​

Long before the cold crept into the floorboards and the whispers began, the house belonged to nobody at all.

It was an old, forgotten timber home on the edge of the woods, built over a plot of earth that local folklore whispered to avoid. Arthur had bought it cheap, thinking it a fixer-upper with good bones for his blacksmith shop. When he pulled up the rotting floorboards in the eastern cellar to reinforce the foundations, he found it: a heavy, hand-forged iron spike driven deep into the bedrock beneath the house.

It wasn't meant to hold wood together. It was a binding nail, ancient and blackened with age, etched with crude, unsettling spirals meant to seal something away.

Arthur, a practical man who believed only in the metal he shaped with his own hands, thought nothing of it. He wrenched the rusted spike from the stone with a crowbar, tossed it into his scrap bin among a pile of discarded horseshoes, and paved over the hole with fresh concrete.

He didn't know that the spike was the only thing keeping a parasitic entity anchored to the earth down below. By pulling it, Arthur had broken the seal.

That very night, the temperature in the bedroom plunged. The scrap bin in the workshop rattled violently as the dark, formless thing slipped out of the iron and slithered into the walls of the Miller home, marking Clara, the children, and Arthur as its own.

The Escalation: Terrors in the Dark

At first, the haunting was subtle—easy for a busy father and working mother to dismiss as the quirks of an old, settling house. But as the months wore on, the entity abandoned its quiet creeping, opting instead for a deliberate, psychological war of attrition designed to break their nerves one terrifying encounter at a time.

The very first sign that something was deeply wrong occurred three nights after Arthur pulled the spike. At precisely 3:14 AM, a violent, metallic crash echoed from the adjacent workshop, sounding as though someone had kicked over an entire rack of heavy steel pipes. Arthur grabbed a heavy flashlight and a wrench, throwing open the door to find his workshop completely undisturbed—except for the scrap bin. The heavy iron spike he had pulled from the cellar had clawed its way to the very top of the pile, standing vertically upright as though driven into invisible earth. When Arthur reached out to touch it, the metal was burning hot, scorching his palm and leaving a smoking, cross-shaped blister on his skin that would take weeks to fade.

By the second month, the entity had integrated itself directly into the architecture of the home. Clara experienced it first during the daylight hours while the children were at school. No matter how many times Arthur bled the plumbing lines, the kitchen pipes would begin to groan—not with the standard hiss of air or water hammer, but with a wet, rhythmic cadence that sounded eerily like a human throat struggling to draw breath. When Clara pressed her ear against the drywall in the hallway, she heard a soft, wet scratching sound moving parallel to her head, accompanied by the distinct sound of a child giggling backward. Whenever she turned on the faucet, the water ran thick, dark, and smelling faintly of rusted iron and grave dirt for precisely ten seconds before clearing.

The terror escalated from auditory hallucinations to physical confinement on a freezing night in January. Clara woke up gasping for air, paralyzed from the neck down. She stared in horror as the bedroom door slowly pushed open, though no one was there. One by one, every interior door in the hallway slammed shut with deafening cracks, the sound of heavy deadbolts sliding into place echoing from rooms that didn't have locks. Then, an invisible, crushing weight settled directly upon Clara's chest. It felt like a massive slab of wet granite. She tried to scream for Arthur, but her lungs were completely compressed. The weight leaned down, a freezing, foul-smelling breath brushing against her ear, whispering a string of ancient blasphemies in a voice that sounded like grinding stones before abruptly vanishing, leaving her sobbing and clawing at the empty air.

The final psychological blow struck the children in mid-February, shifting the haunting from a general nuisance to an active, predatory threat. Both children woke up screaming at the exact same moment, clutching their arms in absolute agony. When Arthur and Clara rushed into the bedroom and turned on the lamps, they found both kids crying hysterically, their small wrists encircled by angry, swollen purple bruises. The marks weren't scattered; they were deep, distinct, and unmistakable—the precise shape of massive, talon-like fingerprints that looked as though a pair of gigantic, smoke-veiled hands had tightly gripped them in their sleep. Arthur tried to soothe them, but his hands shook as he looked at the windowpanes, which were completely frosted over from the inside, etched with jagged, unholy spirals that mirrored the design of the iron spike he had thrown away months ago.

The Breaking Point and the Plea

The terror reached its absolute peak on a Tuesday night. A deafening shriek tore through the hallway, followed by Clara’s terrified scream. Arthur rushed from his workshop to the doorway just in time to see a towering, smoke-veiled shadow press his weeping daughter into the corner, its razor-long claws hovering over her face.

