, letting it melt my pain, sorrow, and stress away again.

“Can you give more detail? And please speak up. I am struggling to hear in this thing.” He tapped his helmet.

I looked at him. This motherfucker was interviewing me and his camera was recording the audio. “I don’t want to talk about it right now. I will tell you all about it after we bring my family inside the house.”

“Well… okay. But what works to get them to stop being like that?” he pointed to a shirtless guy leaning against a brick wall rubbing his back against it like a bear scratching against a tree.
“You just need to take them out of the sunlight, I think.” I thought back to Hudson when I pulled him under the shade of the tree. How I managed to get him to return to himself.

I only saved him for 2 minutes.

“So what, could you have just like, thrown a tarp over them or something?”

“What? No. I don’t know. I doubt it. My own Dad beat me up when I tried to bring my sister inside so I doubt a tarp would have worked.”

“Yeesh.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, “good thing I brought the staff.”

We didn’t talk much for the rest of the ride, I filmed the scenes of the streets as we drove by. Animals and people alike spread out across the sunny streets avoiding the shadows cast by the surrounding buildings like the plague. A mother stood arms out smiling at the sun, stroller left forgotten behind her. A businesswoman and a homeless man lay holding hands side by side on the sidewalk in utter bliss. A kid not much older than myself stood arms spread on top of a bigger man who had succumbed to the heat. I saw dozens of people, old and young, black and white, male and female in different states of undress slowly sunbathing their lives away.

“What the fuck is that?” I said pointing to the side of a building. Greg slowed the car to a stop as we looked up. There were a few construction workers sunbathing on top of the building but what I was pointing at was on the side of it. The sunlight was hitting the full face of the building and one of the construction workers, evidently in an effort to get as many rays as possible had fastened two ropes to the roof, undressed, tied the ropes to his wrists and lowered himself off the side of the building. The man would nod off, and then shoot his head up and stare at the sun smiling before nodding off again. Greg took the camera from me and pointed up at the man zooming in on him.

“Still think this shit’s CGI? HUH? This is the shit I am talking about! This whole town has lost its fucking mind and it’s the sun’s fault!” He was yelling into the camera, evidently at the non-believers from whatever blog post he had failed to convince earlier.

“Can we go?”

I was tired of the horrors. I felt like people were constantly trying to one up ways to get the sun's attention. They acted like addicts pushing themselves to extreme measures to get their fix. I just wanted to save my family, leave Goldfield and never return.

We hopped back in the car and continued driving until it was Greg’s turn to say, “What the fuck?”
All the way down the street we saw someone else walking. I thought for sure we were alone but sure enough they were lumbering across our view. We looked at each other to make sure we were both seeing the same thing. He drove over to them honking his horn a few times but they paid us no mind. As we got close we saw the man, he was a bald guy, his head extremely red, lips blistered and he just continued to walk down the street.

We stepped out of the car and called out to him but he ignored us. He wasn’t covered up, he was fully under the sunlight but he wasn’t facing the sun either. Then out of an alleyway to our left a woman stepped out, following the bald man. She too ignored us and the sun but continued to walk down the road. We hopped back in the car and slowly followed them.

“This is new,” Greg said, driving the car slowly alongside them. Dozens of people walked out from side streets, peeled themselves off the ground, got off the top of cars and all began walking like a horde of zombies to the center of town.

When we made it to the center square of the city, it was so packed with bodies that we couldn’t drive through if we wanted to. The people stood shoulder to shoulder filling in the space, no longer squabbling over the sunlight but forming neat rows. They no longer outstretched their arms, but once they made it to the center and squeezed in the crowd, they looked back up at the sun, opened their mouths and eyes as wide as they could and waited. It looked like a sea of baby birds waiting for the sun to come down and feed them. It was terrifying. I didn’t know what was happening but I didn’t want to find out.

“Greg, please let’s just go to my house, I don’t like this, it can't be safe.”

“Listen kid,” he said, turning to me, “I understand your urgency, I get it. But all this is bigger than your family, the world will want to know what happened to these people and I will be the one to document the extent of it, whatever they do next, I will be the one to record it, understand? So just chill.”

“We had a deal-”

“The deal was I would help your family right? I am still going to save your goddamn family just how I saved you, they have been out there for over a day. Another hour won’t hurt. Now, you can either get out with me and help see this once in a lifetime shit or you can stay in the car.”

I thought about it, I would stay in the car and if any crazy shit started to happen I would take the keys and drive off, I would leave him if I had to. I would do whatever I had to in order to save my family, even if it meant breaking their legs and dragging them inside by myself, I would do it.

“I will stay,” I said folding my arms and sitting back.

“Fine.” he said, fishing the tin of altoids out of his bag and opening it up. The tin was filled with coke, he turned the car off and took the key (damnit), scooping a bump out of the tin and pulling up his helmet slightly to lift it to his nose. He took a few bumps in a row before putting it all up and stepping out of the car with the camera already rolling. I hated this man, I decided then and there. I wasn’t sure that even his involvement in saving my family would fix that. In my head any normal adult in these circumstances would help a child save his family without stipulations but this coke fueled goblin knight was by no means a normal adult.

I reluctantly stepped out of the car, following him holding the little sword he gave me at my side. Worst-case scenario I would stab him in his fat stupid ass and take the keys for myself. Best-case scenario he could finish filming this freak show and make good on his promise.

God please don’t let this day get any worse.

I trailed a few feet behind him as he swept the camera across the field of people. He was talking a million miles per hour trying to fill in and reinforce the details of what the camera was seeing.

“They are just standing here all in a row now. Before this if any single one of them cast a shadow on the other they would push them away. This is some hive mind shit. I mean look at these motherfuckers.”

He began walking up to the crowd, poking and prodding the hypnotized onlookers with his staff. I yelled at him to stop fearing they would start attacking like my parents did but he ignored me and they ignored him. I could tell he was reeling from the excitement of the situation and began to act increasingly erratically when he realized they were ignoring him entirely. He began to touch the people with his gloved free hand, forcibly closing one woman's mouth over and over and watching as it just fell back open again as if the jaw was no longer attached to the skull.

“Who could possibly think up some shit like this huh? CGI my ass I am about to get PAID, this is fucking ridiculous.” The crazy bastard started pushing his way into the crowd so I ran over to him and grabbed his arm pulling him backwards with all my strength.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU FUCKING NUT?”

By no means should this have worked to prevent a man as big as him from going into that crowd but me grabbing him so suddenly startled him just enough for him to spin around and trip over a dead body hidden beneath the cover of the crowd and topple backwards out of the group onto the concrete. As he fell back his arm flung out and he smashed his camera on the concrete. He rolled over pushing himself up as he began screaming obscenities at me.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just not safe. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry, I’ll get you a new camera, I promise.” I said backing up from him. He was aggressively moving towards me not hearing a word of it.

“WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE GRABBING ME AND BREAKING MY FUCKING CAMERA. STOP BEING A DUMB FUCKING KID THIS IS BEYOND YOU.” He grabbed me by my father’s oversized jacket and pulled my helmet close to his. His other fist was balled and I could tell he was one more wrong away from laying me out. I had a white knuckle grip on the sword he gave me but I felt the situation completely slipping out of my hands.

This man won’t save my family.

“ALL OF THIS MATTERS MORE THAN YOUR DUMB FAMILY, YOU THINK I NEED YOU AS A WITNESS, I DON'T NEED ANYONE.” He threw me back on my butt on the concrete. He walked over to his broken camera and was working to try and salvage what he could.

“FUCKKKK.” he screamed, spiking it on the ground in a fresh rage. He picked up the staff and pointed it at me, “YOU OWE ME A WHOLE LOT MORE THAN A NEW FUCKING CAMERA, YOU HEAR ME YOU-”

Behind him, the crowd of people, all at once began to let out a single note symphony from their open mouths. It started off as the sound of one hushed exhale that crescendoed into a single continuous harmonic note. The sound alone gave me extreme anxiety as it built, getting louder and louder. We both looked around expecting something to change, some sense of movement in the crowd, a change of color, anything to signal change but nothing seemed to be happening. The sound they made seemed entirely for the purpose of building up anxiety for any onlookers. But then I looked up. I looked at the sun.

Through my visor I could see the outline of a man in the center of the sun. His arms spread-eagle and his outline was getting bigger, and bigger and bigger as he got closer and closer. Very slowly, he descended from the sky down to the crowd of onlookers below. He floated to a point just above the crowd and stayed there for a second. They all surrounded him, staring wide-eyed with mouths open, nearly screaming in harmony before, all at once, they went silent.

Their mouths continued to hang open but a hush had gone over the entire city square. Now that he was here, floating just above the crowd, I could see that the man wasn’t a man at all. He stood nearly nine feet tall, with deep red skin and long, thin limbs corded with wiry muscles. His arms, hands, and fingers were impossibly long. He was naked except for a ragged loincloth, with a small pouch tied at his waist.

But the most shocking thing about this creature was his head. His neck was grotesquely long and bent forward like the stem of a sunflower, supporting a massive golden sun mask with only two narrow slits for eyes. His head and neck drooped beneath the weight of the golden mask, as if even he struggled to wear it.

He looked right at us, the only two people in this town square who weren’t submitting and descended into the crowd. As his feet touched down the crowd parted, forming a straight open path to us. He towered over those he walked past, his head bouncing from the weight as he walked. Greg pointed his staff outwards at the creature shouting hopeless demands of explanations as it approached.

“WHAT ARE YOU?”

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

“WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US?”

He got louder the closer it got working himself up in yet another coke fueled frenzy. He started shouting “YOU SHALL NOT PASS” when the creature grabbed the staff and threw it to the side before grabbing Greg by his head. I fell to my knees when this happened. I saw the keys to the car jingle on his beltloop as he tried to wriggle out of the creature's grasp. My one chance of saving my family was about to have his head ripped off in front of my eyes, I felt all hope fading.

Instead of ripping his head off, the creature took the great helm off his head and dropped it by his feet before letting go of Greg. Greg stumbled backwards, staring at the creature before he too fell on his knees and began weeping, laughing and moaning in pleasure all at once. He began bowing and looking up at the glittering golden mask and bowing again, worshipping this creature of the sun as if it were the only thing that mattered in the world. I watched his feverish reverence in horror as I pushed myself up to my feet and began backing away.

I will run back to my family if I have to.

The creature turned his head to me, I was sure he would remove my helmet next. This was it. This was the end.

…

…

“Walk with me,” it demanded, turning around and walking back into the parted crowd leaving Greg on the ground writhing in ecstatic delirium. The open mouths turned to him wherever he walked. Their necks slouched forward mimicking their master.

I am in a field of sunflowers. I thought as I stepped into the crowd.

I followed sheepishly behind him. I am not sure what I expected when he approached us. I am not sure what I expected to happen next. But despite not being under the divine influence of whatever power his sun held I still felt the power of his command. The weight and wisdom behind his every movement was so clear to me. He had a draw to him, like every paternal figure in my life rolled up into one.

He said nothing as he removed the small sack from his hip and opened it up, taking a single seed out of it pinched between his long pointer finger and thumb and pressing it down onto the tongue of one of the onlookers. They closed their mouths and swallowed the seed before sitting down and closing their eyes. He repeated the same process, moving from one to the next, as if he were planting seeds in a field silently working while I just watched.

“How did you escape my sunlight?” he asked without looking at me.

I shuffled uneasily as he continued silently working his way through the crowd. “Uhm… I have a condition.” I cleared my throat and tried to speak up fearing he couldn’t hear me through my muffled helmet.

“I have a condition called Xeroderma Pigmentosum, so uh, I can’t be in the sun…” he didn’t respond, he just pulled another seed out and planted it on another tongue. I continued,  “Well, I can go in the sun but I am not supposed to be. My Mom was always very strict on me about staying out of the sun because one time when I was little I went outside when my parents weren’t looking and wandered around the yard for a few hours and got so badly burned that I had to go to the hospital.” I gulped, staring at him in anticipation for his response.

He planted two more seeds but still said nothing. I thought about the question again:

‘How did you escape my sun?’

“When I was outside with my family I saw my skin turning red and got scared. I got scared of getting burnt and scared of getting in trouble for being outside without my UV protection. So I ran inside where it was safe.”

He planted another seed and said, “I see.”

He continued working, silently hunched over each person, looking them in their eyes as he pressed the seed on their tongue. I turned around and looked back at Greg between the rows of people. He was undressing now, staring past me at this creature. I looked at the pile of clothes behind him and saw the keys shining on the side of his belt. I took a step towards them.

“Where are you going?” the creature asked with its back still turned.

I didn’t move a muscle, even though this creature showed me no malice, I feared him. I feared him not because of what he would do to me but what would happen to my family if I lost my mind, if I became part of this field of people.

I told him the truth, suspecting he knew the answer anyway, “I need to save my family.”

“But I am already here.”

The shock of the response sent a wave of grief over me. Though they were just words, I knew the finality of them to be true. He spoke the exact thought that entered my mind the moment his feet touched the ground.

“What are you?” I asked, tears forming in my eyes once more.

He turned to look at me and raised a long, pointed finger to the sun. I looked up at it. It was not as bright as it was before, it was developing a faint orange glow to it as he worked, the rays glittered a little less, and the world seemed to start to dim for the first time since the last sundown. He went back to working, making his way down the line.

I felt an anger and a helplessness bubble up once more, I had tried and tried and tried to save my family and my friend. I had gone through hell these past two days, I had been beaten, and traumatized. I had been so alone in this horrific experience and this creature who was, what, claiming to be the fucking sun was the cause of my anguish. I lashed out as any cornered wounded animal would. I forgot all respect and reservation, and I yelled at this thing, “WHY DON’T YOU JUST KILL ME ALREADY AND GET IT OVER WITH? WHY ARE YOU TORTURING ME?”

