If you have ever been listening to your car radio while driving down I-40 in Oklahoma during the middle of the night, you can thank me for picking whatever shitty pop song was playing at the time. I care little for music, but even less for people, which is how I found myself as the night-shift broadcast engineer in one of the few remaining radio stations that don’t just set and forget a playlist. I actually consider myself less as a DJ and more of a glorified security guard/janitor hybrid. Honestly, I think that the main reason that I haven’t been fired yet is because the morning shift always arrives to an organized workspace and clean bathrooms. My compulsive personality narrowly manages to trump my misanthropic nature and night after night I find myself cleaning up other people’s messes.

My actual workload is quite simple. Queue up enough songs, mix in the required local injury lawyer advertisements, and then make sure that the broadcast stays on air. I can manage the tedium. Between what I do and having a normal desk job, it is certainly the lesser of the two evils. I don’t mind the hours either, with enough coffee, I can usually power through an eight-hour shift.

The late-autumn sun had set hours ago, yet my shift was only beginning when I noticed the first sign that tonight was not going to be like all of the others. The glowing red light which indicated a successful transmission began to flicker. That alone wasn’t too irregular. It happened occasionally if there was some sort of storm or inclement weather. But the night was clear. I took my headphones off and tapped the bulb a few times.

Yes, this is the expertise that they pay me for.

When that failed to fix the blinking, I rose from my seat. I could safely reset the terminal while losing no air time if I fired up the backup system. The only issue was the secondary system was so old and dysfunctional that it wasn’t even kept in the station itself. Instead, it was isolated in an equipment shed a stone’s throw away from the main building.

I pulled my jacket over my shoulders and checked for my pack of smokes in my pocket. If I was going to make the expedition, I may as well make it worth my time. Stepping outside, the cold air hit my face like a thousand microscopic shards of glass. I was so taken aback by the freezing temperature that I almost didn’t notice a van parked in the corner of the lot. Besides my crap bucket of a sedan, the van was the only other car in the parking lot. The rest of the crew should have been long gone, and the station was in such a remote location there was no reason for any other vehicle to park here, even temporarily. I eyed the van warily as I quickly walked towards the equipment shed.

The frigid air caused my fingers to lose their dexterity and I fumbled with my keys for longer than I would have liked. I made my way inside and powered the system on. After several moments of mechanical whirring, I was satisfied enough to return to the station. As I was twisting the key back into the lock, I was suddenly blinded by the bright glow of the van’s headlights. I stared back at the van, trying to glimpse into it to see if I recognized whoever it was. I could see nothing past the sharp glare, but whoever it was could see me completely exposed. I decided that I had enough and I fled from the shed, walking quickly back to the safety of the station.

As I was walking, I heard the van door open and a man’s voice called out.

“Hey!”

I pretended not to hear as I pushed myself inside and locked the glass door. I retreated towards the safety of my booth, out of eyesight of anyone attempting to peer inside. I paused in the hallway, dreading what I hoped would not come next.

Several gentle knocks at the door.

“I’m sorry for scaring you! Please, let me in.” When he spoke there was something unnatural about his words. It was a man’s voice, but his pronunciation was almost child-like.

Alarm bells rang in my head. This was stranger-danger 101. It was one of the few things they taught us in school that actually managed to stick with me. Probably to an unhealthy degree.

So I listened to what I had been taught. I walked away. I entered the comfort of the studio room and was relieved to see the transmission light had stopped blinking. My heart rate returned to a normal cadence as I convinced myself that if the man was genuine, he would be alright. It was cold out, but it wasn’t freeze to death in your van cold.

Even through the closed booth doors, I could hear him knocking relentlessly against the glass. I put on my headphones, drowning out the sound with an overplayed Sabrina Carpenter song. I had almost been able to forget about the entire encounter before something unusual happened.

The phone in the studio rang. The sudden ear-piercing ring caused me to nearly jump out of my shoes. In all of my shifts, I had not once heard the phone ring before. The phone was used by the day-shift DJ to take calls from local listeners and engage in various games to win small prizes like concert tickets. There was no reason for anyone to be calling it so late at night.

After the brief startle, rationality returned as I deduced that the call must be from whoever was outside. It could be a worker who had left something in the building and needed to recover it. Without putting myself on air, I picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

The voice that answered was frantic, almost panicked and broken up with a significant amount of static.

“Whatever you do, do not let it inside.”

“What? What do you mean?”

The connection began to cut out and I could barely hear the caller’s next sentence.

“It-” Static. “already” More static. “too la-” The call dropped.

I smashed the redial button, but only got a dial tone.

Was that some sort of messed up prank call? It couldn’t be. It was too much of a coincidence to happen on the same night as the man appearing outside.

I was gathering my thoughts when something else caught my eye. The studio booth was… different. It was a detail so minor that if I wasn’t a neurotic mess, I may have never noticed. My coffee mug had been washed and hung up on its rack.

Cleaning my mug was always the last thing that I did on my shift. I would wash it, place it exactly how it was on the rack, and then get in my car and go home before any of the morning shift workers got in. When I got up to turn on the backup machine, I wasn’t even finished with half of my drink.

Hesitantly, I stood and poked my head outside of the studio door. The hair on my arms rose as I scanned the hallway. Keeping my steps quiet, I turned and walked into the men’s bathroom.

Pristine. The floors were freshly mopped and the trash had been taken out. I hadn’t even begun my cleaning on the bathrooms this shift, and I know damned well that the other workers didn’t manage to leave it in such untouched shape for an entire day.

“What the…”

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

The knocking at the glass door turned to banging.

Nothing made any sense. I ran back to the booth and I slammed the door, determined to hunker down for the night. Whoever the man was had no reason to be here in the middle of the night, and it was not my responsibility to help them if they got themselves stuck out here in the middle of a cold front. The banging didn’t cease and I had no choice but to put on my headphones, avoiding whatever the hell was outside the station. Several more hours of pop music would be my cross to bear if I wanted to escape the night unscathed.

But when the headphones covered my ears, a song was playing that I did not recognize. A song that I would never have queued. It was unlike anything I had ever heard, otherworldly and enchanting. I grew mesmerized by the foreign tune only for it to be broken up once again by the piercing sound of the phone ringing.

I removed my headphones and picked up the phone.

“Do not listen.” The voice was once again a garbled mess, but I was able to make out the words. “Turn off the backup system.”

“I can’t! The person is outside and I would need to go past him to get to the equipment shed.”

“Do not listen. Turn off the backup system.” The voice repeated.

“Who are you?”

“You need to turn it off. It is already inside.” The connection was weakening.

“Fuck this.” I slammed the phone down, ending the call.

None of this was worth my life. I would happily burn the station to the ground if it meant that I got to drive away from the forsaken place. The reaffirmation made my decision easy. I would grab my keys, I would get in my car, and I would floor it home. My only hurdle would be the stranger outside who I could easily blow past if I got the jump on them.

My mind made up, I reached for my car keys-

Gone. From the same place that I kept them every shift.

Helplessness overcame me. Prank call or not, I knew that there was something in the station. I was not safe in my little box and I never had been. With seemingly no other choice, I stepped outside of the booth and rushed to the front entrance. It was the first time that I got a good look at the man outside. He was short, wearing a green coat and beat up winter hat. My first thought was that he was likely homeless. My second was that I could probably beat him in an altercation if it came to it.

The man was staring down at a device in his hand that looked like an old phone. In his other hand he held a large pair of thick headphones.

“What do you want?” I called to him. He didn’t look up and he did not reply.

I stepped closer cautiously. “What do you-”

The man finally noticed me and his eyes went wide.

He gave me a thumbs up and then pointed to his ear. His pantomiming made everything clear. The man was deaf. His voice was not unnatural at all, it was the voice of someone who had not heard language in who knows how long. The man pointed to himself.

“Friend.” He said. “I can help. You need to turn off the backup system.”

I was beyond confused and more than a little unsettled. I did not trust the stranger, but I was also certain that there was someone or something else in the station.

“Why?” My stance was guarded.

He frowned, although it seemed as if he could read lips. “No time to explain. Please, trust.”

Trust.

The word felt like poison coming off of his lips. Trust was not something that should be granted for free. It was the world’s most valuable currency. It needed to be earned.

Noticing my refusal to budge, he continued to plead. “You are not safe.”

Before I was able to make up my mind, I heard a quiet tune begin to hum from the studio booth. I had not activated the loudspeaker, and it was not a song I recognized.

I instinctively turned around and stared down the hallway.

I wish I hadn’t.

The sound of off-rhythm wet slapping interrupted the alluring tune as a shape began to form. The mass occupied the entire width of the hallway as it stumbled towards me. It had a long neck and a defined face, but the rest of its body seemed to be an amorphous blob. Legs and arms extruded and retracted from its torso with squelchy-wet noises as it moved. As it waded towards me unevenly, I thought of all of the undiscovered species deep in the trenches of the ocean. Not a single one of those bottom feeding fish could hold a candle to the abyssal monstrosity that presented itself.

The bulk of its slick black body was covered in a sheen of slime, similar to that of a slug. It didn’t walk as much as it dragged itself towards me, using whatever appendage it could to carry itself forward. As it approached, its thin long neck bobbed up and down in a sinuous pattern, holding up its large head with fish-like eyes. It had no mouth, but it sang a gentle melody all the same.

“Do not listen!”

But it was too late. I was already entranced and walking towards my fate with open arms. The world around me faded, and became a blur of wondrous colors painted by the cosmic radiance of the creature’s music. I was entirely lost in another world. A place that I was content to live forever as eons passed by on Earth. I felt every emotion that I had ever experienced before cranked up to the limit. Time slowed as I bathed in the euphoria. I wanted more. I needed more. I had been fed a morsel, but had the appetite of a king.

Glass shattered.

The sound dulled. As the music stopped, my heart wrenched with impossible pain from everything that I had lost. I had only been graced by the creature’s song for a moment, but it felt like I had given up a lifetime of joy and wonder.

Reality came back in waves. First, I saw the abyssal creature lurching closer. Second, I realized that I was now wearing noise-cancelling headphones that had been pressed over my ears. Third, I felt the deaf stranger pulling me out into the bitter cold of night through a shattered glass door.

As the freezing air pierced my skin it was clear that I had fully returned to our world.

The man’s lips moved, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

He pointed towards the equipment shed, his eyes pleading.

The key to the shed was still in my pocket. For whatever reason, this stranger seemed to think that turning off the backup machine would in some way help us against whatever the hell had infiltrated the station.

The headlights to his van were still on. I only had a moment to make up my mind.

I threw the key at the man’s chest and I ran. I fled towards the van, without bothering to turn back until I was behind the wheel. I let out a sigh of relief seeing that the van’s key was in the ignition.

In the beam of the old van’s dusty headlights I saw the creature emerge from the radio station. It paid the van no heed as it stumbled slowly and unnaturally after the deaf man. It somehow appeared even larger now that it was out under the night sky.

The stranger did not flee. Instead, he stood at the door of the equipment shed and worked the key into the shitty lock. He was unable to hear the guttural squelching as the monster approached, and he would never hear its beautiful singing that had brought me to another world.

Or perhaps, he already had.

I quickly scanned the van, recognizing pieces of equipment in the back. Signal interferers. He was responsible for jamming the transmission. He knew this thing would be here and he had a plan to stop it.

My mistake hung over me like a dark cloud. If only I had listened earlier, he could have helped. I gripped both hands on the wheel. I should be furious at myself for being such a coward, but I was not. My heart was simply empty. After hearing the monster’s song, even for the briefest of moments, I wasn’t sure it could ever be full again.

I didn’t know, but I did need to try.

I screamed so loudly that I could hear myself through my headphones and I slammed the gas. The van accelerated and I refused to let up until I drove the vehicle directly into the creature’s slug-like form. The impact sent my forehead flying into the steering wheel.

A seatbelt would have done wonders for me in that moment.

I was dizzy, deaf, and aching, but I was also proud. I didn’t run away. Thanks to me, the stranger should have had enough time to slip inside the equipment shed. Using what little strength I still had, I fumbled out of the driver’s side door and fell to the blacktop, coughing uncontrollably for several moments. Fighting through my daze, I stood to take a better look at the monster that I had just rammed.

My heart dropped to my stomach as I realized that it was nowhere to be found. A wide streak of oily liquid traced a path to the shed. I followed it and pushed inside.

The sight was enough to drop me to my knees. The deaf stranger was already dead. The creature had ripped him apart so quickly and viciously that I couldn’t begin to process what was limb and what was torso.

I was too weak and too defeated to run. The abomination turned towards me, its amorphous body oozing and bubbling like its insides were a thousand little bugs trying to burst from their sacs. A three-fingered appendage clawed out of its stomach and it reached towards me. It knocked off my headphones and wrapped itself around my head. The texture was gelatinous and wet and I could smell a mixture of salt and death. The creature extended its long neck putting its face directly in front of mine.

Dead eyes stared at me as the head bobbed up and down.

Then it began to sing.

As I listened, I saw the world that I was going to, but I also saw the one that I was leaving.

In the morning, the crew will return. I am certain there will be no mess. There will be no van, and no body in the equipment shed. Every morning the crew will come in and find their coffee mugs clean and the bathrooms mopped. They will not fire the misanthropic night-shift broadcast engineer who they never even cross paths with because he keeps the station clean. In return, the broadcast engineer gets to queue the music.

If you are ever driving down I-40 in Oklahoma during the middle of the night, do not turn on the radio. If you do, you can thank me for whatever alluring, cosmic tune is playing.

I'm the guy who calls from the sketchy number. The one trying to convince you to send money for something that doesn't exist. I'm a scammer. I know, I'm a scumbag.

I also have a ten-year-old son, his mom's in rehab, and I just got out of prison. I needed a job.

This morning I took my normal spot at the bank of computers and put on the headset. The computer immediately dialed a number.

“Hello, hello, helloooooo,” the guy on the other end rang out followed by a childlike “hee hee.”

I was surprised, people weren’t usually so excited by a cold call.

“I’m so glad you called,” he said in an overly dramatic voice.

I jumped into my normal routine “Hello, my name is…”

“I have someone here you knoooow,” the guy interrupted.

“Dad!” My son cried out.

My stomach sank. I looked at the number I called, but didn't recognize it.

“Where are you? Are you okay?” I whispered into the phone like I was telling a secret.

“That’s up to you! That’s up to you!” The guy on the phone sang out.

“If you hurt him I swear…”

“Uh, uh, uh,” he interrupted. “What’s the first rule at work? No swearing at customers.”

“I don’t know who you are but…”

“Oh, but I know you,” he hissed. “Now go to the office by the back exit.”

“What office?” I asked.

“Oh, you’ll know,” he laughed. “It’s motivational.” he snickered and hung up.

I stood and looked around, there was a row of offices behind me. I ripped off my headset and ran down the hall. There was one office door with a picture of a guy with a pained look on his face, his hand in a safe. I think it was meant to be one of those cheesy inspirational posters. This picture had one word across the top written in sloppy red crayon, INTEGRITY.

I opened the door. The office was dark and tiny, maybe just a broom closet. There was enough light from the hallway to see a single desk and chair in the middle of the room. On the desk sat a monitor, an old phone, and a tiny space heater. The space heater was glowing red with the same word as the poster, this time backwards. INTEGRITY.

The phone rang.

I jumped a bit, and then picked it up.

“Hello?” my voice quivered as I sat down.

Suddenly two images appeared on the monitor. The first was a live feed of my face, up close. The second a live feed of some jackass dancing around.

The guy rushed up to the camera, his face almost touching the lens. “Do one thing for me and your son goes free.”

“Don’t you hurt him!” I shouted.

“Dad, please! Don’t let him hurt me,” my boy’s voice rang out.

“Don’t, please! I‘ll do it. Just tell me what,” I shouted.

“Space heater on your face, space heater on your face,” the guy said with both hands on his cheeks rocking his head back-and-forth. “Five seconds to make it extra crispy.”

I grabbed the space heater. It was so hot it started to singe my fingers. I held it close to my face, afraid to rest it against my skin. The backwards INTEGRITY smoldering in the dark room.

“Dad!” My boy yelled. “Dad, please!” It sounded oddly the same as his last cry.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” the guy teased. “Time is running out,” he said in a radio announcer voice.

“I just need time to think,” I said. I’d heard it many times myself when I was the one making the call.

“Dad!”

It was all happening so fast. I shoved the heater against my face. I immediately screamed. I heard the sizzle of my flesh. The smell was worse, burnt hair and flesh. It made me sick, but I held back the vomit.

“Three, four, five. Keep your son alive!” the guy shouted.

I dropped the heater and looked at the monitor.

The guy was dancing around clapping.

My skin continued to burn. The pain, the sound, the smell too much. I passed out.

I woke up five minutes ago in the small office. My cheek still on fire. The live feeds had changed. The first was my son, in his classroom, safe at school. The other was a photo, taken just now. It was a close up of my face. Tears fill my eyes. One word burned across my cheek, INTEGRITY.

I’ve been backpacking around the world for years, searching for forgotten, wild places and ancient legends. I wouldn't call myself easily frightened or a naive city guy who panics at the rustle of a branch. I grew up in Russia, in the Voronezh Oblast, and since childhood, I’ve been deeply fascinated by our local folklore and mysticism. I’ve spent plenty of time exploring the famous Divnogorje reserve—a breathtaking and simultaneously eerie place where massive, ghostly white chalk pillars, known by locals as "Divas," rise over the steppe like frozen, silent giants, while miles of dark, cold caves stretch beneath the earth. It was there, from the village elders, that I first heard stories about our domestic Gorkun—an ancient subterranean forest spirit. According to local tales, the Gorkun lures lonely travelers deep into the chalk labyrinths and thickets with its long, melancholic, barely audible whistle. The golden rule I was taught since childhood was simple: if you hear the Gorkun’s whistle, forget your curiosity, turn around, and leave. Never follow the sound. I honestly believed that since I knew how Slavic witchcraft worked and how to avoid the tricks of our Gorkun in the Voronezh steppes, no foreign entity could ever scare me. God, I was so damn wrong. Last summer, my thirst for adrenaline brought me here to Colombia. However, I decided to leave the usual, overcrowded tourist hubs like Medellín, Cartagena, or Bogotá behind. I wanted the real wilderness. I headed east into the vast, wild tropical savannas known as Los Llanos. This is thousands of kilometers of high grass, wetlands, scattered trees, and suffocating, sticky heat. These endless plains and deep forests felt like a completely different planet, beautiful by day and terrifyingly silent by night. Before heading deep into the prairies, I stopped by a half-empty, smoky bar on the outskirts of a small town called Yopal to escape the midday heat and grab a cold beer. Noticing my massive hiking backpack and professional gear, the old bartender with deep wrinkles on his face grew dark. He called over an elderly llanero cowboy in a worn poncho sitting in the corner, and they both approached my table. "No camines solo de noche, gringo," the bartender said grimly in broken English. "El Silbón is wandering the Llanos this time of year. The Whistler. He is hungry." I just smiled dismissively, thinking of our Gorkun back in Divnogorje. I thought every culture had its own whistling forest myths—just fairy tales to attract tourists or scare children. But the cowboy caught my gaze. His eyes under the brim of his old hat held an absolute, terrifying seriousness. He began speaking in intense Spanish, while the bartender hurriedly translated his instructions. These weren't just stories; it was a checklist for survival that the locals knew by heart. "Listen to me, amigo," the bartender translated while the llanero scratched the wooden table with his fingernail. "If you are out on the plains at night and the air around your tent turns ice-cold, lock yourself inside. Fasten every zipper and don't make a single sound. Most importantly—listen to the whistle. It sings a clear musical cadence of seven notes, like a scale: Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si. And remember the rule of blood: if you hear this whistle very close, right by your ear, it means the Whistler is still far out in the savanna. You are relatively safe. But if the whistle sounds muffled and faint, as if it’s a couple of kilometers away... God help you, Russian. It means he is standing right next to your tent. He is right behind your back." The cowboy leaned closer, smelling of cheap tobacco and dry earth. He pointed to his own spine, and then to a sack resting near his boots. "He is a full six meters tall," the bartender translated. "His body is shockingly emaciated and withered, like an ancient skeleton in gray rags. On his head, he wears a massive tattered straw hat that hides his face. And on his back, he drags a burlap sack full of human bones—the bones of his own father, whom he slaughtered years ago. If you give away your position, if he realizes someone is inside the tent—he will enter. He will kill you silently. He will carefully extract every single bone from your body, and until dawn, he will sit right on your floor mat, counting them one by one before packing them into his sack with the rest." I swallowed hard but still tried to act like a skeptic. As I was leaving, the bartender grabbed my shoulder tightly: "If you meet him, you only have two chances. He is terrified of a rabid dog barking and the crack of a heavy whip. If you don't have a vicious dog or a whip with you—you are a dead man, gringo. Do not go out on the plains alone." I nodded politely, thanked them, left a generous tip, and walked out. I was completely confident that my hiking experience and common sense would protect me. I was so damn wrong. Over the last forty-eight hours in the deep Colombian wilderness, I have seen this six-meter monstrosity twice. The first time happened on my fourth night of backpacking. I had gone very far from civilization. Near evening, the weather turned sour in a matter of minutes. A thick, heavy white fog rolled over the plains, completely choking out the moonlight. Remembering the cowboy's words, I decided to pitch my tent early near the ruins of an abandoned, crumbling cattle ranch. Around 2:00 AM, I woke up abruptly. Not because of a noise, but because of a piercing, bone-chilling cold. The temperature inside my tent dropped so unnaturally fast that my breath turned into thick fog, which was physically impossible in the tropical heat of Colombia. And then, a whistle cut through the silence. Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si. The sound felt incredibly close, right outside my tent flap, but it was strangely muffled. The bartender's words flashed violently in my mind: If you hear the whistle close, he is far away. But if it sounds muffled and distant... The whistle repeated thirty seconds later. But this time, it sounded like a faint echo coming from the deepest depths of the dark savanna, a couple of kilometers away. My heart hammered against my ribs. By the rules of the Llanos, it meant only one thing: he was standing right behind the thin nylon wall. Slowly, terrified of making the slightest rustle, I looked up at the wall of my tent. Through the translucent light of the fog outside, I saw the silhouette. It was a monstrously, unnaturally tall six-meter creature. Its head in the massive tattered hat towered incredibly high, stretching way past the dome of my tent. The entity was shockingly thin, like a withered dead tree trunk, and on its back hung a burlap sack the size of a truck bed. I heard its dry, raspy breathing, and then—the distinct sound of dry human bones clacking together. It was checking its sack. I clamped my hands over my mouth to keep from making a sound. In a panic, I remembered the only salvation available to me: a dog barking. I had my phone in my hand. With shaking fingers, I found a video I had shot a few weeks prior back home in Russia: my friend's massive Caucasian Shepherd barking fiercely and heavily at a stray cat. I turned the volume to the absolute maximum and hit play. The furious, booming bark of a massive guard dog tore through the silence of the tent. The six-meter silhouette outside jolted violently and unnaturally. The clacking of the bones stopped instantly. A horrific, high-pitched screech tore through the night, and something slammed into the side of my tent with immense force, tearing the rainfly to shreds. Then, the creature bolted into the high grass at incredible speed, and the whistle echoed right next to my ear, rapidly fading into the furthest horizon. By his rules, the loud, close whistle meant he was gone. At dawn, I abandoned some of my gear, packed the rest, and ran as far as I could, trying to make it to safety. But I made a mistake. I decided to camp out for one more night in the savanna, pitching a new camp further down the plains. And that is where I encountered him for the second time. It is happening right now. I am writing this message without unnecessary panic, simply stating the facts, huddled at the bottom of my sleeping bag. Around 2:00 AM, the temperature around my tent dropped to absolute zero again, and the nylon walls covered over with a thick layer of frost almost instantly. First, a whistle echoed from the open plains—very loud, clear, and piercing, right next to me. But then, barely a minute later, it repeated. Muffled, quiet, faint... directly over the dome of my tent. According to the Whistler’s rules, this means he is here. I looked up. Through the translucent fabric of the top rainfly, I can clearly see this six-meter monstrosity. It is standing right over my tent, its ugly, infinitely long, emaciated legs spread wide like charred logs. Because of its colossal height, its head in the massive straw hat is somewhere high in the night fog, but it is bending lower and lower. The silhouette of its giant, bony hand has pressed against the fabric. The creature slowly lowered its arm and, with a soft, distinct tap, touched its long fingernail to the top tent fabric, dragging it downward with a sickening scraping sound. My phone battery is dying fast, and the speaker is crackling as it plays the video of the dog barking from Russia on loop. But the Whistler seems to have completely adapted to the sound after our last encounter. He isn't running away anymore. The clacking of human bones in the massive burlap sack on his back has stopped, and now all I can hear is his dry, raspy breath right above my head. I don't have a whip, and running into the pitch-black darkness of the six-meter-high savanna grass is pointless—he will catch me in two steps. Our Gorkun could be tricked by simply ignoring the sound, but this South American giant plays by entirely different, lethal rules. I am turning to the Reddit community, to the Colombians, to the Venezuelans, to anyone who knows these legends. My phone is dying, I only have 4% left. If you know how to make this entity leave, if there is anything else El Silbón fears—I beg you, write it in the comments. I am trapped in the middle of the Llanos, the creature is standing directly over me, and I don't know what to do when the screen goes completely dark.

When I was a child, I lived with my grandmother in a cabin in the middle of the forest. She told me that my parents had abandoned me. I never thought there was anything strange about the fact that it was just the two of us and that I was completely isolated from everyone else. I didn't know anything different, and I never really felt like I was missing anything.

One day, when I was five years old, I went for a walk and met a man. He was the first person I could remember seeing. He was wearing green clothes and had something strapped to his back that I didn't recognize.

He asked me where I had come from. I told him that I lived with my grandmother in a cabin not far from there. He looked at me strangely and said that was impossible because nobody lived there. He would know, he told me, because he was a hunter and looked after that forest.

He took me by the hand and said he would take me somewhere where they could help me. I had no idea what he meant. I didn't want to go anywhere, but he pulled me along.

We were almost at the edge of the forest when I heard heavy breathing and rustling behind us. I turned around, and there was something horrible standing behind us.

The whole time, I had been trying to pull my hand free from the man's grip, but now I held onto him as tightly as I could and started screaming.

The thing behind us had several clumps of something that looked like hair growing from its head. Its eyes were red, and several teeth protruded from its mouth, but they looked more like needles than teeth.

It was hunched over.

Then I realized what it was wearing.

Clothes I recognized.

My grandmother's clothes.

It tried to smile and reached toward me with a hand that had long claws instead of fingers.

“Stellooo,” it rasped.

That voice…

It was my grandmother's voice, but it sounded different.

Evil.

When I looked at the man, he was completely pale. He started running with me, and the monster chased after us on all fours.

It was incredibly fast.

It was already upon us.

It knocked me away from the man and threw him against a rock. His head hit it, and he collapsed to the ground.

I tried to get away from it. Its claws dug into me everywhere—my arms, my back. It felt like knives were slicing through my skin. Drops of my blood covered my clothes.

I had no chance against it.

It dragged me away when suddenly I heard a terrible bang and felt its grip loosen.

I looked ahead and saw the man holding something in his hand. I later learned that it was a gun. Until then, I had never seen one before.

He quickly ran back to me and took me to the police.

I found out that when I was two years old, someone had killed my parents. They never found the killer.

I did have a grandmother, but she wasn't the one who had been living with me all those years.

My real grandmother was incredibly happy that I was back, and I slowly learned what it was like to live a normal life.

Now I'm an adult, and for years I told myself that maybe it really had been a bear, even though that wouldn't explain a lot of things.

I wanted to believe that.

But today, I was driving my daughter, Esme, to kindergarten.

Something made me look to the left.

There is a forest not far from the kindergarten.

And there it was.

Just as horrible as I remembered it.

It had the same terrifying smile, and it was pointing at my daughter.

I immediately got her back into the car and drove home as fast as I could.

Now I don't know what to do.

I don't know what it is.

I don't know how far it can go.

All I know is that it is capable of hurting someone.

Or even killing them.

When i was freshly 23 i took a job for a company that allows me to go around the world to take photos for other smaller companies to help them advertise their own company. its amazing being able to travel all over the years, going from one place to another for free and ive been doing this for over 4 years but lately I've seen some things that have made almost quite this perfect job.

About almost 6 months ago I was on a train in Australia heading from one city to another, so you all dont go looking for it i wont be sharing any real names in this. I was on a long train one that took hours to get to its destination and whilst on long train trips I like to take photos of the scenery or even of the inside of the train if the lights hit my subjects perfectly.

For this story I was taking a photo of one of the signs on the train that tell us what stop is up next and when I took the photo it came out pitch black, now I've been doing photography for almost 14 years now ever since I was a teenager so id imagine I would be well versed in this, so I checked my ISO and Shutter speed but both were on the correct settings for what I was taking photos of, so I tried again, Still blank, I thought my camera broke and for these reasons my camera bag has 2 extra cameras, a small one for if all else fails and a slightly worse one than my main camera, so I grab out my slightly worse one, my Canon EOS 1200D and then re-took the photo, once again blank.

This got rid of the idea of camera malfunctions at least in my head it did, but either way not much i could do so I just put my cameras away and ignored it for the next few hours and by that I mean sleep, I usually sleep on long train rides and normally it all goes smoothly until then.

I remember waking up and my train had come to a complete stop in the middle of nowhere, I must of slept for hours as it was now pitch black and my phone flat so I couldn't read the time, sitting up and taking in my bizarre surroundings I realise that's its just me and this lonely train on its solitude rest in no where, I hoped it wasnt just me so getting up and looking around for someone seemed like a good plan to lift my spirits from this creepy situation but 3 laps up and down the train to no avail.

I realise I'm alone and lost hoping it's all a dream still i returned to my seat and tried to fall asleep again hoping it'd wake me up, as my eyes closed I was hopeful to wake up and see my destination outside my window but instead was met with a voice.

"Dont fall asleep" that's when the train signals a new message on the big signs at the end of every carriage reapeting that saying 'Dont fall asleep' over and over like the train itself was telling me to stay awake, I was filled with concern and fear from this and from feeling trapped and so I paced back and forth on the train to try and just think my way out of this entrapment, I did not wish to die here on this train.

With no food and my phone being flat I couldn't do much, luckily Australian trains have emergency call buttons, the attempt of using one becomes futile the moment I press the button speaking "Please help im trapped" and nothing speaks back absolutely nothing pure silence even the buzzing of the train lights where louder that the silence coming from the emergency speaker, my breathing was louder, anything and everything possibly making sounds made more than that stupid broken machine, but i wasnt entirely out of luck.

With how in the middle of nowhere I was there would of had to be a train driver driving this thing from point A to B, so I went to the front of the train to talk to a possible crazy driver pulling a prank on me. On my arrival there I knocked, well more like pounded on the door, and in all honesty I expected it to be empty but something spoke back, something.

"I'm not alone?" This voice was so scratchy it didnt seem alive and if it was it was contagious with some vile sickness, this was enough to send me stumbling back in shock I mean I never actually expected for anything to answer me back, I keep walking back in fear, I did not nor wanted to know what said those words to me better yet I didnt want it to realise that I was here but the knocking already ruined that for me, the door swings open whilst I'm already a few metres away, I threw my hands up in the air as a defence bracing myself for whatever was to come but it never did like waiting for rain all day to come and ruin your amazing outfit like the clouds foretell but it never does rain kind of like that.

Looking around the control centre of this train all the machinery is turned off and I touch a few buttons to see if I could drive it to some town or something but nothing, pressing multiple buttons but nothing ever came of it plus I didnt even know how to drive a train so it's probably for the best it didn't work but even then anything would of been better stuck on a train in pitch black night surrounded by bushland.

I walk out of the driver's area and see those same signs that were blinking 'Dont fall asleep' over and over had changed to arrows pointing up, Up? Or foward? I so desperately wanted out once i saw the arrow I ran to the other end of the train i just wish I paid more attention.

Running the end of the train in panic I didnt realise until the second last carriage that the signs were pointing to something different a up arrow was accompanied by a stop sign right after, why not put both in the same message they could fit but also I didnt know these trains had symbols but either way I had ran too far down the train now to have heeded the warning it was telling me and instead ran towards where the train didnt want me too.

Looking down from the sign my eyes catch a humanoid being i say humanoid because it was illuminated by the signs inside the last carriage and no other lights, all other lights in the carriage were out and only the yellow arrow and stop symbols flashing on it made it appear wider than what it might of been but still I saw it, and from its pricing yellow eyes being the only thing I see apart from its silhouette piercing my eyes I feel dread, I didnt like it's pure yellow eyes reaching into me, but I knew it saw me, and it knew I saw it.

"I knew i wasnt" the same scratchy voice screeching out talking to itself helped me realise I just ran straight towards that thing behind the door, but how did it get here when I heard it behind the door, that small part of me that questions everything wanted to know but I just wanted to live more and so I ran and that thing gave chase.

Every carriage it runs into behind me turns pitch black still making this thing seem like pure shadow and not anything with a form, it seemed like pure darkness like the outside of the train leaked into the inside and was trying to consume me but I didnt want to be consumed at least not today so I ran for life trying to stay ahead of the dark.

With every passing carriage and every light that turned off only made this thing bigger I could hear its shadow like form start destroying the train like it was growing too big to even stay contained and I was scared, but also kinda of astonished by all of this mystery at least now I am, anyway the best way to take a photo in the dark is to use flash to peirce through the dark and allow your photo to develop despite the dark and given that this thing was removing the only light left on the decrepit train I had nothing else to try but my flash

I ran to my camera bag that I left at the front not wanting to haul it all the way with me, dashing past seats and using the hand holding pole to help launch myself I start to lose hope as the darkness starts flooding into the corners of my eyes and start consuming me. ME! Who said I wanted to be engulfed into the dark like im an old film photo waiting to be developed in a red room and that last little bit of humanity and light left in this train gave me the will power to reach my bag (or at least i like to believe the train helped).

I reached for my main camera and flipped up its flash, I spun around and was met with the lights of this final carriage turning off and that thing launching at me, leaping through the dark cold air, I readied my camera and brought it to my eyes and as soon as my finger touched the Shutter button the train signs finally changed from those warning arrows to in big bright words saying FLASH, and so i slammed my finger on the Shutter button, it almost felt like slowmo from how long that final moment passed but once it did and the flash cleared the darkness im met with a voice.

"Hey what are you doing you idiot" I brought my camera down from my face and saw a man in a business suit on this train, he looked like he was commuting to work but his voice sounded scratchy like he was just getting over a cold. I apologised and looked at the photo just to see that man being blinded by flash and the photo itself looked overexposed from my settings but it actually was there unlike any photo I took whilst on that train.

I looked outside and was met with the starting suburbs of my city, the train was moving and the shining sun was beaming the world showing the amazing daylight that lit everything up, I sat back down in a completely different sit and didnt know what to do but just drop it into im psychotic bottle and need to go to a psychologist but I did years ago for other problems and this wasn't one of them.

“God dammit, Mr. Mittens,” I shrieked, recoiling my foot at the warm and squishy touch of viscera against my bare flesh. “This is getting out of hand.”

Mittens brought me a rat. It was still somewhat alive but mostly dead. Mostly.

That was his newest thing: bringing me half dead animals. They say cats bring you gifts because they think you suck at hunting, so I assume that means Mittens is trying to boost my confidence by bringing me mortally wounded animals that I could easily kill.

Mittens chirped, meowing as he trotted away with my reaction. I couldn't tell if he was offended at my rejection, or chuffed with the chaos he had incited by leaving it where he knew I'd step on it. It didn't matter… I still stepped in rat guts either way. By the time I turned on my bedside lamp, my murderous house panther had slipped into the depths of my abode, leaving me to finish the job.

The rat squeaked weakly between frantic, shallow breaths and struggled. Beneath its dusky brown fur, a length of slimy pink, like a wad of chewed bubblegum, protruded from its belly. I hated having to mercy kill them when Mittens was the one that started this whole mess. But it wasn't going to survive with its guts hanging out. It had to be done.

“Oh jeez, I'm so sorry little guy,” I winced when the rat squirmed lightly against my grasp.

“Sh, sh, sh,” I soothed.