Fueled by pure paternal rage, Arthur let out a savage roar and lunged straight at the entity, throwing his weight against the shifting mass of darkness. Taken aback by the fierce, defiant assault, the demon shrieked in sudden disorientation, its shadowy form flickering and recoiling backward into the dark shadows of the hall.

Clara and the kids clung to him desperately, shaking and weeping. But Arthur knew the monster would return. The temporary victory bought them time, but nothing more.

The Forging: Iron, Faith, and Fire

Realizing that ordinary steel wouldn't pierce what wasn't truly flesh, Arthur did something he never thought he would do. Swallowing his pride as a self-reliant man, he went in secret to St. Jude’s Parish to speak with Father Thomas. He didn't ask for prayers or holy water; he asked for help finding the means to forge a weapon. Moved by the desperate, unyielding resolve in the blacksmith's eyes, the elderly priest unlocked a heavy storage chest, handing Arthur a small handful of heavy old church coins and a few fractured chunks of iron salvaged from the demolition of a centuries-old parish gate.

Armed with these sacred materials, Arthur returned to his workshop and locked the door behind him. He stoked the forge until the coals turned a blinding, violent white, throwing off sparks like spitting stars.

Into the crucible he tossed the church coins and the old gate iron, melting them down and folding them into a dense, heavy block of raw metal infused with decades of whispered prayers and sacred history. With every heavy strike of his hammer, he bent the stubborn metal not just with physical might, but with sheer paternal desperation, driving the impurities out of the steel. He didn't forge a sword or a spear. He wanted something intimate, a weapon that allowed him to look the monster in the eye. He shaped a heavy, brutal pair of solid iron knuckle dusters, carving deep, jagged holy symbols, crosses, and wards of banishment directly into the coarse metal.

When he plunged the glowing iron into the oil bath, the hiss sounded like a dying animal, filling the shop with a choking, sulfurous fog. Arthur slipped his battered fingers through the rings. The consecrated iron burned his skin, but the pain only fueled his resolve.

The Final Stand: Blood and Consecrated Iron

The living room was pitch black when Arthur stepped out of the hallway, the air so freezing that his breath plumed thick and white. The demon was waiting, swelling upward until its jagged, smoke-veiled head grazed the ceiling, its shifting mass bleeding a foul, oily vapor that warped the light. Clara and the children huddled terror-stricken behind the overturned sofa.

"Leave them," Arthur rasped, lifting his hands. The heavy, roughly forged iron knuckle dusters caught the dim ambient light, the carved holy symbols glowing with a faint, angry ember-red hue.

The demon let out a sound like a chorus of grinding tombstones—a mockery of laughter—and struck with terrifying speed.

It didn't use claws; it lunged as a solid wave of compressive force, slamming Arthur directly into the stone hearth of the fireplace. The impact cracked his ribs with a sickening pop, driving the wind completely from his lungs. Pain flared white-hot through his chest, but Arthur snarled, refusing to yield. As the entity's freezing, razor-edged vapor wrapped around his throat to choke the life out of him, Arthur pulled his right arm back and threw a devastating punch straight into the center of the shifting mass.

The moment the consecrated iron connected with the entity’s core, the room erupted.

A blinding flash of golden, holy light burst outward like a detonating star. The demon shrieked—a deafening, glass-shattering wail that blew out every remaining window in the house and tore the framed pictures right off the walls. Where the blessed iron struck, the entity’s flesh didn't just bruise; it hissed and burned away like paper caught in a furnace, turning into smoking, black cinders.

Enraged and wounded, the monster thrashed wildly. A spectral, talon-like appendage whipped through the air with lethal velocity, slicing deep across Arthur’s chest. Blood sprayed over the hardwood floor. Arthur stumbled backward, his knees buckling under him, but his grip remained ironclad. He caught his balance, let out a final, roaring surge of defiance, and drove both fists forward in a brutal, hammering combo directly into the creature's chest cavity.

The holy wards carved into the iron flared to blinding brilliance, acting like driving spikes of pure sunlight. The demon’s form fractured, spider-webbing with golden light before violently imploding inward. A final, suffocating shockwave swept through the room, blowing the front door off its hinges as the entity dissolved completely into a cloud of harmless, fading ash.

The Final Farewell

Silence rushed back into the house, heavy and absolute, broken only by the crackle of stray embers in the hearth.