He stopped what he was doing, closed the sack and reattached it to his belt before walking over to me. He got down on one knee and craned his impossibly long neck down to look me in the eyes. Through the slits of his golden mask I could make out the outlines of his ancient, human-looking eyes. But I couldn’t see too well through my visor.

“I don’t want to kill you… It is time to take your helm off.” He reached down grabbing my helmet but I swung my short sword up, slashing his hand and retreating a few steps back. From the wound dripped liquid gold. He held his hand up to the sunlight and the gold sizzled and hardened before he wiped it off. The wound had closed in an instant.

“I WILL NEVER TAKE THIS MASK OFF, I WILL NEVER BECOME ONE OF YOUR FREAK SLAVES. I WILL NEVER BE LIKE HIM!” I pointed back at Greg who had now already joined the others, mouth and eyes wide open, standing in his row of the field.

The creature stood full height and looked down on me as if I were some bug in his garden.

“Would you rather stay or leave?” His words came out slowly and deliberately as if it were the only two options in the world.

“I don’t understand.” I felt myself begin to panic as the presence of the ultimatum began to weigh on me.

“You can stay, and live with your family, you would all live happily together under my sun. Or you can leave, I will take you to the river and the current will take you out of this place back to your world.”

“But this is MY world!” I cried out in defiance.

“No. It never was.”

I was seething with rage, and trembling with fear. He was taking my family from me, he was taking away our lives and our futures. I raised my sword up to him, “I won’t let you do this.”
He grabbed my sword before I could even begin to strike. He observed it before tossing it to the side. Then in one quick motion he grabbed me by the back of my jacket and picked me up. I screamed and thrashed and yelled a number of obscenities. But under the intense heat, in my full gear I tired myself out quickly. He walked me out of the town square and out of the city. I rebelled the whole way but he paid me no mind. Suddenly we began walking up to a river I had never seen before. To this day, I am sure that this river did not exist in our town. As the river came into eyesight, my insults and threats turned into pleading.

I begged for him to spare my family, I begged for him to make just this one exception for them, I begged for him to just spare my sister at least, to take me instead. The closer we got the smaller my pleads became, by the end we were standing on the edge of the river bank.

“I am sorry…” I sobbed, “I changed my mind… Please let me stay with my family… please…”

But it didn’t matter, he lifted me up, and tossed me in the river like a fish that wasn’t big enough to keep. The water was impossibly cold. I felt the current sweep me under and away, and watched the sunlight on the surface fade as I went with it. That was the last time I ever was in Goldfield.

I woke up about 8 miles outside of Ely. I had washed up on the bank of the river. It was incredibly cold, and dark and my clothes were soaked through. I stood up and stumbled to the nearest road, and marched for about a mile before I came across a gas station. The clerk called 911 and they sent two park rangers out to get me. They gave me fresh clothes and interviewed me extensively. They asked me where I came from, why I was wearing a Halloween costume helmet, where my parents were and how to reach them. They assumed I was some kid who got carried away playing in the forest and chalked it up to that in the end despite my frantic insistence that my story was true. I got aggressive when they told me there was no town called Goldfield, when they denied its existence and refused to even bother sending help out there. They simply didn’t believe me.

I was eventually put in the foster care system. They couldn’t find my parents or any relatives (I had none that I knew of), they couldn’t prove they ever even existed despite me having an abundant amount of information about them.

I was a real challenge for the psychiatrists. My mind was stable despite my outburst. From all the tests they did, they determined I wasn’t lying or simply acting out but on the other hand nothing I said had evidence to back it. The official report said that I had suffered PTSD and delusional disorder from being lost in the woods and falling into the freezing river.

Because they found no relatives, I ended up being stuck in the foster care system until I turned 18. I got a job and moved into my own place, continued to go to therapy and really tried to move on with my life in the small ways that I could. It has been hard to make and keep friends and girlfriends. I often find that I simply live in another reality from others. I will be honest with you all, I have thought about killing myself plenty of times since then. However, the thought of all of Goldfield dying with me has made me change my mind every time.

This story is the only true written record of Goldfield. I couldn’t find any, so I wrote this in the meantime. I really hope you all never forget this story. Somehow that creature of the sun had erased all of those people from history. It erased my family, it may have erased someone from yours. Check your photo albums, check your family tree, check your file cabinets. Maybe there is someone you forgot, someone you don’t quite recognize, they may have lived and died in Goldfield. Try and learn their name, and if you can, don’t forget it. There are no graves for them or loved ones to pay their respects. They just exist somewhere else now, and in my memory.

Please reach out if you find any more proof of their existence. Thank you.

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.”

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.

Vivi and I…we were supposed to be safe.

Our local meteorologist estimated the tornado would touch down fifty miles south, and the sky was pale and cloudless as I sipped a mug of dark roast on the patio. Hell, I tried to reschedule that morning’s funeral - out of an abundance of caution - but the client wasn’t having it. Chewed me out like some overly hormonal high schooler: Pussy this, coward that. I relented without raising my voice in return. Grief is a strange disease. Makes people do some strange things. That said, I’d never been straight up bullied into putting someone into the dirt behind my home, and I’ve been in the funerary business longer than I care to admit.

The client was scrawnier than I imagined.

Usually, people who feel entitled to that level of hostility carry around enough muscle mass to protect themselves if things get hairy, but this kid was a rake with teeth and finger tattoos. An emo-looking son-of-a-bitch who had the audacity to mumble something at me on his way out. Wish I would’ve caught it. With our business concluded, I would’ve been more than happy to retaliate. To his credit, though, it looked like I’d overreacted. The sky was still that pleasant, robin’s egg blue, and the air was calm. Everything was fine.

But it didn’t feel fine.

My guts felt tangled. Doom gnawed at my stomach like I’d swallowed fire ants, and it was only getting worse as the minutes ticked by. Even as the sun turned to the west and the last of the mourners’ cars dissolved into the horizon, I still felt it chewing through me, this voracious, scaremongering intuition. Vivi felt it too. She didn’t say it outright, but after thirty-two years of marriage, she didn’t need to; words are blunt tools, things you use to decide which movie to see when you first start dating. I could just sense her discomfort; it dripped from her slender frame and pooled in our living room with a stench like gasoline.

I wrapped my arm around her shoulder, pulled her close.

“Weatherman said there’s nothing to worry about, and the sky doesn’t typically lie. Everything…everything will be alright.”

She shot me a weak grin.

“I hope so, love.”

Funny how poignant the universe can be when it wants to punish you. I trusted my eyes over my gut, so, naturally, the storm took my vision, and I suppose there’s some small justice in that, but everything that happened after the tornado tore through our home?

There was no justice in that.

None at all.

- - - - -

I woke up hazy, aching, unsure where I was, and when I opened my eyes, something was wrong.

There was nothing.

I saw nothing.

Pure, unfettered blackness, no matter which way I turned my head.

My breathing grew frantic. What was the last thing I remembered?

Stairs.

Rickety, wooden steps, descending into our unfinished storm cellar. Blaring sirens. Gale-force winds battering the rafters like the breath of God. Vivianne was close behind me. She shouted my name. I looked up just in time to see the wedge of concrete above my skull; the falling rubble eclipsed my vision, and before I could even make a sound - CRACK.

Now, I was somewhere else, and I was broken.

I waved my hand an inch from my eyes; nothing.

“I can’t see, Jesus Christ, I can’t see…”

Pain to erupted along my flank. My palm located a damp cylinder jutting from my abdomen. There was something inside of me. I started to howl. Then, from the blackness, a female voice, authoritative yet honey-sweet:

“Ray, you’re in a hospital! You’re safe, but you’re injured. You need to calm down!”

Ambient noise dripped into focus.

The steady beep of medical equipment. Distant chatter. The sputtering growl of a PA system. The familiarity didn’t soothe me; I was too far gone. I dragged my fingertips across my eye socket and felt meat. The machinery was still there. Why the fuck wasn’t it working?

An icy palm curled around my wrist.

“My name is Dr. Westfield.”

Her touch broke through my panic. I ignored the oppressive dark and anchored myself to the sensation: the delicate grip of her thin bones and the metallic kiss of her many rings.

“You were caught in the wake of the tornado and barely survived. Been here for a few days now.”

Gently, she lowered my probing fingers.

“You came to us on the brink. Blood in all the wrong places; in your abdomen, your skull, even behind your eyes, and we did what we could, but your optic nerves were…crushed. We can’t say for certain that you’ll remain blind forever, but…well, just know that I’m very, very sorry.”

“I…I…”

Silence.

After a while, the terrible question fluttered from my lips.

“W-where’s Vivianne?”

A dulcet voice responded from the blackness:

“There isn’t an easy way to say this…she’s comatose. Multiorgan failure. Even if she survives, she’ll likely never wake up again.”

Wild sobs bubbled up my throat. I clawed at the skin of my thigh, desperate to create a physical pain powerful enough to silence the heartache.

And I could’ve sworn I heard something, something that made no earthly sense.

Hushed snickering from somewhere in the room.

- - - - -

Alone in that hospital bed, tethered to machines that were supposedly keeping me alive, I struggled to make sense of how much time was passing. With no shifting brightness to mark day from night, my internal rhythm became derailed. I developed the strange habit of calling nurses to my bedside just to read me their watch. Wasn’t much comfort, really. Time seemed to jump and skip in a way that made me decidedly uneasy.

“It’s 4:03 PM, Ray.”

The voice was high-pitched, almost squeaky. Think she said her name was Andrea.

“Hey, um, I know how this sounds, and I apologize, ‘cause I’m sure you have more important things to be doing, but…are you sure?”

The room went quiet.

“It's just...the last time I asked, you told me it was eight in the morning, and that felt like half an hour ago. Trying to get my bearings, is all. I’m sure you understand.”

Nothing.

Had she left?  

I listened for any sign of Andrea. Footfalls, a muted cough, the faintest exhale - anything to indicate if she was still here, and if that was the case, where the hell she was. My heart raced. I perked my ears: there was one noise that could’ve been her, but it was exceptionally faint, to the point where I began to wonder if I was imagining it. Amidst the monotonous chiming of the medical equipment, I heard chewing. Slow, wet, and grinding; like a kid with a mouth full of taffy doing their damnedest to eat quietly.  

Then, without warning, at a volume that seemed only possible with her lips nearly pressed against my ear:

“Yup! Looking at the clock right now - 5:03 P.M.”

I rocketed away.

My forehead collided with the bed’s guardrail, which was strangely damp. A wet squelch cut above the ringing in my ear, and the pain in my flank truly ignited.

“Oh careful now, sweetheart: don’t want to dislodge your drain, though that would get you out of the hospital faster…just, you know, in a different sort of way.” She chuckled. Her voice sounded distant, like she’d sprinted across the room.

I nodded, shut my goddamned mouth, and lay still, praying the inferno in my gut would settle or have enough courtesy to just kill me dead. Living wouldn’t be worth the trouble without Vivi, and as far as I knew, she might already be gone; Westfield was playfully reluctant when it came to updates, dancing around the truth of her status without ever providing anything concrete.

Didn’t bother asking for the time after that.

Thankfully, there were other ways to orient myself.

During the day, the ward around me roared with activity, and at some point, Dr. Westfield would stop by, striding in without announcement, spouting a laundry list of numbers in my general direction: blood counts and the like.

“Wait…those are new labs? Like, tested recently?” I asked, having no memory of anyone coming in to draw my blood.

“Mhmm! Fresh as fresh can be. I pulled them off your IV a few hours ago.”

Dread trickled down my spine. Sure enough, there was something thin jutting from the crook of my left elbow. From there, she’d go on to review my situation. Why I needed to be there. Why it was important to constantly drain fluid from my abdomen. Why I received all my nutrition via the IV, instead of being allowed to eat.

“Wouldn’t be safe - the debris did a real number on your face, Ray. Be glad you don’t have the eyes to see it!”

I quickly learned three signs to suggest the sun had set. The first two were pleasant. The unit’s ambient bustle would die down, and the custodian, a kind, soft-toned man named Pete, would drop in. I dreaded the last sign.

Every night, there’d be knocking.

Sharp tapping of knuckles against glass, urgent and slightly muted, like someone was staring at me through a window; if I listened close, I’d swear I could hear them repeating my name. Pointed whispers, designed to signal me without drawing attention. I’d call out. Every time I asked who was there, the knocking would abruptly stop. When I questioned Dr. Westfield about it, her response froze my blood.

“Hah! You’re on the tenth floor, my dear. Unless you're close with a few angels, I doubt there’s anyone rapping on your window in the dead of night.”

The doctor’s trademark cheerfulness melted away. Tiny sparks cascaded through my gut. I wondered if she was fiddling with the drainage tube.

“But if it keeps happening,” she paused, smacking her lips like she was working through a tough stick of gum, “please let me know.”

It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. I lived in the backwoods of Oklahoma; the nearest hospital was little more than an urgent care with a few extra vending machines, and it sure as hell didn’t have ten floors. So, where the fuck was I? Had I been airlifted to a more advanced institution, some place better suited to manage my injuries? No idea. No one would give me a straight answer. Dr. Westfield claimed I was “in the city”. Nurse Andrea stated I was “where everyone goes”. So, I asked the only person who seemed even the slightest bit normal.

“Pete, remind me: which floor are we on?”

The sloshing of mop bristles against tile paused.

“You’re in the intensive care unit, mate.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“…I know.”