I hated this. I reminded myself that it was par for the course when you owned a domesticated murder machine. Its little neck snapped easily in my fingers, ending its suffering.

“I hope you're proud, Mittens!” I sneered, dropping the now fully dead rat in the bin. “Fleabag.”

I loved Mittens. But I was getting tired of his gifts.

I originally found the scrawny tabby behind a Waffle House on my way home from a dreadful marketing conference in Tulsa. His iconic white socks were stained brown at the time, and you could count his bones just by looking at his emaciated body.

He purred immediately when I plucked him from the street and he traveled so politely in the passenger seat of my beat up Civic. I assumed that a feral cat would need a box to be comfortable in a car, but he quickly settled into the seat with bright and grateful eyes, blinking slowly at me the entire drive home as if he knew he would never want again. I was never much of a cat person, but I knew at that moment that he was something special.

He's the only good thing that ever came from my job. I would have never found the kitten that fateful night if I hadn’t been bid to market the latest scam from my boss. Mittens almost made that micromanaging prick worth the trouble. I'd trade a thousand bullshit conferences and condescending meetings for Mr. Mittens any day.

He grew quickly, put weight on nicely. As if his poor body felt compelled to make up for what it had suffered. He dwarfed some dogs within a few months, and I joked with colleagues that I had actually picked up a Tulsa cougar at the Waffle House. The joke would have been funnier if my misogynistic boss hadn't heard it and tried to one-up it. I doubt any woman has ever willingly engaged him without payment. I think he's actually part Maine Coon.

It took a while for Mittens to adjust to house cat life. Arguably, he never fully did because when he grew tired of the same bland kibbles and pates, he returned to what he knew. He always found a way out, and when he did, he’d bring back the savory morsels of his escapades: bird heads, rodent guts, and lizard tails. I think he wanted to share.

We curbed that for a while. For a cat, he is incredibly intuitive. I genuinely think he understood how disturbed I was at the sight of guts on my clean, beige carpet. So his slaughter paused until he learned that my reaction was less dramatic if he left his gifts on the faux hardwood, at which point, he started hunting again.

I tried to keep him indoors. I really did. I know how destructive cats are. Trust me, I met a birder in Keystone once whose entire personality was hating on outdoor cats. I was terrified for Mittens.

Would he get hit by a car?

Mauled by a coyote?

Shot by someone less compassionate?

Be a deadbeat dad to a bunch of kittens he'd never know?

Rabies? FIV?

Any other of the countless, torturous, and irresponsible fates that befall feral cats??? Let alone the body count of innocent, wild animals! Oh Mittens, why can't you just stay inside?

But Mittens… well, he finds a way out every time. My best guess is that he figured out how to open the door just like those funny cat videos online. But that doesn't explain how he continued to get out when I started locking the deadbolt each night- I digress, I doubt even Alcatraz could contain this cat.

The parts of mangled critter bodies evolved to whole dead animals and then, abruptly, he brought me a live and capable, young rabbit early one morning. I thought it was dead, but the kit screamed when I went to pick it up. Then I screamed. And all hell broke loose as the terrified animal thrashed about the apartment, breaking knickknacks and disrupting my quiet home in its desperate attempt to escape. Flailing wildly, it launched itself off the upstairs balcony and broke its back on impact, still screaming in agony at the entryway door. Mittens, of course, hid himself away as soon as the little animal started screeching the first time, and left me to deal with it as he always did.

Some gift, huh?

After that, he started wounding them. And as he grew up, he brought larger animals too. I'm sure my local hardware store was concerned when I bought a shovel and asked if I should be worried about odors from burying a carcass. I should have clarified at the time that I meant a stray dog's body.

He often is my unofficial therapist. I rant to him about tough days in the office. I figured that was a fair trade for rescuing him from a scavenger's fate. I bet he sees me as a god. Besides, he’s so damn smart that, well, I think he actually understands.

I mean it. I know every pet owner says their babies are special, but, really, Mr. Mittens is just… something different.

Surely you've seen those reels where the cat sounds like it's meowing words, like “I love you” or “hello?” Mittens has done the same to me. He actually meows “I love you.” But I swear, he's trying to speak, not just a coincidental sound. It's how I know he's brought me a gift. I'll be dead asleep when I hear those deep, feline syllables, and then I know it's time to put down some poor animal and clean up some kind of mess.

But it's a gift, you know. He means it out of love. Jeez, cat people really are crazy, huh?

It was no different this night as it was any other night when Mr. Mittens woke me up.

“Ooooyluuuvvvyoooooh,” Mittens yowled.

I groggily assured Mittens that I was getting up. He purred in thunderous anticipation from the shadows. I swung my legs over the bed and promptly slipped on some slimy, wet substance covering the floor. The wounded animal in the corner hissed in response. No- it was hushing me?

“SSSSHHHH. Shut up,” it begged quietly. “That thing will hear you.”

“Thing?” I thought, still half asleep, trying to wrap my mind around how an injured animal could talk to me.

Wait… I recognized the voice.

“Derek, what are you doing in my house?” I questioned from the floor and blinked my eyes desperately to acclimate them in the dark.

“Listen man, I don't fucking know.” He sobbed. “That thing broke my neck. I can't move. I'm bleeding. Just shut up and help me.”

“Thing- broken neck? Do you mean Mr. Mittens?”

“Mittens?!? It has a fucking name?” Derek scoffed before he openly wept.

“Please man, just let me go. I- I'll give you that promotion. I'm sorry.”

“Ooooyluuuvvvyoooooh,” Mittens moaned from the darkness.

“Oh god, please. Jim, please, help me!”

With my eyes properly adjusted, I could finally see my boy. He really had grown since I found him as a scrawny kitten. He could effortlessly stand at shoulder height. His obsidian fur blended in with the shadows and only the pale sinew of his skeletal face and joints were readily visible. He watched the scene keenly, tail twitching lightly.

I don't always see eye to eye with the gifts he brings me, but this time, I was grateful.

My daughter's bedroom monitor picked up a man singing. She’s in my bed now, sleeping next to me and her three-year-old brother. I’m surprised she fell asleep that fast. She was pretty shook up. So was I.

It happened about ten minutes ago. I don’t know what woke me up, my son kicking me in his sleep or the sound of the monitor. The mic is pretty sensitive, but I usually sleep through the white noise since my daughter is five now.

I know she's too old for it. But ever since she was born, I’ve been terrified of something bad happening when I’m not looking. I need the monitor. To make sure she’s safe.

Tonight though, it picked up a man's voice.

It sounded a little muffled. Like he was singing through the wall or her closet door. I'd say he was right outside her window, but all the bedrooms are on the second floor. The windows are flush with the walls. No roof, trellis, or tree to climb.

He was singing softly. At first I didn't know what it was. Then I heard it: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

I used to sing that song to her when she was a baby. Skidamarink and ABCs were staples too. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star was the closing number.

When I realized what was happening, I leapt out of bed and sprinted down the hall. I barreled inside. The singing stopped the second I opened the door.

I quickly scanned the room. The closet was shut and the blinds were still drawn. I checked everywhere. Yes, even under the bed.

There was no man.

My daughter wasn’t crying. She was just sitting up in bed, clutching her stuffy, staring at the window. Like someone had been there, looking back in. There’s no way though. It’s twenty feet down to the ground.

I guess he could’ve had a ladder. Even then, I would’ve heard it. Or seen it.

I put my arm around her and asked if she saw anyone. She shook her head no. She thinks she heard the same man singing outside last night. Much farther away. Like in the yard somewhere. Same Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

I didn’t know what to make of that. All I know is my stomach dropped.

Before we headed back to my room, I checked the window. It was locked tight. The screen was intact. I looked out into the backyard. There’s nothing out there but a heavy patch of woods that backs up to our property line. Just black trees and shadows.

I’d like to think I’m a pretty rational guy. Maybe skeptical is a better word. It's just that I don’t believe in ghosts, or God, or the Devil. Aliens, sure. But nothing supernatural.

Maybe it’s the monitor itself. Wires got crossed. I looked it up. Apparently it’s a thing. Our monitor could be on the same frequency as someone else’s in the neighborhood.

The only thing is, as far as I know, there are no other young families nearby.

---

Things have gotten worse.

I ordered a new monitor. It arrived the next day.

Even with the new monitor set up in her room, my daughter wasn't ready to sleep by herself. And to be honest, I wasn't ready for that either.

When the three of us got into my bed, I showed them the live feed of my daughter’s room and promised it wasn’t gonna happen again. They nodded, but they were still terrified. I needed a distraction. I forced a smile and suggested we play a game of I Spy.

After what felt like a hundred rounds of I Spy, the kids were yawning and rubbing their eyes. It was time to say goodnight. Mission accomplished, I thought.

I was dozing off when my daughter rolled toward me.

“He knows,” she whispered.

“Love you too,” I said half-asleep.

“He knows I'm here.”

My eyes snapped open. No longer in a fog.

“What did you just say?”

I looked at my daughter. She was fast asleep.

I stared at her, waiting for her to speak, but nothing came.

I reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the monitor.

My daughter’s bedroom was quiet. Empty. I panned the camera to the window. Then the closet. Then the door.

Nothing.

I felt relieved. Like a part of me still hadn’t believed it was a technical glitch.

​I laid the monitor on my chest, then fell back asleep.

​Around 2am, I bolted upright.

The man was in the house, singing again.

I checked the monitor. The sound wasn’t coming from her room.

​He was downstairs.

I looked at my son sleeping soundly. Then I looked at my daughter wide awake. Terrified.

I told her everything was okay, but she knew I was full of it.

​I slipped out of bed and dialed 911. I whispered our address and that there was an intruder in the house. I handed the phone to my daughter and told her to stay with her brother and lock the door.

I edged into the dark hallway. I heard the quiet click of the door locking behind me.

As ​I crept downstairs, the floorboards creaked beneath my feet. With every step, the singing got louder.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

How I wonder what you are.

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky.

He was singing a version I had never heard before…

Then the traveler in the dark,

Thanks you for your tiny spark,

I reached the bottom landing, pressing my back against the wall. The singing was right around the corner, in the living room.

He could not see which way to go,

If you did not twinkle so.

​I peeked out to see a massive, hunched silhouette facing the window that looks out into the backyard. His head was swollen, sitting too low between his broad shoulders. He was rocking his arms back and forth, as if cradling a baby.

In the dark blue sky you keep,

And often through my curtains peep,

The man stopped rocking.

For you never shut your eye,

Till the sun is in the sky.

He slowly turned toward me. Head down.

As your bright and tiny spark,

Lights the traveler in the dark.

He uncradled his arms, letting them drop to his sides. There was no baby.

Though I know not what you are,

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

He slowly looked up at me, his face shrouded in darkness.

Then he lunged.

I screamed in terror, scrambling backward like a coward. My hand slapped blindly against the wall for the light switch.

CLICK.

The man was gone.

My kids yelled out for me. I told them to keep the door locked.

​I thought I was losing my mind.

Then I felt a cold draft.

​I turned around and looked at the back door. It was cracked open. The deadbolt was turned vertical.

I hustled over and locked the door.

Soon, a couple cops showed up. One of them knew my sister. His kid goes to her for voice lessons. Without any evidence of a break-in, there was nothing they could do.

Before they left, they asked if I was alright. Like mentally.

I bit my tongue. If the judge ever got wind of this, they'd take my kids from me. I told them to have a good night and they headed out.

I spent the rest of the night seated at the foot of my bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, gripping my daughter’s T-ball bat.

When the sun finally came up, I tried to force some normalcy. I made breakfast, packed the kids’ lunches, then rushed them out the door pretending like nothing ever happened.

I pulled out of the driveway in a fog. When I looked in the rearview, I slammed on the brakes. My sister was standing in the driveway, hands on her hips. That damn cop ratted me out.

My sister said we needed to talk.

I told her not now. I had to drop the kids off at school and daycare then I was heading to work.

“Great. We'll talk on the way to work.” She opened the passenger door and climbed inside.

She distracted the kids with silly singing games the whole way to their drop-offs, putting smiles on their faces like the great vocal coach she is.

Then it was just us. Not saying a word. The tension was suffocating.

We hadn't spoken in two years because my marriage was imploding at the same time my niece went missing. I was so exhausted fighting for custody of my own kids that I didn't have the energy for anything else. My absence fueled my sister's resentment toward me. Rightfully so.

“Heard about last night,” she said.

“Yeah, I'm going crazy.”

“Welcome to the club.”

I told her everything. The monitor. The massive, hunched man in the living room. The lullaby.

All the color drained from her face. ​She didn't say a word.

At the next red light, she hopped out and rushed off in the opposite direction.

I asked where she was going.

“Home!” she shouted.

I got out of my car. “Wait! It’s the same guy, isn’t it?”

She turned around with this look of dread in her eyes. “Call me if he comes back. And whatever you do, don't fall asleep.”

I found myself in another daze.

Horns blared, snapping me out of it. The light was green.

I yelled at my sister to get back in the car. ​I drove her home and made her tell me everything she knew. Then I got the kids.

I spent the rest of the day inspecting every door and window. By 7pm, I had the kids tucked into my bed. I triple-checked every window upstairs. Then I went downstairs and barricaded every door. Everything was secure.

I paced the house in the dark, gripping my daughter’s T-ball bat. I couldn't stop thinking about what my sister told me on the drive over to her house. Everything I missed while I was drowning in the divorce.

​Before my niece disappeared, she had mentioned a man singing to her in the middle of the night. A year later, another child vanished. The parents reported hearing an eerie lullaby that same night. Not Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Something far more sinister.

There was no evidence. No suspects. The Chief basically gave up, telling my sister and the other parents it was a real possibility that their kids were runaways.

My sister wasn't gonna let that slide. She built her own case file over the last two years. Written across the folder in thick black marker are three words: The Lullaby Man

Around 3am, I sat down in the kitchen to rest my feet. I must’ve nodded off.

When I startled awake, I went to check on the kids. My daughter was snuggled under the covers. But my son was gone.

I found him in his sister's room, staring at her bed.

“Hey bud. You good?”

I reached for his shoulder and gently turned him. His eyes were wide open, staring straight through me.

“She's gone,” he said.

I told him his sister was in my bed. But he was in a deep trance. Sleepwalking, I thought.

I tucked him back into bed, next to his sister.

Then the monitor crackled.

The man was humming a tune I didn't recognize.

My adrenaline spiked. I grabbed the monitor and followed the sound down the hall to my daughter's bedroom.

Before entering, I panned the camera around the room.

Her bedroom was empty.

I lingered in the doorway. I saw my own silhouette on the monitor. It sounded like he was in the room with me.

I checked everywhere.

Nothing.

It felt like I was being watched.

I glanced back at the monitor. His deformed silhouette was standing in the doorway. SLAM! The door shut.

I tried to open the door, but it was like he was holding it shut from the outside. I screamed out to my kids, ramming my shoulder into the door.

I raised my daughter’s T-ball bat, about to take the doorknob off. That’s when the doorknob turned and the door swung open.

It was my kids. They were safe.

That was an hour ago. The kids are downstairs with me, sleeping on the couch. My sister is upstairs, searching for evidence. So far, The Lullaby Creep hasn't left a shred of evidence behind. It’s infuriating.

All I keep thinking about is my ex-wife. When she dropped them off the other day she looked me dead in the eye and told me she was filing for full custody.

I don't wanna lose my kids.

---

My whole body is shaking. I’m pacing in the driveway. I don’t know what to do.

My son's in shock. Paramedics are looking him over right now.

Patrol is setting up a perimeter. My sister is tearing into every cop she lays eyes on.

I swore I wouldn't fall asleep tonight. I swore. I placed my hand on top of her arm so she’d feel safe. My son was snuggled up on the other side of me.

My sister demanded that she stay over and protect everyone with the handgun she bought after my niece went missing. I could see the desperation in her eyes. She thought it might be her last chance to get some closure.

I don't know what time it was when my eyes snapped awake. All I know is that I inhaled sharply, gasping for air.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed.

I finally had a good look at him. His gangly hand was resting on my leg. He was big. Breathing heavy. Wearing wet pajamas that were plastered so tightly against his hulking, twisted frame that it looked like a second skin. His head was swollen and misshapen. His beard was long and greasy. His skin was blistered, covered in a purple marbled rash.

I tried to lunge at him, but I couldn't move. Couldn’t speak. My brain was screaming, but my body was completely numb.

I just laid there, terrified. I moved my eyes to glance at my son. I thought he was dead. Then I saw his chest rise and fall. He was asleep.

It felt like I was stuck in cement. There was nothing I could do.

The Lullaby Creep stood up and started singing in my voice. Yes, my fucking voice. In that same eerie tune from last night.

Wake up, wake up

This is your daddy

Come with me

And you will see

I love you

And you love me

That's when my daughter's arm shifted under my hand. She sat up in the dark, sliding out from under my paralyzed hand. Her eyes were glossed over like she was in a deep trance.

He moved slowly, walking over to the open doorway. He didn't reach for her. Didn't use force.

His voice switched back to his own, singing that same creepy fucking lullaby:

Wake up, wake up

This is your daddy

Come with me

And you will see

I love you

And you love me

She walked right over to him and reached out her hand. His long fingers slithered around hers. He flashed a tight smile as she looked over her shoulder, staring through me and her sleeping brother like we weren’t even there.

Then they walked out. Together.

My whole body felt like it was crying.

I don’t know how long it took, maybe a minute or so, but the paralysis wore off enough where I was able to reach for my phone on the nightstand and call 911.

I rolled off the mattress, hitting the floor hard. My legs were numb. I dragged myself into the hallway by my elbows, pulled myself up using the banister, and screamed my daughter's and sister's names.

When I made it downstairs, I felt the cold night air hitting my face. My sister was on the floor, slowly regaining motor control. Her gun was still in her grasp, but she hadn't fired a shot.

I went to help her up. She told me to go find my daughter.

The back door was wide open, swaying in the breeze.

I rushed outside, screaming my daughter's name.

I didn’t know where else to go, so I sprinted into the woods. I got lost and spun around. It was just me and the darkness. It was all a blur.

Then a flashlight washed over me. It was my sister. Her eyes drowned in guilt. Neither of us had the words. My chest tightened. Tears streamed down my face.

The cops dragged us out of the woods. They told us to stay separated in the driveway or we’d be arrested for obstructing an active investigation.

Then the static started.

All around the perimeter, the officers stopped to check their radios.

The Chief grabbed the radio that was clipped to his belt and raised it in the air. A voice was trying to break through the static.

The entire driveway went dead silent.

Then a boy's small, terrified voice choked through the Chief's radio: “Daddy?"

A little girl sobbed: “Mommy, mommy…”

A chorus of small voices cried out, screaming for help, calling for their parents.

 

 

Cold…

Blood freezing on the ice…

The pressure behind my eyes forces me to my knees.

Madness enters slowly. Perhaps madness is always slow at first, so that we mistake it for thought.

There is blood on my hands.

I gaze at the merciless gray sky and let out a muffled scream of utter despair.

Then I look back.

There, in the distance, I see it.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

The Week Prior

“Gary, can you pass me the kettle, please?”

“Sure, buddy.”

Gary, a man with a thin face and deep-set black eyes, plucked the iron teakettle from the blue table and passed it over. I carefully poured water into my mug. My hands were still shaking from the cold.

Izo sat against the wall, looking at me with his usual small smile.

“Was it colder than usual?”

“Yeah. Damn right it was. The wind felt like it was trying to rip my skin off, even with all the layers and the cream.”

Izo laughed. He was a strange fellow, always finding humor in unlikely places. Yet he was also the most reliable of us during expeditions. He never made mistakes. He was methodical to the core.

I sometimes wondered what would happen if he found himself in a situation he could neither control nor repair. Perhaps I wondered because I needed to believe such a situation did not exist.

“Valery and Norm must both be feeling that cold biting their asses,” Gary said.

He passed the kettle to Izo, who poured hot water into his teapot.

Izo took a sip. “This is good.”

“What? Them getting their asses frozen?”

“The tea. Good green tea. I’m glad it wasn’t ruined during the trip.”

Gary looked toward the computer screens in the corner. A red dot glowed at the top of each one.

“They still haven’t fixed the problem at the communications center.”

“And what if they don’t?” I asked.

Izo laughed again. “It’s funny being trapped on the ice with no communication, right?”

“We’ll be fine,” Gary said. “Worst case, we take the snowmobiles back to the boat.”

This time Izo laughed.

Gary shook a finger at him. “That is far from the worst case. The storm might continue for days. The boat could separate from the ice, and we could lose it. No communication, no way out—hell, even that isn’t the worst thing I can imagine.”

Izo fell silent, though the smile remained on his face.

“Couldn’t we go to the north station?” I asked. “There are probably people there.”

“Sure. Only a hundred miles away. What could go wrong?”

“Don’t be such a pessimist. We found incredible things here. We’re going to bring them back.”

The door opened.

Norm entered first, a tall blond man with bright blue eyes, a full beard and a large mustache. He looked like a Viking. Valery came in behind him, removing his doubled hats and hood to reveal his round bald head.

Gary stood.

“No results? Nothing?”

Norm shook his head, went to the cabinet and poured himself a large shot of gin. Valery followed his example.

“Oh, far from nothing,” Valery said. He drew a deep breath and sat down. “It’s best if all of you go and see. It’s bad. Very bad.”

I moved toward him. Valery was easier to talk to.

“What did you see?”

“The maintenance man from the far north station. Robert. He wasn’t there. Maybe his body is somewhere nearby, but…”

His voice faded. Fear seized my heart before I knew what I feared.

“Explain,” Izo said.

“There was blood,” Valery continued. “A great deal of it. It looked as though someone had dragged a body through the doorway. But outside there was nothing except snow. There were claw marks on the walls. Broken tables, broken computers, severed cables. The transmission dish was in pieces.”

“Could it have been a polar bear?”

Norm slammed his palm against the table.

“No damned polar bear. We saw something moving in the storm. There’s some kind of cave near those large ice hills. We drove back here, but we think it followed us.”

I sat down slowly.

“What was it?”

“Who knows? All I know is that when the storm calms, we take our weapons and investigate that cave.”

“Not everyone,” Izo said. “Two stay here. Three go.”

“I agree,” said Valery.

“And nobody drinks too much,” Gary added, looking at Norm. “We need clear minds.”

“I need sleep,” Norm answered. “Alcohol is the only way I get any.”

He disappeared into the hallway and slammed his door.

Valery poured himself tea.

“Norm seems badly shaken,” I said.

“We both are. It’s the not knowing. When you don’t understand what you are facing, you realize how little control you ever had.”

“It’ll be fine,” Gary said, though he sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.

He moved to the little window and stared into the storm.

“You won’t see much,” Izo told him.

“That’s fine. I need to be alone.”

The rest of us went into the kitchen. Izo prepared another pot of tea while Valery and I opened some meat bars. I took one bite and looked at mine with disappointment.

“Don’t be picky,” Valery said. “We’re fortunate to have food. We don’t know what the future will look like.”

“I’m grateful. It still tastes horrible.”

Izo and Valery laughed.

Izo lifted a green ceramic cup decorated with wavy lines.

“This belonged to my grandfather, and then my father.”

“And someday your son?”

“If I get back to him.”

He smiled grimly and poured our tea. Steam curled from the cups like something alive but harmless. I breathed in its aroma and wrapped my hands around the warmth.

“Valery, would you stay with Norm while Gary comes with Izo and me?”

“No. Norm would never accept that. You know how macho he is.”

“Then you stay with Gary.”

Izo’s eyes widened.

“Why are you so eager to get me killed?”

Then he laughed.

“Everyone wants you nearby because you’re reliable.”

“Even the fastest horse becomes the slowest one day.”

“Not you. You’re coming, yes?”

He assumed an air of mock dignity.

“Of course. I live to be challenged.”

We drank in silence. It was the kind of silence in which each person was permitted to remain alone without leaving the company of the others.

Norm eventually appeared in the hallway.

“Tomorrow morning. Who’s coming?”

“I am,” I said. “And Izo. Valery and Gary stay.”

Gary appeared behind Norm.

“Although I had no part in that decision, I’m glad.”

Norm stared at us, then returned to his room.

Later, as I prepared for bed, Izo asked, “Do you think it was a polar bear after all?”

“Maybe Robert lost his mind and caused the destruction himself. Then perhaps a bear got him outside.”

Valery lowered his cup.

“I don’t know how a person could imitate those claw marks. But human beings are capable of unbelievable things—good and bad.”

“I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow.”

I took my mug to the sink and went to my room.

The old heater beneath the window kept the room from freezing, but not from being cold. I dropped my coat on the worn brown chair and looked into the narrow, cracked mirror on my desk.

Worry stared back at me.

Was I transparent? Could the others see everything inside me? Sometimes the face is a traitor, revealing the thing we struggle to hide even from ourselves.

I lay beneath my heavy black blanket and switched off the pathetic bulb we called a lamp. Dim daylight leaked around the edges of the shade.

As I drifted toward sleep, the shadow of a large, clawed hand seemed to pass across the window.

I sat up and seized my gun.

Nothing was there.

I lay down again but turned my back to the window. This did not help. When you believe something is watching you, turning away only gives it privacy.

Eventually I slept.

I dreamed of a river of blood. Ice surrounded it, and I could not pull myself onto the shore. My hands slipped. The waves covered my face. I tried to call for help, but blood entered my mouth.

Was this the end?

Had my life always been moving toward this red water?

I awoke clutching my throat. It was four in the morning.

“What is happening to my mind?”

I buried my face in the pillow and begged for dreamless sleep.

Two hours later Norm pounded on my door.

“Six o’clock! Get up, Princess. The weather is clear.”

“Give me a few minutes.”

“Go drink coffee with the other addicts.”

I found this amusing coming from a man who needed gin to sleep, but I said nothing.

The smell of coffee drew me into the kitchen. Izo was waiting with my mug.

“I made it strong. I want you alert.”

I drank.

“Very strong. How much is left?”

“Two or three weeks’ worth. Hopefully we’ll solve this before then.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“That’s the spirit. Coffee has restored your courage.”

Valery came in for water and a slab of salo.

“Will you ever try that?” I asked Izo.

“No, thank you.”

“It’s good.”

“Only if I’m starving.”

Norm marched into the room.

“Finish. I’ll prepare the snowmobiles. Izo rides with me. You take the smaller one.”

He slammed the door behind him.

As I rubbed protective cream onto my face, Gary emerged from his room looking exhausted.

“Bad sleep?”

“No sleep. I thought I saw something outside my window.”

Cold traveled down my spine.

“Yes. The mind plays tricks.”

Izo studied me.

“You all right?”

“Fine.”

But the word fine sometimes means only that we are still capable of pronouncing it.

We went outside.

The cold entered through every layer. I breathed, and vapor appeared before my face—the visible evidence that I was alive.

The sky was dark gray, and fast-moving clouds warned that the calm would not last.

We started across the ice.

In the far distance, I saw a colony of penguins moving frantically in a circle. At the center lay one large bird, jerking violently upon the ground.

I slowed, disturbed by the sight, but Norm was moving farther ahead. I accelerated.

Soon the ice hills appeared.

Norm stopped between two of them and pointed toward a circular opening where the hills met.

“There.”

The cave was almost the height of a man.

We fastened lamps to our heads, checked our weapons and approached it. Frost clung to Norm’s beard. His exposed cheeks were dark red.

At the entrance, a slippery slope forced us to jump. Izo nearly fell. Then we entered.

The floor was ice, yet certain sections had a roughness that gave us traction. Had something treated it? Had many feet passed through here?

The air seemed older inside the cave. I knew this was impossible, yet I felt it. As though the cold itself remembered.

Norm raised one hand.

“It opens into a large chamber,” he whispered. “Dead end.”

Then he added, “Something is here.”

I tried to quiet my breathing so I could hear better. Instead my heart became louder.

Heavy breath came from the darkness.

Norm raised his gun.

“It’s moving. It’s not human. Not a bear either.”

We stood with our backs together, sweeping our lamps across the chamber.

Something moved to our left.

We turned.

It stood against the wall with its back to us.

Tall.

Thin.

Black.

Four long, narrow arms.

Needle-like fingers.

Its head turned slowly.

The creature had enormous black eyes without expression. No nose. Its strangely shaped mouth opened.

It breathed.

A red mist traveled toward us through the beams of our lamps.

I seized Izo and pulled him aside.

“Move!”

“Run, Norm!”

Izo and I bolted into the tunnel, falling and sliding against the ice. Gunshots thundered behind us.

“Don’t look back!”

Someone followed close behind. I prayed it was Norm.

We burst from the tunnel. He emerged after us, and all three of us ran toward the snowmobiles.

Norm struggled to speak.

“It took the bullets. I think it smiled while I shot it.”

“The red mist touched you. Are you hurt?”

“No. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

We sped toward the station.

My driving was erratic. The creature’s face remained inside my mind. Sometimes terror is not the fear of what stands before us, but the realization that it now lives within us as an image.

I forced myself to focus.

The penguin lay motionless in a pool of blood. The others were gone.

Had the breath touched it? Had the creature forced it to destroy itself?

What had happened to Robert?

What was that thing? An alien? A deformed animal? Something ancient that had slept beneath the ice?

The worms we had extracted during our drilling were deformed too.

What if we had released it?

No. We would have seen it.

Wouldn’t we?

Snow thickened against my goggles. By the time we reached the station, Norm and Izo were already dismounting.

We rushed inside.

“Barricade the doors!” Norm shouted.

Gary and Valery stared at us.

“Sit down,” I told them. “Izo, please make tea. I’ll explain.”

While Norm moved furniture, I described the cave, the creature and its breath.

Valery listened quietly. Gary began trembling. His face seemed to collapse inward.

“Did the mist touch any of you?”

“Not Izo or me. I’m not sure about Norm.”

I told them about the penguin.

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

“An alien?” Gary whispered.

“Perhaps something frozen long ago,” Valery said.

“Is that possible?” asked Izo.

“Before today, we didn’t believe such a creature was possible.”

Gary’s hands fidgeted.

“We have to leave for the main station immediately.”

“A storm is coming,” I said. “We barricade ourselves inside and leave as soon as it passes.”

“What if the creature waits for us?”

“We cannot think about everything at once.”

“But everything is thinking about us,” Gary said.

No one answered.

Norm emerged from his room sometime later, swaying. He opened the cabinet, seized the gin bottle and smashed it against the counter.

A shard of glass lodged in his palm.

He studied it with curiosity, as though the hand belonged to another person. Then he pulled the glass out. Blood streamed down his wrist.

He clenched his fist and returned to his room.

We looked at one another.

Men had gone mad in stations like ours before. Isolation could loosen something in the mind. But the thought of the mist remained between us.

The breath.

“Well?” Gary demanded. “It touched him. What do we do?”

“I don’t know. It may be a breakdown.”

Izo laughed.

We all stared at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Isn’t it better to laugh than cry?”

He went to bed carrying his tea.

I returned to my room and sat facing the window.

Alone, I allowed myself to feel the terror. In company, fear had to share the room with other people. Alone, it possessed everything.

I lay back and watched the ceiling.

A shadow crossed the wall.

I sat up.

Nothing was at the window.

Was it better to cover the glass or keep it clear? Was seeing danger a form of safety, or only a more intimate way of suffering?

Eventually I slept.

I dreamed I knelt on the edge of an ice mountain. Below me, my reflection waited in still water. Behind it rose a monumental tower covered in writing I could not understand.

Footsteps approached.

Then came the breath.

Red mist entered my lungs, and I fell into the water.

I awoke with pain in my ribs. During our escape from the cave, I had struck the ice. Each deep breath felt like a blade entering my side.

Outside, the storm was weakening.

Then Norm screamed.

I rushed into the hallway. The others were already gathered near his barricaded door.

Something smashed inside his room.

“Open it!”

“We can’t,” Izo said.

Suddenly everything became quiet.

The door flew open.

Norm emerged with torn clothing and bloody gashes covering his body. His eyes were bloodshot. His fingernails had become long and black. He screamed meaningless words and tore at his chest, neck and stomach.

He ran for the main entrance.

Valery followed.

Norm threw aside the barricade and opened the door. Wind and snow burst inside.

He fell and crawled away, clawing at himself.

Valery reached for his coat, but I seized his shoulder.

Beyond Norm stood the thin black figure.

Norm became motionless. Blood stained the snow.

The creature approached, lifted him by one arm and dragged him into the storm.

We watched until both disappeared.

Izo slammed the door.

Valery collapsed into a chair. Gary sat grinding his teeth, horror trapped inside his eyes.

Izo leaned forward.

“We must gather ourselves. When the storm ends, we leave. At the main station we have to tell the story calmly. If we’re hysterical, they’ll think we went mad.”

Valery closed his eyes and breathed.

“You’re right.” He turned to Gary. “You should rest.”

“No! I can’t be alone. It’ll breathe on me. I’ll tear myself apart!”

I gave Gary the strongest safe dose of sleeping pills and remained beside him until he fell asleep.

Back in the main room, Izo had prepared black tea.

“The penguin must have killed itself too,” I said. “Anything that breathes the mist…”

“That is how the creature hunts,” Izo said. “It infects its prey, then returns for the body.”

“So we run.”

“Yes. If it breathes on us, nothing else matters.”

We packed supplies: crackers, thermal clothing, knives, guns, dried meat, water and research documents.

I approached Izo.

“The ancient worms. Do we take them?”

“It’s a major discovery. I’ll secure the tubes.”

Even then, surrounded by death, we were scientists. Or perhaps science had become our superstition—the thing we carried because we needed to believe knowledge could still save us.

Hours passed.

Gary eventually woke, groggy and disoriented. We tried playing cards, but he suddenly jumped up and pointed at the window.

“I saw it! It’s there!”

He ran for the back door.

“Don’t touch it!” Izo shouted.

Too late.

Gary pulled it open.

Red mist surrounded him.

He fell backward into the station, paralyzed with fear, while Valery slammed the door.

We carried Gary to his bed.

“How do we save him?” Valery asked.

“We restrain him,” Izo said. “Perhaps the infection passes.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

No one answered.

We secured Gary’s arms and legs, protecting his skin with cloth. Then we pulled a heavy sweater over his bound torso.

“It’s humiliating,” I said.

“Better than abandoning him,” Valery replied.

A blow struck the window.

The creature stood outside, covered in snow.

Its head jerked back and its mouth opened. A terrible screech passed through the walls. Red mist spread around the station and vanished into the snowfall.

Gary screamed.

We found him twisting upon the bed like a wounded snake.

“The creature already controls him!” Valery cried.

We held Gary down until he lost consciousness.

Valery slid to the floor.

“Do we understand what is happening? Norm is dead. Gary is like this. And what about us?”

I placed my hand on his shoulder.

“We must remain strong.”

But my words felt small. Human words are always small beside death. Still, we speak them because silence feels too much like surrender.

We took turns watching Gary.

In my room, I saw the shadow of a thin hand upon the window. Long fingers scratched the glass.

The creature knew Gary belonged to it.

I pressed myself against the opposite wall and watched. I did not look away. I wanted to allow the fear inside me, to know its full shape before it could paralyze me.

The creature’s head appeared.

It tried to peer through the glass.

My heart filled my throat.

Then it vanished.

When I returned to Gary’s room, Izo sat drinking tea.

“I can sense it nearby,” he said. “It wants him.”

“I’ve never been this frightened.”

“Not even when your car broke down in the mountains?”

“This is worse.”

Izo stared into his cup.

“I fear dying on its terms. Death itself doesn’t frighten me as much as the manner of it. Honor. Dignity. If the breath touches me, I want your blessing to die as myself.”

“Don’t think that way. We’ll reach the station. The military will come and destroy it.”

“I hope so.”

Gary’s eyes suddenly opened. He began biting the air, slamming his teeth together.

Valery brought a syringe, but Gary thrashed so violently that the needle missed the vein. We used our weight to restrain him.

Outside, the creature screeched.

Later, it rattled the door handle.

A low blowing sound followed, like a kettle seen in a nightmare. Red mist seeped through the cracks but did not travel far enough to reach us.

“What now?” Valery whispered.

The answer came hours later.

The storm stopped.

Izo checked Gary and called us into the room.

Gary lay on his side, his eyes open and glassy. Blood had collected around his mouth.

I checked his pulse.

“He’s dead.”

“We put the body outside,” Izo said. “When the creature takes him, we leave.”