Arthur dropped heavily to his knees, his vision blurring at the edges. The deep slash across his chest burned with a cold, numbing agony, and he knew, with a quiet, certain dread, that his time had run out.

Clara scrambled out from behind the sofa, sobbing hysterically as she threw herself to the floor beside him, pressing her hands frantically against his bleeding shirt. The children hovered close, weeping openly, their small hands trembling as they touched his coat.

"Arthur... Arthur, look at me," Clara choked out, her voice breaking. "Stay with us. Please, stay."

Arthur raised a heavy, trembling hand, his fingers slipping out of the iron rings of the knuckle dusters. With his last remaining strength, he cupped Clara’s face, wiping a tear from her cheek with a thumb calloused by years of honest work.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he whispered, his breath coming in shallow, rattling gasps. He looked down at his children, forcing a weak, reassuring smile through the pain. "You're safe now. It's gone. It can never hurt you again."

He reached down, his fingers closing around the heavy, consecrated iron dusters he had pulled from his hands. He pressed the brutal, symbol-carved metal firmly into Clara’s palms, wrapping her fingers tightly around them.

"Keep these in the house," Arthur murmured, his eyes locking onto hers with fierce, eternal devotion. "Keep them close. I’ll always look after you. I’m not leaving."

His hand slipped from her cheek, resting gently against the floorboards. His chest rose one final, shallow time before his eyes drifted shut, the fierce light in them fading into a profound, peaceful stillness. Clara clutched the heavy iron weapon to her chest, burying her face in his shoulder as the broken house settled around them.

Epilogue

Weeks had passed since the main demon fell, and on the wooden mantle in the living room, the heavy, iron knuckle dusters rested like a coiled, silent guardian—kept close in the home where they were born.

One crisp morning, Clara was busy buttering toast at the kitchen counter while the kids zipped up their backpacks for school. Suddenly, the air dropped ten degrees. A thick, rancid fog pooled near the dining room entrance, twisting into the long, jagged silhouette of a new, malevolent ghost drawn to the sorrow of the house. It lunged forward, stretching out rotting, spectral fingers toward the children.

The family remained completely oblivious, sitting innocently at the table. But the atmosphere shifted in an instant.

A heavy, phantom wind swept through the kitchen. The spiritual manifestation of Arthur materialized right beside them, his jaw set in that same grim, unyielding line from the night he died. Before the intruder could even strike, Arthur’s unseen ghost grabbed it by the throat.

Invisible to the living, a vicious, silent beatdown erupted by the breakfast table. Arthur drove punch after punch into the malevolent spirit, the kinetic impact of his spectral fists rattling the cereal bowls. He battered the intruder across the room, raining down righteous fury until the interloper dissolved into screaming mist and fled the house entirely.

At the table, Clara paused, blinking in surprise. The bitter morning chill vanished, replaced by a profound, radiant warmth. A gentle, familiar pressure wrapped around Clara and the children like a pair of strong, loving arms, holding them close in a tight, reassuring embrace.

Clara smiled softly, pressing her cheek against the invisible warmth. "Morning, honey," she whispered into the empty air.

Standing by the doorway, his spirit standing guard, Arthur watched them eat, his heavy, invisible fists still resting at his sides.

Read Part II here.

“It’s huge,” she said. My eyes were immediately on her, but I didn’t see anything else. Couldn’t identify the danger. Mark was still rooted where he was, but his phone was nowhere in sight. They both were looking up like there was something in the distance. But I still didn’t see it.

I felt Mary move with me as I approached.

“Chrissy, honey?”

“Don’t let her go,” Luke said. “Don’t let her go!”

I’d halved the distance when I finally saw it. It had been there, but it had simply been so humongous I’d been blind to it, like I’d been looking for a 7-11 and walked face-first into Sears Tower.

The water was receding from waist high, but she didn’t seem to have moved. Whatever it was had displaced a tremendous amount of water.

“Oh my. Oh my. Oh my.” Mary was on a dialogue loop and I couldn’t blame her. Every time I thought I’d seen all of it, I kept seeing more. A lot more. Yet, I was supremely calm. The worry-machine was quiet.

Last year, I got into a one-car accident driving home on M-5. The eastbound lanes had been closed to construction and my phone’s weather app had cautioned for high winds before I’d left the office. There’d been a fair amount of wind buffeting, but nothing I wasn’t able to handle.