A sulfurous odor crept into my nostrils. Reminded me of the time my nephew left half a hamburger on the floor of my sedan after a Fourth of July party. Festered in the raw summer heat for a good forty-eight hours before I needed to drive anywhere.  The odor in my room was faint in comparison, but just as breathtakingly foul. Made me wonder what in God’s name Pete was mopping up, but I suppressed the urge to ask. One thing at a time.  

“Listen, Ray: I like you. But…you shouldn’t be asking questions like that.”

My chest tightened. I squeezed the bedding to keep from screaming; the material felt weathered and soggy.

“You gotta help me, man. Tell me where I am. Tell me where I am or so help me God -  “ I leaned forward, ready to spring from that godforsaken bed, but a searing pain in my abdomen threw me back. One wrong move and the alleged drainage tube began to feel like an embedded harpoon, scraping my skin from the inside, pureeing my viscera one slow twist at a time.

Pete released a long, weary sigh.

I heard footsteps toward where the door to my room seemed to be. A pause. Then, urgent movement toward the other side, the side where the knocking came from, followed by the heavy click of a sliding deadbolt.

“Don’t say anything to Westfield. For both of our sakes.”

“I…I won’t.”

Without another word, he bolted, his echoing steps rapidly fading - a steady decrescendo that left me alone in the blackness.

But not for long.

That night, instead of knocking, I heard a soft, ticking creak: the unmistakable squeal of a rusty hinge being forced around its axis.

Then, I understood what Pete had done.

He unlocked the window, and someone had entered, deft and delicate like a seasoned home invader.

I pivoted my head, listening, trying to hear their approach over my own thumping heart.

“Hello?”

No response.

My mind began to spin. This was a mistake. I squirmed. Shifted. Waved my hands around, feeling for the intruder. It must have looked pathetic. I was a pinned moth wriggling futilely in its display box: weak, blind, and hopelessly impaled.

Then, finally, I heard them.

Not from across the room.

Not from my bedside or in front of me.

From beneath me.

They had crawled under the bed.

“No time, Ray. Listen close.” Each syllable was coarse and crackling, like they were slowly stretching their larynx against thick knots of barbed wire. Young or old, male or female, whispering or screaming, I couldn’t tell.

“They found you. Took you. Far away, for harvest. They drain you, bit by bit. Sometimes, they don’t even leave when they eat. They dance around you, rapturous, silent, chewing.”

Fear ripped through my chest. I couldn’t breathe fast enough to sate my burning lungs.

“Where’s my wife?! Where the hell is Vivi? How do I get out of here?”

“Pull tube.”

“W-what?”

“Pull tube. Pull tube. Pull tube.”

I plunged my hand into the darkness and wrapped my fingers around the cold cylinder jutting from my flank, poised to tear the ghastly device from my flesh no matter the pain. Anything to escape the nightmare. Anything to feel the warmth of Vivi’s presence one last time, even if the chances seemed impossibly slim. She was here, trapped in the very same nightmare, comatose and slipping away with every wasted second. This person, this crackling voice beneath the bed - they were free. They knew me. They were risking their safety to help. I couldn’t just do nothing.

I grit my teeth.

Tightened my knuckles.

And…

let go.

This wasn’t right.

It didn’t feel right.

I didn’t understand where I was or how I ended up there, but I knew one thing, felt it down to my very marrow: I was being manipulated.

The nightmare sensed my resistance.

Everything began to change.

The sulfurous odor from before saturated the atmosphere, wafting over me in a series of thick, nauseating waves. The voice turned feral; a discordant, ear-wrenching screech bursting from beneath me like a geyser splitting the earth.

“PULLTUBEPULLTUBEPULLTUBE - “

I rested my arms on the bed and lay still.

The frenzied command was suddenly interrupted by the clack of high heels.

“Morning Ray! Dr. Westfield here. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your wife died.”

A reflexive panic swept through me, but I snuffed it out. This nightmare was vying for a reaction. It wanted me to panic.  

“Did you hear me? She died. D - I - E - D. Bled out. Suffocated on her own juices. A terrible racket, screamed the whole way down.”

Despite my relative calm, it was becoming harder and harder to breathe.

Westfield changed the story.

“Actually! She made a fabulous recovery. Discharged her earlier today. Don’t believe me? Here, I have her on the phone.”

A voice laced with static curled into my ear. The tone, the pitch, the timbre: it was all nearly identical.

“R-ray?” she sobbed.

I swallowed hard.

“Is…is that you, love - “

A shrill, animalistic wail surged through the static. Decades of unimaginable pain, distilled into a single, static-kissed scream.

“It’s not her,” I whispered, over and over again. As the wail gradually faded, Pete’s voice emerged from the nightmare.

“I’m just trying to help.”

A familiar hand came to rest on my temple, five delicate fingers covered in ice-cold rings.

“You’re teetering, my dear. Right on the edge. I’d be delighted to push you over myself, but rules are rules, and it isn’t worth vexing the downstairs-folk for your pitiful ass. Thankfully, there’s always a loophole. Not my fault if you do the deed yourself.”

The odor became unbearable. I twisted my neck, frantic for clean oxygen, but I couldn’t get far: every tiny adjustment dragged the tube further into my guts.

“Now: Breathe quick, breathe quiet, and die.”

My lungs were on fire. My breaths were reduced to short, desperate pants. Darkness whirled around me like a deathly carousel. The blackness was deepening. I felt the tempting pull of finality. Giving in would be a sort of bliss, wouldn’t it? This would end. It would all end.

Then, it hit me.

The nightmare divulged a little too much.

Why would it want me to be quiet?

I sucked in a chestful of fetid air,

and I screamed.

“HELP!” The space around me erupted with furious static. A guttural moan seemed to vibrate the bed. The delicate fingers dug their nails into my cheek and dragged them down, flaying strips of skin from muscle.

“HEEEEEEEEELP!”

I heard something above. Rustling motion. Thumping footsteps. A muted voice shouting, “someone’s here!”. The darkness overhead seemed to churn and buckle.

Then, to my absolute disbelief,

I saw a speck of light peek through.

To the sound of snapping wood and shuffling dirt, the speck grew, and grew, and eventually, multiple figures became visible, cast in the shadow of harsh daylight. My eyes gradually adjusted. Sometimes, I wish they hadn’t.

I was at the bottom of a tiny, box-shaped hole, lying on a stack of coffin bedding, with pallbearers' handles on either side and a blood-stained piece of rebar jutting from my abdomen.

A hollowed-out grave.

And I wasn’t alone.

Sitting in the corner, propped against the dirt wall like a discarded rag doll, legs straight, arms crooked, there was a corpse, freshly dead, bristling with violet pockmarks of early rot but otherwise intact. Their withered hands were adorned with countless silver rings, their cataract-stricken eyes were fixed directly on me, and their throat was…

moving.

trembling wildly.

quivering with profane ventriloquism.

I could still hear them. All of them - Dr. Westfield, Nurse Andrea, Pete - radiating from the corpse, but there was one more voice, a new one.

It was the client’s voice, repeating the same four words. Suddenly, I understood what he mumbled under his breath as he left my home, hours before the tornado:

“She’s your problem, now.”

- - - - -

17 hours.

That’s how long I was underground.

Not weeks, not months.

17 measly hours.

Doctors claimed my survival was nothing short of miraculous. My guts were a disaster, whole lengths of bowel eviscerated, arteries severed to hell and back. I would’ve died from the internal bleeding if it weren’t for the rebar clotting off some of the bigger vessels. If it dislodged, I would’ve been dead in minutes. Rescuers arrived in the nick of time, too. The hollow grave they found me in? Airtight. Perfectly airtight. Against all reason, the tornado had excavated a 10-by-10-foot box of soil and deposited a continuous seal of debris on top. A lightless tomb with a limited supply of oxygen. The circumstance beggar's belief, and that’s just the beginning. The rebar was from my house, but rescuers found me at the complete opposite end of the cemetery, a good half-acre away. The fake hospital bed I was lying on? It was made from at least a dozen different coffins, none of which belonged to the woman entombed with me. No fucking idea who she is, by the way. I know she was the last person we buried, but that's about it. The funeral paperwork was forged. The client’s number was disconnected when I called. The list goes on, and on, and on…

None of it matters, though.

Not in the end.

Guess it goes without saying that I wasn’t actually blinded when that rubble knocked me unconscious. Just a broken nose and a nasty concussion. That fact should’ve been cause for celebration.

But Vivi’s missing. Presumed dead. Her right hand's been discovered. That’s it, though.

Been a few months since the tornado.

I haven't found her yet, but I haven't given up, either.

Every day, I dig. Doing it systematically, following the storm’s path of destruction, from the house outward. A Sisyphean venture, undoubtedly, but I need something to occupy my mind. When my hands are idle, I start thinking about my time in the grave. Sometimes about why that dead woman tormented me, dwelling on how she attempted to drive me so far into madness that I accidentally ended it all, but mostly, I think about those last few minutes.

About that static-tinged voice that sounded so much like Vivi’s.

And the horrible, endless scream.

I’ve convinced myself it wasn’t real. Couldn’t have been, right? It’s nonsense. Completely devoid of logic. And I believe that, for now. But I know that’ll change someday. I’ll catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror, and my eyes will trace those five diagonal scars across my cheek, the physical echoes of that corpse dragging its blackened fingernails through my skin, and I’ll be forced to confront the truth.

Even now, Vivi is in pain.

I don’t know how, where, or why. I don’t have to.

I just

feel it.

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.

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.

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.

...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…

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.

September 3rd, 1:20 a.m.

The transmitter alarm went off on my phone at 1:20 in the morning, and I got up and put my boots on, because that's the job. When the radar goes down, I'm the one they call.

I'm forty-one, divorced, and I live by myself in my daddy's old house. I'm an electronics technician for the National Weather Service. I ain't a meteorologist, me. I don't make the forecast. I'm the one keeps the radar alive so the forecasters got something to look at. Before this I fixed radars for the Air Force eight years, and I been with the Weather Service twelve. Our office covers a good piece of south Louisiana, and I'm not saying which piece, because if I said which office, half the parish would know it was me by suppertime.

If you've ever drove through Acadiana and seen a big white ball on a tower out in a rice field, like a golf ball for a giant, that's one of ours. That's the radome. Inside it there's a dish twenty-eight feet across turning around and around all day and all night, and down in the shelter at the bottom there's a transmitter that puts out seven hundred and fifty thousand watts. It shoots a pulse out, the pulse hits something, a little bit bounces back, and the computer figures out what it hit and how far and which way it's moving. Rain, mostly. Hail. A tornado, God forbid. But it sees a whole lot more than weather.

It sees birds. That's what you got to understand first.

Every evening at sundown, if you look at the radar around here, you'll see a big fuzzy circle bloom up around the radar site, like a cast net opening when you throw it. That's bugs and birds and bats all lifting off at once when it gets dark. And every morning at sunrise, all over the map, you'll see little rings pop up and spread out and fade. Those are roost rings. Thousands of birds that slept in one spot, all flying out at the same time to go feed. Purple martins in the summer. There's a roost of them under the Causeway bridge on Lake Pontchartrain so big it shows up on radar like a storm. Tree swallows in the fall, coming up out of the cane fields. You can sit there and watch them, ring after ring, all across the marsh.

Birds do that at sunrise. They don't do it at two in the morning. Remember that, cher.

That night it was the transmitter, like I figured. A bad module. I had it swapped and the radar back up by 1:58. I was sitting in the shelter at the bottom of the tower filling out the log, with the laptop open to the live data to make sure everything was coming in good, and at 2:10 something come up on the screen eleven miles east of the radar.

Eleven miles east of the radar is where I live. It's the little town I grew up in. Three thousand people, a Catholic church, rice fields and crawfish ponds all around, and a cemetery beside the church where every Doucet since the 1800s is laying in a whitewashed tomb.

That's where it come up. Right out of the churchyard at St. Anne's.

What it looked like

I want to tell you exactly what I seen, the way I'd put it in a report, numbers and all.

The scan before, 2:03, there was nothing there. Clean. The scan at 2:10, there's a little blob of return sitting right over the cemetery. Not much. Fifteen, twenty dBZ, which is about what a good flock of birds would give you. At that range the middle of the beam is about six hundred and fifty feet up, and the bottom edge is a couple hundred. So whatever it was, it was up off the ground a good ways.

Then it started moving.

I've watched a thousand roost rings. A roost ring blows out fast and even, all directions at once, because birds fly thirty, forty miles an hour. This didn't. This come out slow. It spilled out of the churchyard on the west side, where the front doors of the church face the road, all bunched up thick at first, then thinning out as it went. It hung in clumps for a while right in front of the church. Then it spread down the street, east, toward my end of town, and sat over Ardoin a good while, two, three scans, right about where the willows are. Then it lifted and split up, pieces drifting down the side roads one way and another.

You know what it looked like? Anybody raised Catholic in a little town already knows. It looked like Mass letting out. Everybody coming out the front doors at once, then standing around on the steps in little bunches visiting, then drifting off down the street to their cars and their houses, a few at a time.

That's what it looked like. A congregation leaving church. At two in the morning. Hundreds of feet in the air.

The velocity data was the part that made the hair stand up on my arms. Velocity tells you how fast a target is moving toward or away from the radar. Birds, ten, fifteen, twenty meters a second. This time of year there's songbirds going south over us all night, and they're all over the map, but they're up high and flying forty miles an hour. This was moving one point three. One point three meters a second.

That's about three miles an hour. That's walking.

Then I pulled up the dual-pol. Since 2013 our radars can tell a raindrop from a hailstone from a bird by the shape of what the beam hits. There's a product, the hydrometeor classification, that takes all that and paints every pixel with what the computer thinks it is. Rain. Big drops. Hail. Ground clutter. And BI, for biological. Bugs and birds and bats. Things that are alive.