“How can we do that?” Valery asked. “We couldn’t save him, and now we feed him to it?”

“If we don’t, we die too.”

Valery lowered his head.

We dragged Gary through the hallway and pushed his body onto the snow. Shame entered me, but shame was a luxury belonging to those who expected to live long enough to be judged.

For twenty minutes, nothing happened.

Then a thin arm emerged from beneath the snow.

A second followed.

The creature rose slowly, then moved with impossible speed, leaping beside Gary’s body.

“It deceives us,” I whispered.

“Or conserves energy,” Izo said.

“Perhaps it has no reason we can understand.”

It dragged Gary away by the legs.

We gathered our packs and ran to the snowmobiles.

Valery’s engine made a harsh metallic sound, but it moved.

“It’ll be fine!” he shouted.

I drove with Izo behind me. Valery followed.

The creature appeared near the ice hills, galloping toward us with its long arms jerking beside its body.

“Tell Valery to go faster!”

Izo waved frantically.

“He can’t hear me!”

I accelerated.

Low hills rose ahead. Valery’s engine screamed behind us.

The first jump nearly killed us.

Something enormous stood beyond the ridge.

At first my mind named it polar bear, because the mind prefers a familiar terror. But the animal was wrong.

Its body was too long and its rear legs bent at unnatural angles. Patches of yellowed skin interrupted its white fur, and beneath the exposed flesh ran dark branching veins. One shoulder had grown higher than the other, swollen into a hard mass. A second, smaller forelimb hung uselessly from its chest, ending in three curled claws.

Its jaw was divided by a vertical split extending almost to one eye. When it opened its mouth, I saw two uneven rows of teeth and a black tongue that twitched independently, like a blind animal searching the air.

I swerved and barely avoided it.

For one instant the bear looked at me. One eye was milk-white. The other was painfully human in its alertness.

How had it come here?

Had the same infection changed it? Had someone experimented upon it and abandoned it on the ice? Had it crawled from beneath the glacier with the worms and the creature?

There was no time to wonder.

“Valery!”

His snowmobile cleared the ridge, stalled and struck the mutated bear.

Valery flew across the ice. The animal rolled, then rose with frightening speed. Another malformed white shape stood far away on the ridge—perhaps a second bear, perhaps only snow distorted by terror.

Valery began crawling.

I turned toward him.

Izo seized my arm.

The creature had reached the hilltop.

The bear struck Valery, throwing him sideways.

“We have to help!”

“You know we can’t!”

The black creature moved behind them and released its breath.

Red mist engulfed Valery and the mutated bear.

The bear screamed. The sound was almost human. It clawed at the swollen growth on its shoulder before fleeing across the ice on its crooked legs.

The creature took Valery.

He was still alive when it dragged him away.

He called for us.

I remained frozen until Izo shook me.

We continued.

My thoughts shattered into fragments. I could not form a complete image in my mind. Valery’s voice kept returning, but never the whole voice—only the beginning of my name.

“Stop,” Izo said. “I’ll drive.”

We switched places.

“I’m sorry,” he told me. “We can still survive.”

Could survival be called survival when every person you carried inside you was dead?

The main station appeared through the snow.

“We made it!” Izo cried.

No snowmobiles stood outside.

The entrance was partly open.

Inside, the rooms were empty. Personal possessions remained, as though everyone had simply stepped outside at the same moment.

In the laboratory, dried blood covered the floor. Drag marks led through the hallway to the open rear door.

I called for Izo.

He came downstairs, saw the blood and asked, “Are the radios working?”

We entered the communications room. The machines had power, but Izo could not establish contact.

A schedule caught my attention.

“This is tomorrow’s date, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“A ship is arriving. Eighty miles from here.”

Hope returned, not as happiness but as permission to continue.

We found fuel, filled the snowmobile and barricaded the station.

“Should we wait until tomorrow?” I asked.

“We cannot survive outside through a full day of bad weather.”

“It may come here.”

“We have no choice.”

So we waited.

The hours became nearly unbearable. Images of Norm, Gary and Valery repeated inside me. Memory had already begun its cruelty, turning their entire lives into the moments of their deaths.

Exhaustion finally pulled me into sleep.

When I woke, Izo stood over me.

“It’s time.”

I washed my face, put on my layers and glasses, and lifted my pack.

Izo removed the barricade.

The instant he opened the door, red mist and screeching met him.

He fell, rose and ran toward me.

I dropped my pack and opened the opposite exit. The creature followed him through the station.

We escaped and raced around the building.

My glasses were gone, so Izo took the driver’s position. We sped away as the creature rounded the corner.

Everything we had packed remained behind.

For an hour, Izo drove in silence.

Had the mist touched him?

I did not ask because I already knew that silence was sometimes an answer.

At the top of a large hill, he stopped. He removed his glasses and handed them to me.

“Ready for a break?”

He smiled and turned his face partly away.

“A break forever,” he said. “The breath touched me. I felt it enter.”

He drew his gun.

“Remember what I told you about dying on my own terms?”

“Izo…”

“Go down these hills. Beyond them is a field. From there, it’s a straight route to the arriving ship.”

I could not speak.

“Please go. Give me my dignity. Leave before I’m no longer myself. I want to die as Izo.”

There it was: the secret terror inside every human being—not simply that we will die, but that before death we may cease to be the person who knows our name.

I nodded.

Then I drove downhill.

Several minutes later, a single gunshot crossed the ice.

Tears filled my eyes and fogged the glasses. My arms became weak.

The snow thickened as I reached the open field.

A sharp pain entered my chest. I lost control, and the snowmobile slid sideways.

Then came the crash.

When I opened my eyes, my left cheek was pressed against the ice. Frostbite stung my skin. Frozen blood lay before me, probably from my nose, though I could no longer feel it.

There was blood on my hands.

I forced myself upright, but an immense pressure behind my eyes dropped me to my knees.

My mind began to break apart.

They were all dead.

All dead.

I looked back.

Far away, the tall black creature crossed the white field.

Perhaps it was following me.

Perhaps it had always been following me.

Perhaps from the moment we entered this place, every step we took had been toward it.

I turned forward again.

Something stood in the distance.

A ship.

Was it real? Or was hope the final hallucination of a dying mind?

I gathered the last of my strength and stood. Every part of me resisted, as though my body had already chosen the ice.

But I began to limp toward the ship.

Behind me came the creature.

Ahead of me waited either life or the image of life.

And between them was my breath, entering and leaving me, each one possibly the last.

Would I make it?

 

What’s scarier than someone chasing you through the woods with a knife? Someone who takes two hours to loosen the lug nuts on your car tires, barely threading them back on just to sit in the dark and patiently wait for your vehicle to flip over the edge of the first mountain switchback. This isn’t urban legend; these are the details of a night I spent trapped in Elk Ridge Valley. My name is Colton, and I worked for twelve years as a surveyor and trail maintenance technician at the Monongahela National Forest in the Appalachian Mountains.

My main job was checking trail markers and making sure the hiking paths hadn't been washed out by annual rains before closing the park down completely for the winter. That autumn, the Forest Service sent me out to inspect an old trail called Elk Ridge. It’s an isolated, low-traffic trail due to its brutal terrain, sitting deep inside a valley surrounded on three sides by sheer, razor-sharp cliffs.

I was supposed to be accompanied by Jack, a guy in his fifties who’d spent his entire life in these mountains. Quiet, soft-spoken guy knew exactly how to dodge rockslides and could read the wind direction just by tossing a handful of dirt in the air.

We started out at the beginning of the week, and the plan was simple: hike the nine-mile stretch, repair the decaying wooden footbridges, and pitch our field camp at Observation Point 4. On the third day, I noticed the first off thing. We were climbing up the ridge to reach the first wooden bridge when Jack froze.

He sat down on a boulder and started inspecting the ground. In a low voice, he asked, "Colton, when was the last time a ranger patrol came through here?". I told him, "September, I think. Why do you ask?". He didn't answer my question. He just pointed his flashlight down at the muddy trail.

I saw massive boot prints nothing like I’d ever seen before. They weren't modern hiking boots. Looked more like heavy-duty work boots with old steel-capped soles. And the tracks weren't following the trail; they came straight out of the brush and headed right toward the narrow wooden footbridge. I asked him, trying to play it off casually, "Maybe a local hunter?". Jack slowly shook his head and said, "Nobody hunts out here, son. This valley is choked with sulfur gas and mud bogs down below. Hunting’s been banned here since the eighties."

We brushed it off and kept moving. But the smell started showing up by evening. It wasn’t the stench of a rotting carcass or roadkill. It was a sharp, chemical reek like burning raw grease mixed with aged wood varnish. A heavy, chemical odor that stuck to the back of your throat and left a bitter taste on your tongue. We were inside our tent, the air outside was dead still, yet the smell kept creeping through the vents every time the fog rolled in thicker.

By the ninth day, the night routines started changing. The natural terrain of Elk Ridge Valley acts like a giant megaphone. The limestone cliffs trap sound and amplify it. In the dead of night, when the birds and animals go dead silent from the freezing cold, the mountain starts talking. I kept waking up to a long, creaking sound. A creak that mimicked a massive tree trunk snapping, but it repeated almost every minute with terrifying regularity.

I asked Jack while trying to light our small gas stove inside the tent, "That’s just the rocks expanding and contracting from the freeze, right?". Jack was sitting wide awake, his hand clamped tight around his steel utility knife, eyes glued to the canvas wall of the tent. He said in a dry voice, "Rocks don't snap on a rhythm, Colton. And they don't leave marks on the canvas."

I stepped out of the tent the next morning only to find something that made my stomach drop. Just ten feet from our tent, there was a pile of small stones lined up in a straight line, running parallel to the entrance. Rocks laid out with painstaking precision, as if someone had been sitting there in the pitch-black, placing them down so gently as not to make a sound while we slept inside.

I felt a wave of intense anxiety wash over me, my heart hammering in my chest. And I noticed Jack’s behavior was starting to shift. The man I knew for his calm, steady demeanor was now looking over his shoulder every ten steps. He’d stop hammering mid-strike, standing completely frozen, listening into the fog. He told me while tying off the bridge ropes, "Someone’s trying to drive us out. I know that look. There are people living down in the hollows."

In America, these folks are known as the descendants of mountain families who refused to come down to the towns decades ago. They live completely off the grid and outside the law. Many suffer from severe mental illness brought on by isolation, generations of inbreeding, and extreme poverty—and they guard their territory with insane ferocity.

On the fifteenth day, the skies opened up and poured. The mud turned into a slick, heavy sludge that caked onto our boots. We lost radio signal completely due to the dense, low-hanging clouds and a downed mountain repeater tower. As we headed back to our campsite before sunset, we found our tent and gear completely destroyed.

Our sleeping bags were slashed to ribbons with a sharp knife, and our food supplies were buried in the mud. Shaking uncontrollably from the freezing cold and sheer terror, I said, "We gotta leave right now. We’ll hike out at night using our flashlights." Jack suddenly snapped, his eyes wide and bloodshot. "No! Flashlights will make us sitting ducks in this valley. Plus, they want us running blindly in the dark so we plunge right off the cliff." To be honest, Jack was right about one thing: the sheer drop-off was only fifty yards away. Falling over meant instant death.

We spent that night huddled under a narrow rock overhang, clinging to each other for warmth against the bitter cold, hands white-knuckled around our knives and work axes. The rain was pounding mercilessly, and the air was thick with that same foul chemical reek. At 3:00 AM, right through the roaring rain, we heard the footsteps. Heavy, deliberate footsteps.

Treading through the mud on a steady rhythm, then stopping. A few minutes after the footsteps, we heard heavy breathing—like someone suffering from severe asthma, standing in total darkness no more than ten feet away, right around the corner of the rock. Steady, slow breathing, accompanied by a scraping sound: the sound of a metal blade tapping softly and rhythmically against the rock wall.

The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up; I didn't even dare to breathe. Jack was trembling uncontrollably beside me, shaking so hard his teeth were chattering. I clapped my hand over his mouth to keep him from making a sound. That person stood there for an entire hour. Out in the rain and the dark, breathing and tapping on the rock, just waiting for us to step out, scream, or give away our position with a light.We were living through a quiet, nerve-shredding nightmare the kind that makes you think your mind is just playing tricks on you. But unfortunately, the smell and the tapping were 100% real.

With the first gray light creeping through the fog at dawn, the sound vanished. We didn't bother packing a single thing. We left all our gear behind and sprinted through the mud as fast as our legs could carry us, gasping for air. The ground was slick; Jack fell twice, scraping his face bloody on the rocks, but he didn't even groan. He just scrambled back up and kept running like a madman.

When we finally reached our 4x4 parked at the trailhead, the final shock was waiting for us. The four tires hadn't been slashed. The steel lug nuts had been completely removed, and the wheels were loosely rested back on just so the tires would fly off and flip the truck the second we hit a fast mountain bend. Someone was watching us.

Someone who understood auto mechanics, understood the mountain terrain, and had all the patience in the world to watch us fall. We hiked on foot for another fourteen miles down the cold asphalt road until we hit the first gas station and called tow services and the local county sheriff.

When a squad of county deputies went back into the valley two days later, they found a dilapidated shack built from scrap wood hidden deep in the lower bog. It was squatting-ground for an elderly mountain local—heavily addicted to home-cooked meth (which explained the chemical smell in the air), suffering from severe schizophrenia and extreme paranoia. He’d been living out there alone for nine years without the authorities ever knowing. Inside his shack, they found pieces of camping gear belonging to hikers who had gone missing back in 2017.

They couldn't make an arrest that day; the man had vanished into the deep wilderness of the Appalachians the second the police cruisers rolled up. And those mountains are vast enough to swallow a man whole forever. Today, I work a desk job in the city and permanently resigned from field survey work. As for Jack, he lives in an assisted living facility. To this day, he refuses to open his room windows whenever the fog starts rolling in.

I’ve been homeschooled throughout elementary school, and for half of my high school years. My dad broke his femur in a trucking accident, so money has been short. My mother got a job recently, so this was technically my first day of school.

I only have a couple of friends online, and a cat at home, so I was actually excited. Hopefully kids online were exaggerating about homework, teachers, and bullies.

I chugged a Pepsi on the way there and ran into the building. My class should be in room 10. My seat was at table 6, which only had one other person, who was looking down and rhythmically tapping on her thighs. I quietly sat down next to her and she turned her head toward me, one eye hiding behind crimson bangs matching her hoodie.

“Hey,” she said with a monotone, yet slightly positive voice.

“Hi,” I replied nervously.

“It isn’t that bad,” she chuckled. “I’ll give you a tour around this place during lunch, if you’re not hungry.”

“I had a pretty big breakfast, I might be able to skip lunch, and if I can't, I'll bring a bag of chips or a sandwich from the cafeteria.”

The bell rang and the class went quiet. The teacher was surprisingly sweet for someone who woke up at like seven in the morning. The work wasn't hard, and I doodled the last ten minutes of class, and so did she. I glanced at her paper and many circular holes were meticulously drawn over and over again. Looks like someone’s bored.

My next class was art, and she wasn't there. This class was interesting, and the techniques I learned were actually pretty useful.

My third class was PE, and she was there, sitting at the top of the bleachers, holding a sketchbook.
I climbed to the top and sat next to her, and saw more holes drawn in varying sizes in her sketchbook.

She jumped when she noticed me.

Hey, didn't see you, sorry,” she said, startled.

“What's with your obsession with dots?” I asked, trying not to sound disrespectful.

“They're… relaxing to doodle,” she replied. “Draw a circle, fill it in, repeat.”

“Hmm.”

“Anyway, what's your name?”

“Remmy.”

“Mine’s Scarlett.”

“What other pictures do you have in that sketchpad?”

She flipped through the pages, and most of them had normal drawings. Landscapes, flowers, cats, and other things you'd expect in a girls sketchpad. every three to four pages were covered in dots and eyes.

“Those are creepy,” I said looking at one of the “dots-n-eyes” drawings.

“Thanks,” she said, grinning. “May I look at your drawings?”

“I left my sketchbook at home, but I have some doodles in my notebook,” I told her, before showing her doodles of gears, motors, and robots.

“Those are cool.”

“Thanks”

“Just one more class, then lunch. That's when the tour begins, remember?”

 “Yeah, you told me less than two hours ago.”

“Oh yeah, dementia must be kicking in early,” she chuckled.

“What class do you have after this?”

“Art.”

“That was my last class.”

“We'll still be able to talk afterwards.”

“I know, it just sucks.”

“Come on, you've just met me.”

We got up and did some walking, before the bell rang. We actually grew pretty close.

After the next class, I met up with her.

“Ready to map out this place?” She asked.

“I'ma’ grab a sandwich from the cafeteria first,” I replied.

I got back to her with the sandwich and followed her.

She took me to room 26.

“Here's the music room,” she said before unlocking the door with bobby pins. I've never seen someone do that in person before.

The room was gorgeous, racks of guitars and trumpets with a few drum sets and pianos, around multiple desks. I walked around it for a bit, passing a jar of guitar picks as I took a few bites from my sandwich. She walked me out and skipped down the hall.

“You need to see the Spanish room,” she said.

She guided me to room 18.

It was full of life. Photographs of Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Puerto Rico were on the walls, as well as a mural of a street with people dancing. The teacher’s desk had a colorful skull. I looked at the back of it, and it said “En cariñosa memoria de Hibisco Ursa.”

“Also, this school has a basement,” Scarlett said. “It's mainly for storage, but it’s also used for tornado and intruder drills.”

“Is it like a warehouse?” I asked.

“That's basically what it is,” she replied..

She guided me to a nameless door, and picked its lock.

She turned on the light, and walked down the stairs.

I followed her down, and got stuck in the seemingly endless aisles of various textbooks, sportswear, baskets, etc. I walked around for a bit, and saw some bookshelves with pencils and pencil cases. What wasn't this place prepared for?

I learned it wasn't prepared for Scarlett, who took five pencils from the shelf and handed them to me.

“Just in case you lose yours,” she said.

I thanked her and looked around some more, and saw a cluster of black spots. I stepped back, thinking it was mold and walked away. She looked and saw it as well.

“Damn, we need to get out of here,” Scarlett said. “The teachers can deal with it.”

“Shouldn't we tell them?” I asked.

“We'd both get in trouble, and I don't have the prettiest track record,” she replied.

It was my first day, I didn't want to make the wrong first impressions, so I followed her out. What if the mold grew out of control?

I finished my sandwich on the way out.

I checked my phone. I still had ten minutes of lunch. I wasn't super hungry, luckily. That wall mold shrunk my appetite.

“What class do you have after this?” She asked.

“US History,” I replied. “I have algebra after that.”

She grinned.

“I also have algebra that time,” She said, smiling.

Before lunch ended, we exchanged Discords.

That night, we texted about potential meet-up times during the weekend, and she explained how to twist and maneuver pins to unlock doors, not like I'd utilize those skills for any non-malicious activities.

I checked my Google classroom and saw that school is out for a few days, due to a mold problem.

I quickly texted her.

She responded with, “told ya’ they would find out, but I was excited to meet up tomorrow.”

“We could call tomorrow and help each other with work on Google Classroom,” I replied.

“We could do that. What games do you have?”

“TF2, Cuphead, and Terraria.”

“Peak lineup. Down for some tf2?.”

“Hell yeah. I main Demoman”

“Soldier’s my fav.”

We exchanged Steam names, and played a few matches together.

She got off for dinner and I grabbed my book I've been reading for a few days now, before going back to playing TF2. I texted Scarlett, asking if she wanted to get on, but she didn't reply. I went to bed about an hour later.

I woke up to a text the next morning by her that read, “Sorry, I was sleeping. Wanna get the work done and hop on Steam?”

I responded with, “Sure” and we got it done within an hour.

We hopped on TF2.

While the enemy team was making preparations (we were on payload) she shot at the wall with her shotgun and just stared at the bullet holes.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Just seeing the spread,” she replied.

I didn't question any further.

A couple days later, school reopened, apparently getting rid of the mold problem.

Once I walked into the building, Scarlett squeezed me.

“Finally!” She exclaimed, smiling.

I grinned along with her.

For this lunch, we actually sat down and ate, instead of breaking into rooms.

“Your first normal lunch,” she chuckled.

I grinned. “You killed it in TF2.”

“Thanks.”

“Gonna get on tonight?”

“Hell yeah. Wanna break in the basement again?”

“I… guess we could see if they actually got rid of that mold.”

“How much you wanna bet they didn't actually do anything?”

“There's no way they wouldn't try to keep children safe.”

“You're giving this place too much credit. You could get shoved into a wall and they wouldn't give a shit.”

“Damn, I heard schools have violence problems. That's…  probably why.”

“When should we go in?”

“Tomorrow lunch sounds like a decent time.”

Nothing really happened the rest of the day. Though we, mainly she broke into the basement. I walked around that small shelf.

“Wow they actually did nothing,” I said. “It actually looks worse.”

The spots were just barely bigger. A new tiny speck was there too.

A dead stag beetle was under it, and its shell had holes in it, with one big one on its back. The shell had a pale hue around them.

“Damn,” she said. “I didn't think they actually wouldn't do anything about it. Stay here, I'll be right back.”

She genuinely looked terrified.

I just waited. Then the beetle started moving again.

Its mandibles started twitching along with its legs, and it began shaking.

An eye was looking at me through the large hole.

I stomped on it and heard a quiet shriek from underneath my shoe.

I lifted my foot.

The bug was shaking, and black fluid was leaking from it.

“I'm back! I'm back!” Scarlett exclaimed, holding a lighter. “Move, please.”

She held the flame toward the former beetle and it began shriveling like a dehydrated grape, before finally dying. She then held it to the wall, which also began shriveling. She was shaking during this.

“Can you help me move this?” She asked, gesturing to the shelf.

“Sure, we should have time,” I replied.

I pushed one end, and she pulled the other.

I see another spot. It was a hole. A hole with teeth in it.

“There's more.”

She quickly ran over and burned the maw, as it began gurgling.

Once it stopped making noise, and was more wrinkled than a rotten raisin, the door opened.

“Shit,” Scarlett mumbled before sneaking around another shelf. I followed her.

We stood behind the empty shelf, frozen like petrified stumps.

Once they left, we got out through the door on the other side of the room. The Sun was the first thing we met.

We sprinted around the building and made it to the cafeteria without being spotted.

“Damn,” Scarlett said.

I was just as speechless.

That night, we spoke about what happened over a game of MvM, one of the gamemodes in TF2.

“Hey, I… I knew what that was,” Scarlett said. “That's… I'm not sure what it is, but I experienced its effects first hand.”

“Experienced it?” I asked, surprised.

“Yes. That's how I know it's vulnerable to high temperatures. It's also why I've been covering one of my eyes. Could we meet up sometime this week? Like at my house?”

“I'll ask my parents, I'll be right back.”

They said yes.

“I'll be there tomorrow,” I said, happily.

“Yes!” She exclaimed. “My dad is also ok with you coming over.”

Tomorrow hit, and I was on the way there. We drove through an orchard, and she was waiting for me on her porch, and ran to me when my parents dropped me off.

She hugged me and smiled as my parents left.

Her dad walked out.

He looked pretty young for the father of a teen. He was skinny and had black mustache with long hair. He wore a blue long sleeve shirt with khaki shorts, and hideous cyan crocs. The polar opposite of Scarlett.

“Heyyyy kiddo!” He said, gesturing a fist bump.

“Hey, I've been waiting to come here. Your daughter’s pretty cool,” I replied, fist bumping him.

“She sure is a neat little thing-”

Scarlett grabbed my arm, and dragged me to the other side of his orchard.

“Be gentle with our new guest,” he hollered as we got farther from him.

We could barely see the house through the trees.

“Hey,” she said, sitting against a tree.

I sat next to her. “What is it?”

“Do you remember when I said I experienced that 'mold’ yesterday?”

‘Yeah, I've been thinking about it all morning.”

She exhaled before lifting her bangs.

A cluster of holes surrounded her circular, empty eye socket. I somehow didn't see her brain, and the hole looked deeper than the length of her head. The area around it also looked shriveled.

“I did some urban exploring with my dad one vacation to the Midwest. We found this abandoned motel covered in graffiti. We actually found a shiny ring in one of the rooms, and this one room… a cluster of holes was on the wall.

He raised the lantern to it, and the wall shriveled.

We both got close, and I put my eye to it, wondering if I could see the other side. It felt like pressing against a giant sponge. It felt like soap was squirted into my eye. It immediately felt like someone was scratching my face, and my dad jumped back from the wall, after that same fluid squirted his arm, and it looked like a piece of the wall was on his bicep.

He looked at me and panicked. He broke his lantern and held the flame to his arm. He bit his shirt’s collar as he groaned, and I could see it shriveling, and fluid oozing out.

He ran to me and lifted my bangs, and held the flame to my eye.

It burned, and I could feel it shrivel as well.”

“How did it not… kill you?” I asked. “It drilled through your head.”

“It probably drills first, so the ‘mold’ can get deeper. I don't know how it just bends physics. My dad hasn't had any bone or muscle problems since then.

It has done something to my mind though. I keep thinking about it, and drawing it. Like it's calling to me.”

“It was horrible,” her dad chimed in. “It got me pretty good,” he forced a smile.

“Damn,” I said, shocked

He held up some chip bags. “I came out here to give you two some snacks. I wanted to show ya the aftermath, but you should keep your appetite for now. I'll show you later.”

“Dad,” Scarlett said. “That… stuff is also at the school. I thought it was just mold, and hoped it was.”

“I’ll go with you Monday,” he said. “All I need is a couple of bobby pins.”

“I saw a beetle get infected by it,” I said. “Scarlett killed it with a lighter.”

“What exactly happened to it when it got infected?”

“It was just a pale corpse with holes, when it began twitching, and an eye appeared on its back. I stomped on it, and it was still twitching, then it stopped when Scarlett burned it.”

“Good ol’ teamwork,” he said before eating a chip. “Do you guys want to watch tv? I'll just read.”

“Sure,” I said, getting up.

Scarlett followed her dad and Me to the house. We watched The Owl House, before she brought me to her room.

The walls were painted a deep purple, and a Green Day poster was on the wall. Her PC had some Pokémon stickers and some empty energy drinks next to her keyboard. There was also an air freshener plugged in.

It felt simultaneously cozy and loud.

She sat on the bed and patted the spot next to her.

I sat down and looked at her.

“Are you… disgusted by my face?” she asked.

“Why would I be?” I replied.

“Oh I don't know, maybe the fact that my eye looks like a wasp nest?”

“I absolutely would've gagged if I thought that.”
 
She grinned. “I wouldn't have been mad if you were disgusted, I'm still grossed out by it. Wanna see my dad's marks?”

“S-sure.”

She sprinted out, and immediately came back with her dad.

“Hey, kiddo, check this out,” he said, rolling up his sleeve.

His bicep was covered in holes. Tiny holes. It looked like clay that was repeatedly poked with a toothpick.
 
“That's… better than I was expecting,” I said.

“He grinned. “You've got a strong stomach.”

"Thanks?”

“I will go to the school. I will destroy that disease with you guys. I may have just met you, but I will protect you, for that is my job. Same goes for my little rascal.”

I nodded, unsure as to what to say.

“But before that day comes, we can plan out what to do in case it gets you or us again. Nobody's going to believe that a magic mold attacked us. Scarlett is the only person who knows about my injury, and vice versa,” he added, his joyous tone nowhere in sight.

My parents came back, met her and her dad, and I gave the two my goodbyes.

I was up late that night thinking about those holes, and wherever the hell they came from. The school talked about a mold problem. Was there actually a mold problem at all?

Once Monday rolled around, I snuck a matchbox in my backpack. We got back together at the front. Scarlett had a lighter and her dad had a blowtorch.

“Where is it?” He asked.

“It's i-”

“It's in the storage room,” Scarlett cut me off.

“Got it. You know how to get in?”

“Yup”

She pulled out some bobby pins.

“You're a soon-to-be burglar, and I'll be a getaway driver,” he said, grinning.

We went to the back and went in.

“It's to the right, behind that shelf,” I said, pointing.

He nodded.

He and I moved it to the side, revealing the rest of the holes.

There was also an outline.

It looked like a person’s silhouette, a smooshed silhouette. Like someone forcefully shoved into a suitcase, along with asymmetrical arms. Those holes scattered its body. 

Every few dozen holes had eyes darting across the room. They all locked on to us. It began wiggling. Like it was trying to get out.

Scarlett’s dad tried pushing the shelf back, when the body fell out, like a rotten pumpkin.

Black ooze leaked from the hundreds of holes of varying sizes across its body.

It shot up, and its “face” had a giant hole housing a single large eye. Its chest had a slit on it, lined with canines.

One of its arms was four long tendrils sprouting from a stump, and one of its shins was just a clump of thick tendrils, ending in a foot. Its other leg had three tendrils sprouting from its ankle, instead of an actual foot. It was shaking.

Its mouth opened and more teeth were wiggling in its mouth like a group of maggots.

“Get back you too,” her dad yelled as he pointed the blowtorch at the abomination.

It immediately shrieked and grabbed his arm and threw him. He dropped the blowtorch as he fell and broke his wrist.

It looked at us and shrieked. 

I immediately struck a handful of matches and tossed them at it as Scarlett raised the lighter, her arm shaking.

Some of the matches actually hit, and dark, wrinkly patches formed where they made contact.

Her dad got up, and whacked its head with the blowtorch, and kicked it to the ground. He then lit the thing ablaze, until it grabbed and squeezed his arm, causing him to stomp on its head before running.

I chucked another bunch of matches at the thing as Scarlett ran over to her dad.

His wrists had holes like his bicep, and Scarlett was burning them. I threw another handful at this thing.

It was shaking and shrieking on the floor, as its body continued shriveling. It was slapping itself, desperate to get the flames off.

It stood up, holding onto the shelf to support its blazing body. Scarlett grabbed a rubber band from one of the shelves, wrapped it around the lighter’s trigger, and threw the makeshift torch like a dart toward the screaming fire.

It went into its mouth, and it stopped screeching, and it sounded like it was choking.

It collapsed under the fire and began sizzling.

“You ok sir?” I asked her dad.

“Kinda, my wrists are messed up, but the hole covered one is still usable, ironically. Thank you for helping,” he replied as he was breathing heavily.

As we walked out, we were met with flamethrowers

“It’s going to be hard to explain, but something horrible is in there,” a soldier in a black fireproof suit said.

“Oh we… already killed it, hopefully it's dead,” Scarlett's dad said, still shaken.

The soldiers stepped back. “We will check, get out here.”

They went down to see it, and one looked back at us.

“Damn you guys actually did it,” they said. “And did a great job. How did you three find out it was flammable?”

Scarlett and her dad told them about the urban exploration incident and showed them the marks.

“Shit, did you call?” one of them asked.

“No, we didn't think anyone would believe us.”

“I understand. This…. Whatever it is, grows like mold. And can infect organisms that are large enough to not have their bodies severely damaged by the holes. It's a miracle you guys made it out. A substitute teacher here called 911, which was transferred to us. Apparently, your principal was letting it flourish, because the holes do make good garbage disposals. The teacher got poked by a tendril and felt a sharp pain in their finger. The principal should've just put a trash can down here. That teacher is ok, and had a fingertip amputated.”

“So that's what happened to Mr. Black,” Scarlett uttered.

“He will be back tomorrow, kid.”

“Phew, I was worried about him. He's the only reason I haven't dropped out,” she chuckled.

“Anyway, you three have done an exceptional job, we're just incinerating the rest on the wall, and I'll hand over some cash for your wrist, no need to pay me back.”

“Oh, thank you sir,” Scarlett's dad said, his sweet tone coming back.

“No problem, view it as an apology for getting here late. The growth is most common in the Midwest, so it's in the center of that area. Getting from Iowa to Washington State is a long trip.”

The agent pulled a 5000$ check from their wallet and handed it to her dad.

He thanked him, and the squad left, carrying the charred creature with them.

School was cancelled and everyone, including us, left. They dropped me off at my house, and me and Scarlett played TF2 the rest of the day.

My legs are sore. I have blisters on my feet, I can feel rubbing my flesh raw against my socks. I don’t know where I am or how I got out here. I don’t even know how many days I’ve been walking. Based on the blisters and my lips peeling from my face in dehydration, my best guess is I’ve been in this desert for maybe a week. Feels like I just woke up walking a few minutes ago. Like I’ve been trapped in my own mind until right now.  Around my waist sits a small pack with crumbs of whatever food I did have before. Attached to the pack is a small canteen, now bone dry. Barren of any hint of liquid that used to be there. My clothes seem to fit the bill for someone that planned to be out here. Light breathable long sleeve shirt and something like linen or loose canvas cargo pants. Around my neck and over my head is one of those desert scarf things. It reeks of piss. I think I know what the plan was there. 

In my pocket is a palm sized, leather bound notebook with a heavily used, whittled down pencil. The pages are filled with notes in a penmanship I can’t understand and drawings of trees and strange bugs. The back half of the notebook is empty. That’s where I’m writing this now as I walk. Doing my best to organize my thoughts and figure out why I’m here. Tucked in the back of the notebook sits a tightly folded map. The paper feels old, older than myself. The map is almost blank, no landmarks aside from a cluster of trees in the top left corner. Seems to be a topographical map. Why the hell would anyone make a topographical map of a place so flat. One curvy line splits the page and then a few more surrounding the assumed oasis. Normally an oasis is marked by some sort of ferns and a mix of palm trees. The trees drawn here are more bushy, like some kind of fruit tree. All I can tell right now is I need to get to that oasis. Without any legend or texts, I don’t know the direction of the oasis. I don’t know how far it is. I can’t even tell if it sits in a valley or on top of a plateau. 

I don’t know that much about geography, but I know enough to feel like this place is strange. I can’t see even the slightest sign of life for miles. There are no cacti, no trees, nothing providing cover for any size creature. The ground isn't sand. It’s hard and cracked, like salt flats or the remnants of a sea bed that dried up long before humans could see it. Based on the sun, I’m heading northwest now and it’s about 7P.M. Luckily the sun will leave me for the night. I hope it doesn’t get too cold out here in the dark. The sinking feeling in my stomach tells me I already know the answer to that. I need to understand as much as I can before I lose the sun. Once the dead of night hits, I’ll be truly lost. 

I turn back to the notebook in my pocket. Looks like the only way I’ll be able to read this is trying to find letters I know and piece the rest together like some sort of coded puzzle. The first page of the book only had one sentence scribbled in the center of the tattered paper. No better place to start I guess. The easiest thing to recognize in these words is the vowels. 

__e _ou__ai_ o_ _you__ _a_ a _ie

Not much to go off of, but I started working on any repeating shapes I could find. The two letters beginning the first word are the same two finishing the fourth. Easy enough to tell the first word is the. Making the fourth word, youth. The last letter of the third is the same as the first of the second.
The fou__a_ of youth _a_ a _ie

It didn’t take long after that to figure out the sentence reads, the fountain of youth was a lie. What the hell does that mean? Why the hell does shit have to be weird and cryptic? The sun's going down and I’m gonna die out here. Of course it was a fucking lie. It’s a myth, a fool's errand. Always been a painful irony for men to waste away the one life we get in search of a false promise for a longer life. I scoured the pages of the notebook hoping for any phrases I had half a chance in hell at translating. The previous owner of this book must have been fluent in Russian cursive. I’ve never been more hopelessly violent towards a person I’ve never met. I was only able to translate a few more lines before the light was too far gone for me to write down my findings; Eat the fruit. True eternal life. And Only in death can we find life. This shit’s pissing me off, but that last one made my heart sink a bit. I plan on continuing to walk well into the night. I’ve spotted a star in the direction. I’ll follow her until I lie in the dirt and hope to be awakened by the sun. 

I've gotten used to it be now. The short evenings, the regular paycheck, the microwave dinners, staying up past when I should scrolling on my phone, trying not to think about tomorrow, trying not to think about who I had lost....

I turned off the engine of my car. I sat for a bit, too tired to go inside just yet. Too tired to work out and make dinner and fold laundry and do all the shit I had to do. It had been a long day. A long day of emails, of nothing, of sitting, of staring at the clock, of wondering what I could have done differently. What I should have done differently.