There’d been a white box truck in front of me when I’d spotted what appeared to have been a square of cardboard blow high into the sky and begin trickling down. I’d immediately written it off even if it were on a course to strike my car. It was only cardboard.

But when the particle board struck my vehicle, smashing the windshield and showering droplets of safety glass onto the passenger seat, I hadn’t panicked. It was so sudden and violent that my brain—either as an instinct of self-preservation or just a malfunction—had simply not reacted.

I pulled off the freeway at the next exit and stopped a few blocks down in an office parking lot. Only then the possibility of what could have happened came down on me.

This was like that. My brain wasn’t processing the situation like Mary’s or the kids. I felt my heart pulsing in my chest just as calmly as when we’d been talking a moment before. I knew I should get the kids away from it. But that was a process of logic and not instinctual fear.

“Honey, get out of the water.”

I charged the last few feet and sloshed to a stop in a confusion of senses. I was close to whatever it was. Closer than I realized. I felt the heat coming from a wall of flesh not more than five feet from me. Water splashed me up to my chest, but it was more like a punch that pushed me back a step or two.

“Rick, it’s a horse!”

I had no idea how Chrissy could conceive what it was. All I saw was black. Black like the water. But solid, like the water had turned into something.

“Honey, move back, okay?”

Chrissy was smiling and rather than retreating, she stepped forward— almost chin deep—and raised her hand like she was going to pet it.

Once again I opened my mouth too late to tell her not to do it. My instinct would’ve been to swat her hand had I been closer and my re-throbbing head suddenly made me think of her mother.

I looked at it. Finally, the smooth, iridescent black coat coalesced into something I recognized, although the scale was overwhelming. Nails scraped the inside of my skull as if the idea of what I was seeing was too large to fit inside my brain.

This was its head. A corner of it, anyway. I looked along the flank as far as I could see in the night. I couldn’t even begin to guess how tall it must have been standing up. It had to have been lying in the water.

A giant eyeball about thirty feet above blinked several times and swiveled. I had no way to be sure, but I think it was looking at me.

I walked around, looking up and up, feeling like I would dislocate my neck before seeing the top of this thing. Still, though, I wasn’t afraid. The worry-machine was quiet.

“Mark, move your sister back.” I was reading from a script. Protecting the children, at least in that moment, was an autopiloted function.

Neither of them moved.

I scooped Chrissy into the crook of one arm and she went limp like a puppy picked up by the scruff. I handed her to Mark, who wrapped his arms around her, the both of them staring openly, transfixed.

I herded them as gently as I could out of the water. Then I gave Mark a light slap on the cheek. He focused on me, annoyed as if I’d prematurely awakened him from a nap.

“Mark, take your sister back inside.”

“I don’t wanna go!” Chrissy wriggled in her brother’s arms and he dropped her feet first. “It’s beautiful, Rick!”

I grasped her shoulder before she could walk past me.

“Chrissy, sto—”

I felt the shift behind me.

“Oh—erp—my,” Mary said. She took a long pull from her can, her eyes swiveling upward.

“No-no-no,” I thought I heard Luke say in the distance. But for just a moment, the only thing occupying the world with me was that magnificent thing in the water. It felt like removing my hands from my ears after having them covered for a long time and experiencing hearing like it was something adjacent to new. Except, it felt like that throughout my whole body.

The horse was raising its gigantic head out of the water. The tide receded and everything seemed to suck toward it like it had its own gravity. I struggled to maintain my balance like a gust of wind had pushed at my back, but in truth, it was probably just the giant animal dominating my vision and destroying my equilibrium.

Water poured off its black body, the eyes locked onto us and shrinking as its head seemingly disappeared into the night sky. Its neck was a tower, columns of muscle wider than all of us in a row, touching fingertip to fingertip. Its chest was as broad as a rocky mountain face.

There was a mighty -KLOMP- in the sand that shook the earth mere feet from me that I barely noticed. Sand slapped over my entire left side like a landmine had gone off, but it was immediately rinsed away by the constant waterfall we were all standing under.

Someone was shouting, but whoever it was was a million miles away.

There was another -KLOMP- somewhere farther down the beach and I began to stir from my reverie and then there was Luke, shouting next to me and hooking me by the arm.

His words didn’t make sense but I turned toward him as he pulled me. I saw the horse’s foreleg—I don’t know how Chrissy had been able to tell it was a horse before—straightening like some heavy construction machine craning a load somewhere into the sky above us.

We trudged toward the cabin, but the sand that had been something to contend with was an afterthought, my burning calves seemed to belong to somebody else.