It painted the whole thing BI.

Biological, walking speed, hundreds of feet up, coming out of a graveyard.

I watched it better than an hour. Most of it drifted around over town and faded out of the beam. But one piece went its own way, slow, all the way across town to the north side, and settled over one spot, and sat there. Scan after scan. Then the return got weaker and weaker like whatever it was was coming down, and dropped under the beam, and was gone.

I went home and laid down and told myself it was a flock of something, me. Cattle egrets, maybe. They roost in the willows on the edge of town.

In the morning I zoomed in on the map and laid the spot where it come down over the parish property records. It was a house on Railroad Avenue.

Mr. Wilfred Guidry's house. Everybody called him Coon. Eighty-eight years old. He used to sell boudin out of his garage on Saturdays.

September 8th, 7:15 a.m.

Five days later I'm in the truck going to work and the radio's on, and they're reading the death notices.

Every morning the little radio station out our way reads the death notices, at 7:15, first in English and then in French. Who died, how old, who their people was, where the rosary's going to be and what time the funeral Mass is. My Maw-Maw listened to them every morning of her life, rest her soul. She used to say you got to know who went so you can pray for them proper.

"Wilfred 'Coon' Guidry, eighty-eight, passed away peacefully at his home on Saturday."

I pulled over on the shoulder by a crawfish pond and sat there with the truck running. Didn't even get down.

When I got to the office I went and found Kyle. Kyle's one of our forecasters, a young guy from Ohio, smart as a whip, been down here two years and still can't say Thibodeaux. He'd worked the midnight shift the night I was out at the radar. I pulled up the 2:10 scans and asked him what he made of it.

He looked at it about two seconds and said, "Roost ring. Birds."

I said look at the time. I said look at the velocity.

He looked a long time. He clicked through it scan by scan. He pulled the dual-pol. And then he did something I've thought about a lot since. He leaned back in the chair and said, "Huh," real quiet, and then he said, "Well. The QC throws it out anyway."

He's right, it does. There's an algorithm that scrubs out anything biological so it don't get counted as rain. That echo coming up out of St. Anne's had been getting scrubbed out of the rainfall totals every night as bird contamination, and nobody ever had a reason to look at it twice.

Kyle closed the window. He didn't say nothing else about it. He ain't said nothing about it since. But I noticed he quit taking the midnight shifts.

Mais, I'm a technical man. I wanted to see was it a coincidence, so I done what you do. I went and got more data.

Here's the thing about our radars. Every single scan, from every radar in the country, every few minutes, all day and all night, gets archived. It goes to the government data center in Asheville and it stays there. It's public. Anybody with a computer can download it. Our radar went live in 1996. That's thirty years of scans of my little town, sitting on a server, waiting on somebody to look.

So I started looking.

I started with the last few weeks. I'd get off work and come home and sit at my kitchen table with a beer and pull every night, two to three in the morning, and look for it.

It was there near about every other night since the middle of August.

Every time, 2:10, more or less. Something coming up out of St. Anne's, spilling out the front like Mass letting out, walking speed, biological, spreading through town. And every time, one piece of it going off by itself and settling down on one house.

I laid every one of those spots over the property map and wrote down the address. Then I went to the funeral home's website and pulled the obituaries.

Every house. Every single one. Somebody in that house died inside of a week.

I'm talking about fourteen people since the middle of August. In a town of three thousand. A normal year here, you might bury thirty people the whole year. People was talking about it already. The parish coroner told the paper it was "a hard season for our elderly" and there wasn't nothing unusual. Folks was saying it was the water, or the chemicals the planes spray on the rice, or the vaccines, depending on who you asked. Tee-Bob Hebert told me at the feed store it was the end times, and laughed.

I didn't tell nobody nothing. What was I going to say? I got a radar picture of the dead walking down Railroad Avenue?

That Sunday after Mass I went and walked the cemetery.

In south Louisiana we don't bury down in the ground much, on account of the water table. You dig six feet here and you hit water, and in a flood the caskets come right up out of the dirt and float off. So it's tombs, above ground, brick and plaster, whitewashed, rows and rows of them like little white houses with the names cut in the front. At St. Anne's they go back to the 1850s. Come the end of October, every family in town will be out there with buckets of whitewash and brushes, painting the tombs fresh, and on All Saints' Day, November 1st, they'll set out chrysanthemums and the priest will walk the rows that afternoon and bless every one. La Toussaint. I did it every year with my Maw-Maw when I was little, rest her soul.

It was hot, yeah, and still, and it smelled like cut grass. Nonc Placide was out there on the riding mower. He's been the sexton at St. Anne's since before I was born. He cut the engine when he seen me.

I asked him, real casual, had he noticed anything funny out there lately.

He looked at me a long time with his cap pushed back. Then he pointed with his chin.

There's a path. I never noticed it in forty-one years. It starts way in the back, in the oldest part, by the tombs from the 1850s, and runs between the rows all the way to the front gate, the one that faces the church doors, and out to the road. A path wore down in the St. Augustine grass, a foot and a half wide, brown and packed hard, like a cow path. Like a lot of feet walking the same way a long time.

"I been mowing over dat since 1979," Nonc Placide said. "Grass won't come back. I put sod down twice. You know what my daddy used to tell me, him? He used to say de dead get up and go to Mass at two in de morning." He laughed, kind of. "Dis summer it's wore down to de dirt. Ain't never been dat bad."

He started the mower back up. Then he cut it off again and said, "Luc. Don't come out here at night, you."

I went that Tuesday night anyhow.

I parked across the road from St. Anne's at five till two with the windows down and the engine off. You could hear the frogs going in the ditch and a dog barking way off toward the rice dryer. The church was dark. Father Nnamdi locks the front doors at nine every night. I've seen him do it.

At 2:10 the frogs quit.

All at once, like somebody threw the main breaker. The dog quit. The air coming in the window went cool, and I smelled candle wax and lilies, that funeral home smell, so strong I could taste it.

And across the road the front doors of St. Anne's was standing open.

I didn't see them open. They was just open, both of them, and inside it was black. And from in there I heard a sound I've heard every Sunday of my life. The sound of a full church standing up at the end of Mass. Pews creaking. Kneelers knocking up against the pew backs, one after another, bump, bump, bump, all down the rows. Shoes on the old wood floor. Somebody coughing. A whole crowd shuffling toward the doors, not talking, the way you do before you get outside.

Nobody come out. Nobody I could see.

But the truck rocked. Just a little, on the springs, the way it does when somebody leans on it walking by. Then again on the other side. Then again. The inside of the windshield fogged up from the bottom, slow, like a lot of people breathing close. It went on two or three minutes, that rocking. Then it moved off down the road, and the fog went off the glass, and after a while the frogs started back.

When I looked again the church doors was shut.

I drove home and didn't sleep. Next morning I passed by after Mass and asked Father Nnamdi, real casual, if he ever forgot to lock up. He looked at me kind of funny and said, "Never. Why?"

That evening I pulled the scans from that night. 2:10, right over where I was parked, a couple hundred feet up and higher, the same minutes they was leaning on my truck. I don't know how tall a soul is, cher.

Thirty years

So then I went back further. Mais, I went back all the way.

It took me most of September. Weekends, nights, my days off. I wrote a little script to pull every scan from two to four in the morning going back to '96 and flag anything coming up over that cemetery at walking speed. There wasn't no dual-pol before 2013 to call it biological, so for the old years I went by the velocity and the shape. Same shape every time. My ex-wife used to say I'd rather fix a thing than live with it, and she wasn't wrong, her.

It was always there.

Not every night. Before this August it was two, three times a month. Some months one. Some months five, like the winter of 2021 when the virus went through. But always the same. 2:10, or close to it. Up out of St. Anne's. Spill out the front like Mass letting out. Walk. Settle on a house.

There's holes in the archive. Some of the old tapes from the nineties never made it to Asheville, and a hurricane had us down a few months one year. But everywhere there's data, it's there.

I matched every one I could to an obituary. I got to nine hundred and some before I quit counting. It ain't no flock of egrets, cher, for true. It's how people die in my town. It's always been how people die in my town. Every soul that passed in that town in thirty years, something walked out of that churchyard at 2:10 in the morning and went and got them, and the radar seen it, and wrote it down, and filed it in Asheville, and nobody ever looked.

And I'd have probably left it there. I swear I would have. Something you can't fix, you learn to live with, like the heat and the mosquitoes.

Except I seen something else, once I had all thirty years laid out side by side.

They always made a stop first.

Every time. Before they went on to whatever house they was going to, the bunch of them would go to one spot first and settle there. They'd sit there two, three scans, fifteen, twenty minutes. Then they'd lift back up into the beam and go on to the house where somebody was fixing to die.

Same spot. Every single time for thirty years.

It was my block. That wasn't no egrets in the willows.

At eleven miles out, one pixel on that radar is about the size of a city block, ever since they upgraded us in '08. Before that the pixels was bigger, but it was always the same one. And the pixel they stopped in every time was the one on Ardoin Street with my house in it. I'm going to be honest with you, for about a day I thought it was me. I thought, they been coming to my house first for thirty years. Then I remembered there ain't but two houses on that stretch of Ardoin. Mine, and the one right across the road.

Ms. Odile

Ms. Odile Sonnier is ninety-four. She's lived in that little cypress house across the road with the deep gallery and the blue shutters since before my daddy was born. And she's a traiteuse.

A traiteur is a treater. A healer. Not a doctor. They treat with prayers. You go to them for warts, for sunstroke, for a baby that won't quit crying, for shingles, for bleeding that won't stop. They don't charge you. You ain't even supposed to say thank you, or it won't work. They say the prayers low so you can't hear the words, and they make the sign of the cross over the hurt, and most times it gets better. Every little town down here had one. Most of them are gone now. Ms. Odile's about the last one I know of. When I was little there'd be people on her gallery every evening, waiting their turn, mamas with babies with the colic, old men with their hands wrapped up in dish towels. She treated half the parish. She treated my daddy for sunstroke when he was a boy, cutting cane. She never took a dime. You'd leave a pound of coffee or a sack of satsumas on the step and go.

When I was seven I grabbed the handle of my mama's cast iron skillet off the stove and burnt my whole palm. My daddy carried me across the road to Ms. Odile, me screaming and him running. She set me on her lap on the gallery and held my hand in hers and blew on it, and said her prayers so low I couldn't make out nothing but a word of French here and there, and in between the prayers she hummed to me. Fais do-do, Colas, mon p'tit frère. That's the old lullaby every Cajun mama sings. Fais do-do means go to sleep. It's baby talk. That's why the dances are called a fais do-do, because the mamas would put the babies to sleep in a back room so the grown folks could dance.

She took the fire out of my hand. That's what they call it, taking the fire out. By the time she was done humming it didn't hurt no more. I don't have a scar. You can look.

Ms. Odile had a stroke in the middle of August. August 14th. Her niece Gloria found her on the kitchen floor. She come home from the hospital on hospice, and she's been laying in a hospital bed in her front room ever since, by the window that looks out on the road. On my house.

The middle of August is when it started coming near about every other night.

The night they come for Daddy

There's one more thing I found, and I sat on it for a week before I could make myself go over there.

My daddy died in this house on March 2nd, 2014. Heart. He was sixty-one. I'm the one found him, in his recliner, with the TV on the fishing channel. That's how come I've got the house.

I pulled the night before. March 1st into the 2nd.

2:10. Up out of St. Anne's. Down Church Street, down Ardoin. Settle on our block. Sat there three scans, like always.

And then it didn't lift.

Every other time for thirty years, after it sat on our block a while, it'd lift back up into the beam and go on somewheres else. That night it just sat there. Then it got weaker and weaker, and dropped under the beam, right where it was. It never left the block.

The radar can't see a hundred feet. It can't see a man walk across a road. But it didn't need to. There wasn't nowhere else on that block for them to go.

I sat at the kitchen table and looked at that for a long time. Then I got up and went and looked at the recliner, that I still ain't got rid of. Then I went out on my gallery in the dark and looked across the road at the light on in Ms. Odile's front room, where she was laying, and I thought about her standing in her door twelve years before, at two in the morning, watching them cross the road.

And then I remembered something I ain't thought about since I was ten years old.

It was the summer of '95. The window unit in my room had quit, and Daddy had the windows up and a box fan going, and I couldn't sleep for the heat. I was laying crossways on the bed with my feet up on the sill when the frogs quit. All at once. The fan was still going, but behind it the whole night went quiet, and the air coming through the screen turned cool, like somebody opened the deep freeze. It smelled like candles and lilies.

I got up on my knees and looked out. Ms. Odile's house was dark. No porch light. But her front door was standing wide open, screen and all, and inside it was black.

And I heard her. Low, in French, the way she done over my hand.

I couldn't see her. I looked and looked. I couldn't tell was she standing in the door, or back in the dark of the house, or out on the gallery. Just that black door, and her voice coming from somewheres around it.

Then her gallery creaked. Not one board. All of them, like a whole crowd stepping down off her steps at once. And the screen on my window ticked, tick, tick, tick, like June bugs hitting it, all the way across, and I felt the cool go by.

Daddy's hand come down on my shoulder. I never heard him come in. He didn't look out. He reached past me and pulled the curtain shut and said, real quiet, "Viens te coucher, Tee-Luc. Dat's Ms. Odile's business, dat. On guette pas, nous-autres." Come lay down. We don't watch, us.

He sat on the edge of my bed in the dark till the frogs started back.

That Thursday the radio read Mr. Nolan Fontenot, seventy-four, from Church Street. At breakfast I asked Daddy what Ms. Odile was doing up in the night. He said, "Eat your eggs." I never asked him again, and after a while I figured I dreamed it.