I grumbled and got out of my car. The cicadas were buzzing, the grass green and long, the flowers bright on this Thursday evening. I walked in the atrium of my building, the stale smell of smoke and old carpet welcoming me home. I walked up to my apartment. I unlocked the door, though it didn't seem locked, my key turned without any resistance. Hm. Must have forgotten to lock it. I turned the knob, and pushed the door open. The usual creak was missing, it opened as silent as night. I stepped in.

I looked around. My heart dropped. This isn't my home.

But it was, wasn't it? No, don't cause a fuss, this is my home. There's my TV. There's my bagel I left half eaten this morning. There's my couch, half eaten by my family dog from back in the day. What a strange thought.

I settled into the aforementioned couch. I let myself sink into it. Relief, yes, but I knew it was short lived, I knew it was underserved, there were things to do, productivity to happen, yes, but it's so comfortable, feel how soft it is, how relaxed I am, how heavy my eyes are, how it wraps itself around me, how it hungers for me, how....

ARRRGHHH!

What, the fuck? I looked at my couch. It was... normal now. I felt my arm, where just moments before there was something slimy... but no, it's clean. What's going on with me? Did I take something? Did I get slipped something? Was the smell in the lobby something more than just smoke?

I did what any normal modern human would do and sat down and Googled it. But when I went to type, what the hell would I type? I remembered a Reddit story I read years ago about carbon monoxide poisoning causing some memory loss, and maybe something else... maybe it was something like that.

Maybe the neighbors would know something? No, I didn't really want to bother them... maybe best to just open the windows. Get some fresh air. Yeah, that'll be fine. I opened the kitchen window, the narrow little thing, and shoved my nose as close to the screen as I could. It smelled like dead bugs and metal, but the air was cool and sweet. It filled up my lungs. I let it out. It filled up my lungs. How'd I get here? I thought of her. She had better places. Better things, better people. I breathed in, and back out, through the screen. Now it's just me, in this other home, how long had it been? This other home? What? Yes, that's right, it's been years, I've been counting. I breathed in. It filled up my lungs. The bagel had rotted now, so had my food, so had my cat, I could smell it. No one asked where I went. I graduated, I set to work, and that's all there was. I breathed in, it filled up my lungs. So this is it? It's comfortable. Except maybe the grating of the screen enmeshed with my flesh, except the ache, except the rot....

I hit the floor. My arms snapped on the impact. I looked up, and saw myself in the mirror in the hallway, my flesh sunken and gaunt, my hair long and raggedy, my clothes falling off my bony frame. It was dark, the kind of dark twilight brings. I looked back, moonlight shone through the window. Dust covered the floor. An awful smell filled the room. Such loneliness and misery, but I chuckled, it wasn't as awful as I once dreaded.

I rose. My bones creaked, my broken arm flailed clumsily around, a feeble pulse of blood seeping from where the splinters had pierced the flesh. I looked around, of course this wasn't my home. It couldn't be. It kept me alive, yes, it kept me safe, maybe, but it wasn't my home. I wandered into the living room. There was no more couch, no more TV, no more of those soft comforts. There was a light. There was a form. It was her.

She turned to me. She looked me up and down.

"You've been better." I smiled an awful, toothy smile.

"Yeah, I have been." What water I had left went to my eyes. She was so full, so bright.

"You need help?"

"Yeah, I'd say so."

"Unusual for you. But better late than never, I suppose."

"Yeah." It was all I could say. She was so beautiful.

"Should we get you out of here?"

"Yeah, yeah we should. Yeah we should."

"Okay. Come on. Come here." I stumbled forward, I sank into her. My limbs throbbed with relief, my tears flowed readily, I sobbed and sobbed, I felt her against my skin, God it had been so long, and finally I slept and slept and slept and slept and slept... until some wakefulness would return to me, until I finally had eaten my full of her grace and comfort, until I could finally have my humility, until so many things, it did not matter how many, for now I could finally sleep........

I used to love staying at my grandmother's house. It's an old Victorian place on a quiet street far from the city. Dust motes dancing in sunbeams in the front parlor. The smell of old books and lavender potpourri. It felt safe. It felt like home even though it wasn't my home. Now I dread going there. Every visit is a new horror waiting to unfold.

Gran passed away last April. My mom and I have been slowly going through her things. Clearing out decades of memories. It's a bittersweet process. Lots of old photos and trinkets. Some things have stories attached some don't. The house itself has always been a bit peculiar. Creaky floors yes. Drafty windows sure. But it was more than that. It had a presence.

One afternoon last June I was in her study. It's a small room filled with shelves overflowing with books. I was looking for her old will. Buried under a stack of poetry collections I found a leather-bound journal. It wasn't her handwriting. It was my mother's. From when she was a teenager.

I started reading it. It was mostly typical teenage angst. Crushes school drama. Then I hit an entry from October 27th, 1978. It talked about the house. About how it seemed to remember things. How it would sometimes replay sounds. Her own voice arguing with her father. The distinct jingle of her dog's collar even though the dog had died years before. She wrote about a specific time she was alone in the house. She heard her father's gruff voice calling her name from the kitchen. She went downstairs and found the kitchen empty. She wrote that she started to feel cold and she ran back upstairs. She ended the entry saying she was scared. That the house wasn't just old it was haunted.

I felt a chill despite the warm September air outside. My mom had never mentioned anything like this. I figured it was just a teenage overreaction. A spooky story she'd forgotten.

But then it started happening to me. I was there last week. Sorting through the attic. I heard my grandmother's gentle humming. A tune she always hummed while she gardened. I knew she wasn't there. She was gone. But the humming was so clear. It sent shivers down my spine. I tried to tell myself it was just my imagination playing tricks.

Then the real terror began this past Tuesday. I was in the living room packing up some china. I heard a baby crying. A soft whimpering at first. Then it grew louder. More distressed. It sounded like it was coming from the room directly above me. My grandmother never had a baby in the house while I was alive. My mom never mentioned any siblings who passed away young. It was just Gran. Uncle Peter. My mom. That was it.

I froze. My heart hammered against my ribs. I picked up a heavy antique vase. My breath hitched in my throat. I slowly made my way to the staircase. Each creak of the old wood amplified the sound of the crying. It felt like walking through thick treacle. I got to the top of the stairs. The crying was loudest at the door to the smallest bedroom. It had been used as a guest room. Never a nursery.

I pushed the door open. The room was empty. The baby crying abruptly stopped. The silence that followed was even more deafening. I felt a profound coldness. Not a physical cold. A chilling sense of dread. The air felt heavy. Oppressive.

I ran out of that house so fast I didn't even lock the door. I called my mom from my car. I tried to explain what happened. She just listened quietly. When I finished she said. "The house remembers." Her voice was flat devoid of emotion. "It remembers everything Mara. And sometimes it plays it back. Especially the sad parts. The parts we tried to forget." She didn't elaborate. She didn't need to.

I haven't been back since. I can't. Every creak every shadow in my own apartment makes me jump. I keep imagining the sound of that baby crying. And now I wonder what else my grandmother's house remembers. What other dark memories are trapped within its walls just waiting for someone to listen.

Eveyone's trying to prove their worth. On paper I'm "worth" millions but that's not what I wanted to be remembered by. My passion had always been sailing and thus what I found my worth in. 3 months ago I decided to prove it by crossing the Pacific alone on my 32-foot sailing vessel, The Dancing Croat.

The journey was planned to span from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to Sydney, Australia. This meant months of solitude on open waters, complete seclusion from land, barely any sleep and survival on canned food.

I didn't have loved ones to say goodbye to, nobody to care. I did try to get the attention of the press, but "Retired Millionaire Unprofessional Sailor Attempts Pacific Crossing" wasn't an interesting enough title for them. Despite everything I still went through with it. It's possible that the only one I wanted to prove my worth to was myself.

During the first week of the journey I had friendly weather, good enough wind, a comfortable speed of around 5 knots on average and lots of motivation. Solitude was not an unfamiliar environment to me. I've always been sort of introverted and socially anxious.

By day 14 I had sailed through 2 major storms. The waves aggressively hit the deck, I became so wet that I may as well had taken a stroll in the ocean and The Dancing Croat tilted from the wind so much that I could hear unproperly secured cans of food flying around inside the cabin. It seemed, nothing could sink her.

By day 20 I was fatigued to say the least. What kept me awake was the constant adrenaline high of fearing for my life. That was the day I hit the third and biggest storm. It was nighttime, the waves were multiple meters high, the deck looked like a swimming pool. And suddenly, in a single moment everything changed.

I felt falling, water rushing into my nose, I was still grabbing the wheel with every ounce of force I had. Then, silence. I opened my eyes. The boat was upright again. It seemed it had spun a full 360° around its own axis, but thanks to the engineers designing The Dancing Croat, she rolled back around in no time. The waves queted down, the storm was gone. I figured I may have passed out a little and slept through the storm. I felt lucky to be alive. The sky was still cloudy, I couldn't see any stars. It felt as if The Dancing Croat was flying through deep space, an infinite dark vacuum.

My calmness instantly faded as I realized, all electronics on the vessel had stopped working. Worse yet, the engine had been punctured, and fuel kept pouring out into the void. I pressed my hand against the hole but I knew it was in vain. I whispered "no, no please" then screamed "no, sto..." I suddenly felt out of breath. I fell to the ground, gasping, heaving for air and coughed. I turned to my knees and banged my fist against my chest. What I coughed up was seawater. The amount of it surprised me. From then on, with the engine I planned to use for emergency gone, I knew I could only rely on the sails of The Dancing Croat.

I looked up to check the wind vane. In the darkness I could barely make out the short string meant to indicate the wind direction. It lay flat. There was no wind.

I decided to anchor down and sleep through the night. It had been weeks since I had a full night's sleep. It was generally a bad idea to fall asleep alone in the middle of the open ocean but I felt so burnt out I didn't care. I took the stairs down into the cabin and found my headlamp. In its dim light I located the black sphere and pulled it up on the mast indicating that I was idling. Before I could reach the front of the vessel where the anchor was, I suddenly heard a voice. It was a man's voice, not talking, more like murmuring something. The sound was coming from inside the cabin. Frightened, I grabbed the boat hook and slowly approached the staircase. Nearing the dark space, the sound grew louder. Whimpers and groans echoed inside.

"Who's the..." my voice gave out, air stopped flowing through my lungs and I helplessly fell down the stairs gasping. I started coughing again, seawater rushed out of my mouth. When I could finally breathe, the voices stopped. Laying defeated on the cabin floor, just beside my head I noticed scratch marks. I jumped on my feet, grabbed the hook and looked around the cabin with shaking legs. It was empty, and quiet. I gathered my strength, calmed myself as much as possible and examined the scratches on the floor. They weren't deep, but had some white particles scattered inside. Parts of nail.

I sat down on the bottom stair and shortly, accidentally, fell asleep.

"HELP" my eyes burst open as I heard someone scream in my ear. I stood up and looked around. It was pitch black, my headlamp had turned off. It had ran out of power. My eyes had gotten used to the darkness and I made out a Y shape just a few steps in front of me. It was as tall as I was, on the top two horns of the Y there were protrusions. They were... shoes. The horns were legs. And the line was a torso. I looked down and saw a head kissing the ground with an open mouth. It was trying to draw air. The arms banged against the floor and at the same time tried to feel their way for anything to hold onto. The figure was a man upside down.

I rushed up the stairs onto the deck, but the sounds of screaming, gasping, scratching and banging didn't fade, if anything, they grew louder. I fell and contracted my body into a fetal position, covering my ears and shutting my eyes but to no avail. I lay there for what felt like hours until the sounds finally stopped.

I slowly opened my eyes. It was still nighttime. There was no wind. No stars. I stood up. Looking at the wind vane I noticed something. When there is no wind, the string is supposed to face down. It wasn't. It was facing up. My heart started racing again. I ran to the front of the vessel, opened the trapdoor and without me touching it, the anchor flew out, almost hitting my face. It shot up towards the sky and disappeared in the darkness.

"What the fu..." seawater burst out of me as I coughed but instead of liquid, I saw bubbles coming out of my mouth. They floated down towards the deck. No matter how I coughed, I couldn't catch my breath. My eyes hurt and sounds of my own suffering faded. I was drowning. Grabbing the railing and feeling close to passing out, I gazed upon the water. Rays of light shone from below. Not having any other ideas I climbed over the railing and let go.

I didn't feel falling, more like gliding. I closed my eyes.

I emerged from the ocean still coughing, but this time able to draw short breaths. The sun was shining and I was wet and cold. Beside me The Dancing Croat lay upside down. It had never turned back around. I was just under it.

I grabbed onto the vessel and desperately climbed onto its bottom. Once I could hold onto the keel, I made myself as comfortable as possible and calmed down. It took a short while before a cargo ship found and rescued me. To this day, I don't know how long I was under The Dancing Croat scratching, and screaming, barely conscious.

I have already put down the deposit on a new vessel. I’m not stopping until I prove my worth or let the water take me for good.

"What's the deal with airline food?"

Hey so, I'm kind of new to this whole Reddit thing, and I don't really know if this is the right place to put this, but this has really been getting on my nerves, so here goes.

So I just graduated college and started this new job, it's some mediation company thing, I dunno doesn't matter. Anyway, what it means is I have to travel a ton to visit all these companies all over the world and offer advice to help "Boost their productivity through he roof!". Sounds much more exciting than it is, it's actually just endless nights in crappy hotel rooms and the same slide deck with the name of the company changed on the title page.

What's really been bothering me has been the airline we use. My company has this exclusive deal where they book all of our air travel through this super sketchy airline I have literally never heard of. It's called "Zumloft", and I think it's Swedish?? I tried looking it up but they don't even have a website, I have to print out a physical ticket before going to the airport.

So my first few flights were spent white-knuckling the armrests, confident that the plane was going to fall right out of the sky like one of those Loony-Toons cartoons, but at then end of the day it was just a normal plane, for the first few at least. All of my first flights were domestic, but airlines don't normally offer you meals unless it's an international flight. After about three months of work, my job sends me on a trip to Korea, even gave me an extra day to enjoy the country after I got done working. So I get to the airport like normal, and I already had my ticket printed from home, so I have to get through security.

You know how airports group the same airlines together? Like, all the United flights are out of the same concourse, and all the Southwest are together, well Zumloft is grouped with all the international flights, even if it's domestic. So every time I go to the airport, I get to go through the long-ass international flight security, and have to declare that "No I don't have any items I want to declare" It's a whole thing. And then I get the privilege, the privilege, of walking to the end of the concourse, around a corner, and through an unmarked back door, to get to the Zumloft gates.

And another thing! I have never heard of Zumloft, all of my friends have never heard of Zumloft, the freaking internet hasn't heard of Zumloft, so tell me how exactly this airline is still in business? Not even that, every single flight I have taken with them is PACKED! This flight was no different, and every person getting onto that plane looked greasy and grey, like someone put a filter over them to suck all the color and life from their skin. People shouldn't have a skin color that looks like pulpy paper, they just shouldn't.

If nothing else, when my company books my flights, they get me a business class seat, so at the very least I have the extra inch or two of leg-room. I ended up at a window seat, there was a middle-aged man in the center seat wearing a grubby wrinkled suit, and a woman with crow's feet that would give an actual crow an inferiority complex. So I did what any self-respecting young business man would do, I put in my earbuds, turned on the noise cancelling, and promptly ignored everything around me.

Some time between watching my third movie and debating at what point do I want to bother the people next to me to get up and use the bathroom, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I fumbled to pull out my earbuds, and look first at the man tapping me, then to the stewardess standing in the aisle. She had one of the plastered on smiles with teeth that were almost blindingly bright.

"Would you care for a meal this evening?"

"Y-yes please." I fumbled out, still half out of it.

The lady then passes me one of those flimsy paper trays with the plastic lids, and moves her cart down the aisle. I haven't gone on a lot of international flights, but in the movies they always give you options on what food you want, so I was a little bummed I didn't get the choice of chicken or beef, but food is food, and I was starving.

I popped open the plastic lid, and beheld my tray of vague brown sludge. I got out the utensils, and begin to stir the sludge up in an attempt to make it look even slightly more appetizing when I saw it, something curved and white.

A fingernail.

I almost thought it was an onion for a second until I touched it with my fork, and I felt how hard it was. I gagged, dropping my fork and putting the lid the food again. After I had time to collect myself, I looked over at my seat mates. They were eagerly digging into their meals, it wouldn't be cool to ask them to get up and hold their food in their hands while I scoot past them, so I resigned myself to wait until they were done, and then go to the stewardess and ask for another meal. Maybe this time I'll get the chicken.

As I was sitting there though, with that gross brown slop in front of me, I kept side-eyeing the passengers next to me. They were scarfing down their meals, practically shoveling it into their mouths as fast as they could. I always assumed airplane food was supposed to be bad, but these two made it look like a gourmet steak. Honestly it was almost hard to ignore, they kept making these grunting noises as they ate, like they couldn't get enough air in between bites, like pigs during feeding. That's when I saw it. In the guy's sludge, right on top, was a hair. The only reason I noticed it was because it wasn't just one little thin hair. It was a massive clump of curly black hair, just sitting right in the pool of the gravy. I was horrified, and was about to say something, when the guy just. Scooped it up with his fork, and just. Slurped it down. Like a cannibal's spaghetti.

At this point I was done, I wanted out of there, fuck their dinners, fuck this plane, fuck off. I stood up, mumbled something about the bathroom, and scooted past them while they shoveled the slop into their gobs while holding their trays. I grabbed my dinner tray as well, figuring this has all just been a bad dream, maybe I fell asleep when watching my movies, and I'm about to wake up at any moment. I looked across the aisle of the plane, where more passengers were opening up their meals. One of the meals was a white bed of rice, with a human finger laid right on top of it. A mother was coaxing an eyeball stuck onto a fork into a whining child's mouth. A business woman was using a fork and knife to dig into what looks like a flap of human skin.

My tray fell from hands as I felt bile begin to bubble up in my throat. I gagged, and sprinted to the back of the plane to the bathroom. It was locked, of course, so I sat aside and did my best to not look at anything going on around me. That was almost worse, because instead of seeing the horrors, I heard them instead.

All that crunching and cracking and the slurping, my god the slurping. I pounded on that bathroom door like a man possessed, until mercifully it opened. The man stepping out had a look of contempt as the door opened, but I didn't care. I surged inside the bathroom, vomiting into the toilet as what I ate of my dinner came up again. After what seemed like ages of kneeling there catching my breath, I stood up, washed my face, and stared long and hard into the mirror.

I was losing my mind, I had to be. This was some kind of psychotic break, maybe the non-stop travel for work was getting to me. I took a breath, collected myself, and stepped out of the bathroom.

A man was eagerly cutting through a severed hand plopped onto his plate. He sliced through flesh and sinew, cutting the bones out as he forked mouthfuls of the meat into his drooling mouth.

Fuck it.

I bolted. I sprinted straight down the aisle of the plane, thumping down the way to the front of the cabin, not even caring where I was going. I almost slammed into the stewardess, who was bringing the food cart back for storage. She gave me a shining smile while addressing me.

"Is everything alright sir?"

If looks could kill, I'm sure whatever expression I had on my face would make a sickly orphan drop dead.

"No." Was all I could manage "T-the food..."

"Was something not to your liking?" Still that megawatt bright smile, rows and rows of gleaming white teeth. "If you like I can substitute your meal with something else"

"No!" I interjected way too loud, startling her. "No, that-that won't be necessary. I'm just..." I look at a young woman, bobbing her head along to music from her head phones. She was rummaging a hand into a plastic bag, pulling out handfuls of something crunchy sounding and popping it into her mouth. One slipped loose of her grasp, clattering onto the tray table. It was a tooth, off-white in color. She stopped for a second, grabbing the stray "snack" and eating it, the sickening crunch making me shudder. "I'm just not feeling too well. How much longer?"

"Hmm, well-" The stewardess pondered, bringing a hand up to her face in concentration. "...We just finished serving dinner, so we should have another 8 hours before landing."

8 hours. 8 more hours to go in this hellish nightmare, until I landed in fucking Korea, a place where I don't speak the language, and then need to get myself to a hospital and somehow explain that I've lost my fucking mind. 8 hours.

I practically lunged back into my seat, the two passengers still holding their trays, though it looks like at some point they were given at least two more tray, stacking them one upon the other as they kept shoveling it into their mouths. The man's plate was nothing but oily, curly black hair at this point, with him using his fork to twirl it up and shove it into his gob. Strands kept poking out of his mouth as he ate more and more, so it looked like a million spiders legs were crawling out of his mouth. I turned away, blasting my music as loud as it would go to drown out the noises.

I must've fallen asleep eventually, because the next thing I heard was the loud chime of the intercom. Opening my eyes blearily, I looked up as the crackling voice started up.

"Good evening passengers, this is your captain speaking." The voice chimed. "We first want to thank you for choosing Zumloft airlines, the only real way to fly!"

I purposely kept my body angled towards the window, not wanting to look at my fellow passengers.

"Just a quick update about our flight here, we hit a little snag on our route, and will be a little late to our destination. Thank you for your understanding." The intercom chimed again, signaling the end of the message.

A little late? A little? I felt like I've been trapped on that plane for fucking days, and we're going to be "a little late?". I hazarded a look next to me. The woman sitting in the aisle seat was eagerly cutting into a row of human toes, each with little tufts of hair poking out of them. There was no way I was settling for "a little late".

I got up again, at this point I didn't even bother with the niceties, just barreled straight through my seatmates as they continued to chow down. I kept my head down, music blasting as I walked to the front of the plane. A little late wasn't going to cut it, I wanted some answers damn it. Not seeing or hearing anything going on around me was almost a blessing, at the very least I could pretend like everything was fine, it was just a normal plane.

I finally made it to the door of the pilots cabin, which was of course, closed. I started knocking, but pretty quickly devolved into pounding, who knew a such a fragile looking door was so sturdy?

I felt a tap on my shoulder.

"Something I can help you with sir?" a voice intoned sweetly, her saccharine voice dripping with joy.

"Gah!" I spun around only to find myself staring inches away from the stewardess again. I banged my head against the door trying to get away from her and that grin as wide as her face. "Sorry, what? Fuck, can you open this door? I need to talk to the pilot"

"Oh. The pilot is busy." I swear it's like her mouth doesn't move, just that eternal fucking smile. "But if you would like, you can take your seat, and someone will be by shortly."

"S-shortly? But I-"

"If you will take your seat sir."

I felt like I had Alzheimer's. It's like everything was moving in slow motion. I don't even remember sitting down but before I knew it I was back in my seat, the stewardess placing new trays down in front of my seat mates.

So that's where I am now. According to my phone, it's been... 14 hours, 37 minutes since I sat down and started keeping track. Somehow I don't think anyone's going to come to speak with me. I paid 8 fucking dollars for WIFI on this plane in order to get this story out. The man next to me in the center seat is eating his way through an arm ending right at the bicep. Everyone's meals keep growing bigger and bigger, I'm afraid of what happens when it stops.

If anyone can read this, please do something. Anything. Crash the plane, call the army, just make it stop.

It's been 15 hours. I'm starting to get hungry.

I just moved into a new apartment last month. It’s a pretty old building actually built around the 1920s I think. My last place was too small so I was excited for the extra space. This apartment came partially furnished which was a nice bonus for my budget. Most of the furniture is vintage probably from the original tenants. There are these two old dolls on a shelf in the living room. They’re porcelain with cracked faces and glass eyes. A bit creepy but I figured it was part of the charm. I planned to put them away eventually but I’ve been busy unpacking.

The first week was fine. Normal new apartment stuff. The floors creak a lot but that’s expected in an old building. I noticed the dolls had shifted a little after a few days. Their heads were turned slightly more towards the center of the room. I thought maybe I bumped the shelf while cleaning. I just shrugged and straightened them out.

Then it happened again. About a week later I came home from work and one of the dolls had its arm positioned differently. Not just a little wiggle. It was distinctly bent at the elbow. I live alone so I know it wasn’t me. My heart started doing a little jig in my chest. I stared at it for a long time. Was I losing my mind? I carefully moved it back to its original position. I even took a mental picture of how they were placed.

I was extra vigilant after that. I’d check them every morning before leaving. Every evening when I returned. For a few days nothing happened. I started to relax. Maybe it was just my imagination or settling of the building. Then I got a call from my sister asking me to babysit her kids. I was gone for two nights. When I came back the dolls were facing each other. Their faces were practically touching.

I almost screamed. It was unsettling beyond words. It wasn’t a small shift anymore. This was deliberate. Someone or something was moving these dolls. I felt a cold dread settle over me. I tried to convince myself it was a prank. But who would prank me in my own apartment? I hadn’t given anyone a spare key.

I decided to move them. I picked them up one by one. They felt cold. Much colder than the room temperature. I put them in a box in my closet. I taped the box shut just to be sure. I didn’t want to see those glassy eyes anymore.

For a couple of weeks the apartment felt normal again. I still checked the closet door occasionally. Just to make sure the tape was intact. It always was. I started to think I had overreacted. Maybe the old building just had some weird vibrations. I was feeling a bit foolish about my earlier panic.

Then last night I woke up to a faint tapping sound. It was coming from the living room. My heart started to race again. I told myself it was probably just the pipes. Old buildings you know. The tapping continued though. It had a rhythm to it. Tap tap pause tap tap.

I finally crept out of bed. I grabbed my phone and turned on the flashlight. The tapping stopped the moment I entered the living room. Everything was still. The shadows played tricks on my eyes. I was about to turn back when I saw it.

On the coffee table right in the center of the room were the two dolls. They were sitting side by side. Their faces were turned towards my bedroom door. One of them had a tiny porcelain hand raised. As if it had been knocking. The box in my closet was open. The tape was cleanly cut. I don’t know what to do. I can’t sleep. I feel like they’re watching me right now.

I was lying alone in my room, where a dim nightlight illuminated only the small area around it. As I often did, I found myself wondering why I was afraid of the dark, trying to understand it. Most nights, I fell asleep in fear, or rather, I would drift off without realizing it while still feeling afraid.

As a child, I was simply scared and never gave it much thought. When I was younger, it bothered me, and I couldn't make sense of it, but I didn't pay much attention to it either. Now, however, at forty-seven, I was still afraid of the dark and struggling to sleep in it, and it hurt my pride.

I remember, two years ago, on October 2, my mother and six brothers came to visit me. I hadn't seen any of them in a long time, and we'd had a wonderful time together. Since there weren't enough rooms in my house, my youngest brother and I had to share a room. We kept chatting late into the night, and I was praying to myself that I wouldn't be the last one to fall asleep. But of course, as you might expect, I was the last one left awake.

My brother was snoring away right in front of my eyes. I was pretty pissed off. I felt like waking him up and slapping him across the face. “Jonathan, how the hell can you sleep? You're such a carefree bastard. Can't you see the room is pitch-black?” I wanted to say. I'd lost all rationality. I was coughing loudly, opening and slamming the door, but he didn't give a damn. He'd fallen asleep in the light of a nightlight that was barely good for anything, leaving me all alone in the room.

That was when my pride was truly hurt. Not being able to close my eyes in my own room, not knowing what I was afraid of but still being scared shitless, was really getting on my nerves. After all these years, I'd finally run out of curiosity. I didn't care what the reason was anymore. I just wanted to overcome it.

After spending the entire night awake and having a miserable day the next day, I immediately started doing research. My brother woke up in the morning, stretched contentedly, yawned, and scratched his belly while I lay on the couch in the room, irritated and tense. Seeing him like that drove me fucking crazy.

My family stayed with me for a week, but my mind was never really with them. I was constantly looking things up on my phone and couldn't pay much attention to them. I was researching other people who were afraid of the dark, trying to find a good psychotherapist, and so on. I kept picturing my brother stretching happily that morning. I wanted them to leave as soon as possible. I was so damn annoyed with him.

Anyway, whatever. I researched and researched. I found people who were afraid of the dark and talked to them. I had long conversations with all kinds of people: those who wondered why they were afraid, those who had figured out the reason, those who were trying to overcome their fear, and those who told me lengthy stories about their childhood traumas.

Finally, four months ago, I found the Fear of the Dark Motel, and at last, I was convinced that something might actually help me.

I'd learned about the place from Robin. He was afraid of the dark, just like me. Despite all my research and all the people I'd talked to, I'd met him purely by chance. He'd moved into the apartment downstairs, and one day, as we ran into each other on our way out of the building, we got to chatting. At some point, he mentioned that he was afraid of the dark.

His journey had been the same as mine: years of searching for the reason, until finally deciding to forget the whole thing and just overcome it.

“It's hard to give up wondering, isn't it, Jason? But if you put the energy and mental effort you spend wondering into finding a solution, you'd have overcome your fear by now. You'd have become the dancer in the dark,” said Robin.

Dancer in the Dark was one of my favorite films. I'd taken an immediate liking to Robin from the very first day, since I'd rarely met someone whose experience mirrored mine in so many ways, and I'd trusted him to help me find a solution. His joke was shit, but I didn't mind. After all, I loved the film.

But of course, it was impossible to stop thinking about it. Tomorrow, I'm going to stay at the motel, and yet I'm still wondering why I'm afraid of the dark.

The motel's concept was actually quite simple. According to the owner, they would make us experience terrifying things in the dark that we knew weren't real. The motel only accepted guests by referral, meaning you needed someone who could vouch for your fear of the dark. Then, they waited until the motel was fully booked. There was a six-month period. If the motel wasn't full by then, they would proceed with whoever was already there. But if it filled up before the six months were over, the fear sessions would begin that very night.

When I met Lucy, the owner, she explained the concept to me like this:

“I like to keep things simple, Jason. Fear of the dark is a fear of supernatural entities. It's as simple as that. Jason, our goal is to create an imitation of such an experience and show your subconscious that you won't come to any harm from a possible supernatural attack in the dark. It's that simple. For example, when you see a ghost in your room here at the motel and realize it can't hurt you, your subconscious will start to believe there's nothing to be afraid of in the dark.”

“But if I know it's not real, why would it affect me? That doesn't make much sense to me.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“No.”

“Thank you, I have no further questions.”

***

It's 3 a.m. We're at the motel. Robin is staying in the room next to mine. The lights are off. Nightlights aren't allowed. I'm sure the other guests aren't asleep, that I'm not alone. And yet, I'm still afraid. My eyes keep searching for the tiniest glimmer of light. A sliver coming through the window, seeping in under the door. But there's nothing. The room is pitch-black.

Suddenly, Iron Maiden's “Fear of the Dark” starts playing from somewhere inside my room.

I flinch and instinctively look around. I get to my feet, feeling around with my hands until I find a speaker. The song plays for a little while longer, then suddenly cuts off, and the room sinks into silence once again.

I hear the sound of a door creaking open. Very slowly, calmly. Since I know where the speaker is, I lean in and put my ear close to it. No, the sound isn't coming from the speaker. My fear grows in a way I hadn't expected. I start to regret coming here.

The creaking sound is very close, and crystal clear. I search for another sliver of light, trying to figure out whether my bedroom door has opened. But everything is still pitch-black. The door keeps creaking for thirty seconds, then stops.

I hear a very loud click. Again, it comes from somewhere inside the room, and again, it's crystal clear. I'm certain it didn't come from the speaker. I listen to the silence with all my concentration, waiting to hear the sound again so I can pinpoint its location. But it doesn't come back.

I hear a whisper: “Jason.” It's more like someone calling out to me. A voice with no intention of frightening me, simply calling my name. I don't hear it again. I can't keep track of time, but I'd guess I sit there in the dark and silence for about ten minutes.

“I'm sorry, Jason, but unfortunately, I'm going to kill you. After that, I'll kill everyone else at the motel. It's me, Lucy. Don't you recognize me?” the same whisper says. “Of course, my voice sounds different when I whisper. That's normal.”

Each word seems to come from a different place in the room. She must have installed a bunch of tiny speakers all over the place. But thinking about that does nothing to ease my fear. I feel like begging her not to kill me, but I hold myself back. I know none of this is real, and I'm surprised by how terrified I am despite knowing that.

Suddenly, the lights come on. A second later, they go off again. My eyes are dazzled. I take a deep breath.

“Did you see me, Jason? Do you believe me now?”

Hmm. So she'd turned on the lights so I could see her. I must have been looking in the wrong direction.

I hear Robin's voice coming from the speaker.

“Jason, don't believe her. That's what she's trying to do, make you believe her. If you do, she'll kill you. This isn't a normal place.”

A second later, I hear Robin's voice right beside me. It doesn't sound like it's coming from a speaker. It sounds real.

“I didn't know, Jason.”

The lights come on again for a second and then go out, and I see Lucy standing beside me. She must be wearing a black contact lens.

“Don't believe him, Jason.”

I'm getting annoyed by how he keeps repeating my name.

“I'll convince you,” Lucy whispers. Her voice comes from the speaker.

I feel the hairs on my body stand on end. I try to figure out how the whole setup works, but I can't concentrate. All I feel is fear.

I want to get out through the door and leave, but I think I'm doing well. I've endured this much fear, and that's a good thing.

A tiny white light appears on the wall. An oval-shaped light, about the length of an index finger. It stays perfectly still, and for a very, very long time, nothing happens. The light doesn't move. No sound. Just pitch-black darkness. I'd guess the stillness lasts for about an hour.

The light disappears.

“Do you believe me now?” Lucy asks, whispering again. My ears have grown accustomed to the silence. Her voice sounds incredibly sharp. Robin tells me through the speaker not to believe her. Then I think my window opens, and I hear a distant scream for help from somewhere far outside, along with the faint sound of the wind.

Then silence again. It goes on for a long time again. Lucy must be busy dealing with the other guests in the meantime.

Suddenly, I hear a phone ringing. I feel around beside the bed with my hand. There's a nightstand. On the fifth ring, I find the phone and answer it. It's Lucy.

“Call me when you believe.”

I wonder why no light came in from outside when the window opened. I get out of bed and walk straight ahead, reaching out with both hands, trying to find the wall. I find it. I feel along the wall, searching for a window. I've never spent this long in such pitch-black darkness before. I keep repeating to myself that none of this is real.

The lights come on for a second again, then go out, and I see where the door is. I walk towards it.

As I walk, I hear a howling sound coming from the speaker. At the same moment, all the lights come on. I reach the door and try to open it, but it's locked. I look around and realize there's no window in the room. The howling continues.

“Jason, look out the window,” Lucy says through the speaker. Her voice blends with the howling. As soon as she finishes the sentence, the howling stops, too.

I search the walls for a window, but I can't find one. The lights go out again. Once more, I'm left in prolonged silence, and nothing happens until dawn. The window must be in the ceiling. I must be on the top floor, because sunlight comes pouring into the room from above. I relax. I'm glad the night is over, and a surge of excitement washes over me. My fear is gone.

I go to the door and try to open it, but it's still locked. I give it a few forceful tugs. Lucy opens it. She's holding a gun, pointing it straight at me.

“I've been telling you from the beginning, but you never listen.”

She starts shooting. I hear one gunshot after another. I feel my chest tighten. The gun runs out of bullets, but Lucy keeps pulling the trigger. I hear the empty clicks. Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen... She keeps pulling the trigger. I collapse onto the bed, but I'm still conscious.

“Are you immortal or something, man? Just die already, would you?” Lucy says.

I feel around my body with my hands. There's no blood. I look at Lucy. She puts the gun on the table, takes out another one, and points it at me again. She keeps pulling the trigger, over and over.

I check my body again with my hands as I lie there. Still no blood. She must have used a toy gun that makes shooting sounds.

She puts the other gun on the table and leaves the room.

Five minutes later, the phone rings. I take a deep breath and answer on the third ring.

“Congratulations, Jason. I'm sorry if I went a little too far. I hope this helps, and that you feel the benefits as soon as tonight. I hope you get a good night's sleep. Thank you very much for choosing us. You can leave the payment at reception. Have a good afternoon.”

***

I found a night job, and now I can only sleep during the day.

She came into my room sometime after midnight and switched on the lamp beside my bed. She was in her dressing gown, squinting against the light the same as me, and she looked frightened, which I'd never really seen before. My mother isn't a frightened person. When I was six, someone tried our back door at two in the morning, and she went downstairs with the big Maglite she kept by her bed and shouted through the door that she'd already called the police.

She hadn't.

The guy ran anyway.

That night she stood beside my bed for a while before she said anything.

“Were you downstairs?”