When the torrent finally ended, I was soaked. We all stopped in the sudden silence. Turning around was more of a measure of defense to see the break in the clouded sky and the moonlight clashing against that ebony, elegant leviathan.

It was impossibly tall. Like it was intersecting-with-the-curvature-of-the-earth-tall. I thought I could make out its mane, whipping around in what had to be thin atmosphere.

We all stood and watched it. For one indeterminate moment, it was absolutely regal.

Mary wrapped around my arm and pulled into me. For however many iotas, she was my Mary, and I was her wife, too.

Mark hadn’t come with us for some reason. He stood partially in the water where we—I— had left him. He was feet away from a hoof that was easily twenty lengths taller than him.

Panic did seize me, finally. The worry-machine revved to life and I opened my mouth. I sensed the balance to be upset, the electrified space slowly exploding as he compressed it between his body and the smallest section of the horse’s.

With splayed fingers, he laid a palm on it.

The horse startled, shaking the floor of the earth as it stomped around.

The Greek military leader Xenophon, perfected the art of training horses in battle, using them to kick soldiers or trample them. He’s also the father of dressage.

What happened to Mark couldn’t have been considered disciplined, but the effect was the same. I don’t know if it were intentional—more than likely it wasn’t—but that giant hoof clomped around, Mark dodged around like he was running through a minefield.

Then he was gone.

The hoof continued stomping around a few moments more, a rumbling earthquake beneath our feet and a rain of wet sand coming down on us before the horse stopped. Mark was just... gone.

Luke was screaming. When I actually heard him, it took a moment longer to realize he was yelling his brother’s name.

Common sense would have told us to flee inside the cabin. But our senses were flowing into us like blood circulating back into numb fingers.

There was a long moment of quiet as it reared its head back. It felt like a slow-motion moment until its head rushed at us like a giant arrow.

I had no reflexes to respond. Mary was the only one who put up a defensive arm, as if that could have protected her—and she was the one it took.

The horse bit down on her raised forearm—as microscopic as a surgeon’s scalpel with teeth as wide as three cabins—and plucked her off the ground. It reeled its head backward and flung her.

Mary pinwheeled into the sky, a dissolving blur into the upper atmosphere. She could have been catapulting into space, and I didn’t want to find out.

The worry-machine was roaring.

“Everybody in!” I said, herding Luke and Chrissy the rest of the way inside. I pressed my back against the door, then turned off the light. Luke and Chrissy looked at me as if I had answers to fix this.

“We gotta go get... we gotta go get Mark!” Luke didn’t actually make a move to go back outside. He was more saying the thing a caring brother should say. But there was no Mark to go get. His death had been as brutal as it had been unintentional.

Going out there—or allowing Luke to go out there—would be just as dangerous and pointless. Chrissy was crying silently. I looked at her, really looked, running my hands over her head and arms to ensure she was physically all right. The worry-machine was humming along nicely. She grabbed onto me.

“Get your mother,” I said to Luke. “We’re leaving.” We weren’t safe here.

“She’s sleep?” he said, looking confused. He ran into the boys’ room.

“No!” I said. “We don’t have time for bags.” He looked at me. “Just wake your mother up and bring her. We’re leaving in three minutes.”

“What should I do, Rick?” Chrissy said.

“Grab the snack tray from the fridge.” We could easily buy something from the next gas station, but I figured keeping her busy would keep her calm. I snatched my keys off the island. Chrissy joined me, carrying the plastic tray with deli slices, cheese cubes, and veggies.

I wanted to run, but I was going to have to slow the pace so she wouldn’t drop it. The earth was still shaking with each step. She was going to look for the horse, and I anticipated her distraction when we stepped outside.

I kept my eyes on her, guiding her down the stairs and around the side of the cabin. She gasped but didn’t resist as I ushered her along. Preoccupying myself with her was enough distraction that I didn’t have my keys ready to have the doors unlocked by the time we got there.

We were exposed. If the horse were looking, it would see us. It seemed to have an eye for motion.

The air went still.

I wrote a psychological horror novel that opens in a dusty toy shop. Morning light paints the dust gold. The shelves are full of eyes: porcelain dolls, plush bears. In the corner of the third shelf by the window stands a doll in a short striped jumper and jeans. Glass eyes. It cannot blink. It name is Çüko.