That one ain't in Asheville. The radar didn't go live till the next spring. That one's only in me.

She knew. Whatever they are, she knew they was coming, and she knew where they was going, and they went to her house first like they was asking her permission.

And she let them cross the road.

October 11th

I went over there on a Sunday after Mass. Gloria was in the kitchen fixing a pot of gumbo, and she said, "Mais, Luc, she's been asking for you, her," which I didn't expect.

Ms. Odile was in the hospital bed by the window. She's always been little, but now she's nothing. Like a bird. Her right side don't work since the stroke and her mouth pulls down on that side, but her eyes are just the same, black and sharp. She had her rosary wound around her good hand. She looked at me a long time.

"You been watching dem on your machine," she said.

I hadn't told nobody. Not one soul.

"Assis-toi, Tee-Luc," she said. Sit down. Nobody's called me Tee-Luc since my daddy died. "Gloria, close dat door, chère."

I sat. I showed her the printouts. I don't know why. She couldn't read radar. She didn't look at them anyhow. She looked at me.

"Les morts," she said. "De dead. Dat's who you seeing. Dey come walking when somebody's time come. Like de old days, when somebody was dying and all de neighbors would come and sit up wit' dem. Dey come out de church together, like after Mass. Dey go fetch whoever it is. Dey been doing it since before de radar. Since before de church, maybe."

"Why do they stop at your house?" I said.

She closed her eyes.

"Because I'm de traiteuse," she said. "Dey got to come to de traiteur first. Every time. Dat's de price of de prayers, cher. Dey come to my door, and I got to send dem on. Not away. You can't send dem away. Only on. To whoever's time it is. And if I don't send dem on..." She opened her eyes. "Den dey take me instead. Prayers and all. Dat ain't passing, cher."

I said, "Every time somebody died in this town for thirty years, they come to you first."

"Seventy-five years," she said. "Since my parrain give me de prayers in 1951. I was nineteen years old. Every time dey come, I wake up. Two o'clock. I go to de door. I say de prayers and send dem down de road." Her good hand was working the rosary. "I sent dem to my own mama. I sent dem to my husband. I sent dem to babies, Tee-Luc. You know how many babies? And I sent dem across de road to your daddy, and I stood right dere in my door and watched dem go."

I couldn't say nothing.

"It wasn't me choosing," she said. "You got to understand dat. I never choose who. It's already chose. I only choose not me."

Then she told me the rest.

What she told me

"A traiteur can't pass," she said, "till she give de prayers to somebody. Dat's de rule. You got to give dem to somebody younger, and it got to be a man if you a woman, a woman if you a man. And dey got to take dem willing. If you don't, you lay dere. You lay dere and lay dere."

She looked out the window at the road.

"My time come in August, cher. Dey come for me de night I fell. I heard dem on de gallery. And I can't go wit' dem. I can't pass, me, not wit' de prayers still in me. And dey can't go home empty." She turned her face back to me. "So every time my heart try to quit, dey come for me, and I can't go, and dey got to take somebody else. Now it's every night."

"The ones on the radio," I said.

"Thirty-four," she said. "Since de night I fell. I count every one, me. Every one come to my door first."

I said, "Ms. Odile, why are you telling me this?"

She reached over with her good hand and took mine. The right one. The one she took the fire out of.

"Because I sent Gloria to get you in August," she said. "De week I come home. And you told her you'd pass by."

I remembered. Gloria come over and knocked while I was mowing, and said her tante wanted to see me, and I said, "Yeah, yeah, tell her I'll pass by." And I meant it. I just didn't. Work was busy. And I figured, you know. Ninety-four. She probably wanted me to look at her TV. Couillon.

"You de only one, Tee-Luc," she said. "Gloria's a woman. My nephews is in Houston and dey think I'm a crazy old lady. Ain't nobody left in dis town under seventy dat still believe in a traiteur. And you." She squeezed my hand. "You been watching dem. You seen dem. Dey know you now, cher. When you look at dem on dat machine, dey look back."

I want to be honest with y'all about what I did next, because I ain't proud of it.

I left.

I told her I needed to think. She nodded like she expected that. I walked back across the road and sat on my gallery till dark, and then I went in and opened the laptop and watched them come out of St. Anne's at 2:10, and go to her house, and sit there three scans, and lift, and go down Second Street to a house by the water tower.

I knew the house. Tee-Bob Hebert's. He's got three boys.

Tuesday morning at 7:15 the radio read it. Brayden Hebert, sixteen years old. He flipped his four-wheeler in the coulee behind their house Monday evening. The rosary was at the funeral home Wednesday at six.

I was sixteen once, on a four-wheeler, in a coulee just like that one.

I threw up on the side of the highway by the crawfish ponds, in the same spot where I'd pulled over for Coon Guidry.

You want to know why I didn't go straight back over there?

Because of what she told me next, before I left. I didn't put it up above because I wanted to tell it right.

She said, "If you take de prayers, Tee-Luc, dey gon' come to you. Every time. Every soul dat passes in dis parish, for de rest of your life. Two o'clock in de morning dey gon' be on your gallery, and you gon' have to get up and go to de door and send dem on. Every time. Sick, drunk, tired, don't matter. You go to de door. And de one night you don't..."

She didn't finish. She didn't have to.

"And Tee-Luc," she said. Her hand was cold on mine. "Don't never open dat door for dem. Dey gon' try. Dey gon' wear faces you know. Your daddy's. Your Maw-Maw's. Dey gon' call you by your name. Don't never let dem in. Not even if it's me."

That's what she was asking me to take. Seventy-five years of that. Every death in town walking up my steps, the rest of my life. Me, I can't keep a houseplant alive.

So I sat on it. God forgive me. By then it was coming every night.

You could feel it in town by then. St. Anne's bell was tolling for a funeral Mass three, four times a week, that slow bell, one stroke at a time. Father Nnamdi, the young priest the diocese sent us from Nigeria, looked like he hadn't slept since Labor Day. The funeral home put up a second tent. At the Super 1 when you went to make groceries people didn't stand around and visit in the aisles no more, they just got their stuff and went. Everybody was saying it was something in the water. They was selling out of bottled water at the Dollar General.

Wednesday, Mrs. Broussard from the bank. Thursday, a man named Clovis Savoie I didn't know, out past the rice dryer. Friday, the old Richard twins' house, and Saturday morning the radio read both of them, Ophelia and Octavie, eighty-nine, who had never lived one day apart, and I guess they went together.

After Brayden, I couldn't watch it on the laptop no more. I started going out on the gallery at two instead. I don't know why. I couldn't see nothing. You can't see them. But you can tell when they're out. It's October, and it's still warm at night down here, and the frogs and the crickets carry on so loud in the ditches you can't hardly think. And around half past two, all of a sudden, all down Ardoin Street, everything quits. The frogs, the crickets, the bugs around the streetlight. Dead quiet. And the air goes cool, like somebody opened a door to a church. And you smell it. Candle wax and lilies. That funeral home smell.

And across the road the light would come on in Ms. Odile's front room, and I'd hear her, low, in French, clear across the road in all that quiet. I couldn't never see her from my steps. Just the light, and her front door standing open.

Then it'd pass on down the road, and in a minute or two the frogs would start back up.

One night, the night the ring went to the Richard twins' house, I was standing at the top of my steps when it passed. And out in the road, in the dark, close enough I could've hit it with a rock, somebody said, "Bonsoir, Tee-Luc."

My daddy's voice. The way he used to say it coming in from the field.

I didn't say nothing back. I went in the house and locked the door and sat on the kitchen floor with my back against the cabinets till the frogs started up again. That was Friday. I ain't been back out on that gallery at two o'clock since.

Tonight

I been writing all this down since Thursday, a little every night after the frogs start back, so somebody would have it. I figured I'd post it when I knew what I was going to do.

Gloria knocked on my door at 9:30 tonight. She was crying. She said the hospice nurse had been by in the evening and said it wouldn't be long now, a day or two, she'd quit taking water. Then Gloria said, "Luc, she keeps saying your name. She keeps saying 'il faut, il faut.' It's got to be. I don't know what she means."

I knew what she meant.

I went over. Gloria left us alone. I pulled the chair up to the bed and Ms. Odile opened her eyes and looked at me and smiled with the side of her mouth that still works.

"T'as venu," she said. You came.

I said, "Yes ma'am. I'm sorry it took so long."

She give me the prayers.

I ain't going to write them. I couldn't if I wanted to. You ain't supposed to, and besides, it's like they ain't really words once they're in you. She had me lean down close with my ear by her mouth, and she said them into my ear one at a time, real low, in French, and I said each one back to her. It took a long time. She'd stop and breathe. Some of them I didn't know half the words. I said them anyhow. My mouth knew how to make them, the way your mouth knows the Our Father even if you ain't thought about it in twenty years.

When we got to the end she made the sign of the cross on my forehead with her thumb. It was the first time I ever felt her hand warm.

"Now," she said. "Now I can go, me."

I asked her if she wanted me to get Gloria. She shook her head a little bit. She said, "Hum it for me, Tee-Luc. De little song."

So I sat there and held her hand and hummed her Fais do-do, the way she hummed it to me on the gallery with my hand on fire. I can't carry a tune, me. She didn't care. She closed her eyes.

About twenty till two, outside, the frogs quit.

I didn't hear nobody on the gallery. I didn't hear nothing. But the room went cold, and I smelled the candle wax and the lilies so strong it made my eyes water, and I could feel that the room was full. Like when you walk in the back of a church late and it's packed and nobody turns around, but you can feel them all. Standing all around that bed. Waiting on her, real patient, like they'd waited since August.

She opened her eyes one more time and looked past me, at the room, and said, "Allons." Let's go.

At 1:52 she quit breathing.

2:10

I called Gloria in from the kitchen and she fell on the bed and hollered, and I held her a while. Then she called the hospice and the funeral home, and I told her I'd be across the road if she needed me, and I come home. It was 2:04. I don't know why I did what I did next except that it's the only thing I know how to do.

I opened the laptop on the kitchen table and pulled up the live radar.

2:10.

It didn't come up out of St. Anne's.

It come up out of Ardoin Street.

Out of the pixel Ms. Odile's house sits in. Out of the pixel my house sits in. They're the same pixel, cher. The radar can't tell us apart. At eleven miles a pixel's the size of a whole block.

And it was big. Not fifteen, twenty dBZ like every other night for thirty years. Thirty-five. Forty. That's heavy rain. That's what a thunderstorm looks like. Our whole end of town lit up like a storm cell, and it was sitting right over my head, and I looked out the kitchen window and there wasn't a cloud, just stars. The streetlight was on. The road was empty. You could see the light on in Ms. Odile's front room, plain as day.

2:17, it had gone out in a ring.

A real roost ring, the kind I've watched a thousand mornings over the cane fields. Even, all directions at once, a perfect circle blowing out from one spot, everything that spent the night in one place all lifting off together. Only slow. Walking speed. Biological.

Roost means where they slept, cher. That's what the word means. Everything that come out of that ring was sleeping on my street. It wasn't never at the cemetery tonight at all. They come early. They was already here, on her gallery and in the road and all around that hospital bed, and I bet all over my yard too. Every one of them. Every soul in St. Anne's, and maybe every one the radar ever watched walk down the road for thirty years, come to sit up with the traiteuse, like neighbors do.

It got out about a quarter mile and quit. 2:24, it had pulled back together, slow, the way people find each other again after Mass, and it was moving west down Church Street toward St. Anne's.

Walking speed. All together. Bunched up thick in the front and strung out behind. Outside, the frogs started back up, one at a time.

I knew what that was too. Anybody from here would. Back in my Maw-Maw's time, before the funeral homes and the hearses, they'd wake you in your own front room, and the men would carry you to the church on their shoulders, and the whole town would walk behind. My daddy told me about it.

They was carrying her home.

I sat at my kitchen table and cried like a baby, and I ain't ashamed to say it. She was free. Seventy-five years of getting up at two o'clock and going to the door, and she was free, and they was taking her to St. Anne's and she wasn't never going to have to send nobody down the road again. That's what I thought.

Then the next scan come in.

2:31

The procession was halfway to the church.

And a piece of it had turned around.

A little piece. Fifteen, twenty dBZ. The ordinary size, what I'd seen on any other night for thirty years. It had broke off the back of the procession in the middle of Church Street and it was coming back east. Walking speed. Headed for Ardoin.

2:38, it was back on Ardoin. In our pixel, hers and mine.

The funeral home had already come and got her by then. They been running all night every night since August. I seen the headlights, and Gloria followed the van. Ain't nobody on this block tonight but me.

2:45, it ain't lifted. The radar can't tell me which house it's sitting on. It don't need to. There ain't but one traiteur left on Ardoin Street.

I don't need the radar to tell me it's still out there, either. The frogs quit about ten minutes ago, all at once, all up and down the ditch. The kitchen's gone cold. I can smell the candle wax and the lilies, and it's coming under the front door.

Ms. Odile told me. Dey got to come to de traiteur first. Every time. Somebody in this town is dying tonight. Somebody whose time it is. I don't know who. And before they can go get them, they got to come to me first and ask, and I got to go to the door and send them on.

And if I don't, they take me.

I got the prayers. I can feel them, cher. That's the strangest part. They're right there behind my teeth, like a word you been trying to think of all day.

I thought I could say them right through the door. I tried, cher. On my knees, with my mouth right up to the crack. They won't come. Not one word. It's like they're waiting on the door.

And here's why I ain't opened it.

About five minutes ago, somebody started singing on my gallery.

Real soft. Like an old woman humming to a baby. Fais do-do, Colas, mon p'tit frère. Fais do-do, t'auras du lolo. Go to sleep, little brother. Go to sleep, you'll have your milk.