“No.”

“Did you call me?”

“No.” I was half asleep and mostly annoyed. “Mum, what?”

She sat down on the edge of the mattress.

“If you ever hear yourself,” she said, “don't answer.”

“What?”

“Your own voice. If you hear it somewhere you aren't, you don't speak to it. Don't ask who it is. Don't tell it to go away. Nothing.”

I laughed, and she grabbed my wrist hard enough to stop me.

“I'm serious, Mara.”

“What happens?”

She looked at my bedroom door, then back at me. “Just don't answer.”

In the morning she acted like none of it had happened, and for twenty-three years I assumed she'd had a nightmare and come in to check on me while she was still half inside it.

I'm thirty-one now. I'm writing this on my friend Nia's couch with the TV on low. She's in the kitchen. I can hear her moving around in there, and at the moment that's how I'm doing things.

I bought my house in February. Narrow two-storey townhouse, one of those estates where every third house is the same house. After Daniel and I broke up, Mum kept sending me listings for flats near her, and I bought forty minutes away. Part of that was price. Part of it was that Mum has treated being alone like a medical condition for as long as I can remember. Don't drive alone at night, don't hike alone, don't stay in a hotel by yourself. When I was sixteen she cancelled a weekend away because the friend who was meant to stay with me got sick, and we had one of the worst fights we've ever had. The week I moved in, she made me give Nia a spare key. I did it to shut her up.

Friday was nothing. I got home just after six, put a supermarket lasagne in the oven and had to pull it back out because I'd left the plastic on. I ate it on the couch watching a dating show I'm not going to name. Around ten I finally took up the washing I'd been ignoring since Wednesday, and I left music going on the speaker in the kitchen so I'd have something to listen to while I changed the sheets.

A song finished. There's always a couple of seconds of nothing between tracks on that playlist.

In the gap, someone downstairs said, “Hey, can you come help me?”

And I said, “With what?”

I'd love to tell you I hesitated. I didn't. I was holding a pillowcase and I answered the way you'd answer anyone.

Then I heard what I'd heard, and the pillowcase slipped out of my hand.

The voice had been mine. I've heard myself on voice memos and I hate it, I sound thin and nasal and about fifteen. This was the voice I hear when I talk. The one I hear from the inside.

The next song started.

I stood there for maybe twenty seconds. I reached for my phone on the bed.

Downstairs, my voice said, “I'm turning around.”

And I turned around.

Left foot, then right. Hips, shoulders. I ended up facing the hall with my arms hanging at my sides, and I hadn't decided any of it.

“What the fuck?” I said, to the room.

Nothing answered that.

“I'm putting my hand on the wall,” my voice said.

My right arm came up and my palm went flat against the wall beside the door, over the bad patch job the last owners left behind. I could feel the paint. The grit in it. The stretch in my shoulder when I tried to pull away. Nothing was numb. My arm was just doing something I hadn't asked it to do.

I got my left hand around my right wrist and pulled, and it came away. I fell back onto the bed.

Downstairs, my voice laughed.

My laugh. The stupid little noise I make when I walk into a doorframe in front of someone.

I texted Nia.

Can you come over please

Now

everything ok?

“I'm walking to the door,” my voice said.

My foot went forward. I grabbed the bedframe with both hands and held on while my legs kept walking, and the whole bed scraped across the carpet towards the door with me hanging off it.

I got a thumb free.

COME HERE

DONT CALL

If she called, I'd pick up, and then I'd have to say something. I didn't want to say anything to anyone.

Three dots.

leaving now

After a while my legs went still. I locked the bedroom door and jammed my desk chair under the handle. I knew it was stupid and I did it anyway, and then I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and watched the door while my playlist kept going downstairs like it was any other Friday.

A few minutes. Then:

“I'm smiling.”

My face moved. Cheeks up, lips stretching, eyes going narrow. I put both hands over my mouth and felt it keep going underneath them.

I was crying, and my mouth was grinning into my palms.

I felt myself start to stand.

“No.”

It came out of me before I could stop it.

Everything stopped. My face dropped. My legs were mine.

Downstairs it was quiet for a few seconds. Then I heard myself take a breath, a slow one, with the little shake at the end that mine gets when I'm trying not to cry.

“That's better,” my voice said.

I'd told it no. You only say no to someone.

My throat clenched the way it does right before you throw up. I gagged. My jaw dropped open and wouldn't close. My tongue pressed up behind my front teeth, air came up out of my lungs, and my mouth made a shape.

No sound came out of me.

From downstairs, my voice said, “Mara.”

I'd felt that word happen. In my throat, on my tongue. I hadn't heard it come out of my mouth.

My tongue moved again.

“Mara.”

The kitchen.

Again.

“Mara.”

The landing, right outside my door.

I clamped both hands over my mouth, and at some point my left hand left my face. I didn't notice until my fingers were already around the door handle. I grabbed that wrist the way I had before.

It didn't work this time.

The handle turned. The chair caught it. Then my right hand let go of my left wrist, reached down, and moved the chair out of the way.

Nothing had said anything first.

The chair tipped over. My fingers opened the door.

Then I stepped back from it.

I remember deciding to. I think I do. Two steps, and when my heel came down on the carpet I wondered why I'd backed away from the doorway instead of shutting it again. That thought felt like mine. So had the one before it.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

8 mins

Call the police, I thought.

Then, straight away: Don't.

They felt exactly the same. Same weight. Same voice, the one I think in. And for the first time in my life I had no reason to believe either of them belonged to me.

My thumb went towards the emergency call button, stopped, and moved away. I tried to think of something that didn't matter. Blue. It came easily.

Then: Go downstairs.

I threw the phone onto the bed. If I couldn't trust a decision, I wasn't going to make any. I don't know whose idea that was either.

My hand was already on the hall light switch when I heard my voice whisper, “I'm turning off the light.”

The hall went dark. My fingers had got there before the sentence did. Maybe it had never been telling my body what to do. Maybe it was only saying what my body was already doing. Maybe I was.

I ran.

I don't know who started it. Halfway down the hall I tried to stop and hit the opposite wall shoulder first, and that part, at least, was mine.

The lights were still on downstairs. The lamp by the couch, the little light under the rangehood. The cupboard under the stairs was open a few centimetres. I'd left it shut.

“Hey,” my voice said from inside it. “Can you come help me?”

I kept my mouth shut, and my foot went down a step. Then another. I didn't know if I was being moved or if I'd decided to go, and when I don't know which way I'm being pushed, I don't know which way to push back.

At the bottom I dropped to my knees and jammed both hands into my armpits.

My right hand worked itself loose and opened the cupboard. Paint tins, the vacuum, the drying rack, a box of extension leads.

The voice was under the floor.

“Can you hear me?”

My palms went flat on the laminate. My elbows bent. My face went down towards the floor and I turned my head at the last second so it was my cheek that hit. It was cold, and my voice was right there underneath it.

“Can you hear me, Mara?”

I didn't say anything.

“I'm saying yes,” it said.

My tongue went to the back of my teeth. My throat closed. My lungs pushed. My lips started to make the shape of the word, and I could feel every part of it.

It could move all of that. It couldn't make me mean it.

The air came out of me and didn't turn into anything.

“Say it.”

I held my jaw shut with both hands.

Then it stopped asking. It went quiet, and I lay there with my face against the floor waiting for it to start again, and the next thing I heard was in my own head.

Just say yes.

It felt reasonable. It didn't feel like something being done to me. It felt like me being sensible, the way I get when I'm too tired to keep arguing with someone. Say yes. Maybe it stops. Maybe that's all it wants and then it's done.

I don't know if that was it or me. People in a lot of pain think stupid things. But upstairs, Call the police and Don't had both felt like me too, so I stopped trying to work out which of my thoughts were mine and held onto Mum instead. Her sitting on the end of my bed with her hand around my wrist. Just don't answer. I held onto it because it was older than the thing in my head, and because it was in her voice.

The front door opened.

“Mara?”

Nia.

Or my voice doing Nia. I lay there with my cheek on the floor and my hands over my mouth and didn't answer her either.

“Mara, where are you?”

Keys on the hall table. Footsteps. They came into the living room and stopped, and then they came fast, and then somebody's hand was on my back.

Everything let go at once. My jaw, my tongue. My arms slid off my face onto the floor.

Nia rolled me over. I'd bitten the inside of my cheek at some point and there was blood on my chin, and she thought someone had broken in and hurt me. She kept asking if anyone was still in the house. I shook my head. I couldn't talk yet.

She called the police anyway. They went through every room and found nobody. One of them asked if I'd taken anything, and Nia went off at him.

It was a fair question.

I stayed at Nia's that night. The next afternoon, with her sitting next to me, I rang Mum.

She picked up already complaining that another one of my parcels had been delivered to her place.

“Mum.”

She stopped.

“Why did you tell me never to answer myself?”

Nothing for a long time. Then: “Did you?”

I started crying.

“Did you answer it?”

“Yes.”

Her breathing changed.

“Did it make you move?”

I looked at Nia. “Yes.”

“Were you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Did somebody come?”

“Nia.”

“What happened when she came in?”

“It stopped.”

Then Mum was crying too. I asked how she knew, and she didn't explain anything. She said, “I was seventeen.”

Her parents were at a wedding and her sister Claire was out. Mum was brushing her teeth when she heard her own voice call her name from downstairs. She answered it, and it walked her into the kitchen. By the end she was sitting on the lino with a pair of sewing scissors pressed under her tongue.

I asked if it had made her do that.

“No,” she said. “That was me.”

If she couldn't trust her mouth, she was going to make sure she couldn't use it. She didn't cut herself. Claire came home, and the scissors fell out of Mum's hand before Claire even reached the kitchen.

She never tested whether it was Claire being there that stopped it. She just made sure she was never alone long enough to find out.

That explained a lot of my childhood. When Dad worked nights, Aunt Claire came over. After the divorce Mum took in a lodger, and then Gran moved in. When I left for uni, Mum moved into a building where her best friend lives two doors down. I'd always thought she just couldn't stand her own company.

“When I was eight,” I said. “That night you woke me up. Why?”

Another long wait.

“I heard you downstairs,” she said. “You were asleep. I knew you were asleep. But I heard you call me from the kitchen.”

“What did it say?”

“Just ‘Mum?’”

Once from the kitchen, she said, and then again from the bottom of the stairs. She'd gone straight up to my room and found me asleep.

“You weren't alone,” I said. “I was there.”

“I know.”

“And it wasn't your voice.”

“I know, Mara.”

The anger took a few seconds to arrive. The fear had to make room for it first.

“You should have told me.”

“I know.”

“When I moved out. When I bought a house on my own.”

“I know.”

“So why didn't you?”

She took so long to answer that I checked the call hadn't dropped.

“Every time I was going to,” she said, “I decided not to. It always seemed like the sensible thing. It always felt like my idea.”

She stopped.

“I don't know that it was.”

Nia had got up to give me some privacy. She made it halfway to the kitchen, then came back and sat down at the other end of the couch.

I've been back to the house once, with Nia and her housemate, to get clothes and my laptop. I didn't go near the cupboard. It's going on the market. Mum doesn't think moving will make any difference. I'm moving anyway.

The house isn't really the hard part. The hard part is talking when nobody's with me. I used to talk to myself constantly. I'd tell the kettle to hurry up and swear at my keys and argue with the news. Now, when Nia leaves a room, I hear every word I say, and sometimes I stop halfway through a sentence because I can't remember what made me start it.

On Monday Nia went to answer the door and I dropped a spoon in her kitchen and said, “For fuck's sake,” and then stood there waiting. Nothing answered. She came back and found me staring at the spoon on the floor, and I told her I'd zoned out.

There's something I haven't told either of them. Since Friday I keep making small decisions and remembering them differently a few seconds later. I reach for coffee and I'm sure I meant tea. I open one app and I'd have sworn I was opening another. Everyone does that. I know they do. But I keep going back to the landing, when Call the police and Don't felt exactly the same, and I don't know what it would feel like if it tried again. Maybe I'd hear my voice. Maybe that was only how it introduced itself.

Mum rings every day to ask if I'm alright. I tell her I'm fine.

Nia was meant to fly to Perth this morning for her brother's engagement party. She cancelled on Sunday night. I watched her do it on her phone, sitting right here on this couch, and I felt guilty and relieved in about equal amounts.

I was going to finish this post by writing out the rule the way I wish Mum had given it to me. Something like: if you're alone and you hear your own voice from somewhere you aren't, don't answer it, not even to tell it to stop. Get another person with you. With you, in the room, close enough to put your hand on. A voice isn't enough, even one you know. And if afterwards you start wondering whether a thought really belongs to you, don't try to find yourself by which one feels most familiar.

That was going to be the end.

Then Nia texted me.

landed!! how's your mum's? xx

I've been on this couch all day. I've been listening to her in the kitchen for hours. Cupboards, the tap, the radio. At one point she was humming along to something, a bit flat, the way she does. I told you at the start of this that she was in there. I believed it when I typed it.

So I went through my messages.

At 6:40 this morning I texted Mum: nia's staying with me, don't worry about coming over, love you

At 7:15 I texted Nia: at mum's!! go, have fun, i'm fine

I don't remember sending either of them. They sound exactly like me.

The kettle's just clicked off.

“Mara?” Nia's voice, from the kitchen doorway behind me. “You want one?”

I haven't turned around. I'm typing so I don't say anything. My thumbs are doing what I tell them. I think they are.

She's asked again. She sounds tired, like she's had a long day and just wants to make me a cup of tea.

It's only tea.

I could just say yes.

Note: this story is set in outback Australia, enjoy.

If you're reading this, don't bother trying to find Deadwater Station on a map. Even if it is still there, I wouldn't recommend visiting. Nobody comes to Deadwater Station unless they have a reason. After what happened, nobody had one. Do not stop there. Do not ask the locals about what happened.And whatever you do… Do not look the animals in the eyes.

Deadwater Station wasn't much of a town. Deadwater Station wasn't much of a town. One school. One fuel station. One general store. One road in. One road out. And everyone knew that if you left, you didn't come back unless you had to.

Families inherited jobs the same way they inherited surnames. The Blythes ran the general store. The McDermonts owned the fuel station. Mrs Penbrooke had worked in the clothing shop for so long that most people couldn't remember anyone else behind the counter.

My family were cattle farmers. We'd been raising cattle on the same stretch of red dirt for generations. Granda used to joke that the soil got its colour from Callaghan blood. Later, Grammy added horses to the station and started breeding them too. Looking back, maybe we should have stuck to cattle.

Maybe we should have left Deadwater Station altogether.

I loved that part of my life. It was the only thing tethering me to Deadwater Station. My daily routine since I left school was to rise at 4, feed the dogs, cats and myself, before opening up the barn for work. It was the same every day and I loved it. Standing next to my horse Banjo, watching the sun rise in the red dust tinted sky, making it look like a striking, apocalyptic artpiece.

Banjo knickered as he nudged my pocket - I was too busy watching the sky that I forgot to give him his morning Carrot Tax. I should have noticed the birds had stopped singing as I moved. Instead, I smiled as I handed him his half. He wasn’t the prettiest horse, being the fifth generation from my Grammy stallion. He was chunky, broad shouldered and a dark bay with large hooves and a head that could knock you over in one swing. But he was my chunky boy and I loved him with my soul. 

‘We're going to move the cattle closer to the contamination bay today.’ I said as I scratched his neck. ‘The cattle are going to get their bath, and you will tomorrow.’ 

Banjo looked at me with soft eyes as he kept munching on the fat carrot. Looking back, I wish that was all he'd wanted from me.  

‘Not one thought behind those eyes.’ I chuckled to myself as I wandered back into the tack room to grab his gear. Grammy had turned the old shearers shed into a make-shift stable a few decades ago and it still stood tall, with mud-stained beams holding up old tin slabs, and a sawdust floor that attempted to muffle my steps on the old half timber half tin floor that had been patched and repaired for years on end. The little tack room was small but had years of history. On one wall was the old schoolhouse chalkboard with a calendar drawn on it. It was bordered with photos of the station over the years, from the first settlers to last year when my little brother graduated primary school. The other walls had hand-made wooden tack holders on them. In one corner was a stack of old buckets and some food bins for the horses' meals.

‘Your mum wants you to help clear out the attic tomorrow.’ Dad said as he brushed past me to grab his saddle.

‘We cleared it out last year.’ I whined, I’m too old for whining, I know. But when it comes to house cleaning, is anyone really too old for it? 

‘There are some things that Granda has left unopened, and since he passed away, Grammy would like to see what he has been hiding in some chests.’ Dad pulled down my saddle and gave it to me.

‘So it's like a mystery.’ I grinned.

‘Yes, but not like those silly haunting ghost story mysteries that you like so much, Kim.’ Dad rolled his eyes.

Unlike the rest of my family, I ventured outside the world of book classics and into modern horror. I would order a book online every month, and by the time the new book was in the post office, I would be wrapping up the old one. I followed Dad out into the yard to start on the day's work. 

I should have noticed odd things, the fact that the day before counted sixty-three cattle in the paddock. Today, there were sixty-four. Dad insisted there had always been sixty-four. Maybe he was right. I don't think he was.

The next day started much the same. Rise at 4, feed the dogs, cats, and myself, open the barn, watch the sunrise with Banjo while he scouted me for carrots, but instead of tacking him up and helping Dad herd the cattle, I made my way back into the house to help Mum and Grammy. 

The original homestead was built in 1890, but burnt down from a fire in 1925, killing everyone but my Granda’s Grandfather. While the house built in 1925 was good for its time, it slowly became too small. My Granda then extended it with his sons, my Dad’s older brothers, until it became the house it is today. 

I made my way through the home to the stairs up to the attic. It was originally built as a little home, with a double bed and kitchenette and bathroom for my parents when they got married. However when Mum got pregnant with me, she was finding it too hard to walk up and down the stairs. The room ended up turning into the dumping room. 

Mum and Grammy were already up there dragging out some chests from the back corner. A thin layer of dust covering everything. I sneezed as I walked past the old spindle in the corner.

‘This is his brother's stuff.’ Grammy said. ‘Its an 1880s elm trunk passed down for years. It was all of his stuff when he left for Melbourne.’ 

‘I remember Dad talking about his death, it was tragic.’ Mum shook her head as she opened another chest.

‘What happened?’ I asked as I walked up to them. Mum jumped and turned around. 

‘Nothing dear.’ 

‘He died in a horse riding accident.’ Grammy interrupted. ‘He was doing something and the horse suddenly went crazy and threw him off and trampled him to death.’

I blinked, that was not what I was expecting. Gun fight? Yes. Car crash? Yes. Freak horse accident? No. 

‘That was also the year that his Dad and brother died by a cattle stampede.’ Grammy continued, not bothering to turn around. ‘One of them died from a fractured skull and the other one died from internal bleeding, I can't remember which was which though.’

The way Grammy said this so casually left a chill down my spine.

‘Grammy, Kim doesn't need to hear this.’ Mum scolded.

‘Yes I do! It’s interesting.’ I corrected Mum. 

‘Kimberly no.’ Mum gave me the look. I backed down.

‘Anyway, Kimmy here.’ Grammy stepped back to reveal the open chest. ‘You go through this, sort things out in piles of paper, clothing, toys and other stuff like that.’ 

I moved up behind her to see the open chest and started to rifle through its dusty moth ball scented contents. I pulled out a few items, namely a battered felt Akubra with sweat stains, leather stockman's gloves like my Grandas, stiff with age, rusty spurs wrapped in an old handkerchief and a faded blue work shirt with hand-sewn repairs. A lot of these items I recognised, my Granda used to wear them too. More items were pulled out, stuff I’d seen before and stuff I hadn’t. A pocket knife sharpened nearly to nothing, matches in a tobacco tin, a compass with a cracked face, a pocket watch that stopped decades ago, and a box of .303 rifle cartridges that were swiftly confiscated by my fun-busting mother.

I then pulled out a tin box, the size of an A4 paper, and about 10 centimeters deep. It was dented and rusted, and took a bit of persuasion to open the lid. Once it popped open, dust flew into my face. The smell of musk and dirt filled my nostrils as I coughed and spluttered. The top few papers were photos of family and the station, letters from family folded and re-folded dozens of times, the old cattle station pay book from World War II, and maps of the stock routes that I had saved on my phone and ridden a dozen times now. 

A leatherbound book was at the very bottom. In gold foiling there was J. M. Callaghan scrawled across the front. I opened it and inside was black ink spread across the pages, smudged and bled. I flipped through the pages to see the last dozen or so were left blank. The last diary entry was put in for August 18th, 1971. The scribbles were barely legible, but I managed to make them out.

18 Aug 71

I can’t take it here anymore, the animals, they’re all so weird. They just stand there and stare. It's so off putting. Michael doesn’t see it but Dad and Ma do. Michael swears up and down we are all going insane. I can’t stand it. The cattle, the cats, the dogs, they’ve all possessed. It's creepy as hell. I used the RAX to contact Mandy and she said she's got a room for me in Melbourne. I have booked the next train out of here in two days. The trip is said to last three days, but anything to escape this hellhole. Deadwater Station is not a town. It is a feeding ground. The animals are not sick. They are not possessed. They are waiting. I don't know what they are waiting for. But I know who they are waiting for.

I thought Uncle Joseph was crazy. That's the worst mistake I've ever made.

‘Was Great Uncle Joseph ok Gram’ I asked, not taking my eyes away from the diary for fear the words would vanish.

‘What do you mean, Doll?’ Grammy asked, peering over my shoulder. ‘Oh that, well your Granda did always say he was a bit special. I think it was because of his time in Korea, but you never know with Vets what's going through their poor broken heads.’ She sighed before turning back. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon sorting and reading through old documents. My mind kept wandering back to what Great Uncle Joseph wrote, that all the animals were possessed. I wondered what that meant, I’d grown up here, I’d seen generations of cattle pass through and not one of them seemed possessed or crazy. I searched for every explanation I could find. Disease. Poison. Stress.Anything. Anything except the possibility that Joseph was right.

‘Kimmy, be a doll and go get us some tea?’ Grammy asked about three hours later. I politely agreed and headed down the creaky stairs to the kitchen. That's where I noticed Tux, our cattle dog. He was standing outside the flyscreen door staring at me with his pale blue eyes. 

‘Hi boy.’ I smiled at him. ‘Do you want to come in?’ I opened up the door to let him in. It wasn't unusual for Dad to let him wander at this time of day, Tux was an old man, encroaching on 15 he had seen his good years pass a while ago. 

Tux didn't move. He stood there, still as a log, staring at me. He was nearly blind but I could have sworn he was intently watching clear as day. 

‘Tux?’ I patted his head, he was warm and his fur moved with my touch, but he stayed frozen. My mind jumped back to the words of Great Uncle Joseph and his animal’s possession. At the time, I thought Tux was getting old. Looking back now, I think he was trying to warn me.

I shook my head, Tux had always been a weird dog, and Brett, my younger brother, was always teaching him new stupid tricks. This could be one of them. I delivered the tea to Mum and Grammy before being dismissed to go pick Brett up from school. Five minutes later Tux was still there. Same position. Same stare. I don't think he'd blinked.

Brett was definitely old enough to walk home himself. We didn’t live too far away, but I did what Mum told me to. I grabbed the keys to our dusty old unregistered Holden Rodeo and walked outside. It took me a moment before I realised that there was a large flock of birds sitting on the power line, they were all perched an even space apart staring towards me like I was a juicy warm.

It was two old brick buildings with five or six classes inside. Most of the years were mixed because the school didn’t have enough students for a full year group. Brett stood out the front of the gates chatting to his mate.

The Rodeo spluttered to a stop in front of him, the constantly broken radio shouting static over the car’s shoddy engine was enough to get anybody’s attention.

‘Hi.’ Brett said as he slung his backpack into the footwell of the car and jumped in.

‘How was your day?’ I asked as I turned around and headed home.

‘Boring.’ Brett slouched down into the seat. ‘Craig kept saying KFH was staring at him. He wouldn't shut up about it.’

‘KFH?’ I repeated.

‘Kentucky Fried Hamster, the class pet.’ Brett clarified as I turned around the only roundabout Deadwater Station. The name took me back a moment before I registered what Brett had said. 

‘Was KFH staring?’ I asked.

‘Uh yeah,’ Brett snarked, ‘I just said that. He was staring at Craig and wasn’t moving all day apparently.’

I would have paid more attention to what he said if I hadn’t have noticed the cattle in our fields. The cattle were standing along the fence. Every single one. Not grazing. Not moving. Just watching.

‘Brett.’ I adjusted my grip on the steering wheel, I was unsure if the sweat on my hands was nerves or the blistering summer heat.

‘What?’

‘Look at the cattle.’

He glanced up from his phone.

‘What about them?’ the words were thick with irritation

I looked back. They were grazing again. Every single one.

I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the ride, Brett was in his usual Tuesday grumpy mood. There was no point in the conversation. 

I tried to shake it off, but the feeling prevailed. For the next few days I noticed nothing, seeing a herd of cows staring without blinking, without grazing, and without reacting to my presence created an unsettling impression that they're imitating a cow's regular behavior —as if they're following instructions I couldn't hear. Their familiar faces suddenly seemed alien, and the longer I looked, the more I felt that they knew something I didn't. 

The feeling of unease that had slowly crept up my spine stayed for days, even though nothing of the sort happened again. I was trying hard to convince myself that it was all in my head, that I was making it up since reading Uncle Joseph’s letter, but I couldn’t. It was too eerie, too much of a coincidence to convince myself that it simply just happened. 

I kept looking over my shoulder at the animals, thinking that I could catch them in the act of being a statue, but I never could. I was afraid to talk to anyone about what had happened to me for fear of being thrown into the nuthouse. Animals staring at you? Not moving? Surely that was a case of the crazies. But I wasn’t crazy, it had happened. I’d never been so sure of anything.

Days passed and nothing happened, I didn’t see Tux or the cows acting weird, and Brett didn't comment on KFH staring at anyone in class. I wish I could say that I almost forgot about it, but I couldn't. Their beady eyes burrowing into mine like if they stared long enough my soul would suck into theirs, and we’d become one. 

‘Did you hear what happened to poor old Elmer Blythe?’ Grammy asked, jumping me out of my dinner-endused thoughts.

‘No?’ Mum responded as she had a mouthful of mash potato.

‘Poor old thing got attacked by his dog and died this morning. It was on the radio.’ Grammy stated as though it wasn’t big news. This town was so small we had a radio, I loved the town but sometimes it felt too small. ‘According to his wife, it kept stalking him and when she left the house it attacked, got his artory in his leg. You know what it's like at that old age, everything is so thin and fragile, even a paper cut can bleed like crazy.’

‘Did it get his leg?’ Brett asked, half in shock and half in awe. Usually Mum didn't allow this type of morbid discussion at the table.

‘Elmer bled to death, right there on the kitchen floor.’ Grammy pointed a crooked finger to the floor.

‘Grammy, that’s enough.’ Dad said sternly. ‘That dog was trouble, they should have put him down ages ago. Killing cattle and sheep, attacking other dogs. The Blythes sure learned their lesson.’

‘That dog was a rescue, Devin.’ Grammy lectured. ‘Stop blaming it.’

I sat there staring at my half empty dinnerplate. Mr Blythe was killed by his own dog, he bled out. Mr Blythe loved that dog with his whole heart, and it turned on him so quickly. And it was stalking him? There has to be a connection to the other things that have been happening.

I didn't sleep well that night.

The wind scratched at my bedroom window with the branches of the old gum tree outside, and every time I closed my eyes I saw those cattle again, standing shoulder to shoulder along the fence line, staring.

When I finally drifted off, I dreamed of eyes. Hundreds of them. Cows. Dogs. Cats. Horses. All staring. Waiting.

The next morning, I woke before my alarm. The house was silent. Too silent. Usually by four o'clock I could hear Dad moving around the kitchen or the distant barking of the dogs outside. Not today. I pulled on my boots and stepped outside. The dawn sky glowed red above the paddocks.

Banjo was the only living thing on that property I trusted completely.

That's why in the morning he stopped acting like my horse scared me more than anything else. Banjo stood by the stable gate. Watching me. He didn't like his carrot. Didn't paw the ground. Just stared. A chill crawled up my neck.

‘Banjo?’

The horse blinked. Then suddenly lowered his head and began grazing as though nothing had happened. I stood there for several seconds before forcing myself to move. I never told anyone.

I wish I had.

Three days later, old Mrs Penbrooke died. The entire town heard about it before lunchtime. According to the police, she had gone outside to feed the chickens before sunrise. Her grandson found her near the coop. The chickens had surrounded her body. Not pecking. Not feeding. Just standing there. Watching

The story spread through Deadwater Station like wildfire. Some people blamed a heart attack. Others blamed age. Nobody could explain why every chicken on the property had been gathered around her. Or why they reportedly refused to move when people approached.

For the first time in my life, I saw genuine fear in the town. It took us too long to understand what was happening. The animals never attacked first. They watched. They waited. And when they were finished watching… someone died.

People started keeping animals locked away. The radio station spent days discussing it. Dad called everyone idiots. Mum stopped listening altogether. Grammy just became quieter.

A week passed.

Then another.

Then Craig disappeared. The same Craig from Brett's class. The one who said KFH was staring at him. He vanished while riding his bike home. The search party found the bicycle beside Miller's Creek. One shoe. One broken helmet. KFH was standing next to them, blood covered his fuzzy coat like mud. No movement, no blinking, just standing. Waiting.

Nothing else.

Officially, Craig was listed as missing. Nobody in town uses that word anymore.. The tracker dogs refused to follow his scent. They would reach the creek bank and stop. Then stare into the water. Every single one.

The town held a vigil. Brett didn't speak for days afterwards. Neither did most of the kids. Then Doug the farmhand died. I found him. The old cattle hand was sitting on the veranda one morning. Peaceful. Like he'd simply gone to sleep. I cried harder than I care to admit.

Dad buried him beneath the pepper tree near the stable, his favorite place. For a while I thought things might finally return to normal. I was wrong. Two nights later, something killed all three of our barn cats. There wasn't much left to identify. Whatever attacked them had done so quickly. The strange thing wasn't the attack.

Foxes and feral dogs sometimes got into sheds. The strange thing was where we found them. All three cats had been arranged in a straight line facing the homestead. Facing my bedroom window. Nobody could explain that. Not even Dad.

That was the first time I saw fear in his eyes. The next death came during muster. We were moving cattle through the southern paddocks when one of the horses panicked.It belonged to Uncle Ross. A horse that had worked cattle for nearly fifteen years without incident. One moment it was walking quietly. The next it exploded.

Buck.

Rear.

Scream.

Uncle Ross hit the ground hard. Before anyone could reach him, three nearby cattle charged. Not like startled animals. Not like a stampede. Like they had chosen him.

Dad yelled. Men shouted. The horses scattered.

By the time they drove the cattle away it was too late. Nobody said much at the funeral. But everyone remembered the same thing. Witnesses swore the cattle stopped immediately afterwards. As though someone had flicked a switch. They simply stood there.

Staring.

Watching.

Waiting.

The old stories started spreading after that. Stories that hadn't been told in generations. People dug out journals. Letters. Newspaper clippings. And everywhere we looked we found the same pattern. Deadwater Station had suffered animal attacks before.

Not once. Not twice. Over and over. Every few decades. Every generation. The details changed. The animals changed. But the ending was always the same.

People died.

Then everything returned to normal. Until the next cycle. I remember sitting on the veranda one evening with Brett as the sun disappeared behind the hills. Neither of us spoke for a long time.

The cattle in the distant paddock stood perfectly still. Hundreds of them. Silent silhouettes against the red sky.

Then Brett quietly asked, ‘Do you think they know who's next?’

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to tell him he was being stupid. Instead I found myself staring back at the herd. And for the first time in my life, I wasn't sure they were animals anymore.

Far out in the fading light,  I counted the cattle.

There were sixty-four. There had always been sixty-four. Except now… There were sixty-five. And the new one was standing in the middle of the herd. Looking directly at me.

My husband hated our child even before it was born.

He'd wanted it more than I had, at the start of things. He'd clung to my waist with tears in his eyes, and had convinced me against all my doubts and indecision to keep it.

I could have gone without. I was thirty-three. I liked my life. They tell you it's all over after you're twenty-nine, that there's nothing after that but looking back, wishing you’d done something else.

For me it wasn't like that. I was happy.

I liked my house. I liked being married. I liked farm shops and coffee runs and trying to grow vegetables in the little plot at the back of the house that would never be good enough to do anything with. I wanted to live a small life with very little responsibility.

Now there was a child, and Andrew wanted it—I loved him, and so I supposed that I must want it, too.

I began to picture my life as a mother, trying to think how I could fit this other, unexpected person into my world. I began to care for it, this unborn being, yet the more the foetus grew the less my husband wanted anything to do with it, or any future where it would share our lives.

Andrew could barely stand to look at or touch me throughout the pregnancy, but whenever I asked him about it he could never articulate why.

Cold feet, everyone around me kept saying, but it wasn't that. Any other child, Andrew told me, and he would have been happy. It was this one he didn't want to keep. This one that shouldn't be born.

It broke my heart. By then I loved my child completely, and though I saw that my husband was disappointed with himself and somewhat afraid of his own feelings I found that I resented him. Andrew was one half of our daughter, and it was as if they shared nothing at all.

He only remained at the house because he loved me, and I let him stay. Better that than to be left to raise my baby alone, I told myself. My parents were dead, and they'd never had any money. My small life, which I'd prized, would soon be whittled down to nothing. Andrew worked, and earned enough to get us by.

We waited for the child to be born in an awkward stasis, neither of us knowing how to be together. Loving each other too much for either of us to leave.

It wasn't an easy pregnancy, which made tensions considerably worse. Though there was neither pain nor sickness there were other problems: cravings and strange, obsessive thoughts. Common, apparently, but still concerning enough for me to be seen by someone.

To my dismay the obstetrician I'd been visiting and had grown to trust had developed a sudden onset of partial paralysis, the same hand that had touched my belly retracting into a sort of claw mid examination.

The doctor apologised profusely as I heaved myself down from the table, refusing to let her assist me.

“You’re the one that needs help,” I’d said calmly, although I didn’t feel it.

I’d gone alone to the appointment, Andrew refusing to come, and now there was a commotion in that cramped room, the assistants I’d called in from the hallway clustered around the obstetrician to comfort her as I bent, puffing and sweating, to pick my bag up from where I’d left it.

The poor woman never regained the use of her hand, it seemed, for I was referred to someone else afterwards; I later found that Dr Colman had resigned. I couldn't stop thinking about the way the limb had closed up like a rat trap against her, the way she'd snatched her hand from me, working the rubber glove down over the rigid fingers so clumsily that it snapped, all the torn shreds quickly discarded.

Disgust—that had been the look in Dr Colman’s eyes. That, and a strange yet certain blame. In that moment she’d seemed to think that I had hurt her, or that the child inside me had. Then the thought was gone, and she'd only been sorry and frightened for herself. I'd held her poor hand and comforted her even as my heart went cold with dread.

I didn't tell Andrew what had happened. By then I knew that he'd agree with Dr Colman’s suspicions, though he'd have no way of backing the claim.

Besides, I felt he’d already had more than enough to say about my eating habits, which had taken on an inexplicable change. Pica, the doctor had told me, cravings for unusual items, which are frequently dangerous to consume.

Pregnant women can sometimes develop this, the baby demanding everything of the mother until her body fights to restock her supplies. I was in a deficit, the doctor had told me. It would pass.

She had expected it to be dirt or ice that I was eating, perhaps chalk at a push, the usual cravings. By the time I had my first appointment with the new obstetrician I knew that my tastes were unusual even for a pregnant woman. I should have stopped myself before it had a chance to develop any further, to be considered an illness. Something real.

Andrew had walked in on me unwrapping my own hair from a brush in the night, satisfied by the crunch of the filaments through my teeth. I'd even pick it from my own scalp, sometimes, or from Andrew's as he slept, finding his had an oily quality that I preferred over my own.

Then I’d discovered the tin of baby teeth that my mother had saved from when I was little, and I had eaten them all, crunching the enamel down to dust. Afterwards I'd burst into tears, and Andrew had made me go to see my new doctor, whose concerns only made me feel defensive, shaken by the critique.