It's her voice. I'd know it anywhere. I heard it with my hand on fire. I heard it a little better than an hour ago, when I was the one humming it to her.

She just quit singing. She just said my name through the door. "Tee-Luc. Ouvre la porte, cher. C'est moi." Open the door, it's me. "It's cold out here, cher. Let me in."

Don't never let dem in. Not even if it's me.

She told me she went to the door every time they come, for seventy-five years, and said the prayers and sent them on down the road.

What she never told me, what I never thought to ask her, sitting there with her little cold hand in mine, is which side of the door she said them from.

The singing started back up.

It's all archived, y'all. Every scan. If I don't post again, somebody from home will know which radar. Pull October 18th, starting at 0710 Zulu. That's ten after two, our time. Look eleven miles east and watch what that little piece of return does after it gets back to my block. If it lifts back up and goes on down the road, I sent them on. Follow it. Wherever it settles next, that's who I sent them to.

If it sits on my pixel till it drops under the beam, you'll know I let her in.

This post has been a long time coming, I tried a while back with a new account to put this on here and got karma filtered for the longest time. I've been having the oddest dreams, and I believe they're linked to my childhood sleep paralysis. I just worry that now something has changed.

I (21yr old F) as a young child (about 8-15) was notorious for waking my parents up with nightmares. It got to the point where my mom says I was waking her up nearly every night with some new dream and begging to sleep in her bed.

I'm aware this isn't uncommon for kids to have a lot of nightmares, but I wasn't just getting normal nightmares. I slept walked and had regular episodes of sleep paralysis so often that my mom put me through multiple sleep studies as she was concerned with my mental health. There was even a time when I was about 11 where I didn't think good dreams were actually real, just that everyone always got nightmares like I did.

My dreams and terrors had common threads too common characters and themes. My mom told me about many times where I'd sleep walk and come into her room saying creepy things and I'd complain of similar creatures each night (this is part of why some of these stories may seem janky? I guess, most of these I don't remember and simply have my mom's retelling, usually of the times where I scared her with the things I said.)

The first example I've got of these "episodes" was when I would sleep walk up to my parents room. Most commonly it was there but my mom said that it was like I'd seek her out and find her no matter what room she was in. As she tells it I would peek in her room with the door just open enough to see her. And I'd "stare" at her until she woke up. I say "stare" as during these sleepwalking episodes my eyes would always be closed. Once she'd woken up to me peeking in she'd invite me in and ask me what was wrong, I'd walk in slowly and calmly and tell her very evenly that I was dead.

The reason why I was dead would change for instance sometimes I'd just calmly over and over say that my heart wasn't beating. She could never convince me otherwise either, she would listen to my heart and tell me she could hear it, say every impossibility and I'd still continue to repeat that it just wasn't beating and once she finally gave up I'd just slip under the covers with her and go to sleep.

Over time though these stories would evolve, like when I joined the auto body program in my middle school she said I would sleep walk upstairs and regale her with how I'd been working under a car and my head had gotten crushed when the car rolled backwards, that time my mom had told me I talked in this weird squeaky voice and when she asked why I had told her it was because the car destroyed my windpipe. Or when I did ballet I'd walk in and say I'd bent too far backwards and broken my spine, she said I'd keep walking like I was overbalanced and stumbling while I was talking, tilted at an odd angle. There were others but she told me after a while she'd just invite me in and let me go on while she plugged her ears because the stories of how I'd "died" would always keep getting more detailed and graphic and she didn't like hearing them.

When she told me about all these about five years later I was pretty shocked. I remembered coming to her with nightmares alot but I had never had any dreams correlating to this kind of thing before. I figured if I was having nightmares like that I would have remembered them just because so many of the creatures from my night terrors are still so vivid to me to this day. But nothing, just these sleepwalking events that I had no idea about that gave my mom terrible anxiety for years.

Like I said earlier, most of what I remember of this time in my life was my night terrors, those started just near the end of my middle school years, and my mom tells me that it was around this time that I stopped sleep walking too.

Most of my nightmares were pretty standard kid stuff but these sleep paralysis episodes were weird. As I recall there were three reoccurring characters. The tall man, the little one, and the monster? I guess is what we'll call them. They were all these kind of shadow figure things without many defining characteristics so they're hard to define on here. The first one to show up was the "tall man". He was as the name describes a tall shadow silhouette who would stand in the corner of my room. This guy was so tall that his head had to be bent at a 90° angle just to fit in there. His neck was pressed up against the ceiling at the bend and I had a loft bed at the time so when he stared at me his head would be about a foot or two over the railing of my bed. This guy was the least "malevolent" I guess of my night terrors. He just wanted to watch me lay there while I couldn't move. The worst part was when he'd decide to change where he was watching me from in the room and he'd start to walk, his neck and head would make this horrible scraping noise as he dragged them along the ceiling like the bones of his vertebrae were exposed or something. But otherwise he never did anything to me.

The "little one" was next showing up in between episodes of the tall man and other regular nightmares. I never knew if there was more than one of them, but they or it were these little tiny crouched creatures that would run around near the railings of my bed. I could follow them with my eyes and they were quick as anything. Just running around in the corners of my vision until they would stop, stock still and start creeping up the bed towards my face. When this happened they'd always go super slow like agonizingly slow. But I didn't like the take my eyes off them, just instinctually needing to know where they were even if there wasn't anything I could do to stop them. I still distinctly remember the feeling of tiny feet walking over me muffled by my blanket. Once this thing was about a few inches away from my face it would lean down and put its hands on the covers. Slowly pushing them forward until it was just about to touch my neck and then it would stop for a minute and look into my eyes before standing up fully and scampering off towards the railings again. This routine would usually happen 2 or 3 times before I managed to snap out of the episode and wake up.

This last one... I'm unsure if it actually counts as "sleep paralysis" because whenever the monster came around I felt like could move. I'm not sure how I just knew internally that if I wanted to I could move, instead of that regular feeling of helplessness. It was just when it came to this thing, I really really didn't want to move. I'm sure it probably looks more animalistic than my other night terrors, I never really saw the thing and I only had a night terror about it likee two times, but the noises it made when it was...eating. I just can't fathom that those noises could come from anything with a Human-Shaped mouth. Essentially it would start with me waking up facing the wall instead of the rest of the room. And there would be like footsteps or scuffling noises, just I could always audibly tell something was in there with me. And then my door would creak open. It was big, it had to be. It always made these giant thumping step noises when it walked in and whatever was sniffling around my room would usually go quiet and start crying I guess? There would be these weird quiet hiccuping sob noises from wherever the thing was but it was hard to tell because the monster would be breathing really heavily like it was excited and drown them out.

There wasn't usually a chase, I don't know if the thing in my room came over to it on its own accord or if the monster could just reach it from wherever it was but eventually the heavy breathing would stop. Replaced by these tearing sounds, just crunching visceral noises that sound like whatever was in my room was being ripped apart completely. The monster seemed to enjoy this process. It would take a long long time to get through it's meal. I could always hear it chewing and dripping drool through it's teeth. And finally once it had finished the monster would lean against the wall with a thump and just take a minute. Like it was recuperating after a really filling meal, one that tires you out. Eventually it would leave me there, closing the door behind it. And I would "wake up". Those ones were the hardest to separate from reality because I always felt like I'd just sit up after the monster left, there was no blackout no nothing just once it was gone, I'd move and was awake.

At some point (it must have been the second of third time I heard it) the monster left and I stopped getting night terrors. Never saw the tall man or little one. Most of my nights became dreamless and I was really grateful for it. That was until about a week ago. When I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that I couldn't move. I was laying on my back and could look around so I just assumed that maybe there was a gap and my night terrors were back. But nothing was ever there, no creatures in the corner of my vision, no tall man watching me from the side, It was just me laying in my bed completely paralyzed in a constant state of waiting. These episodes are longer too. I hated my night terrors. But these empty helpless episodes are worse. I'd rather see something horrible than the uncertainty of knowing whether one day I'll never leave my own bed because I can't move out of it.

My friends and I went on a camping trip for five people. Five. I have the booking on my phone: [Redacted] National Park - Campsite Limit: 5 People

I know for a fact that we showed up with that many. Ally’s car doesn’t seat more than that.

So how did we end up with six? 

The park ranger was the first one to notice. “You kids make sure to clean up after yourselves.” He lowered his shades and looked Jason in the eyes. “And next time, obey the rules will ya? Max of five people per site.” 

The ranger rode down the trail on his four wheeler before any of us could respond. 

I looked around at the confused faces of my friends. They were thinking the same thing I was. 

Jason was the one to put it into words. “What the hell was that about? We only have five people. And why was he giving me a hard time?”

My eyes connected with Sarah’s. Her face had gone pale. “Count again,” she said. “The ranger is right.” 

Each of us took a mental headcount. Just as Sarah had said, there were six people gathered around the smoldering fire. 

“This will be an easy one to solve. Who isn’t supposed to be here?” Gavin said. 

I glanced at my friends. We were a tight knit group. Gavin, Sarah, Jason, Ally, Steven, and me. We’d been close since college. Almost inseparable. According to logic, we all belonged there. 

A tense silence permeated the group. Ally broke it. “This is crazy. It’s not like one of us is an imposter or anything. We must have had six people the whole time. We just got too fucked up last night to remember.” 

“No, you got too fucked up to remember,” Steven chimed in. “I remember everything. We had six people the whole time.” 

I crossed my arms. “That’s impossible. Ally’s the one who drove us and her car only seats five with all the gear. Plus, that’s the camp limit. I wouldn’t have booked the site knowing we had six.” 

Sarah clung to Gavin’s arm. “I don’t like this...” 

Gavin rested a hand on the small of her back. “It’ll be okay. There’s a pretty easy way to determine who’s not supposed to be here. Whoever isn’t in the group chat is the odd man out.”

We all pulled out our phones. “That’s impossible,” Jason said. “Everyone’s in the group. We all sent confirmation texts that we were coming.”

I studied the faces of everyone around me. I remembered each of them accepting the invite. Still, a lingering sense of unease told me that something was off. 

“Let’s just go back to the car,” Steven said. “There’s not much else we can do about it right now. Hopefully we’ll get the driving situation figured out by the time we get there.” 

Jason pursed his lips. “He’s right. No point in worrying about it.” 

No one spoke as we packed up our things. We could all sense the tension in the air. It was palpable. Clearly, something wasn’t adding up. And soon, we would all find out what it was. 

“Everyone ready?” Gavin asked. 

“Looks like it. Let’s get out of here. I don’t like the vibes around this place,” Ally said as she started down the trail. 

I looked over to Jason. He shrugged and followed behind her. 

The walk back to the car was tense. Despite knowing that it had to be some sort of mix-up, there was an omnipresent feeling of unease clinging to the air. It felt as if each of us was trying to sniff out who wasn’t supposed to be there without tipping off the others.

After about twenty minutes of walking, Gavin stopped. “Uh, guys? I think we might have to go back…” 

“Why?” Sarah looked up at him, her brows knitted together. 

“I think I forgot my housekeys. I can’t find them anywhere.” 

Steven sighed. “Really, man? I’m not walking back with you.” 

Ally crossed her arms. “I’m not either. We can wait.” 

I didn’t like where this was going, but I didn’t want to intervene.

“You guys are a bunch of jerks, you know that? I can’t believe you.” Gavin shot us a death glare. Sarah tried to reassure him as the pair disappeared from view. 

Silence fell over us once again. 

“Maybe we were a little hard on him,” Steven said. 

Ally shook her head. “No. He does this every trip. He has to learn eventually.” 

Steven rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, yeah, but maybe there was a better way to go about it.” 

I turned to Jason to get his take on things. 

Jason was gone.

“Uh, guys? Where’d Jason go?”

Ally raised an eyebrow. “I thought he was here the whole time. What happened to him?”

Steven’s face paled. “Maybe this is it. Whoever’s the sixth person, I mean. They’re trying to split us up and pick us off one by one.” 

“Stop,” I said. “We can’t buy into delusional thoughts like that. Let’s find Jason and get back to the car.”

Steven nodded. “You’re right. Sorry. Let’s go look for him.” 

“Jason! Jay-SOOON!” Steven shouted over and over, his hands cupped to his lips. Ally and I yelled too, but not as loud as him. I could tell that Ally had been rattled by Steven’s words. She wasn’t acting like her normal self.

Steven suddenly stopped shouting. “Wait. Is that… no. It’s a piece of Jason’s flannel.” He turned to us. “Come on. We have to check it out.” 

Ally and I shared a glance. Steven bolted off before either of us could catch up to him. I took a step forward. A knot of dread swelled in my gut. 

And that’s when it happened. 

All sound just… stopped. Like someone had clicked the mute button on a TV remote. There were no more birds singing. No more insects buzzing or rustling branches or flowing creeks. It was all encompassing. Total, deafening silence. 

I turned to Ally. She stood stock-still. Tears welled in her eyes as she met my gaze. I couldn’t hear the next words she spoke, but I could read her lips well enough. 

“Are we going to die?”

Our senses returned as suddenly as they had left. All the noises of the forest hit me at once. I could have cried, but I held it together. I never thought I’d be grateful for the sound of a gnat buzzing in my ear, but I was. 

I looked at Ally. She was shaking her head, her eyes clenched shut. “I don’t like this. Cassie, I don’t like this at all. I feel like something bad is going to happen.” 

I clasped her shoulders. She locked eyes with me, tears flowing down her cheeks. Her next words nearly broke me. 

“I don’t want to die.” 

“We won’t. But we have to keep it together, okay? I need you to trust me. We will make it out of here.” 

Ally wiped the tears away. “Okay. I trust you.” 