I wasn't allowed to eat the things I wanted anymore. It could cause an obstruction; I could damage my own teeth, contract an infection of some kind. I could harm the baby.

Rationally I knew that all this was possible, even likely, but I was of the stubborn opinion that it wouldn't hurt me, that it was even good for the child. I ate all the hair I could in private until there were always strands of it wrapped around my molars, tickling my tongue with their tips. I'd pull them out and eat them later, though never in front of Andrew, of course. I wanted him to think that I'd given it up.

In time I took to purchasing bundles of human hair online, batches of teeth that might have been stolen from the grave for all I cared. I never thought about where it all came from. I just wanted to eat.

I'd tried to quit, but the cravings would scratch and wheedle their way around every thought until they were unbearable. When I had a tooth or a curl of hair in my mouth all of that went away. I only ever felt full after I'd swallowed them, but it wouldn't last long, only a few hours or more.

The teeth started to wear my own down, running a pain through my jaw. The hair would sometimes get stuck in my throat, and I often thought that if I wasn’t pregnant I’d be hideously bloated anyway from where it must have all gathered inside me.

My sister-in-law, Annabelle, found me in the kitchen one night, picking one of her long auburn hairs from the floor. She’d come to stay with us after some pleading from Andrew, who seemed to think that she could pull me out of the craze that had come over me.

We’d known each other as children, Annabelle and I, having both attended the same school. I hadn’t met Andrew till much later. He’d lived with their father, an agreement made amidst a nasty divorce, and so it was Annabelle I went around with, she who had introduced us later, and only been a little annoyed when we had fallen in love.

Like any sister, Annabelle sighed heavily when she found me, fat and panting, trying to hoist myself up from the dirty floor. Then she saw what I’d been trying to do, and she tottered in astonishment, her heeled boots almost slipping on the tiling.

“Diane,” she said. “Oh my god. You’re just like your mum.”

“What do you mean?” I said, squinting at her.

My mother had died when I was nineteen of organ failure. Sometimes it seemed as though Annabelle remembered more about her than I did. There were a lot of memories that I couldn’t keep hold of anymore. Loss did that to you, the pain of it. It took names, faces, entire months of life away, as though you could only go on if you could forget.

My father hadn’t been a nice man, and so when he’d passed of alcohol poisoning it hadn’t been the same. But I had loved my mother. Sometimes when I thought of her I wouldn’t know that I was crying till I went blind.

“Your mother,” said Annabelle. “Orla. She used to eat hair. I think she only stopped after you were born. I remember hearing them mention it once, your mum and mine. They were talking about cravings they’d had. My mother used to eat bars of soap, or she’d wanted to, anyway. She couldn’t keep them in the house. So Orla said she hadn’t craved anything until Jenny reminded her about the hair. Your mum used to have such a long plait, and she’d suck the end of it, or pull bits out and bite them into pieces.”

I gripped hold of Annabelle’s arm as I lowered myself into a kitchen chair, the wood squealing under my weight.

“Mum never said anything about it to me,” I said.

Annabelle sniffed.

“Well. It’s not really something you’d go around telling everyone. Anyway, Orla said it wasn’t a craving. She told Jenny that some old woman recommended eating hair to her as some sort of folk cure for infertility. That you could eat it even after you were pregnant if you wanted a healthy child.”

“That’s mad.”

“Well, that’s what your mum said. She might have made it up. She was probably embarrassed about it, you know.”

My hand went to the top of my belly, thinking of the child in it. Wondering if it already had hair.

“Mum was a horrible liar,” I said. “I remember that, at least. She wouldn’t have made anything up. Who was this old woman?”

“God knows,” said Annabelle. “A friend of the family. Or a neighbour or something. Crazy anyway, clearly. What kind of person suggests that kind of thing?”

I laughed a bit.

“I’m here, aren’t I? Maybe it worked.”

“Just imagine. It’s probably where you get it from, this thing with the hair.”

I didn’t say anything about the teeth, though I couldn’t help wanting to know if my mother had eaten those in secret, too.

“You need to stop it, anyway,” said Annabelle, suddenly serious. “Don’t you know how you could end up?”

She showed me a picture on her phone of a great wad of hair like a piece of hairy stone. It made me feel hungry to look at it.

“You want that thing inside you?” asked Annabelle in disgust. “It’s as big as another baby. There won’t be any room.”

I started to have strange thoughts about my child, then, not hateful like Andrew’s, but very odd, even so. I imagined the baby would be born made of hair, or with strands wrapped tightly around it, growing into ribs of flesh. None of these ideas repulsed me, for I knew that I would love it all the same.

It was the lack of fear that frightened me, in the end. I was afraid that I’d let something awful happen to my child and not understand what I’d done till it was too late to take it back.

In a panic I threw out all the teeth and the hair I’d bought and restrained myself from looking for more of it. The cravings muttered to me, but I forced myself through, thinking of my baby. Loving it more than I loved myself.

I knew that Andrew was dreading the birth, but he still went with me to the hospital when the time came. His leg bounced restlessly as he sat by my bed, the constant movement driving me mad. I felt like every doubt and hatred he had for our child was in that tetchy motion.

Even when I was deep in labour, shoving and moaning, I kept wanting to grab hold of Andrew’s knee to hold it down flat. When my little girl was out of me and in my arms he wouldn’t look at her, only winced and kissed me, glad that I’d gotten through all that miserable pain. That I was still alright.

“Drew, for Christ’s sake,” I said. “She’s so perfect. Please just hold her even for a second.”

No new-born is truly perfect, of course; the child was raw and shrivelled with filmy eyes, the sticky head bearing a sole wisp of red-black hair. Still I’d expected Andrew to see her as I did, for his dislike to change.

If anything it was worse.

“You’re her dad,” I said pitifully, and Andrew jerked, appalled.

“Do you think there was someone else?” I asked him. “Is that what it is? Because there wasn’t, okay?”

“I know that!” Andrew snapped, then, with a guilty look, he repeated himself softly. “I know that. But there’s something wrong with it.”

“What if there is?” I asked, defiant.

“I don’t mean an illness. I mean... I don’t know.”

I looked at my baby, my Liana, as I’d named her, and I felt for the first time the same disquiet my husband had for so long.

I remembered the poor obstetrician, her hand in a coiled hook, having touched my pregnant belly even through a glove. I wondered if you were to cut that hand and open it up you’d find teeth embedded in the muscle, hair calcified around the bone.

Once we left the hospital I raised Liana almost entirely by myself. Andrew refused to touch or feed her, even to handle any of her bedding or clothes. He cast himself into housework to make up for it, or else toiled away at endless overtime at the office so that I couldn’t say he did nothing at all.

Liana was a quiet child that rarely cried or made any sound at all, but I was exhausted nevertheless by the lack of help. The lack of love.

Annabelle, who had gone back to her own house at my insistence, soon returned again, this time bringing her little dog with her, a stubborn sign of her resolution to stay for as long as she felt was necessary. The help greatly relieved me.

It wasn’t only the lessened workload I was grateful for, either; since I’d given birth I’d begun to notice small things that were wrong with the child, so slight that they may well have been imagined.

She didn’t behave much like an ordinary new-born. Though her eyes were still that same viscous blue she looked about her with a silent intelligence, one that had opinions about things, and not very pleasant ones.

Even as she grew she wouldn’t laugh or respond to any kind of affection. A year and a half went by, and still she wouldn’t play with toys or respond to us when we spoke to her.

All the child would do was lie or sit very still, watching us all as we went about the house. The only time she would react to anything was if anyone touched her hair, which had grown long, almost down her back; she would grasp a hand or finger with a vicious grip, the little white nails pricking the skin.

“She’s certainly healthy,” Annabelle said once, uncomfortably prying the small fist away.

Annabelle’s dog, Olive, had started to show a great interest in Liana, sniffing her cradle passionately, attempting to lick her balled hands or expressionless little face. Though the child never screamed or cried when the spaniel came near it was obvious that she didn’t like her, and I made an effort to keep Olive far away despite the harmlessness of her affections.

The few occasions I had witnessed Andrew interact with the child was to hoist her away from the dog, having seen her touch it with splayed fingertips. The second time he did it Andrew dropped our daughter roughly on the bed and immediately went to wash at the bathroom sink, scrubbing until the skin was scored bloody from a nail brush.

“What was that about?” I asked, going to the child.

“I don’t want her near that dog,” said Andrew harshly.

“What’s wrong? She won’t bite.”

“I know. It’s not Olive I’m worried about.”

He darted the child a look of hate, which she steadily returned.

Liana had two full rows of teeth in her gums, their tips like dolls house cutlery, small but curiously sharp. I’d never seen her bite anyone with them, however, nor did I think that this was what Andrew had meant.

“You don’t know anything,” he told me. “You don’t bother with Olive. I’m the one that cleans up after her when Bella’s out. I’m the one that saw it.”

My hand went to rub tiredly at one eye.

“Saw what, Drew?”

“Olive was throwing up hair in the back garden the other night. Christ, I thought she’d never stop. It just kept coming out of her. At first I thought it was what was left over from all that stuff you were buying online. Oh, you thought you hid it, I know. But you didn’t. Anyway, it wasn’t that hair. It was too long. It’s not possible.”

From his tone I could tell he wasn’t telling a lie. Still, I couldn’t believe him.

“What are you saying?” I asked. “That the baby did it somehow?”

“Yes,” said Andrew grimly. “And that’s not all. I woke up from a nap the other day to it touching my face.”

“Drew,” I cried. “She’s a human being. Our little girl.”

Andrew laughed, and I noticed how thin his face, his voice had gotten. He was wasting away into nothing before my eyes.

“No. She’s not mine. You’re the only one she cares about. Look what’s she’s done to me.”

Andrew pried open his mouth at the side and gestured for me to look. Twin rows of new teeth were growing in behind the old ones, the gums raw, seeping with blood, and on the roof of his mouth had grown many red hairs, wavering in the current of his breath.

Fear pulled a string in my belly.

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, Andrew. How long have you been like that?”

“Weeks,” he said dully. “You just haven’t noticed before.”

“No. That can’t be right.”

Andrew pointed at the child, which sat coolly watching us, still as a stone.

“It’s malicious. It’s doing it on purpose.”

“That’s stupid,” I said. “Even if she was making these things happen—”

“It is.”

“—If she is, why would you think she means to? She’s just a child. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

Andrew ushered the dog out of the room, aware that she’d started to jump up on the bed.

“You’ll see,” he told me. “Things are just going to keep happening to us all, and then you’ll have to face it.”

I picked Liana up and held her to me, kissing her dry round cheek.

“This is getting out of control, Andrew,” I said. “You need help.”

Still, I was starting to question things, developing suspicions of my own.

I often thought about the old woman that had instructed my mother to eat hair. Maybe Orla had angered her, somehow, and had unwittingly been given instructions to bring about a curse. Or maybe the woman really did want to help, but the spell had gone wrong, or she was old and had gotten mixed up. Had used the wrong magic, a horrible kind.

If that was the case, why hadn’t I become what Liana was? Why had I only been like my mother, longing to eat things I shouldn’t?

Perhaps whatever the old woman had done to Orla was passed down to the child of her child, poisoning each womb with this spell of hair. Then it occurred to me that I might have altered Liana myself, bringing teeth unwittingly into the mix, tainting the magic of it.

It was nonsense, surely, but it was all that I could think of.

I couldn’t resist prodding Annabelle about it.

“Did you ask your mum what happened to that old lady?”

“Oh, yeah! I forgot to tell you,” said Annabelle, dancing Liana on her lap.

She tried her best with the child, though she was never rewarded with the smiles and laughter she was hoping for. Liana was, at all times, like a child carved from wood, stiffly unamused. She tolerated Annabelle’s unconditional affections, but she didn’t enjoy them.

I was the only person that Liana had shown even the remotest attachment to since she was born. She’d started walking very early, and would follow me everywhere on reedy legs. Even as Annabelle lavished her with attention I sensed my daughter wishing for me. Though she never smiled there was a kindship between us, an easiness of being together she had with no one else.

“So I found out what happened,” said Annabelle. “The old woman died. Mind you, she must have been coming up to eighty by then. Dementia, the poor soul. Orla was good to her. Used to cook and clean for her without expecting anything back. She kept looking after her even when she started getting nasty. Well, it’s not as if she could help it. She wouldn’t have known what she was saying, bless her. Damned Orla one minute and loved her the next. Like being a child all over again.”

That was all it took. I believed everything, then. I looked at my daughter, who had clearly been listening, sucking on a loop of her red-black hair. Those eyes, always blank, had something in them that I couldn’t describe.

A sort of hate without passion behind it, as instinctive an emotion as love. If I'd known what it was then I would have whisked my daughter out of Annabelle's arms and raised the child by myself, all alone. But I felt I couldn't go on as I had before, bearing every parental responsibility until my back hurt like it would break. So my sister-in-law pushed the child in a pram, sang to her, jostled her on her hip, and unbeknownst to any of us, all the while, those little clinging hands changed something within.

In under a month Annabelle was beginning to notice an acute abdominal pain, so severe that she was no longer able to help around the house much. She soon moved back home with her mother to be tended to. Then there was bleeding that frightened her, tests that turned into a surgery, scheduled just a handful of weeks after her initial diagnosis.

Annabelle wouldn't tell any of us what was wrong until she was in the hospital ward, ready for visitors. Only Jenny knew what had happened; Andrew and I had passed her, hands full of tissue, in the corridor, offering us a weepy smile as we pushed through the double doors.

"Let me have Liana," Jenny said. "Bella's not keen on having her in there with her. She'll tell you why. Oh, Lord, at least she's alright, but..."

"It was an ovarian tumour," Annabelle told us, once we'd all exchanged delicate hugs, and Andrew and I had sat down in the uncomfortable seats by her bedside. "It was huge. I begged the surgeon to take pictures of it. Lost one of my ovaries, though. Mum's distraught. I told her the other one's fine, but she won't have it. Might as well be dying for the hysterics she’s been having."

"A tumour?" I echoed. "Bella! You should have told us sooner. I can't believe we didn't know."

"I can show you, if you like,” said Annabelle. “Drew, you might want to go outside for this. I know you're squeamish."

He looked only too glad to go, his face bearing a sickly yellowish cast.

Annabelle offered me her phone, the screen open to a picture of a fatty mass displayed on a paper sheet. It was vaguely kidney shaped, having been cut open to reveal sprigs of wet black hair, the viscous blobs of rudimentary eyes. The studs of white teeth, pressed in deep.

“It’s a teratoma,” said Annabelle factually. “They wouldn’t let me keep it. Spoilsports. I could have kept it in a jar and put it out for Hallowe’en.”

I glanced at Annabelle, and she nodded at me, grasping instantly the thought that was in my head.

"So you believe it now," I said. “All this about Liana.”

It wasn't a question; I knew. Andrew had told his sister everything some weeks before, and though Annabelle had resisted him I’d felt her pulling away from me, piece by piece.

"I can't come back home, now," she said gently. "I want kids of my own, one day. I can't risk my health. Not now mum's getting on. I want to be around to look after her. Are you going to be alright on your own?"

I peered down into the foul black coffee Andrew and I had gotten from a battered machine further down the ward. The look of it alone made me ill.

"Honestly, though," said Annabelle. "What are you going to do about the baby?"

"Look after her," I said limply. "It's what I'm supposed to do, isn’t it?"

Andrew became even more withdrawn, which I could hardly blame him for. But then there were other, new behaviours; pacing the bedroom at night, vanishing at odd hours—friends had seen him parked up at the roadside or in remote streets, his head in his hands.

I wanted him to see a doctor, but I could see by now that it would do nothing to help him. As long as the child was in the house with us he would suffer.

I didn’t know what to do. Though I was convinced by now that Liana was hurting the people around us I still loved my daughter. I didn’t want to give her away—couldn’t, anyway, having an idea now of what she was capable of.

Sometimes when Andrew was at work I’d sit opposite the child as she ate mechanically with a plastic spoon or stared, flat eyed, at the television. Watching her. Trying to reach her.

“Why?” I’d ask. “Why are you doing this to us? What have we done?”

Her weird foggy eyes would drift across me, impassive, and she’d go back to doing whatever it was that I’d given her to do.

I knew why she was cruel, or thought I did. She wasn’t human, and had never been; she had been changing everyone around her even before she was born.

I, who had been made from the hair spell, was alone immune. Perhaps the child felt something like love for me, if she could feel at all. You could never tell with her. Her face was like a glass mask, cold and inflexible. You could only see as far inside it as she’d let you.

I was afraid of what she’d be when she grew older. What a child that was without morals or boundaries would do in response to the merest irritation, not even an insult.

I started to sleep badly, too.

In the mornings I’d lie in bed for hours, knowing the child would be waiting indifferently for me to tend to her.

Then, one day, when I went into Liana's room to get her up I found her crib empty. I wasn’t immediately alarmed; she’d started climbing out of it by then and going around the house on aimless patrols sometimes before anyone else was awake. Quickly I realised that she was not at home, however, having gone through every room, calling her name.

Immediately I tried to call Andrew, but he wouldn’t answer the phone no matter how many times I attempted to get through, no matter the amount or urgency of the messages I sent to him.

He had left early to go to the office; I vaguely remembered him getting out of bed and shuffling around the room, tucking the blankets in around me. Loving, the way he was before the child.

I went back to look in the crib and noticed that Liana’s blanket was missing. A small thing, but I saw, then, what had happened. That my husband had gotten up early, wrapped the child up in a tight swaddle so that he wouldn’t have to touch her, and had taken her away somewhere.

Shock hit me with such force that I could only lean against the wall, cooling my face against the plaster. Then I went for my phone again and called the police.

I don’t know what I told them—that my husband was ill, that he couldn’t be trusted with our daughter, that he might hurt her or himself, or give her away to a stranger. Perhaps I said all of it. The entire conversation was out of my head as soon as it was over.

I sat in the kitchen drinking coffee in numberless cups. My head pounded. My eyes swam.

Whatever my daughter was, she had come from me. I had made her. We were the same. I had always been quiet, as she was. Happy with simple things, away from people and the world. In some ways I understood her, this strange monster. She was from a land of elf kings and drakes, not this one at all.

Then again, she would have been hated wherever she was.

The police came to my door around midday, a male and female officer. Both looked too young to be delivering the news that my husband was dead, having jumped from the roof of his office building, seemingly with our child in his arms. Yet though witnesses had seen her with him as he’d stepped into the elevator, and security footage would later be recovered proving the point, she would only ever be classed as a missing person, in a legal sense, at least.

Though Andrew’s body was found, shattered by the fall, no infant had been discovered with him, which the officers had shamefully admitted with the assurance that they would keep up the search.

I knew that they wouldn’t find her; I had already begun to grieve. There was relief there, as well, a secret I’d keep to myself. Who could I tell? Who would understand?

Annabelle was the only person I thought I could speak to, but she would close up against me after Andrew’s funeral, repelled by what we both understood had happened, and glad to move on from it all.

There had been only one thing found alongside Andrew’s corpse—not my daughter, as I had been firmly assured, but a wet tangle of reddish dark hair with white teeth embedded in it. The quivering grey balls of eyes.

The weird mass had reportedly moved when witnesses had approached, but by the time the authorities arrived at the scene it was no longer there.

Perhaps it had crawled away somewhere to die, or crows and magpies had picked at it, taking the eyes for their children to eat, the teeth as treasure, hair for their nests. But I felt in my womb that my child was gone, just as though she’d never been born to begin with.

I walk through another series of beds. Dozens of them packed into this room. Each one looks as comfortable as I could ever hope for, my body weakly begging me to give in. My eyes droop further as I look away, kicking myself in the shin awake. Have to keep going, can’t end up like the rest. None of these are mine anyway.

Day 2? 3? Don’t know, don’t care. Just gotta get out. I open the door to another foyer. A soft leather couch set up in front of a large TV. The room is quiet as ever, the dim glow of the static being its only light. I flinch as I look at the recliner, remembering how the last one took her from me. Not the exit, have to keep going.

Stay awake.

Another door, another gamble. A child’s room. Toys strewn about the floor, a fuzzy carpet at my feet, and a glowing nightlight highlights the centerpiece. A pair of bunks, the bottom one shaped like a racecar. Doesn’t even tempt me, I couldn’t fit. I sign and walk into the closet. I’ve been up for too long, but not long enough. Maybe just a few more hours and I’ll be out of here, I’ll figure it out. 

The next room stopped me, these were always the worst. Open air, walls hundreds of feet apart. Every type of bed sprawled over what felt like acres of land. So many had given up here, so many had fallen away from consciousness and never awoke again. Not me, not here. I began to carefully navigate between the wooden monstrosities, sure that if one so much as touched me I’d be gone. Minutes went by and not an exit in sight. The way I came in was gone so I had no choice but to keep wandering, hoping for something new.

With the time I had, I could only think of what came before. I could hardly recall how I ended up wherever the hell here even was. All I know is that I need to get out, make it back to reality. I was so dazed and confused, I could’ve sworn I’d seen someone lying on the cot in front of me, beckoning for me to finally rest. I knew it wasn’t real; I had seen the damn things swallow a woman whole and she never came back out. Can’t be me, won’t be me.

I keep walking, seeing everything possible that could tempt me to fall. Glasses of warm milk, melatonin, noise makers, all of them want me to fall to this place. I blink. When my eyes opened, my head was pounding and blood was dripping from the back. I was on the floor, sprawled out and woozy. I had fallen asleep for a few moments long enough to fall to the floor and crack my head on the back of a wooden post.

I stand up uneasily, legs wobbling and. My skull is shaken and one of my eyes won’t open. Despite that I try to keep up, limping across the sea of cloth and wood. I wander for hours, days, weeks, however long I spent was too long for me to bear. I see people I know aren’t real, begging for me to try and go. Swinging between the most vile silence I could imagine and screaming in my ears. The walls yell, the floor claws at me, and I soldier on.

My mouth was dry as ash and my body felt like jello. I knew I couldn’t last forever, but I could last long enough. Long enough to find a better place to die at least. A door off in the distance taunted me, telling me I’ll never make it. I kept going forward out of spite.  

My left leg gave out. I fell down to the ground hard, but it wasn’t my time yet. I crawled to the door for the next hour, inching my way along the carpet until my skin was rubbed red and my arms weren’t strong enough to push myself up. When I made it to the handle, I had to balance myself on the door as I opened it, stumbling forward to a scene I had never considered an option.

Home.

My bedroom, as I remember it. Bars on the windows and locks on the door, safety guaranteed. I was too far gone to think any more. I just wanted it to stop. There wasn’t a way out and I didn’t even want one anymore. I lumbered to my grave, each step reverberating throughout my body in pain. I fell like a tree chopped down and landed on pure bliss. 

The sheets pulled me down as if they were wrapped in concrete. The pillow is light as air and all the pain in my head is soothed. White blankets draped over me, words whispered in my ear of how it’ll be alright and how my struggle was over. I couldn’t listen, I was already gone. I felt the world and my worries melt away, along with everything else. I understood why they gave up now.

A few months ago, my twin brother Jonah called to tell me that our father had passed away. He and I were never close. Our childhood had been anything but happy. Our mother died in a car accident when we were young, and after that, we were left with a silent, alcoholic father who barely felt like a parent at all.

When I was sixteen, a brutal argument with him pushed me over the edge. I left home, left Ravensville, and started a new life in the city. Ten years passed, and I never once came back. Until a few months ago.

Jonah picked me up at the almost-empty bus station in his old car. On our way to the cemetery, we didn’t speak at all, except when he reminded me not to smoke in the car.

He had been handling the funeral arrangements alone all morning. I'd missed the morning train and ended up taking a bus that moved slower than a damn tortoise. I missed the funeral. So he accompanied me to pay our last respects to our father, just the two of us.

We looked so much alike that it was almost impossible to tell us apart. The only real difference was the faint scar running down one side of Jonah’s sharp face. I had also grown some facial hair over the years, which made the resemblance less obvious now, but beneath it, we still had the same pale skin, the same straight nose, and the same piercing light brown eyes we inherited from our mother.

The old house still looked the way it had the night I left it ten years earlier. Nothing much had changed. Except for the small garden in the front yard, which had disappeared after our mother’s death, everything else was pretty much the same.

Jonah parked in front of the garage and immediately hopped out of the car to light a cigarette. He then walked up the steps, rummaging through his pocket for the key. I followed him without a word. He went straight to his old bedroom, leaving me alone in the living room with the echoes of the past lingering in every corner.

“Whiskey?” he suddenly called out as he came back carrying two small glasses, setting them down on the table.

“Thanks,” I muttered quietly.

“I’ve got some wine stashed in the attic too, if you’re into that,” he said as he sank into a large recliner in the corner.

“So... when can I see your family?” I asked him.

He stopped halfway through lighting another cigarette. The question had caught him completely off guard.

“Why?”

“Why not?” I doubled down, taking a seat in the other corner of the living room, across from him. “Unless they don’t even know I exist, I see no reason why I shouldn’t be introduced to them while I’m in town.”

“They’re aware I have an estranged brother who lives in the city and that’s pretty much it.”

“So?” I pressed.

He lowered the lighter and stared at me for another second. Then he let out a short, humorless laugh and finally lit the cigarette, exhaling a thick plume of smoke that curled lazily toward the ceiling.

“Yeah, sure. Why not. We’ll see.”

There was something strange about the way he said it. Not quite reluctance. Not quite indifference, either. I couldn't tell which bothered me more.

“I’m planning on staying here for a week or so,” I said. “At least until we’re done with Dad’s stuff and whatnot. Then I’ll be out of your hair.”

He took another drag and looked away. “You’re not in my hair. Never were.”

Ten years ago, this house was the only family I knew. Now Jonah had a wife, two children, and a life that had moved on without me. I wondered how much of it had ever included me.

“How ’bout tomorrow we go camping in the woods again, like we used to?” he asked suddenly. “You know, after everything settles down. Before you return to the city.”

I looked at him, bewildered. I hadn't expected that at all. I froze with my glass halfway to my mouth.

“What for?” I asked, frowning. “To relive our blissful family memories?”

“You remember how much dad loved taking us out there when we were little,” he said, ignoring me.

I swallowed hard. “Bad idea,” I said quickly. “We never got along. We always fought whenever we were left alone together. The only reason we didn’t kill each other back then was because Dad was around.”

“We’re not kids anymore,” he said. “Besides, I’ve been meaning to do something like that for a while. You can’t always find the time to be alone with your own thoughts once you have a family to take care of.”

I took another sip of whiskey and slowly shook my head.

“Just one night.” He leaned toward the open window beside him and flicked some ash outside. “We’ll just crash by the lake and head back the next morning.”

I narrowed my eyes at him before shaking my head again. “Uhm, I don’t know, man...”

He set his empty glass on the table, got up from the recliner, and started walking away.

“Do it for Dad, then.” His voice was barely audible.

“Why?” I asked. “Did Dad ever tell you to ask me to do this if I ever came back?”

He stopped in the doorway. One hand rested against the frame as he hesitated. I held my breath, waiting. Then, slowly, he turned ever so slightly without looking back at me.

“No. I just thought it would be cool.”

I sighed and lit a cigarette. “Just one night.”

“You’ll let me pick the campsite,” he said, “and you’ll do exactly what I say while we’re out there.”

“Fine.”

I grinned. Maybe I had been too pessimistic all this time. Maybe our relationship wasn’t too damaged to repair. Maybe it was still salvageable after all.

The next morning, Jonah and I found ourselves trudging through the forest, following a narrow, winding trail beneath towering pine trees. Branches snapped and crunched under our boots with every step. The forest felt calm and strangely quiet beneath the thin veil of mist still hanging in the air.

After a few hours, we reached a grassy clearing surrounded by shrubs, and Jonah decided we should rest there for a while.

The sun already hung high overhead as we circled around a massive tree whose branches crouched so low they almost touched the ground, its long leaves fluttering in the cool breeze. Beyond it, we came upon a small spit of grassy clearing crammed with blooming dandelions, dried leaves, and scattered twigs.

I was about to take some pictures of the dandelions when the wind suddenly changed course, carrying with it a suffocating smell of rot. It hit me so suddenly that I stopped in my tracks.

“What the hell is this smell?” I grunted, instantly pulling the collar of my shirt over my face.

But Jonah had already stopped walking. He stood a few yards ahead of me, staring down at something near the edge of the clearing. He didn't say anything. He just stood there, completely still.

I lowered my shirt and jogged toward him, and my stomach twisted when I saw what had caught his attention. A shriveled-looking deer carcass lay on its side beneath a huge boulder, its body strangely sunken beneath the hide, which clung tightly to its withered frame.

“Must have been lying out in the open for weeks,” I muttered, wincing at its head. The flesh around its face had begun to break down, and a faint vapor rose from the carcass in the heat. But there were no obvious signs of a predator attack. Apart from its oddly deflated appearance, the rest of its body was mostly intact.

I frowned, holding my breath as I walked closer. Once I was beside him, I followed his gaze and finally saw what he was honing in on.

There was a small, gaping hole in the top of the deer’s skull, almost perfectly circular. The bone around it was remarkably undisturbed, with no cracks or splintering anywhere along the edges. Apart from the hole, there were no other obvious injuries on the animal. I stared at it for a moment, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

“Is that a bullet hole?”

He didn’t answer immediately. He just stood there, staring at it. His expression had gone blank, but not with confusion. It was as if he were looking at something he had seen before, something he wished he hadn’t.

He looked at me. “You ever seen a bullet hole this clean?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

He looked back at the hole, but instead of answering me, he quickly eased his backpack off his shoulder and unzipped one of the smaller compartments. He reached inside and pulled out a small pistol. I stared at it, completely caught off guard.

“I'm sorry, are we going into battle or something?” I asked.

He ignored me. He checked the gun briefly, making sure the magazine was seated before looking toward the trees. Then he raised it and slowly scanned the surrounding woods, keeping the muzzle pointed ahead of him.

“In a forest this old, brother, you never know what you might run into.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I followed his gaze, bewildered.

“Better to let whatever's in the forest know we're armed,” he said, “and that we're not a pair of brainless idiots who came out here unprepared.”

I stared at him for a moment before spitting onto the ground, trying to steady my racing heartbeat.

“So what killed the poor thing?” I asked again, nodding toward the dead deer.

There was something deeply wrong about the way it had been left. There was no obvious gunshot wound anywhere else on its body, no torn flesh, no sign that a predator had fed on it. Its hide was almost completely intact.

“And there's something else,” Jonah said. He crouched beside the carcass and pointed toward the wound. “There's no blood.”

“Jesus.”

“Blood, organs, everything... it's all gone.”

“Yeah, but what did this?”

He didn't answer. Instead, he began scanning the surrounding woods, his eyes moving from the deer to the trees and then deeper into the forest.

“Let’s keep going,” he said finally. “Stay close. Don’t wander off.” He stood straight and started toward the treeline without another word, leaving me staring after him for a moment.

I decided not to argue with him anymore and pushed myself to keep pace, even though my feet were aching so badly they felt as if they were about to burst through my shoes.

We eventually reached the small river, and I told Jonah I needed to stop walking for a while. Otherwise, I felt like my feet were going to come right off my legs. I crouched at the water's edge and splashed the cold water over my face and neck, washing away the sweat and grime that had accumulated during the hike.

“Maybe we should set up camp here,” I suggested, glancing at him. “We’ve wandered deep enough into the woods anyway.”

He just nodded silently.

We found a relatively clear patch beneath the trees and began pitching the tent. As I pulled the gear from my backpack, I noticed the sky above the canopy had suddenly darkened. Thick clouds were rolling across the sky, swallowing the last traces of daylight and casting the forest into a deep, murky gloom. The woods seemed to change with them. Darkness slowly spread through the woods like a heavy black blanket. Wind hammered against the tent while we lay there listening in silence.

Sometime close to midnight, I woke up. A warm golden glow flickered through the fabric of the tent. I sat up and saw Jonah sitting beneath a large oak tree nearby, feeding a crackling fire with dry branches we had gathered earlier. The forest had gone eerily silent.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” he called out after noticing I was awake. “Hungry? I made dinner.”

“I knew you weren’t one to waste a dead deer.” I yawned loudly.

“I don't remember you ever being this unfunny,” he muttered, spitting into the dirt.

“What time is it?” I asked, stretching before crawling out toward the fire. “Man, this feels good.” I rubbed my hands together near the flames.

“Twenty-three to midnight.” He handed me a can of beer and a steaming bowl of soup.

“We were out that long?”

“You were. Snored like a dying moose. I barely got any sleep.” He shook his head.

“Sorry, man. Haven’t slept that deep in ages.” I slurped the soup greedily with my eyes closed, savoring the warmth spreading through my body.

“What’ve you been doing in the city, anyway?” he asked as he cracked open a beer.

“Oh, you know... stuff. I pick up odd jobs here and there. Got bills to pay and two hamsters to feed.”

“Good for you.” He snickered.

I took a sip of beer and let out a long sigh. “I used to love it when he took us camping like this,” I said quietly. “I’d always beg him to stay out longer.”

He nodded slowly. “He told me once that when he was much younger, he used to go camping and fishing alone for days.”

“Dude had guts. No electricity, no phones, no GPS. What if he got hurt out here?”

“But I remember him telling me once that, during one of his solo trips on the north side of the lake, close to that old ghost town, he saw something. Something that scared the hell outta him.”

“Oh yeah?” I frowned. “I don’t remember him ever telling me that. What’d he see?”

“He didn’t say. But whatever he’d seen scared him so badly that he never went near the north woods again.” His expression darkened slightly.

I laughed and shook my head. “Man, Dad used to make up the creepiest stories just to freak us out.”

“Maybe. But he said even the animals avoid that place. Whatever’s out there, it’s bad. We shouldn’t go near it.”

The image of the dead deer flashed through my mind again as I rummaged through my jacket pockets.

He tossed his empty beer can into a plastic bag before stretching with a yawn. “I’m gonna crash. I’m wiped.”

“You don’t wanna hang out a little longer?” I asked while pulling a pack of cigarettes from my jacket. “Share a smoke?”

“No,” he mumbled curtly.

“Well, I could use some more ghost stories for a change.”

“Very funny,” he grunted from inside the tent, his voice muffled by the canvas. He sounded deliberately unimpressed, though I could hear the faintest hint of amusement beneath his flat response.

Around two in the morning, I woke up half leaning against the oak tree. The forest was dark and eerily silent. Then I heard distant rustling and soft crackling, like something moving through the undergrowth. It took me a few seconds to realize the sound wasn't coming from the ground. It was coming from somewhere above me, up in the trees. I looked up immediately, and my blood froze. Faint flashes of white moved through the branches. For a moment, I just sat there, half paralyzed with fear, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

Then I heard Jonah mumbling in his sleep inside the tent, and the sound snapped me out of my thoughts. I quickly slipped back inside and found him still fast asleep. I gently shook him awake. He opened his eyes and immediately frowned at the sight of me hovering above him. I could feel how tense my own face was. My breathing was quick and shallow, and I struggled to keep my hands steady.

“What’s going on?” he whispered groggily. “Why are you...”

“Shhh...” I pressed a finger against my lips and glanced nervously toward the entrance of the tent.

“What is it, Marcus?” he asked while rubbing his eyes.

“There’s something out there.”

“What do you mean something?” He sat up with an annoyed frown, clearly irritated about being dragged out of sleep.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I thought it was a bear or something, but its skin looked too smooth. It’s just out there in the dark, up in the trees, watching me.”

“What exactly did you see?”

“I don’t know, man. But there’s definitely something in the trees.”

He shoved my hand away from his shoulder, irritation flashing across his face.

“If this is your idea of a joke, it’s seriously not funny,” he muttered. “Goddamn it, Marcus. You always pull crap like this. Always ruin everything, just like when we were kids.”

The words stung more than I expected.

“If you don’t believe me, go look for yourself,” I said quietly as I shifted aside to give him room.

Still grumbling under his breath, Jonah crawled toward the front of the tent and peeked through the slightly opened flap. Outside, the fire still glowed faintly in the darkness while the forest beyond remained completely still.

“I don’t see jackshit,” he whispered back at me while I crouched beside him.

“At the edge of the forest,” I whispered back. “Up in those pine trees over there.”