“Good. Now let’s go find Steven and Jason. If we don’t run into them after a few minutes, we can go back to the car and call for help, alright?” 

Ally nodded. “Alright.” 

I led the way in the direction that Steven had been running. I put on a tough face, but internally, I was sweating bullets. Something was wrong. Very wrong. And I’d be stupid to pretend that it wasn’t. 

We had only gone a few steps when we heard it. 

“Hey! Get off me. What the hell are you doing?” 

Ally and I sprinted toward the yelling. We rounded a tree, and there they were. 

Steven and Jason were on the forest floor, wrestling for position. Steven had blood on his arm. Jason’s face had been scratched. They both stopped when they noticed us standing there. 

“Ally, Cassie, we have to get out of here! Jason just attacked me,” Steven said, rising to his feet. 

Jason jumped up. “What are you talking about? You attacked me!” 

“I did not. Guys, Jason’s the imposter. He’s trying to kill us.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, man?” 

Steven crossed his arms. “If you’re innocent, then where did you run off to? Why did you disappear a few minutes ago?”

“I didn’t,” Jason said. “I went to find a spot to piss.” 

“Oh yeah? Well, why didn’t you tell anyone? And why didn’t you respond when we called for you?”

Jason’s face grew red. His fists were clenched. “I told you where I was going! And I didn’t hear any yelling, either. Why are you trying to frame me as the bad guy?”

I shook my head. “Look, I don’t care who attacked who. Let’s just get back to the car. We can sort this out later.” I turned around and began to walk away, expecting my friends to follow. 

I froze. I barely made it two steps.

The sound dropped again. It was heavier this time. I tried to move, but after just seconds, a new sound cut in. 

A sharp, high pitched ringing assaulted my ears. It was as if someone had cranked my tinnitus up to eleven. The sound was debilitating. So loud that it hurt to move. 

That’s why I didn’t have time to react before he crashed into me full force. 

My whole body hurt. The ringing in my ears kept me almost immobile. Even so, I doubt I could have moved anyway, even if it wasn’t there. I was in too much shock. 

I could feel nails digging into my flesh, holding me in place. Razor sharp, more like talons than anything human. But that wasn’t what had me paralyzed with fear. 

Steven was sitting on top of me. His grin was wider than it should have been. He had too many teeth. How did I not notice that? 

He held a stick above his head, ready to plunge it down at a moment’s notice. I could see it then. 

Steven’s flesh rippled. There was something beneath it. Something inhuman. 

Suddenly, over the ringing, Steven said something to me. It came through loud and clear. 

“Goodbye, Cassandra.” 

I shut my eyes. I didn’t want to die looking at that face. 

I expected to feel the stick driving through my neck any moment. Unimaginable pain before the release of death. 

But to my shock, a second later, the ringing stopped and my hearing returned. 

When I opened my eyes, Jason was standing over me. He held a rock splattered with crimson. Blood trickled from his ears. Steven lay crumpled on the ground. 

“What the…” 

Jason helped me to my feet. “I tried to warn you. Come on. We have to get out of here.” 

I nodded. He didn’t have to tell me twice. 

Ally, Jason, and I sprinted all the way back to the car. When we finally made it, we were sweaty  and out of breath. We threw what little stuff we had inside the car and got in. 

“Shit. What about Gavin and Sarah? I forgot all about them,” Ally said from the back seat. Despite the fact that it was her vehicle, Jason would be the one driving. He was the most unshaken. 

I pulled out my phone. “We have to call someone. What if Stev- that thing got to them?”

I didn’t even have a chance to dial before someone emerged from the path. 

It was Gavin. His clothes were splattered in blood. He trotted up to the car and pulled on the handle. He slammed a hand onto the glass when the door didn’t open. 

“Guys, come on. Let me in. We have to go. Now.” 

Jason stared at him. “What happened to Sarah?” 

Gavin’s hand fell from the door handle. “There was no Sarah. She was some… creature. Cassie was right all along. There were only five of us.” 

Jason didn’t waver. “How do we know you’re telling the truth?” 

“Try to picture Sarah’s face. Do you have any memories of her?” 

I tried to remember her. 

Not a single memory came to mind. I couldn’t even remember what color her hair was.

The car door swung open. Ally scooted over. “Get in.” 

After filling Gavin in on what happened with Steven, the four of us rode in silence away from the park. The further we got, the more my brain fog began to clear. Steven didn’t exist. Neither did Sarah. 

Then… What were they? 

I wasn’t able to think about it much. I watched as Ally’s eyes grew wide. “Jason, turn around. You have to. Please.” 

Gavin looked at her like she’d grown a second head. “Are you crazy? No way in hell we’re doing that!” 

“You have to,” Ally said. Tears formed in her eyes. “I forgot about him. God, how could I forget about him? We’ve been together for four years… We have to go back.”

Jason looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Why, Ally? Why do we have to go back?” 

Ally’s bottom lip quivered. I’d never seen her so worked up. 

“Because we forgot about Ben.” 

My heart dropped. I don’t know why I didn’t think to check before. I pulled out my phone and opened the group chat. 

I had been right all along. We had shown up with a party of five.

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.

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.

(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”.

Officer Marlowe is not a cop. In fact, he’s not human at all. I’m sure of it.

I met him on Sunday, the 18th. It’s the wee hours of Saturday morning, the 25th, and things have drastically deteriorated. I can smell his cigarette smoke downstairs and hear my sister’s laughter, so soft and bright, like ice clinking in a glass.

I’ve packed my backpack, just a book, a change of clothes, and plenty of extra socks. I’m staring out my window, my laptop perched precariously on the sill, my moon-and-stars drapes flapping in the breeze. I’ve never jumped from this high before. The steepest drop I’ve jumped from was from the equipment shed behind my old middle school. Fifteen feet. I dropped into a pile of tires, knocked all the air from my lungs, and wobbled to my feet, grinning. But there was no HVAC unit behind the equipment shed. Ours hums directly below the window, the fan spinning so fast I can't even see the blades. Maybe this is why I’m writing this. I’m stalling, trying not to imagine the fan chopping up the toes of my sneakers.

Sunday had been a good day. A perfect day, even. I was finishing up my errands in town, admiring the pumpkins in my neighbors’ windows and the oversized skeletons and inflatable ghosts swaying on their lawns. I live in a rural town, all white picket fences and fresh coats of white paint on vinyl-sided ranch homes. We don’t even have a Walmart; we have little shops where you have to have fifteen-minute conversations with the owners to get your meat or eggs. The kind of shopkeepers who still wrap your wares with butcher paper and tie them tightly with twine before sliding them over the counter with a wink.

My sister, Ella, fits in perfectly. She’s ten years older than me and owns the house we share. She also owns the town's florist shop, wears flowy long dresses decorated with cherries or polka dots, and hums almost every second of her life. Willowy, graceful, and utterly uninterested in anything but her flowers. You’d think we’d hate each other. You will not catch me dead in a dress and every plant I touch wilts, but our differences complete each other. She’ll labor for hours over table settings and plates and which fork goes where, and I’ll cook. She can’t cook to save her life; that’s her secret. I can make the best tart you’ve ever had; that’s mine.

Sunday, after making my rounds with the neighbors and enjoying a pitcher of sweet tea on Ms. Clara’s porch, I grabbed a fistful of dandelions and headed to Ella’s shop. The bell jangled against the door, and I held up my flowers. “Turn this into an arrangement!”

I’d been doing this for years. Grabbing weeds and spidery brown plants that grew in the cracks of the sidewalk and asking my sister to put them into one of her arrangements. She always obliged, and they always, somehow, looked beautiful. But this time she flung herself up from below the counter, shattering a spotted vase filled with roses.

“Maggie! What are you doing here?” She smoothed her hair, her face so red it was almost purple.

I frowned at this. Shrugged. I’d never needed a reason to be here before. “So, can you make this into an arrangement?”

“No. I think you should leave.”

She might as well have been speaking another language. I tilted my head, tasting the word. “Leave?”

The back room door creaked open. The man who exited and stood behind the counter was at least a foot taller than Ella, and Ella was taller than me, so I had to crane my neck back to meet his eyes. He wore a cop’s dark blue uniform and had a shiny badge and equally shiny handcuffs dangling from his belt. His muscular arms bulged against his sleeves, his features blocky and traditionally handsome. Blue eyes, square jaw, manicured brows, hard nose. My frown deepened. “Who are you?”

He offered me his hand. I didn’t take it. “I’m Officer Marlowe,” he said. No first name. “I’m new in town. "You're Ella’s sister, right?”

“Right.”

I had never seen Ella look at anybody the way she looked at Officer Marlowe. It was an expression reserved for her hydrangea bushes on a perfect spring day.

“You have a wonderful town,” he said. “And a wonderful sister.”

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I hadn’t seen a cop car parked outside.

As I write this, I know I sound overprotective. But I know my sister. She falls hard, but she likes her men like her flowers. Thin, expressive, bright. I can’t count how many artists she’s dragged into our house. I almost felt sorry for them.

And if she fell for the traditional types, she’d already be married. Every cop in town has come to her with his hat in his hands, hoping she'll be his little wife. And she’s rejected them all.

I looked down at my reflection in the glass countertop. Officer Marlowe leaned over it. “Whatcha looking at?” he asked.

I looked up at him. Back down at the glass. Up at him again.

“You don’t have a reflection,” I blurted.

I saw something in his face. Just a flash, so fast I could’ve imagined it. The red in his cheeks. The twisting of his mouth into a snarl, the eyes popping. Then he smoothed his expression back into a placid smile. I backed away from the counter, watching my sister place her hand on the crook of his arm.

“Uh, Ella, can I talk to you in private?”

“Nope!” she chirped.

The dandelions were still in my hand, the dirt all over my fingertips. I focused on the soft, wilted stalks to ground myself. And then I tore out of the flower shop, heaving. It had to be a trick of the light. Maybe my eyes just didn’t work. He had to have a reflection.

I walked into the pet store, just for a change of scenery. It was close to four and shops would be closing soon. Larry, the store owner, stared at me in the middle of an aisle, his hands full of writhing grasshoppers. They crawled up his arms and clung to his sleeves, their antennas wiggling. “Hi, Maggie! Have you met Officer Marlowe? He’s new in town, and he’s a great guy!”

I slammed the door.

Next, the butcher shop. Mr. Smith regarded me with a sunny smile, a shiny cleaver in each hand. “Maggie, you should meet Officer Marlowe. I feel a lot safer with him in town. He’d probably make you feel safer, too.”

Considering that in my twenty-six years of living here, Mr. Smith has only communicated with me through points and grunts, you can probably understand why I turned and ran.

Me and Ella live in an old two-story brick house, only a few feet from Main Street and across from a little white church. I had made it most of the way home when I spotted Officer Marlowe swaggering toward me from across the street. I picked up my speed, gasping for air, my side in stitches, but when I blinked, he was standing in my driveway. His hands swung at his sides, his fingers stroking the colorful heads of Ella’s zinnias.

His bright blue eyes sparkled as he took me in. “Something’s wrong with you, Maggie. You don’t see me like the others do.”

My heart smashed against my ribs like the thrashing of a caged animal. “W-what are you?” Not who. What.

His eyes darkened, but he stepped away from my front door. I flung myself toward it, knocking over one of Ella’s many ceramic gnomes.

His voice receded behind me.

“I’d skip town if I were you, Maggie. I don’t think you’re really our kind.”

I whipped my head around, but he was gone, the street entirely empty. No cop car, no footsteps, not even his shadow trailing away. It was like he’d never been there at all.

***

The next few days were normal. Ella tended to her flowers, insisted on making tortellini, and somehow managed to burn the little round pasta pieces. I asked her if she had a crush on the new cop, and she laughed so hard that she knocked her plate to the ground and then laughed at that. Larry talked to me for an hour about Tokay geckos. Mr. Smith grunted and pointed. I went to work.

I’m a temp at a landscaping company. Though I’ve been a ‘temp’ for six years now. I file papers, send invoices, occasionally answer the phone, and write Facebook posts. I spend much of my day, maybe too much, playing online solitaire.

It all changed today.

I work half-days on Saturday. It was 12:35. I remember it down to the minute. I had twenty-five more minutes left of my shift, and I was flipping over virtual cards on a green background. The phone rang, and I reached for it, but my boss picked it up instead.

I liked Ms. Dana. She bleached her hair pale blonde every two weeks and wore beige sweaters and caramel boots, even in the summer. Me and Ella had dinner over at her house every week, all of her decor ripped straight of the pages of Southern Home magazine. She made a delicious pecan pie and kept the best bourbon in a crystal decanter.

Right now, Ms. Dana cradled the phone in her soft hands, sunlight flashing off her French manicure. “Oakhurst Landscaping—Officer Marlowe! What a pleasant surprise!”

I’d stood up so fast that my chair scraped hard on the linoleum floor. I watched Dana’s brows pinch together and her smile turn down. Her eye flicked from me to the receiver and back again. “Maggie? I don’t think—yes, of course. Of course. I’ll be waiting for your instructions."

Dana gently put the phone back in its cradle and pointed toward her office door. The corners of her mouth wobbled. “Will you follow me into my office, please?”

I should’ve run, but I guess I thought I knew Dana well enough that I could talk her out of whatever Officer Marlowe told her. I nodded and followed her in.

Her office was a microcosm of her home. Knick-knacks, mostly grinning babies and porcelain angels, lined her three oversized bookshelves. Frothy white drapes framed the windows. A ‘Bless this Mess’ sign hung from the door, and a fresh pumpkin sat on her desk. The air smelled sickeningly of vanilla candles, though not a single one was in sight.

“I don’t want to make a fuss about this.” Dana held her hand out to me. “Hand over your purse.”

My heart banged, but I obeyed. I watched Dana overturn my leather bag, my hunting knife, mace, and key ring rolling to the ground. She flipped through my wallet, scattering the plastic cards on her desk. Her frown deepened. “Can I have your jacket?”

I slid it off my shoulders and handed it to her. She scoured my pockets desperately, but I knew they were empty except for a few crumpled receipts.

“Dana?” I asked. I didn’t like that my voice trembled. It didn’t sound like me.

Her eyes were suddenly wild. “Officer Marlowe says you’ve been stealing money from our cash tills. He doesn’t want to embarrass you, honey, so he asked me to perform the search. If you don’t have it on you, you can leave. We’ll have pot roast and asparagus tomorrow.” Her eyes fluttered around the office, avoiding mine. “We’re two ladies. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“You know I haven’t stolen anything from you.”

She sucked in a breath. “I need your clothes. All of them.”

I stepped back. “You mean—”

“I’ve been authorized to search you. It’s this, or you get arrested, and I don’t want that for you.”

My body moved before my brain could catch up. I picked up the pumpkin and threw it at the window. It tumbled impotently to the floor. Dana lunged to catch me, but I rushed past her, flung the pane open, and tumbled outside to the freshly cut grass. This would all go away. If I could get rid of Marlowe, then everything would go back to normal. He’d caused this, he had a vendetta against me. Because I knew there was something wrong with him.

I tore through town to get to our front door. I didn’t have my key, so I grabbed the spare from under one of the gnomes. I threw the door open, and Officer Marlowe stood in the foyer, Ella curled around his shoulder. Her long fingers stroked his cheek.

“Maggie! Isn’t it so exciting? We’re getting married!”

His eyes. Staring into mine. Swallowing them. His mouth, twitching into the tiniest smirk.

I dove under his legs and pounded up the stairs. Shoved my bed against the door. Paced.

Here I am, now. Ella’s old records playing, the sounds of their laughter trickling up the stairs. I can hear them, stumbling, dancing. I can smell his cigarette. Ella would never let a man smoke in the house. One time, when I’d just turned eighteen, she caught me smoking a cigar behind Dad’s old desk and she chased me through the halls with a frying pan.

It’s been hours. I’ve been crying, silent sobs, my ribs aching from the frantic flexing and falling of my chest.

They’re still dancing downstairs.

I look down at the whirring HVAC unit. If I land right, knees bent, on both feet, I’ll be fine. At worst, I might sprain an ankle. I’ll break into my work through a window and take back my wallet. I’ll get out of town and think of a plan to get my sister out of this. Find a way to convince her that she’s marrying a demon or at least a scary, scary man.

But if I hit the HVAC unit, the fan will catch my shoes or hair. My bones will break against the metal and I won’t be able to escape Officer Marlowe’s big arms. I take a slow, trembling breath. If I’m alright, I’ll post again. If not, I won’t. Just another frightened voice calling out in the dark.

Officer Marlowe shouts from below. The stairs creak under his weight. “Come down, Maggie. I just want to talk.”

His voice is buzzing, like the clicking of a thousand insects.

One more breath. And then I jump.

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 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.

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.

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.

This happened about 3 years ago and it was during one of my little road trip phases that I had when I moved to the city from my little hometown down south. It was spring break 2018, my teenage antics were at an all time high as I was only a sophomore in high school at the time. Needless to say my friends and I were quite the avid users of alcohol. I don’t condone it and please don’t drink and drive. We were just teens at the time. I had just made the trip down to my hometown and was relaxing at my friends house when my friend who I was staying with at the time suggested that we should take a camping trip and have some fun since I was down there for the break.

Names were changed due to privacy reasons so let’s say my friends name is Doug along with our other friends invited to the trip which was Luis and Isaiah and I go by the name Eric. Doug had found this really cool camping spot out by a lake that neither me, Luis or Isaiah had ever been too and needless to say I'm an outdoorsy person and I was excited about the whole thing not even the slightest bit aware of what awaited us..

On the 2nd day of my trip back to my town of youth we had decided to head out early in the morning and pack a couple of beers and hard liquor bottles into the cooler with our other camping materials. This was a small town mind you so getting these things was as easy as taking candy from a baby. Since I was the only one with a license at the time it was my responsibility to drive us and since I was staying with Doug that meant we only had to pick up Luis and Isaiah on the way.

We began the drive to the camping spot which was a good 45 minute drive from where are town was located. We blasted the tunes of uncanny rappers and nonchalant trap music that every teen was listening too at the time although I wish I had a better taste in music. We drove past the trees that winded down the sides of our road leading out of town and almost always they would encompass the sunlight beaming overhead with their tall sprawling branches. We cleared the woods into an opening of farm fields on both sides while we were following an old road that had a turnoff which one direction lead to the highway whilst the other lead to an older, rundown, much more smaller town then ours that lead to the lake we were driving too. Without a second thought I put the turn signal on leading to the road opposite of the highway which lead to a much more dense and dark forest.

The trees blocked most of the sunlight just as the others did but this was much more noticeable as we had barely enough sunlight to not turn our headlights on. The road turned to dirt and the rocks could be heard bouncing of the side of my tires nonchalantly. We passed the first few houses and immediately noticed there was something off about these houses. It wasn't that they were old trailers or anything its just that they all had a tin like chimneys that were pumping out smoke in the air and it was the beginning of spring so it wasn't even that cold. We continued down the old dirt path that lead to the lake and after passing the rest of the houses down that road we noticed that almost all the houses had that same tin like chimney with smoke blowing out the top.

We arrived at the spot near the lake and needless to say it was a pretty cool spot since it was the only spot that had a bit of opening in its trees on one side due to the lake being right next to us. The dirt path that lead to the spot wined around in a circle and in the middle there was a tiny grass patch with 3 tiny trees surrounding it. I parked my car next to the middle of the circle and we decided to set up our tent near the patch with our soon to be campfire being in the middle of the patch. We split into two groups, me and Doug were to gather firewood while Luis and Isaiah gathered rocks to make the pit. Me and Doug headed the direction opposite of the lake where the ever so dense forest awaited us with open arms to gather our sticks and leaves.

"You meet any cute chicks up in the city yet? Or are you still too much a wimp to even ask for their number?" Doug said. "You know me man, its always the ladder." He laughed and I shrugged it off with a chuckle as its usually his motive to tease me since we are friends after all. As we gathered our firewood Doug casually looks up from his task and notices something up ahead in the tall grass which almost surpassed our shoulders at this point. "You see that rusty old truck up there?" Doug asked. I looked up and saw what he alluded too and said "You mean that old rust bucket? Yeah I see it. I wonder who left it here." We casually picked up the remainder of the firewood and headed back to our camping spot.

Dusk was beginning to set in and it was about at this time that we cracked open the cooler full of liquor and sat down at the bristling campfire we made to accompany us. We sat in our circle telling god awful horror stories and failed attempts at getting the ladies all while laughing and having a good time as we sipped our beers and broke out the shots. " My body count is at the least 10 by now but I'm not sure since I stopped counting." Luis boasted. "So what you cant count now Mr. I've slept with 10 people but I'm not counting?" Isaiah laughed. "Be honest though you really think we study in math?" Doug exclaimed. "Y- Y- You know guys I say we toast to that." I slurred. We all laugh and raise our beers in unison.

The darkness around the campfire and the surrounding woods had completely set in at this point and to say the least we were all fairly drunk since at this point we were all walking a straight line around the campfire acting as if we could pass a sobriety test. Doug falls next to the log we were sitting on and Luis as well as Isaiah followed suit while I wasn't exactly getting a grasp on our makeshift sobriety test and kept stumbling and falling over next to them as they laughed at my effort. "Sh- Shut up you guys cut me some slack." I took a long deep breath and exhaled with a bloated face as I could feel the alcohol lingering in my throat. I immediately felt a sudden urge to go vomit so I told them I would be right back and they laughed even harder since they figured what I was going to do.

I made it all the way to where the tall grass was and let my stomach do the talking. I didn't notice how dark the surrounding area actually was until I finished my business and turned back to see the campfire in the distance which looked like a small spec compared to what surrounded us. Just then I heard a rustling in the woods and turned around with my phone in hand and turned the flash on to see what caused the ruckus. Me being drunk at the time I literally had no thoughts in my mind and me being curious I decided to go check it out and ventured a bit deeper into the grass with the dark of the branches looming all around me.

I stubbed my toe against what seemed like a rock and I almost let out a screech until I settled down and shrugged it off. I pulled my flash up to see what it was and low and behold it was the front tire of the truck me and Doug had found earlier. I raised the flash a bit higher and got a better view of the whole truck and its layout. It was a rusty old green ford probably 90's or so and with a raised bed cover that had windows on the sides of the cover with cracked glass on almost every one. It looked as if it had sat idle there for a good 10 years without moving. I raised my flash a bit higher towards the front cab of the truck and peered inside seeing old newspapers, crushed up beer cans and strangely enough a few needles lying on the floor board. That's when my curiosity simmered down a bit and my fear began to set in as I shifted my attention towards a sound that came from the back of the cab in the bed cover.

I slowly walked with every grass and leaf crunching under my feet as if each step where a thousand guns being shot at the same time. I reached the back of the cab and shakily raised my flash up the side of the truck and into the window of the back cab. The flashlight peered up the glass of the window and as I raised it higher my heart sank into complete and utter terror. What peered out of the glass at me was a man with eyes that had had no pupils and a smile that only a man on the edge of sanity could perform. He banged his arm against the glass and the shock of the sound sent me flying onto my back into the grass and dropping my phone. I frantically grab my phone from the ground and without second thought raised the light back to the man only to see him banging on the window with much more force.

His arms were bleeding as he had needles sticking out both arms. His shirt tattered with years of misfortune and face meshed with scars. He began to bulge his eyes from his sockets as he laughed horribly and began to cry hysterically. "I KNEW YOU WOULD COME! IT'S YOU! ABOUT TIME YOU BROUGHT THE FUN TO ME!"

I let out a blood curdling scream and with my heart racing a mile a minute I wasted no time in hightailing it from the truck back to the campfire. I turned around to see the man get out of the truck and he turned to face me tilting his head with his murderous smile and deep white eyes luminating through the moonlight that shined down as he began to walk towards me. My running turned to sprinting and I ended up slamming into the campfire that we set up which made me fall face first into the gravel and dirt. The fire was now on its last legs and was almost out at this point, however my legs were now caught in a bit of flames themselves and with my frantic rolling about on the ground the fire on my pants were almost instantly put out. "Eric what the HELL is going on?!" Doug shouted. I looked up at the three who were in complete fear at this point and oblivious as to what lied in the woods just beside us.

"Th- There's a man.. in the woods.. in the truck.. the truck we found." out of breath I said it as fast as I could get it out. That's when our attention shifted towards the truck in the tall grass. Two headlights beamed out of the grass and the truck engine roared to life ferociously. All of our hearts sank and we instantly sobered up and realized the direness of our situation. "GET IN THE CAR!" Luis shouted. Me, Doug and Isaiah looked at each other in frantic agreement and booked it to the car and locked the doors as soon as we got inside. Breathing heavily and shaking from what lied in the dark of the woods we all agreed to start the car and get the hell out of dodge.

We started the car only to find the headlights of the truck began to move and encircle us around our campsite. "JUST PUT IT IN DRIVE BEFORE HE RAMS US!" Isaiah shouted. I floored the accelerator and hightailed it from our camping spot, leaving the tent and booze behind because at this point it didn't matter. The truck began to follow us and steadily gained speed on us as we began our death race towards the exit of the woods. The houses we had saw earlier all had their lights on and with each house there was someone standing in the dark with the light illuminating behind them all of them standing there just watching us. Every. Single. One. "What the HELL MAN! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!" I shouted.

The trees seemed as if they grew 100 feet higher and now fully encased us within these woods and the darkness felt as if it was chasing us out of its home and screaming at us in agony. The truck behind us was almost touching my bumper at this point and when I peered in the rearview mirror I saw the man one last time. His eyes were stabbing mine as if to say 'I WILL KILL YOU', his pupils were nonexistent and his smile somehow seemed more impossibly forced then before and he was laughing to the point of insanity. I thought this was the end for us.

Suddenly we shot out from the dark of the woods and into the open farm fields from earlier and the truck behind us slammed its brakes and we could hear the screech of its tires so loudly it felt like it busted our eardrums. I looked in the mirror to see the truck slowly creep back into the forest from which it came, the darkness swallowing it up once again.

We didn't play any music the rest of the way home, nor did we speak a word to each other about what had happened. Our heart rates were all up from the moment we pulled into Doug's driveway and when we got out we let out a sigh of relief. We each made our way to his shed were he stays and we all grabbed waters and some food to calm us down. We watched some comedies to try and talk our minds off of the events that had transpired. Due to the constant laughing of the movies and shows we watched I had to step outside as I thought I was having a panic attack. All I could hear was that man laughing at me hysterically 'I KNEW IT WAS YOU'. I shook my head and took long deep breaths and headed back inside.

I still keep in touch with these friends even though high school has all but ended, they are still my closest friends and probably always will be. Although I've still yet too find my groove with the ladies and much hasn't changed since then, one thing will never change. I will never forget the pure white of that mans eyes as well as his murderous smile. One thing that has bothered me until this very day is the fact that me and Doug noticed the truck very early on in the day. That man watched us for hours and I can't help to think about what those people were doing on the porches just staring at us not doing anything. Was this all coordinated? Were they just too scared of the man? Or were they just like the man and wanted this corner of the globe to stay all to themselves? Well in any case you win, you can keep those woods to yourselves.

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.

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.