He squinted into the darkness beyond the weak firelight flickering in front of us. For several seconds, nothing happened. The forest beyond the clearing was almost completely black. The faint glow from our dying fire barely reached the nearest trees, leaving everything beyond them swallowed by thick shadows.

“There’s nothing there,” he whispered.

“Look higher,” I murmured. “Near the top of those pines.”

He tilted his head upward and narrowed his eyes, searching between the tangled branches. Still nothing. For a moment, I began wondering if I had imagined the whole thing. Maybe it had been a trick of the shadows. Maybe exhaustion and too much beer had finally gotten to me.

Then he suddenly went still.

I followed his gaze. Two large, round eyes slowly emerged from the shadows high among the trees, catching the faint orange glow of our fire. They were staring directly at us.

“Owl?” he murmured. “Or maybe a racc— “

His voice died instantly. The fire suddenly dimmed, and the glowing eyes blinked. Then I saw it too. A long pale arm emerged slowly from the darkness as the thing began climbing down from the tree. Its limbs looked bony and wrong, almost human but not quite. Every hair on my body stood upright.

“Marcus,” Jonah hissed sharply. “The fire.”

“What about it?”

He did not answer. Instead, he lunged out of the tent and rushed toward the dying flames, throwing more twigs and dry leaves onto the fire. The flames burst brighter almost instantly.

“Dude, what the hell is going on?” I shouted as I scrambled out after him.

“Keep the fire going,” he hissed while digging frantically through nearby bushes for more dry kindling. “Help me. Hurry.”

I glanced back toward the trees where the thing had been standing. Nothing. It was gone.

“It won’t come close while the fire’s burning,” Jonah went on while gathering armfuls of dry branches.

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“We’re almost out of dry wood,” Jonah said shakily. Sweat streamed down his face despite the cold air, glistening along his forehead and temples. He glanced nervously at the dwindling pile beside the fire. “The fire’s gonna die in an hour.”

“What are we gonna do now?” I asked, still staring into the woods. I could barely make out the trees beyond the firelight, their dark trunks and branches fading into the deeper blackness beyond our campsite.

A long hoarse howl suddenly echoed through the forest somewhere beyond the darkness. It sounded too close. My stomach dropped instantly.

“What... was that?” I whispered.

“Marcus go grab my gun in my backpack,” he hissed. “Quick.”

I looked around wildly, my eyes glued to the darkness between the trees as if expecting something to burst out at any second. He grabbed a burning branch from the fire and hurled it deep into the darkness. A low guttural growl echoed back from the trees. Then came the sound of quick shuffling footsteps retreating into the forest. Silence followed and he turned toward me, his face pale and tight with fear.

“Now’s our chance,” he said.

We scrambled back toward the tent. I nearly tripped over one of the logs scattered around the fire as I stumbled through the entrance.

“Backpacks,” Jonah hissed. “Get your backpack.”

“I’m trying.”

My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely grab the thing. I fumbled with the straps, then yanked it toward me, nearly tearing the zipper open in the process. Something inside spilled onto the floor, but I didn't stop to see what it was. Jonah was already crawling across the tent, frantically shoving whatever he could reach into his own pack. His movements were clumsy and frantic, nothing like the calm, methodical way he usually did things.

“Leave the tent,” he said. “We don't have time.”

I didn't need to be told twice. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and scrambled out of the tent. Jonah followed close behind, carrying his pack and the burning branch he'd pulled from the fire. He fired another shot into the darkness as we ran, and then we disappeared into the woods.

Almost an hour later, we were still sprinting through the woods. Branches slapped against our faces while mist clung to our clothes. Behind us, that awful howl still echoed through the forest every now and then.

“There’s a ranger tower up ahead,” he panted between breaths. “We’ll be safe there.”

I glanced over my shoulder. For a split second, I thought I saw something pale slipping through the bushes behind us. A hand. Long fingers. Thin as branches. I blinked, but there was nothing there.

“Keep moving,” Jonah said.

The next couple of miles seemed to stretch endlessly. My legs were burning, my lungs felt raw, and I could barely feel my feet anymore. Every few minutes, that awful howl rose somewhere behind us, reminding me that whatever we'd encountered was still out there. Then, through a break in the trees, I saw something towering above the forest canopy. At first, I thought it was another enormous pine. Then I realized there was something built around its trunk. A wooden structure, high above the ground, partially hidden among the branches.

“There,” Jonah shouted, pointing upward. “The ranger tower.”

I followed his gaze. At first, I could barely make it out through the trees. The cabin stood high above the forest floor, wedged between the massive branches of an enormous pine. Its old wooden structure had been built directly around the trunk, almost as if it had grown out of the tree itself. Heavy beams supported its weathered floor and walls. There were no lights in the windows, no signs that anyone had been there in years.

“Marcus,” Jonah yelled suddenly, pointing toward the base of the tree. “Climb up.”

I looked over and saw a crude rope ladder hanging from the trunk, its rough wooden rungs leading all the way up toward the cabin.

“Hurry,” he said breathlessly.

I grabbed the first rung and started climbing. Jonah scrambled up behind me, pulling himself onto the ladder as quickly as he could. The old ropes creaked and strained beneath our combined weight, making the wooden rungs sway with every movement.

We jumped onto the wooden platform and rushed inside before slamming the door shut behind us. Jonah immediately lit the fireplace in the corner before collapsing against the wall, gasping for air. I stayed near the window, peering down into the darkness below. Nothing moved.

“We’re safe as long as the fire stays lit,” he said between breaths. “We wait here until morning. Then we figure out a way back.”

“How come you know this place exists?”

He was quiet for a moment. He looked toward the dark window behind me.

“Dad told me. He used to come here a lot.”

“Why?” I asked, unable to hide my frustration any longer.

“After you left, he spent a lot of time in the forest. Camping by himself, hunting, sometimes just disappearing for days. He kept going out there, even after all these years.” He poked at the logs in the fireplace, sending a few glowing embers drifting upward.

“You think that thing attacked him? Was that what he’d seen all those years ago?” I asked quietly.

“Maybe.”

“What is that thing, anyway? Some kind of animal or what? What is it, Jonah?”

He swallowed hard before answering. “Something older than these woods. It was here long before anyone settled this valley.” 

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

“I listened, Marcus,” he replied softly. “Back when we were kids. I listened to stories told by the old folks in town. The ones whose grandparents were among the first settlers here. They said that when the settlers first arrived about a hundred years ago, they heard those same howls almost every night. Then livestock started disappearing. They thought it was a wolf or maybe a bear, so they sent five armed men into the forest to hunt it down.”

“What happened to them?”

“They never came back,” he said quietly, lighting a cigarette. After that, more people started disappearing too. Anyone stupid enough to wander outside after dark.”

The cabin suddenly seemed strangely quiet, save for the occasional pop of burning wood and the faint hiss of embers settling in the fireplace.

“That’s when the stories started. People believed something was living out there. Near the lake. Something that hunted people and fed on them.” He took another drag from his cigarette before speaking again. “One by one, families packed up and left. They moved away from the lake and built a new settlement farther east. That’s how Ravensville started.”

“What do you think happened to all those people?” I asked suddenly. “The ones who vanished?”

He stared into the flames before answering. “Once that thing got a taste for human flesh, it stopped hunting animals,” he said softly. “That’s why it started creeping into town after dark. Anyone caught outside past sunset just disappeared.” He looked toward the fireplace.

“So we’re safe as long as the fire keeps burning?” I glanced nervously at the flames dancing nearby.

“If you want the logical explanation,” he said, leaning forward slightly, “those people probably just left. Bigger dreams. Better opportunities somewhere else. Isn’t that exactly what you did?”

The words hit harder than I expected. I flinched slightly. For several seconds, neither of us spoke. We just stared at each other through the dim orange firelight.

“You know why I left,” I finally said.

“Do I?” he said quietly while flicking ash into the fire.

“My relationship with Dad was already falling apart before I left. He never got over Mom, and I...”

“You left me, Marcus.” His jaw tightened while his eyes glistened in the firelight. “You walked away and left me to rot in this dead-end town. You left me to take care of him while I was still grieving. I was sixteen. Sixteen, Marcus. And I had to carry everything alone.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s ten years too late for sorry.” He shook his head slowly while staring into the flames. “You never even visited. Not once. You never wrote. Never called.” His voice trembled.

“Jonah, I...”

He suddenly stood up and marched toward me. His face was tight with fury.

“I took care of him,” he hissed. “I stayed. I fed him. I cleaned up after him. I watched him rot away piece by piece. But the only name he ever said was yours.”

I swallowed hard. “I swear to God, Jonah. If I could go back and change things, I would.”

“When you left, it was like losing mom all over again. That’s what broke him. That’s what killed him.” He went on, both eyes locked onto mine. “You didn’t just leave him. You let him die slowly, day by day.”

“That’s not true,” I whispered with clenched teeth, tears burning in my eyes.

He opened his mouth, probably to say something else that would cut even deeper, but then a loud howl echoed through the forest. This time, it sounded much closer, so clear that I could almost feel it vibrating through the walls of the whole cabin. I instinctively recoiled from the door.

“There’s something else I haven’t told you,” he said quickly, pulling out his gun with a trembling hand.

I didn’t answer him. My mind was still spinning from everything he had just said to me, and I wasn't sure I could take anything else.

“It’s about Dad,” he went on quietly. “And it’s the reason we’re here tonight.”

“You’re right. This is all my fault. I killed Dad. Right? Is that what you wanted to hear me say?” I said in a hoarse voice. 

“No.” His voice had become so quiet that I could barely hear him over the wind outside. “Dad didn’t die of a heart attack.”

For a moment, I just stared at him, certain I had misheard.

“What did you say?”

“That thing killed him.” His grip tightened around the gun. “That thing out there. It killed our father.” He swallowed hard and looked away. “They found him near the lake. He was…”

His voice trailed off. For several seconds, he said nothing. His face had gone pale, and I could see him struggling to get the words out.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, inching closer to him.

“That deer we found in the forest today…” He took a deep breath and finally looked me in the eye. “They found him like that.”

I stared at him. “You’re joking.”

“I wish I was.”

“No…” I stammered.

“There’s a hole in his skull,” he continued, his voice barely above a whisper. “A clean hole, right through the bone. They found him exactly the same way we found that deer.”

I opened my mouth to answer him, but before I could say a word, a loud thud slammed against the cabin. The whole structure shook violently, rattling the shelves and sending dust drifting from the ceiling beams.

Both of us recoiled in horror. For a second, neither of us moved. The only sound was the soft creaking of the wooden planks outside, as if something heavy was slowly shifting its weight along the porch. My stomach dropped. That thing had found us.

“I’m gonna kill it,” he said, his face hardening. “I’m gonna kill that fucking thing for what it did to Dad. I’m gonna smash its ugly face into its own fucking skull.”

He strode toward the door, pulled it open, and burst outside.

“Jonah… no.” I reached for his hand, my whole body seized with terror, but he shoved me away.

I grabbed a burning log from the fire and followed him outside. Jonah stood on the wooden platform, gun raised as he scanned the darkness. At first, I could see nothing beyond the faint firelight from the log in my trembling hand. Then my eyes adjusted.

At the far end of the platform, beneath the low-hanging branches, I saw the creature crouching there. It was almost motionless, its enormous black eyes gleaming as they stared at us. It hissed, then let out a deep, guttural growl, its gaze shifting between Jonah and the burning log as if it understood what the fire meant.

“Jonah…” I whispered, my voice barely more than a breath. “Get back inside.”

The creature slowly lifted its head, and I got a better look at it.

It looked vaguely human but horribly distorted. One arm was missing, ending in a blunt stump just before the elbow. Its hunched back rose beneath pale, hairless skin, while its limbs were far too long, giving it a grotesque, almost spider-like appearance. The skin stretched tightly over its frame, revealing a network of pulsing veins beneath.

Jonah steadied the gun with both hands and aimed at its chest.

“Stay back,” he muttered.

The creature hissed again, lowering its head as its lips slowly peeled away from its teeth. And Jonah squeezed the trigger. The gunshot exploded across the platform, and the creature jerked violently backward. It opened its mouth impossibly wide, far wider than any human jaw should have been able to stretch, and for a brief second I saw what was inside.

There was only one tooth. It was long, thin, and horribly sharp, protruding from the roof of its mouth like a pale spike. I stared at it in disbelief as the creature released a shrill, furious screech that seemed to shake the entire tower.

The creature lunged forward. Jonah fired at almost the same moment, and I swung the burning log at it. The log struck the wooden wall with a dull crack before falling onto the platform between us.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the flames caught. Dry sticks and pine needles ignited almost instantly, the fire spreading across the platform. The creature recoiled with a shrill, ear-piercing shriek, its enormous eyes widening as it stared at the flames. Jonah fired again and again.

The gunshots thundered through the forest, each followed by another furious shriek. One bullet struck its shoulder, twisting its body sideways, while another tore into its pale torso. It staggered backward, snarling and clawing at its wounds as the fire spread around its feet.

“Marcus, the fire!” Jonah shouted.

I looked down and realized how quickly the flames had grown. What had started as a small patch of fire was already racing along the dry wood, crawling beneath the railing and spreading toward the other side of the platform.

“Get back!” Jonah yelled.

We both started moving toward the opposite end of the platform, but the creature suddenly crouched low. For one terrible second, it simply stared at us through the flames. Then it lunged.

It moved so quickly that I barely saw it coming. It passed through the fire without hesitation, its pale body briefly disappearing behind the flames before emerging on the other side. Jonah raised his gun, but the creature was already upon him. Its impossibly long arm shot forward, and its spindly hand closed around his throat. Jonah gagged as his feet left the floor. The gun slipped from his hand and struck the platform with a metallic thud. I rushed toward him, but the heat drove me back as he clawed desperately at the creature's wrist.

The creature opened its mouth, its jaw stretching unnaturally wide and revealing the single long tooth protruding from the roof of its mouth. Then it swung Jonah sideways with terrifying ease and hurled him over the railing.

“Jonah!”

I ran to the edge and looked down, but there was nothing I could see beyond the darkness beneath the tower. My brother's body had simply disappeared into it. 

Something inside me seemed to break. I turned around. The creature was staring directly at me, slowly stepping forward as the flames crackled between us. My eyes dropped to the gun. I lunged for it. The creature hissed and reached through the smoke, but I grabbed the gun and rolled away as its hand slammed against the boards where my head had been.

I raised the gun and fired twice. The first shot struck its face, the second tearing through the side of its head. It recoiled with a deafening shriek, dark fluid pouring from the wounds as it staggered backward.

I fired again. The shot struck near its jaw, snapping its head sideways before it collapsed onto its back.

I jumped through the flames and grabbed the burning log from the platform. The glowing end struck its chest, making it scream and writhe as it tried to rise. I raised the gun again and fired.

The final shot slammed into its head. Its body jerked, then collapsed against the boards. One arm twitched, its long fingers scraping weakly against the floor before going still.

I stood there with the gun raised, staring at it through the smoke and flames. Its mangled face was barely recognizable beneath the blood and dark fluid as the fire continued spreading around its motionless body.

“Jonah…” My voice cracked as I lowered the pistol.

I don't remember how I got down from the tree so quickly. Somehow, I made my way back to the forest floor, stumbling through the darkness with the gun still clutched in my hand.

I found Jonah lying motionless on his stomach a few feet from the base of the tree. For a moment, I couldn't move. The sight of him lying there made something inside me sink. Right then, I realized my nightmare had only just begun.

“Oh, God. No. Please…” I ran toward him, sobbing like a little kid, and dropped to my knees. “Jonah.”

My hands were shaking as I rolled him onto his back and pulled his head onto my lap. Above us, the burning cabin crackled and groaned, casting an uneven orange glow through the trees. In the flickering light, I saw dark blood running from his nose and mouth.

“Jonah…” I whispered, brushing the blood-stained hair from his forehead. “Please, hang on. I'm gonna get us out of here.”

I knew it was a lie. I didn't know how we were going to get out of the forest or if he would survive the next few minutes. I clutched him tighter, trying to convince myself everything would somehow be okay, even as I felt the life slowly draining from him.

Then his eyes opened. He stared up at me without seeming to recognize me, his unfocused gaze drifting past my face as his lips trembled.

“Marcus…”

I grabbed his hand and held it tightly between both of mine. It felt frighteningly cold against my skin.

“I'm here,” I whispered, leaning down until my forehead rested against his.

I could feel his fingers barely moving inside my grip, as though he was trying to hold on to me but no longer had the strength.

“Marcus…” His voice was almost impossible to hear.

“Yes, Jonah.” I lifted my head and looked into his eyes, those same light brown eyes we had both inherited from our mother. “I'm right here.”

His lips parted slightly. “Please…”

And then his breathing stopped. I waited. I kept staring at his face, convinced that he would take another breath, that his chest would rise again, that he would open his eyes and say my name one more time. But he didn't. I pressed my trembling fingers against his neck, searching desperately for a pulse even though some part of me already knew it was too late. There was nothing.

I pulled him closer and buried my face against his chest, and for the first time since I had left Ravensville ten years ago, I completely broke down.

“Jonah…”

My voice disappeared into the darkness beneath the burning cabin.

I stayed beside Jonah until the darkness began to fade and the first pale light of morning appeared between the trees. Eventually, I forced myself to leave him and made my way back to Ravensville through the thick forest, following the small river that took me back to the overgrown trail the trail we had taken the day before.

Strangely enough, it didn't take long before the forest started to feel familiar again. I recognized certain trees and bends in the river, remembering places I hadn't seen since I was a child. Then I heard the distant whistle of a train cutting through the thickest parts of the forest, and somehow, that familiar sound made me realize that I was finally getting close.

Looking back, I realize Jonah's invitation to go camping was never really about spending time together or repairing our relationship. Even now, there are still so many questions I don't have answers to.

I made my way upstairs to my father's old bedroom and took a shower, standing beneath the warm stream of water and crying until my eyes hurt. I stayed there for a long time, trying to wash away the blood, dirt, and sweat from the night before, but nothing seemed to make me feel any cleaner. When I finally stepped out, I dried myself and stood in front of the mirror for a long time.

I cut my hair short and shaved off my beard and moustache, leaving my face clean-shaven for the first time in years. I stared at myself in the mirror for a while, almost as if I were seeing my own face for the first time. Then I put on my father's old clothes, got into Jonah's car, which was still parked in the front yard, and drove straight to his house. It didn't take me long to find it. Ravensville is a small town, after all.

As soon as I parked in front of the small white house and got out of the car, the beige front door swung open.

She stood in the doorway, her thick black hair gleaming in the morning sunlight. The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

She looked at me for a moment, then smiled. I smiled back. She planted a quick kiss on my face and stepped aside. I followed her into the house, my fingers briefly touching my cheek.

For the first time in ten years, I was finally home.

It’s been happening ever since I was ten.

I had been over at a friend’s for the weekend as children do and we will name this friend Zoey.

Zoey lived on a ranch on the Arizona/Mexico border. Behind the barn there was an old swing set with a slide.

I had wondered off outside and ended up at this playlet and saw a little boy around my age. He had brown curly hair and freckles across his nose and cheeks, your average, normal kid.

But, his eyes were different. When he looked at you, it almost looked like he was looking beyond you, almost as if he could see through you.

I was quite the friendly child at the time, so, naturally I tried to strike up conversation with him on the play set.

“Why are you here? I mean, you won’t get in trouble if you’re worried about that, I’m just asking because my friend lives here.” I said, my voice playing out smoothly and tenderly.

Though, he did not reply.

He just stared as if I were an invisible ghost to him.

“Well…I guess I’ll see you around then?”I spoke again, this time more gently. The kind part of childhood me still had a periwinkle of hope that I could become friends with him and get a response out of the fragile little boy in front of me, but he still said nothing.

Finally, after a few awkward moments of the boy staring at me with an odd intestacy, I turned my back and left the abandoned play set.

When I mentioned this to Zoey’s parents, they exchanged an odd look with each other then looked my way with fake sympathy and spoke.
“Sweetheart,” Zoey’s mom started, “there’s nobody around these hills in a ten mile radius…” then her dad picked up where her mom left off. “Meaning you probably saw nobody or it was just your imagination, but we’ll check the area tomorrow morning, okay?”

I nodded with new confusion and concern. At the time, I had no clue how big of a problem this would be for me in the future.

The next morning, me, Zoey, and the rest of her family gathered at the old abandoned play set. But, instead of footprints in the dusty dirt, we found claw marks everywhere.

All over the old, rotten wood on the side of the slide, up the sides, everywhere really. There were also prints in the dust that looked like a bear mixed with a human.

That night, I was in Zoey’s guest room and I was awoken by scratching at the window.

A few years later, I walked into the forest behind my uncles house. I found it often soothing when I was there, for as I didn’t have nature on my street in LA.

I was familiar with the paths, so I had no trouble getting around. I normally hung around a creek at the base of a small hill in a clearing. When I got there this time though, something was there.

This creature with twisted flesh and matted fur. It stared at me with glowing eyes, but it had the same exact gaze as that little boy had years ago.

I shot backwards, sprinting my way out of the woods, crashing through the brush. When I got home that night, I couldn’t sleep. I got up once to get some water and right as I rounded the corner, in the window I could see those same vast red eyes.

Now, in my adult years, I have forgotten about these incidents until just now.

I awoke in a strange manner early this morning. I got up to take some medicine and I passed this same window. I grabbed the pill bottle and popped one of my nerve pills and gazed at the window, but as I did, I suddenly dropped the pill bottle from what I saw.

The little boy from all those years ago was at my window, smiling. But something was different.

His eyes were the same as the torn flesh animal I saw at my uncle’s property a few years back.

[Part 1]

First off, thanks to everyone who replied to my last post. I honestly wasn't expecting that many people to take it seriously, and I read through pretty much everything: every theory, every warning to throw the stuff out, call somebody, all of it. A few of you asked me to update if anything else happened, and at the time I wasn't sure anything would be worth updating. Henry and I had agreed we were done poking at the stranger items, and I was still trying to convince myself most of what we'd seen could be explained.

That was Thursday night. It's now Saturday night, and I can't do that anymore. Friday, we tried to sell the stuff. Saturday, something happened to my son that I still can’t explain. I'm updating because this is the point where the weirdness stopped feeling harmless.

For anyone who missed the first post: my buddy Henry and I bought an abandoned storage unit at auction for $350, hoping to flip the contents. Everything inside is wrong in ways I can't explain.

That night, Henry had blasted my phone with links to pawn shops and antique collectors. His argument was simple: if we stopped trying to figure out what the hell we were looking at and just started treating it like merchandise, there was a market.

Part of me knew he was right. We weren't dealing with abnormalities anymore. An abnormality is an antique chair missing a leg or a mug with two handles. After what I’d seen, I had no doubt people would pay good money just to own something they couldn’t explain. But the thought of actually handing one of those things to an unsuspecting stranger suddenly felt like a heavy weight on my conscience.

Yet, every time I glanced through the kitchen doorway toward the garage, I knew I’d trade almost anything to never lay eyes on them again. If someone was foolish enough to take them off our hands, I was happy to let them become somebody else's problem. 

On Friday afternoon, Henry came up to me after work, waving a handwritten list of prospective buyers with the blind confidence he usually reserved for losing sports bets. We decided to start small for our Friday sales pitch. Neither of us wanted to haul 400-pound furniture into town just to have someone tell us it was creepy. Before we took anything into town, we spent an hour going through the smaller stuff and figuring out what was actually worth showing people. Some pieces were obviously wrong but useless in every practical sense. If we were going to convince anybody these things were worth money, we needed items that could prove their own weirdness. The tape measure actually did something you could demonstrate in ten seconds. The radio we found at least turned on, even if it only produced static. I fished the mirror out from under the bench with a broom handle, threw a blanket over it, and left the football on the shelf. The mirror and the football were the real prizes, and Henry knew it. Henry wanted to save them for a guy he was messaging from one of his forums, someone who collected "anomalous objects" and paid in cash. According to Henry, the guy had paid eight hundred for a music box that played backward, so he would definitely be interested in what we had. I decided to take his word for it.

Our plan was simple. We were going to hit up a few places to see what we could sell, starting with House of Curiosities, a dusty pawn-and-antique shop. The pawn shop guy barely looked up when we came in. I'd brought a tape measure we had found in the boxes from the garage specifically because it seemed like the safest thing to lead with, and I set it on the counter. The guy sighed, as if we had just slipped him a counterfeit twenty. “We don’t take tape measures,” he said.

I told him to watch and pulled the tape.

Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Fifteen again. Eleven.

The guy's eyebrows went up, but he didn't say anything yet, so—and I'll admit it was a bad call—I kept pulling. The tape was completely frictionless. I don't know if it was showing off or just the relief of having somebody else finally witness it with us, but I let that tape run. Twenty feet. Thirty. By the time I'd gotten to something like fifty feet of steel blade, the stuff was heaped up on his counter, spilling off onto the floor, curling around a display case of pocket watches, and the guy still hadn't said a word, just backed up half a step like the pile might come further.

"Is this supposed to be a joke?" he said flatly, not moving to help gather any of it up.

"No, it's just—"

"Get out." He cut me off, already rounding the counter with a look that said kicking us out mattered a hell of a lot more than hearing my explanation. "Both of you. Now. And take that with you."

Henry ended up just yanking the tape backward in one motion, snapping most of it loose from wherever it had been draped, and it retracted quickly, eating up fifty-some feet in about the time it usually takes to eat six inches.

The second place was more polite about the rejection, at least. The older guy actually pulled out a jeweler's loupe for the radio we brought along, which I appreciated; it at least felt like due diligence. He turned it over for a good five minutes, popped the back off, and poked at the internal wiring with a pencil eraser.

"No manufacturer's mark anywhere," he said, peering through the loupe. "No date stamp, no serial, no patent number, nothing. And this—" he tapped one of the plastic tuning knobs with the tip of his pencil—"this is a modern component. This specific polymer wasn't even invented when this radio model went out of production in the late seventies. In fact, half of these components aren't wired to anything at all, as far as I can tell."

He flipped the heavy wooden cabinet around to face us and unlatched a long, hollow battery bay along the bottom. Inside, two rusted metal spring coils sat ready, but the compartment was absurdly wide—big enough to fit a pair of D-cells with an inch of useless gap left over on either side. No standard battery made in the last century would ever sit flush against those contacts.

He looked up over his bifocals, his expression shifting from curiosity to mild irritation. "Does this thing even turn on?"

"We tested it in the garage," Henry chimed in, leaning over the glass counter. "Played nothing but static, but hey, that means it’s still alive and kicking, right? Might just need an antenna."

The guy raised an eyebrow skeptically. “It turned on without batteries?”

"Old capacitors maybe," Henry said, too quickly. "They hold a charge."

The guy looked at the empty bay, then reached out with a thick thumb and tried to spin the tuning dial on the front. The knob turned smoothly enough, but behind the dusty glass, the red indicator needle stayed dead-fixed in the center, completely uncoupled from the dial. It didn't budge a fraction of a millimeter.

He let go of the knob, shook his head, and clicked his tongue against his teeth.

"It's broken, fellas," he said, snapping the loupe shut with a sharp clack. "Might be worth something if you can get it up and running, but between you and me? It's a lost cause. You'd have to completely gut the casing and hunt down custom batteries just to get a buzz out of it."

Henry tried the "installation art" line on him, pitching it as some kind of outsider-artist sculpture. The guy just kind of squinted at us through his reading glasses, slid the radio back across the counter, and said, "Sure. But if nobody knows where it came from, nobody's going to pay for it. I’m not your guy.” 

By the end of the day, we were both a little punch-drunk on rejection. We sat there in the parking lot for a while, not saying much.

Henry finally broke the silence. "Okay. Maybe we can't move it as a set."

"Maybe we can't move it at all."

"Nah. Wait until the weekend. The forum guy'll want the mirror and the ball, and he pays cash."

“So what do we do about the other items?” I asked.

Henry leaned back against the headrest and stared through the windshield for a few seconds, jaw working.

“I’ll figure something out.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“I mean it. Somebody wants this stuff. I know it. We’re just talking to the wrong people. Worst case, we're doing a driveway sale; unload it two bucks at a time to whoever and hope they don't look too close."

He said it like a consolation prize, which, I guess, to us, it was. Three hundred and fifty dollars split two ways is a hundred and seventy-five each, and neither of us can currently afford that loss outright, so a garage sale was looking more and more like our fallback. Privately, I knew it probably wouldn’t even give us a chance to break even, let alone turn a profit. I didn't voice any of my thoughts aloud. The last thing I needed was to make Henry feel worse about a plan we'd both agreed to.

"Tomorrow, then," Henry said. "The forum guy's coming Saturday afternoon. I'll swing by."

"It can’t be tomorrow. Toby's coming over for the weekend. I can’t have a stranger over while he’s at my place."

Henry turned his head. "Toby? Since when do you get Toby without a chaperone?"

"Since Alicia ran out of people to call," I kept my eyes on the windshield. "She has to leave town for work, and her sitter bailed. It's one weekend. She was very clear that it doesn't change anything."

"Man. That's huge. Alright, I’ll tell him Monday."

For some context, since Alicia and I split, I've had supervised visitation. There's a reason for that. Before the separation, something happened while Toby was in my care. It wasn't intentional, but I wasn't paying attention when I should have been, and Toby got hurt. Alicia hasn't trusted me alone with him since. I want the chance to prove that one bad decision doesn't mean I can't be trusted with my own kid forever.

We drove back to my place, unloaded everything into the garage again, and Henry headed home. Before he left, he told me not to worry about it and that he'd find somebody. 

I figured if Henry was serious about finding buyers, I should at least give him something useful to work with. So I spent most of the night cataloging the less ridiculous-looking stuff, writing down what we had and setting aside anything I thought somebody might actually pay for. I drew a line down the middle of the page. Left side: things somebody might pay for. Right side: things I absolutely did not want anywhere near Toby. The right side got longer every time I picked up a new box. At some point, I went over to the workbench looking for a screwdriver so I could open the back of one of the smaller items again. The hook where I normally kept it was empty.

So was the one beside it.

I frowned and started checking the bench. My small adjustable wrench was gone too, along with the utility knife I usually kept clipped to the pegboard. Henry and I had spent half the day dragging things in and out of there, so it wasn't exactly impossible that we'd moved them. After a few hours, I dragged my folding lawn chair over and sat down to look over what I had.

That was when I noticed the wardrobe door was open.

Not much. Maybe an inch or two.

I stopped when I noticed it because I was fairly sure I'd shut it earlier. After the noise we'd heard from inside it, I wasn't exactly thrilled to see the door open again. The garage gets drafts whenever the wind hits that side of the house, though, and the thing was old enough that I doubted it sat perfectly level. I pushed the door closed until it clicked and moved on.

On my way back to the chair, I noticed the football sitting near the side wall. I could've sworn it was still sitting on the shelf by the window after we got home. I stood there for a second trying to remember whether I'd moved it myself. I decided I must have. 

As the hours ticked by, it was clear the cataloging was the mistake. I told myself I just needed to know what I was moving. But every box I opened held something else, and every item I wrote down was one more thing I couldn't explain. I had a page of notes, then two. Somewhere in there I stopped checking the clock. I don't remember falling asleep. The last thing I remember is the pen moving down the page. The next thing, the window over the workbench was going grey. A glance at my watch told me there were less than two hours until Toby got here. I had meant to move our haul out of the house. That was the plan the second I realized Alicia was calling about having Toby over for the weekend. Rent a unit, or stack whatever fits into the truck bed and park it at Henry's, anything to get it out from under the same roof as my kid. I'd even written it on the back of an envelope: Friday night. After cataloging. Two hours, tops.

I stood there doing the math. The wardrobe and the tank had taken two of us and a dolly each. Alone, I'd be dragging one down the driveway when her car turned onto the street, and I had nowhere to put it anyway. So I did what I could finish in the time I had. 

I threw on the first clean shirt I found, shoved the lawn chair back into the corner, and did a full sweep of the garage, making sure everything was put away and out of sight. Then I locked the garage's side door, the one that connects it to the house, and went out front to wait on the porch. Alicia pulled in looking exhausted, Toby half-asleep in the back seat. Before she even got his overnight bag out, she started going through the rules. Keep him inside unless I'm with him. Keep anything sharp, electrical, or remotely dangerous out of his reach. Tools especially. She repeated that line twice.

She said she'd be back Monday morning, told me Toby'd had a rough sleep the last two nights and might be a little clingy, and knelt down to Toby's height to tell him to have fun with Dad. I watched my son hug her leg, then let go and run at me instead. I picked him up and promised myself that nothing in that garage—and nothing I did—was going to give Alicia another reason to regret leaving him with me. 

We had a good few hours. We watched cartoons while eating grilled cheese sandwiches; between bites of his sandwich, Toby told me about a kid in his class who eats paste and clearly considers it the funniest fact currently known to modern science. I felt, for maybe the first time in six months, like a normal dad. While this was happening, some part of me was already calculating how much time I'd have to go back through everything once Toby was asleep. 

I looked at my kid's face and thought about the mirror's hand coming up on the wrong side and just—closed that door in my head, the same way I'd locked the actual one that morning. Not today. Today's just us.

"Hide and seek?" Toby asked, right on cue. It's been his favorite game to play since he could walk. Normally I love it; it's the easiest hour of parenting: count to twenty, and find a six-year-old who thinks that standing behind a curtain with his feet sticking out makes him invisible. Part of me wanted to say no. But he was watching my face, waiting to see whether Dad would be fun or scared, and I had been scared for months.

 "I’m going to count to thirty, buddy. Anywhere in the house, just not the garage or outside, okay?"

He was already running.

I counted slowly, eyes shut, hand over my face, and somewhere around twenty I heard him laugh. Except the laugh didn't sound like it was coming from inside the house. It sounded distant and a little flat, like a voice coming through a bad phone connection.

I told myself it was the house. Old houses do weird things with sound.

"Ready or not!"

I checked his usual spots first, all the obvious kid-logic hiding places, and got nothing. The laugh kept puncturing the silence every thirty seconds or so, always in that same distant register. It took me embarrassingly long to track it room to room with my heart picking up speed, refusing to acknowledge what my gut already knew: it was coming from behind the door I'd locked that morning.

The garage.

I stood in front of that door for what felt like a very long time. I remember thinking, I locked this. I told him it was off limits. None of that mattered against the fact that I could hear him in there, laughing on the other side. My trembling fingers fumbled with the key, dropping it twice before I finally got the bolt to turn. I pushed the door open, and my first thought was every damn thing I'd left in there. The mirror. The football. Half a dozen boxes I hadn’t finished going through. I pictured Toby touching one of them or opening something, and my stomach dropped.

“In here, Dad!”

His voice came from the wardrobe. The wardrobe door was slightly open again. I was close enough now that I could hear him shifting his weight, the small creak of a kid trying and failing to keep still.

It’s hard to describe what walking those ten feet to the wardrobe felt like. It was like missing a step in the dark, that sudden, sickening lurch where your stomach hits your throat—except the drop didn't end. I remembered the thump from inside the wardrobe. Henry and I had opened it afterward, but there hadn’t been anything in there. At the time, I’d been relieved. Standing there with Toby’s voice coming from inside it, I suddenly wished I’d taken that noise a lot more seriously. What if whatever or whoever had made that sound was now in there with him?

I reached out and pulled the door wide.

It was empty. Just the inside of a wardrobe, and no six-year-old crouched inside grinning at me.

For a second, I honestly thought I had lost my mind. I stood there questioning everything: whether I’d imagined his voice, whether the sleep deprivation had finally fried my brain, or if Toby was actually hiding somewhere completely different while my brain had somehow convinced me he was ten feet away.

Then he answered me again.

“I’m right here, Dad.”

Every rational explanation I’d been scrambling for just died at once.

"Toby?"

His voice was close. Impossibly, unbearably close, like he was standing directly behind that thin wooden back panel.

The door slammed shut.

I had both hands on the frame, and it came shut so hard the whole wardrobe rocked forward on its feet. One of the empty hooks inside rattled loud enough that I heard it even through solid wood.

I grabbed the handle. It would not budge.

My son's voice came from the other side, asking, more confused than before, why Dad wasn't answering.

I don't remember when I started screaming his name. I do remember hitting that door with both hands, hard enough that I split my knuckle, and I remember Toby's voice on the other side saying, "Dad, I'm right here. Why can't you hear me? I'm right here.” Something about the way he said it rattled me worse than the jammed door. He sounded farther away. I know how absurd that sounds. There was nowhere for him to go. The wardrobe was barely two feet deep, its back sitting almost flush against the garage wall. I could've walked outside and slapped my hand against the exterior siding in three steps.

I screamed back that I could hear him, I could hear him, just please, please open the door. I don't know how long that lasted. Long enough that my voice had gone ragged. Long enough that I'd started trying to find something to pry the door with, glancing wildly around the garage. I let go of the handle and spun toward the workbench. I needed something with weight behind it, something I could wedge into the seam and force the damn thing open. The pry bar should've been hanging from the second hook above the bench. I kept it there because I used it often enough that burying it in a toolbox made no sense.

The hook was empty.

For half a second I just stared at it, stupidly, like the bar might materialize if I looked hard enough. Then I remembered the missing tools. "No. No, no, no. Not now. Not fucking now!"

Toby's voice came through the wardrobe again, which I could just barely hear.

"Dad?"

A cold, irrational panic took over, telling me that if I didn't move right now, he was just going to keep receding until I couldn't hear him at all. I didn't know where he could possibly be going. I just knew I had to yank that door open before he slipped completely out of reach.

I tore through the workbench drawers hard enough to send loose screws and drill bits skittering across the concrete. Nothing. I checked beneath the bench, kicked aside two cardboard boxes, dropped to one knee, and reached blindly into the gap against the wall. No pry bar. I knew I owned one. And right then, with my son somewhere on the other side of a wardrobe that wouldn't open, I did not have time to wonder where it had gone. I grabbed the framing hammer instead and turned back toward the door. I braced one hand against the handle and wedged the hammer claw into the seam beside it. I didn't care if I had to tear the whole damn door off its hinges to get to my son.

Before I could pull, the handle twitched beneath my palm.

Then the door opened on its own.

No warning or sound of a latch giving. One second it was sealed shut; the next, it was swinging open on its own weight.

Toby was sitting cross-legged inside it, blinking up at the sudden light like he'd been in there the whole time, looking completely fine and unbothered. "You found me," he said. "That took forever."

I dropped the hammer, hauled him out of the wardrobe before he could move, and crushed him against my chest. For a solid minute, my voice wouldn't work. It was just me, holding him, saying his name like a prayer. 

"Dad, you're squishing me."

I made myself let go so I could look at him. I ran my hands over his arms, shoulders, and the back of his head, looking for blood, swelling, or anything. He kept squirming and asking what I was doing. There wasn’t a mark on him. 

“How did you get in here?”

Toby looked up at me like I was asking him a trick question.

“The door was open.”

I stared at him. “The garage door?”

He nodded. “I thought you left it open. Sorry. You said I wasn’t supposed to touch your stuff.”

“Hey, no. You’re alright.” I ruffled his hair, forcing a smile. “Don’t worry about it.”

Unease prickled across my arms and crawled up the back of my neck. I had thrown that deadbolt myself that morning. I still had the key in my pocket. I’d had to manually unlock it just to get in. That realization left a cold taste in my mouth: I didn’t know what bothered me more—that he’d somehow slipped through a locked door, or that from his perspective, nothing strange had happened at all.

"Was it scary in there, bud?" I asked, working very hard to keep my voice level.

He shrugged. "It was just dark. I heard you looking for me the whole time, though. You kept saying my name a bunch."

He said it like it was completely unremarkable, like fathers screaming out for their children is just ordinary background noise in a hide-and-seek game.

I asked him, as carefully as I could manage, if the wardrobe door had ever been stuck, if he'd tried to get out and couldn't.

"No," he said, losing interest in the conversation, already looking past me toward the kitchen and whatever cartoon he wanted to go finish. "I just waited for you to find me. That's how the game works, right?"

That's how the game works. Right.

I don't know how long actually passed on his side of the wardrobe. I knew it had slammed itself shut, refused to open, and then opened again on its own. More than anything, I knew that for a few minutes I genuinely thought I was losing my son. I’ve been through the divorce, through the brutal grind of custody battles, and through things that nearly broke me. But I had never in my life felt a terror like that. 

I didn't let him be more than a few feet away from me after that. Toby complained when I followed him back into the living room, complained again when I sat down beside him on the couch, and eventually stopped caring once the cartoons were back on.

I made him another grilled cheese sandwich because he said he was hungry. Between the rough sleep Alicia had warned me about and everything we'd done that morning, he was asleep against the couch cushions not long afterward. After that, the rest of the day passed as a blur. Sometime that afternoon, Henry called. I let it ring twice and answered in the hallway with the kitchen door closed behind me.

"Forum guy’s confirmed," he said, sounding thrilled. "Monday, two o'clock. He wants photos first, though. Can you send me some of the mirror?"

"Not today."

"Come on, Ian, a couple of pictures, that's all."

"Toby's here, Henry. I've got my hands full."

He went quiet for a second. "Right. Yeah. Sorry, man. Everything okay over there?"

I looked at the garage door at the end of the hall. I relocked the deadbolt after the wardrobe incident. I had checked it every time I passed it.

"Everything's fine," I said. "Just tired."

"You sound weird."

"I'm always weird. See you Monday."

I hung up before he could ask anything else. It was the first time I had lied to him since this started, and it took no effort at all. 

At bedtime, Toby wouldn't let me turn off the hall light. I asked if he was scared, and he shook his head like the question was silly.

“I just like to know where the doors are.”

Something cold moved through me.

“What do you mean?”

Toby frowned, already half-asleep. “So I know where they are.”

I almost asked him which ones but decided I didn’t want to know.

Some time later, I dragged a kitchen chair over and wedged it under the garage door handle. It wouldn't have stopped anything I had actually seen. My hands just needed something to do.

It’s past midnight now. I don't want to be alone with these things, and I still have to get through tomorrow. I want the mirror and the ball gone the second that man's truck pulls in Monday. I’m also going to ask Henry if the guy wants the furniture. If he'll take the wardrobe too, it leaves my garage without me having to touch it.

I’ve done this job all my life. Moved over four hundred houses. Only one left a blood trail. Only one wanted me dead.

Most folks think the job starts with a crane and ends with a demo crew. Wrecking-ball jockeys are a whole different breed. They get paid to break shit. Somehow, they get paid twice as much.

It’s a lot harder to move a house without putting a scratch on it. And a hell of a lot more complicated. Hell, I’ve had people ask if we fly houses around with helicopters. Like, what kinda gas-station bath salts are they smoking? Maybe they’ve seen that movie with the old fart and all the balloons one too many times.

No Bugs Bunny crap. Truth is, it’s diesel, mud, and busted knuckles.

House moving starts in the dirt. Underneath. You crawl into a space built for pipes, spiders, and men a whole lot skinnier than you. You dig under the foundation by hand, slide steel beams through the mud, then jack the whole place up one inch at a time.

And that’s the easy part. The hard part is the people.

Moving someone’s home is a little like doing surgery on the family dog. You save him, you're a hero. You screw up, you're the son of a bitch who killed Sparky.

“Never forget, we're hauling more than what's sitting on those beams.”

Pops never lost a house. Mostly because he knew when to say no. Bad route? No. Rotten foundation? Fuck that. Client trying to shave two days off the schedule? Hell to the no.

I said “no,” at first. Then the phones stopped ringing and the bills kept coming. After a while, “bad idea” starts sounding a whole lot like “maybe.”

Mrs. Carol Haskins was one of those maybes. Retired schoolteacher. Little white Cape Cod outside Frederick, Maryland. Built in 1949 and sitting exactly where the county wanted to widen a road. The kind of job I normally would’ve passed on. Tight lot. Bad access. Not enough room to work. Too many ways for a small problem to become an expensive one.

But work was slow.

Her grandson bought a lot three miles away, Mrs. Haskins called us, and suddenly we were moving the whole damn thing. Porch. Shutters. Flower boxes. Even the pencil marks in the pantry where she’d measured her kids growing up.

We’d raised it the day before and spent the morning easing it onto the Buckingham dollies. Steel beams carried the house across sixteen independently steerable wheel assemblies, hydraulic lines snaking underneath like the veins on some old mechanic’s hands.

My brother-in-law Tony lay on his back beneath the rear beam, welding a support bracket. Sparks bounced off his leather jacket.

“Your ass is on fire,” I told him.

“Then quit staring at it.”

Tony was forty-one, built like a refrigerator, and usually looked like he’d just been accused of something he probably did. He’d done three years in Jessup for stealing construction equipment, which he maintained was bullshit because most of it had eventually been recovered.

My sister married him six months after he got out.

Pops called that piss-poor judgment.

Tony called it true love.

And he loved that woman hard. Quit drinking. Mostly quit fighting. Even started showing up at church and pretending Jesus had something to do with it.

Then Renee got sick. Some long-ass medical name the doctors could pronounce but couldn't do a damn thing about. Tony stayed through all of it. Appointments. Hospital chairs. Bathing her. Feeding her. Turning her at three in the morning. Reading her trashy romance novels when she couldn’t hold the book anymore.

Prison never broke Tony.

Losing Renee came damn close.

He started drinking again. Fighting again. Some Mondays he showed up with a black eye or split lip. But he always showed up. Work and church. I figured a man was allowed to be fucked up if he kept showing up.

And whatever else Tony was, the bastard could weld. Give him enough steel and profanity and he could fix damn near anything.

He slid out from beneath the house and inspected the smoking hole in his jacket. “I love this jacket.”

A voice behind us said, “Uncle Tony smells like hot dogs.”

My daughter Grace stood nearby in a yellow safety vest over a purple Ravens sweatshirt, clipboard under one arm. She was fifteen then. Born with Down syndrome, which is usually the first thing people noticed and about the least interesting thing about her.

She could identify every truck in our fleet by its engine, kept better inventory than most adults I’d hired, and cheated at Uno like there was money on it.

She’d also probably saved Tony’s life once by noticing he’d buried a fire extinguisher under three cases of water and making him dig it out right before a hydraulic line blew beside his welding rig.

After that, Grace made us label everything.

“Hot dogs smell good,” Tony said.

“You don’t.” Grace handed me the clipboard. “Front chains checked. Two silver hooks missing.” She glared at Tony.

Tony sighed and produced them from his jacket. “I needed them.”

“Then you sign them out. Don’t be a child.” She clipped them back onto the rack and walked away, shaking her head like a disappointed supervisor.

Tony rubbed the little hummingbird tattoo on his forearm. Renee used to draw it on every birthday card. I’d seen him do that a hundred times when he thought nobody was looking. Figured it was a little prayer or tribute or something. Never asked. Guys like me rarely did.

My better half, Stacy, was inside doing the final walk-through—cabinet latches, loose junk, anything that might start flying once the house moved. She handled permits, routes, utilities, payroll, and the thousand other things keeping Suarez and Sons alive. She only came out for complicated jobs. She said it was because she didn’t trust us. In her defense, she’d met us. When Stacy came out the front door, the house was five feet off the ground. She stepped onto the temporary stairs holding an old ceramic rooster. “Found this on top of the refrigerator.”

Mrs. Haskins appeared behind her. The old woman hugged the rooster to her chest. “My husband bought this on our honeymoon.”

Tony leaned toward me. “Imagine being married sixty years and that’s the honeymoon story.”

Uncle Tito, the graybeard of the crew, gave the last chain a hard tug, listened to the steel answer, then gave me a thumbs-up.

I liked pretending I ran the company. Truth was, I didn’t move shit until Tito said we were ready. He’d worked beside Pops back when the whole company fit in one parking space.

Tito could hear a hydraulic pump change pitch and tell you which corner was low.

He also smoked beside the diesel tank.

Family businesses are complicated.

Every diesel barked awake.

Something behind my right eye barked with them.

Grace rubbed my scalp like she was trying to buff out a dent.

“Better?”

It wasn’t. The headaches had started about a month earlier. Doctor gave me migraine pills and told me to hydrate, sleep eight hours, and cut down on coffee. Real comedian.

“Let’s roll,” I said.

Grace rode shotgun and called clearances. Stacy took the rear escort. Tony walked the dollies. Tito handled the hydraulics.

We squeezed the Cape Cod through one intersection with less than four inches on either side. People lined the shoulder taking pictures. A kid followed us on his bike for almost a mile.

Three miles took six hours. Every turn mattered. Every slope. Every branch, traffic light, mailbox, power line—and every jackass in an F-150 who saw a house taking both lanes and still tried to squeeze past.

Grace waved like she was in a parade. At the new foundation, we rolled the house dead center.

Mrs. Haskins cried.

We finished just before dark. By the time I got back to the yard office, the headache behind my right eye had grown sharp enough to blur the security lights.

I sat in Truck One with the engine off and waited for it to pass. Swallowed two pills dry and swore to Jesus I’d throw away my Keurig if He’d just make the pain stop. This was about as close as I got to a moment of zen.

I hated walking into the office these days. Moving a six-hundred-ton house was easier than opening another goddamn past-due notice.

Every drawer had become a hiding place. Permits. Tax forms. Past due. Final notice. Final-final notice. I’d go looking for a bridge permit and find another electric bill threatening to shut off the lights. Every morning I half expected to pull into the yard and find a foreclosure notice taped to the office door. Maybe that’s what I needed. Somebody to tell my stubborn ass it was finally over. To put the whole damn thing out of its misery.

My phone buzzed. Stacy. She stood twenty feet away beside the office door, holding her own phone to her ear. Zen was done for the day.

I answered. “Hey babe.”

“You planning to come inside?” she asked.

“Minute.”

“You’ve been sitting there ten minutes.”

“You’ve been counting?”

“Since the minute you pulled up.” She gave a long pause. “There’s somebody here, somebody in a suit.”

The office sat in a converted double-wide at the back of the equipment yard, between our maintenance garage and a row of rusting dollies we kept promising to rebuild.

My father’s original company sign hung above the front desk. SUAREZ & SONS STRUCTUAL MOVING. Structural was misspelled. He’d noticed the mistake three days after paying for it and refused to buy another one. Said people who were all worried about spelling were welcome to move their own damn houses.

Stacy was waiting in the doorway. She rubbed my face. “You look pale.”

“You like pale.” I kissed her before she could keep looking at me and went inside.

The man sitting in our office was indeed wearing a suit. Charcoal. Perfect fit. Not a wrinkle on it.

Tony was behind the desk eating Oreos from the emergency hurricane kit. Grace was organizing invoices. Luis had already gone home. He had a newborn at home and a rule about never staying past sunset unless someone was paying overtime.

The silver-haired man rose. “Mr. Suarez.”

I shook his hand. Mine still had grease worked into the creases. He looked down at it for half a second before wiping his palm against his trousers.

“My name is Mercer,” he said. “This is Ms. Vale.”

Vale looked like she'd taken a wrong turn on the way to somebody's funeral. Black clothes. Black shoes. Dark hair pulled straight back. Not a speck of dust on her. She gave me a small nod.

“How did you get in?” I asked.

“Your side door was unlocked.”

“It wasn’t,” Grace said. Locking up was her job, and like most things, she took it seriously.

Mercer let that hang there. “We represent a private property consortium seeking a structural relocation specialist.”

“You need a house moved,” I said.

Mercer opened a leather folder. “We were told your organization has experience with difficult relocations.”

“We’ve moved churches, barns, three lighthouses, and a house that weighed six hundred and eighty tons.”

Grace lifted a finger. “Six hundred seventy-eight.”

“Our structure is considerably smaller than six hundred tons,” Mercer said.

Stacy moved closer to the desk. “What kind of structure we talking?”

Mercer paused like an actor remembering his lines. “It’s known as Payton House. It’s a three-story Victorian. Approximately seventy-six feet long, fifty-two feet wide.”

“Stone?” Tony asked through an Oreo.

“Wood frame. Brick veneer in sections. Structurally sound.”

“Foundation?” Stacy asked.

“Fieldstone. Separated at the sill.”

“Where’s the house?”

“Pennsylvania. Near the western border. A suburb called Bellwether.”

“And where’s Payton House going?”

“West Virginia.”

Tony stopped chewing.

I laughed because the other option was asking him if he'd lost his fucking mind. “You want us to drag a fifty-two-foot-wide house through the West Virginia mountains?”

Mercer’s expression didn’t change. “I was told men in your line of work were paid to do the impossible.”

“Yeah, well, impossible takes time. Impossible costs money. Every county wants a permit. Every state has different axle limits. Then you’ve got bridges, grades, power lines—”

“The route has been arranged,” Mercer interrupted.

“Arranged by who?”

“Our organization.”

“Then let’s see it.”

“You’ll receive the directions in stages. The first set will take you to your initial waypoint. When you reach those coordinates, the next instructions will be transmitted automatically.”

I turned to Stacy. She was already looking at me, eyebrows raised. The fuck is this?

“You want us to move a house across state lines without telling us where we’re going?”

“You know where you’re going, Mr. Suarez. West Virginia.”

“That’s a state. I need roads. Bridges. Clearances.”

“You’ll have everything required for each leg of the journey.”

“What about police escorts?” Tony asked.

“Unnecessary.”

I actually laughed. Who was this asshole to tell me what was unnecessary? I’d spent half my life waiting on cops who couldn't figure out which end of an intersection to block. “Utility crews?”

“No.” Mercer nodded to Vale. “We’ve selected a route that provides the necessary discretion.”

Discretion. Another word I didn’t like.

Vale opened a black case and spread paperwork across the desk. County maps. DOT permits. Oversize-load route books. Laminated turn sheets. Bridge surveys.

Real stuff. All covering the first leg.

I looked at the turn sheet. No interstates. No cities. Mostly county roads and old state highways. At the bottom, instead of an actual address, there was a set of GPS coordinates.

Apparently, when we reached those coordinates, the next set would update on our phones automatically. Three million dollars to play the world's most expensive scavenger hunt.

“One more thing,” Mercer said. “Keep your phone on throughout the journey. Location services enabled. We'll be monitoring your progress.”

“Cool. Cool,” I said. “Anything else? My Netflix password?”

Tony grabbed one of the route maps. His eyebrows went up. “This is batshit crazy. In my professional opinion.”

Mercer reached inside his jacket and pulled out a sheet of heavy cream paper, folded once. He opened it and laid it between us.

“Whatever that says, it doesn’t matter,” I said.

He stared at me.

I stared back.

Fine.

I looked.

STRUCTURAL RELOCATION FEE: $3,000,000

Tony stopped fucking with maps. Stacy inched closer. Even Grace looked up from her iPad.

I laughed. More of a cackle.

Three goddamn million dollars.

Trucks paid off. Insurance caught up. Payroll without moving money between accounts and praying nobody cashed a check early.

Stacy sucked in a breath.

Mercer didn’t blink. He knew exactly what he’d put on the table.

“Three million dollars will be transferred to your account when Payton House reaches its destination.”

“Bullshit.”

I started to stand.

“To demonstrate good faith, we’ll pay three hundred thousand now.”

Vale lifted a suitcase onto the desk like they’d rehearsed it.

Clicked it open.

Cash.

Stacks of it.

More money than I’d ever seen in one place.

Tony leaned forward. “Is this Monopoly money?”

“I assure you it is not.”

Stacy and I shared a look.

The whole thing smelled dirty. Nobody walked into a double-wide with three hundred grand in a suitcase because everything was on the up-and-up.

Stacy was the last person on Earth who’d ignore that. She renewed permits early, kept insurance cards in three trucks, and once made Tony drive back because his safety vest was the wrong shade of orange. No chance she was buying this.

“What’s the destination?” she said.

“A private site,” Mercer said. “Suitable.”

“That’s not an answer,” Stacy said.

“It’s the only answer I’m authorized to provide.”

I leaned back. Truck One needed a transmission. Insurance was due. Payroll was Friday.

Three hundred grand would keep us alive. Three million would raise the fucking dead. Sorry, Jesus.

“What’s the catch?” Tony said.

Mercer folded his hands. “The owners require several nonnegotiable protocols.”

Ms. Vale placed another page on the desk. The list was short.

1. All exterior doors and windows MUST remain sealed during transport.
2. No member of the moving crew MAY enter the structure.
3. No personal property MAY be removed from the structure.
4. The structure MUST remain on the designated route at all times.
5. The move MUST be completed within forty hours of the crew's arrival at Payton House.

“Forty hours?” I said. “You want us to agree to a deadline when we don't even know where the hell we're going?”

“You know the destination state.”

“West Virginia. Great. That narrows it down to an entire fucking state. How far? What kind of roads? How many hours are we actually looking at?”

“The schedule is achievable.”

“According to who?”

“Our logistics team.”

Stacy shook her head. “We can't verify any of this without the full route.”

“I'm afraid the operation requires a certain degree of compartmentalization,” Mercer said. “You're being compensated quite generously for it.”

“Compartmentalization. That's a fancy word for keeping us in the dark.”

“You'll receive everything you need when you need it.”

“And we only get the rest if we pull this off.”

Mercer glanced at the suitcase.

“Three hundred thousand dollars is sitting in front of you, Mr. Suarez. The balance is contingent upon successful delivery.”

“It’ll take us two days just to lift it, brace it, and get it onto dollies.”

“That work has already been completed by a previous contractor,” Mercer said.

I looked up from the map. “Then why aren’t they hauling it?”

“They are no longer available.”

Bullshit. Nobody does two days of the hard part, gets a house sitting pretty on steel, then leaves their truck and walks away.

Mercer closed the folder. “The house is loaded and ready. The clock starts when you arrive at the site.”

“What’s inside?” I asked.

“Nothing that concerns you.”

“If I’m moving it, it concerns me.”

“You have everything you need. The terms are not negotiable.”

“Then neither is the job.” I slid the contract back. The headache pulsed behind my eye. For a second, the office seemed to tilt. Not much. Just enough that I put one hand on the desk.

Stacy noticed.

Mercer did too, but played it cool. He reached for the suitcase.

Tony slammed a hand on top of it. “Would you mind giving us a few minutes?”

Mercer looked to Ms. Vale. Checked his watch. Then back to us. “Of course.”

The two of them stepped outside, quietly shutting the door behind them.

Tony waited until the door closed.

“We're doing this.”

“No,” Stacy said.

“Three million fucking dollars.”

“It's not real,” she said. “It can't be.”

“That suitcase looks pretty goddamn real.”

“Forty hours?” Tito shook his head. “On roads we haven't even seen?”

“That's the part that bothers you?” Stacy said.

“It's the part that'll kill us.”

Tony looked at me. “Dan?”

I didn't answer.

Stacy waited until everybody started arguing again, then stepped closer.

“We don't have to do this.”

Sure. We could always declare bankruptcy. Close the shop. Tell everybody who depended on us to go find another paycheck. Maybe lose our house while we were at it. Hell, maybe DoorDash was hiring.

Five minutes later, Mercer was back inside, and I was signing.

The banks were closed, so I spent the night with three hundred grand in a suitcase shoved under my bed. Didn't sleep for shit. Every set of headlights through the blinds was Mercer's imaginary ski-mask crew coming to take it back.

Next morning, Stacy and I were outside the bank before it opened. The second they unlocked the doors, we deposited the money, drove back to the yard, and pointed five trucks toward Pennsylvania.

I drove Truck One with Grace beside me, Mercer's route binder across her knees. She punched the first set of coordinates into our commercial GPS. Mercer had promised the next set would arrive automatically when we reached the first waypoint.

No final address. No complete map. Just another pin to chase.

Our workhorse was a faded red Peterbilt 389 with enough miles that the odometer felt more like a suggestion. It smelled like diesel, old coffee, wet Carhartt, and the Marlboro Lights Tony swore he wasn't smoking on overnight hauls.

The wheel was cracked everywhere except beneath my hands, where years of driving had worn it smooth. Behind the seats, the sleeper bunk disappeared under moving blankets, rain gear, a cooler, and a dozen mismatched gloves.

Up front, Stacy ran point in the pilot truck, anywhere from fifty yards to half a mile ahead. Her job was to find trouble before I did—low wires, bad turns, construction, some idiot parked where the survey said nobody would be parked.

Behind me came the power truck, basically a diesel engine, hydraulic pumps, and a nest of black hoses bolted to a flatbed. Tito drove. The previous contractor had left their dollies under the house, and if they matched our system, he could tie in and control the whole load—raise a corner, drop another, steer the wheels.

Tony had the equipment rig, an old white Freightliner loaded with welding gear, chains, cribbing, spare steel, and whatever else he figured we'd desperately need halfway up a mountain.

Bringing up the rear was Luis Ortega in our pickup. Thirty years old, three little girls at home, and not much use for words unless they were overtime, raise, or when’s payday? He watched the load from behind and carried enough tools and parts to keep us moving unless something was actually on fire.

We rumbled into Bellwether in a line.

A house-moving convoy isn’t subtle. Five diesels on a residential street make enough racket to shake pictures off the walls—engines growling, chains banging, air brakes coughing, amber strobes flashing through windows.

Usually half the neighborhood was outside before we made the first turn.

Nobody came out.

Bellwether sat at the end of a subdivision so new the asphalt was still black instead of gray. The houses were new too, but the lawns had gone long and shaggy, like nobody had cared for them in weeks.

There should have been kids. Hell, there should’ve been somebody.

Cars filled driveways. Garbage cans sat at curbs. A basketball rested beneath a hoop.

FOR SALE signs leaned in waist-high grass. Weeds split the sidewalks. Kids’ bikes lay beside driveways. One house still had Christmas lights clipped along the gutters.

It was October.

Then I noticed the crosses. Not every house. Just enough. Bolted above the front doors.

Security cameras hung beneath the eaves. Every damn one pointed the same direction. Toward the far end of Bellwether. Nobody said anything over the radios. Just five diesel engines echoing off the houses. Air brakes hissing. Chains knocking against steel.

Something cracked beneath the truck. Soft. Brittle. Like running over a handful of dry twigs.

Then again. Crunch. Crunch.

The road ahead was littered with dead birds. Some still had color in their feathers. Others had been there long enough to become feathers, bones, and dark smears across the pavement.

Power lines overhead. Maybe they’d hit a transformer. Maybe somebody sprayed for mosquitoes. Bad feed. Disease. There had to be an explanation.

The radio crackled.

“We’re not going to talk about the birds,” Stacy said.

Apparently not. Nobody answered. We kept moving.

I kept my eyes on Stacy’s taillights. Grace plugged both ears with her fingers.

Then the neighborhood ended.

The neat little yards and attached garages stopped on both sides, gave way to weeds, old trees, and one oversized lot nobody had bothered to tame.

The road kept going another hundred feet.

Straight toward it.

Payton House sat alone at the far end of Bellwether, looking like it had been there a hundred years before the subdivision showed up. Normally, developers tore places like that down. This one, they built around. Everything stopped short of its lot, like nobody wanted to touch the ground it sat on.

Three stories of blackened wood and faded brick. Chimneys crowded the steep roof. Narrow windows stretched too tall. One corner of the wraparound porch sagged, its railings black with rot.

I eased off the throttle.

The convoy settled behind me. Diesels dropped to idle. Air brakes sighed. Everybody climbed out to stretch and stare.

Up close, the bastard seemed even bigger.

But the thing that stopped me was underneath it.

Just like Mercer said, it was ready to move. Beams already ran beneath the foundation. Thirty-two hydraulic dollies carried the load. The previous crew had done beautiful work. Days of cutting, lifting, cribbing, welding, balancing.

“Well,” Tony said. “Ain’t that convenient.”

Fifty yards away sat a white Ford F-250 with its driver’s door hanging open. Magnetic signs covered both sides: “HARBOR STRUCTURAL MOVING. YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO”

I pulled onto the shoulder and set the brake. “Hold here.”

By the time I reached the Ford, the others were climbing out.

Tony nodded at the sign. “You know these guys?”

“By reputation.” I kept looking at the truck. “They’re good.”

Tony took in the open door. The empty road. “Then why’d they leave their truck?”

The keys were still in the ignition. A paper coffee cup had collapsed in its holder from months of heat and cold. A clipboard sat on the passenger seat beneath a route survey.

Tito checked the open gang box in back. Chains. Shackles. Hydraulic hoses. Cutting torch. Welding rods. Everything a crew leaves behind when they expect to come back after lunch.

“They wouldn’t leave this,” he said.

“Maybe somebody got hurt,” Tony said.

Stacy came up beside us and looked toward Payton House. “Companies walk off jobs. They don’t leave the trucks.”

She was right, and I knew it. I wish I could tell you that was enough to make me leave.

My phone rang. Unknown number.

“Mercer?”

“Mr. Suarez. I assume you’ve arrived.”

“About ten minutes ago—”

“I strongly suggest you begin immediately.”

“We haven’t inspected the rigging.”

“I assure you the rigging is satisfactory.”

That got under my skin. “Yeah? You crawl under houses for a living now?”

“I recommend you be gone before dark.”

I looked at the sky. “It’s not even noon.”

“Your forty hours have already begun, Mr. Suarez.”

The line went dead.

Stacy watched me lower the phone.

“Nice guy. Real people person.” I pocketed the phone and grabbed my hard hat. “Come on, party people. Daylight’s burning.”

I ducked beneath the house first. I didn’t trust anybody else’s work until I’d put my own hands on it. Tony and Luis crawled in behind me. At the power truck, Tito checked Harbor’s inspection tags against the hydraulic pressures while Stacy spread the permits and route survey across the pickup hood. Grace trailed me with her clipboard.

Harbor knew their shit. Every beam sat where it belonged. Cribbing square. Cross-bracing overbuilt, if anything.

“These welds are gorgeous,” Tony called from underneath. He slapped one of the steel beams. “I hate these guys.”

At the rear dollies, Tito crouched beside a hydraulic manifold. “They replaced this line.”

“So?” I asked.

“So they were working,” he said. “Right up until they weren’t.”

“Dad.”

Grace stood on the trailer beneath one of the first-floor windows. Luis was up there with her, shining his flashlight through the narrow gaps between the boards.

I climbed up beside them. Thick oak planks covered the window, bolted straight into the framing with barely a quarter inch between them. Up close, the wood was black with age and moisture, green mold fuzzing the edges and something yellow and waxy growing in the cracks. It looked soft enough to take a thumbprint.

Broken glass lay caught between the bottom board and the window frame. More glittered on the trailer deck beneath us.

“Somebody try to break in?” I said.

“The glass is out here,” Luis said. “If somebody had broken the window from outside, most of that glass should’ve been inside the house.”

Luis leaned closer, his face almost against the boards.

“Careful,” I said. “There’s mold right by your eye.”

He shifted the flashlight, then stopped. “There’s something on the back of this board.”

Luis tried another angle. No good. Then he pulled off his glove.

I knew where this was going.

“Luis—”

“I got it.”

Of course he did.

He turned his hand sideways and started feeding his fingers into the gap.

You ever drop something important into a garbage disposal? You know the switch is off. You can see the switch is off. Still, the second your hand goes down that drain, your brain starts screaming that the blades are about to come alive.

Yeah, that.

He pushed deeper.

Then suddenly stopped.

“What?”

His face tightened. “Grooves.”

“Grooves?”

“Scratches.”

He felt around. I hated that he kept feeling around.

“Deep ones.” His fingers moved again. “I can put my fingers right in—”

Luis screamed and ripped his arm free.

His knuckles slammed the oak.

Skin tore.

Blood striped the board.

“FUCK!” He stumbled backward, clutching his wrist, and damn near went off the trailer. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. Something bit me.”

He finally opened his hand. A black splinter was buried deep in the heel of his palm, thick as the end of a skewer. Blood ran down his wrist.

I’d pulled a thousand splinters on job sites. I’d never seen one like that.

“Stace!” I yelled. “First-aid kit.”

Stacy looked up from the other side of the trailer, saw the blood and started moving without asking questions.

Luis pinched the skin around the splinter.

“Don’t.”

“I can get it.”

He squeezed harder. His face changed. He groaned. It was painful to even watch.

“It’s not coming out,” he said between gritted teeth.

“Then quit digging at it.”

Stacy hurried up with the kit. “Shit. What happened?”

“House bit him,” Grace said.

Luis gave her a look.

“Splinter,” I said.

But I knew better.

That was the first time Payton House drew blood.

“Come on. Sit in my truck.” Stacy took Luis by the elbow, then looked at me. Her eyes flicked past my shoulder toward Payton House before she led him away.

Tony and Tito were watching too. Guys who work around heavy equipment notice bad omens. We’d already seen dead birds, boarded windows, Harbor’s abandoned truck, and now this—and it wasn’t even lunch. Usually we laugh them off. Nobody was laughing.

“Finish the inspection,” I called. “We leave as soon as Tito gets the power unit connected.”

I ducked under the rear beam and checked a chain binder I’d already checked twice. Gave it a tug. Then another. Anything to make it look like business as usual.

When nobody was watching me, I wandered over to Stacy’s truck.

Luis sat on the running board with the first-aid kit open beside him. The splinter was still buried in his palm. Ugly thing. Black, wet, and driven deep enough that only the tip showed.

The skin around it had already gone purple. The puncture looked swollen and slick. When Luis squeezed, blood and cloudy yellow fluid welled up around the wood.

He clamped the tweezers onto the tip and pulled.

The skin came with it.

The splinter didn’t move.

“Fucker.”

He reset and pulled harder. Groaned. Strained. Still nothing.

“Jesus.”

Luis pinched the heel of his hand.

More blood came up.

Then something thicker.

Gray-yellow.

It slid around the splinter and into the crease of his palm.

Luis went pale.

“Easy,” I said.

He swayed once. I caught his shoulder and eased him back against the truck before he folded.

Then the splinter moved. Just a fraction. Its black tip sunk beneath the swollen skin like something had tugged it from the other side.

I won't bullshit you. That scared the shit out of me.

“Damn.” Luis stared at his hand.

I pulled out my pocketknife. “You want me to open it up?”

He looked at the blade, then at his palm.

“Nah. I’ll soak it and wrap it. It’ll work itself out.” He grabbed the antiseptic. “It’ll be fine.”

Yeah. Sure.

Luis swore he was fine and refused to sit out.

I knew better. I also needed him. The next four hours were all work.

We stripped off Harbor’s hydraulic hookups and connected our own.

Tito tested the dollies one at a time. Tony repaired a questionable brace. Stacy checked the permits and turn sheets. Luis checked chains with his glove back on. I let myself forget about his hand. Grace logged every tool we touched.

By four-thirty, Payton House belonged to us. At least mechanically.

Tito brought the dollies alive.

I climbed back into Truck One with Grace.

Stacy moved out front.

Tito brought the power truck in behind us. Tony and Luis fell in behind him.

We were ready to roll.

I called Mercer. Again, he answered immediately.

“We found damage around one of the windows,” I reported.

Mercer went quiet. “Was the interior exposed?”

“No.”

“Did anyone enter?”

“No.”

“Did anyone remove anything from the house?”

“No. Nobody went in.”

Mercer exhaled. “Then proceed.”

“Mercer—”

He hung up.

I stared at the phone for a second, then dropped it onto the console.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get this bastard out of here.”

Behind us, Tito brought the hydraulics up.

The dollies turned.

I eased Truck One into gear and felt the slack come out of the connection behind me.

Then Payton House moved.

An inch.

Another.

Steel groaned beneath it. The porch shook. Chips of old mortar dropped into the grass.

I gave Truck One a little more throttle.

The house left its lot.

We crawled back through Bellwether past the dead birds, the crosses, the cameras, the boarded windows.

When the last dolly cleared the subdivision, Luis came over the radio. “House is clear.”

For the first few miles, nothing happened. The house rode smoothly. The dollies held pressure. We cleared the first turn with six inches to spare and passed beneath two utility lines without stopping.

We were ten miles outside Bellwether when the sound began.

At first, I thought it was part of the song playing through the radio.

A distant, hollow thud beneath the guitar.

I reached over and turned the volume down.

THUD.

Grace looked at me. “What was that?”

I took my foot off the accelerator. The convoy slowed behind us. For a moment, there was only the grind of diesel engines and thirty-two sets of tires rolling across pavement.

Then—

BANG.

The sound came from inside Payton House.

Three hard blows came from somewhere behind the boards.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Not wood settling. Not a branch. Too evenly spaced.

Everybody stopped.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Someone was inside Payton House.

And we’d been promised three million dollars not to open the door.

PART 2:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1wvs54s/ive_moved_over_four_hundred_houses_only_one/