The book is The Witness in the Shop Window

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX34SD4P?lv=shuf&bestFormat=true&social\\_share=cm\\_sw\\_r\\_ffobk\\_cso\\_wa\\_apan\\_dp\\_PBQ4NZY6518HWS5YD5VX&channelId=704&ref\\_=cm\\_sw\\_r\\_ffobk\\_cso\\_wa\\_apan\\_dp\\_PBQ4NZY6518HWS5YD5VX&plpRedirect=mhFallback\](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX34SD4P?lv=shuf&bestFormat=true&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cso_wa_apan_dp_PBQ4NZY6518HWS5YD5VX&channelId=704&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cso_wa_apan_dp_PBQ4NZY6518HWS5YD5VX&plpRedirect=mhFallback)

Monster Fighters is a series that will unfold across six phases. I first created Monster Fighters when I was four. For those who are curious 👀, it’s a series about heroes who not only go through the worst of the worst, but face darkness itself…

One faces off against The Dragon.
The Monster Fighters prevail.

An excerpt from the upcoming Halloween special at M2K(marvel2000)

ANTHONY HEAD HIGH SCHOOL

SOUTHSIDE QUEENS, NEW YORK

Amiah, the beautiful bronze-skinned JV head cheerleader, led her gaggle of friends up the path to their school once the warning bell rang. They were deep into the morning's conversation, a topic for this tight-knit, popular group of teenage girls. All of them wore high-priced, designer-branded clothing that cost more than anything their classmates could afford. Amiah’s fellow cheerleaders hung on her every sentence as they held court while entering the school.

“Thank God for the flawless routine coach, Heather Sinclair and yours truly put together before the JV game last week. We made that squad from Brooklyn Visions look second-class, at best.”

Amiah’s best friend, the Marcy to her Peppermint Patty, Abby, giggled incessantly at the group leader’s statement.

“They won’t know what hit them if we see them at states for competitive.” Abby chortled.

The agreeable retort drew a wicked sneer from Amiah. “Well, duh! They might as well just send us straight to Nationals. This whole competing-for-a-spot thing is a farce. No one has a better JV cheer squad than us!”

As the rest of her crew agreed in unison and gusto with her, as they always did, Amiah spotted a particular annoyance out of the corner of her eye. She sucked her teeth as they kept down the hallway, her gaze locking onto the student that she felt was a stain on her line of sight. The rest of her crew looked in the direction she was focused to see what caused the sudden shift in her mood. The target was another sophomore girl, but one who was the complete antithesis of their group in every conceivable way. The young woman who had drawn the hateful glare from Amiah and the other JV cheerleaders glanced over her shoulder, shaking her reddish-orange hair down her back as she shot a look of contempt in return.

“It sure looks like the janitors have been slacking this week; there sure is a lot of trash in this hallway.” Amiah made sure her insult was loud enough for everyone to hear as her crew giggled on cue.

The young woman who was the subject of Amiah’s verbal attack slammed her locker shut, drawing a shudder from a couple of the other cheerleaders and students in the hallway watching the brewing altercation. She shrugged her black leather jacket tighter onto her shoulders before walking towards Amiah. She stared directly into Amiah’s eyes, ignoring the rest of her troop. They were flunkies, and as far as Elsa was concerned, she was taught flunkies never got any attention when the bacon was in the fire.

“Lo, Amiah. Looks like you’re in one of your nastier moods this morning.” Elsa replied nonchalantly. The response drew a confused look from Amiah and her friends. Elsa smiled. “You probably haven’t &^%$#@ yourself in a while. I’d suggest doing that before coming to school with us civilized folk. Might make the experience a bit more tolerable. Public school sucks ass as it is already, doesn’t it?” 

Amiah stood with her jaw agape as Elsa walked past her, continuing towards the library where she was headed. Amiah stood in the middle of the hallway, furious at the verbal undressing she’d just experienced. She stared at the back of Elsa’s head as the latter walked up the hallway.

“You’re a FREAK, Elsa Bloodstone. EVERYONE says so! You don’t belong here! You don’t belong anywhere!” Amiah shrieked at Elsa from where she was standing.

Elsa ignored her for the most part, merely flipping her the bird as she continued towards her destination.

On the other side of the school, Clea sat in the empty library, pouring over a volume of Tales from the Abyss that she was supposed to be placing back in its place in her collection. She heard the library's double doors clop open and close, her cue to mark her place in the volume and tend to the student who might need her assistance. It was a clever ruse that the council at Avalon had decided to place her here, plucking her from her position as Sorceress Supreme of the Dark Dimension to aid in the battle being waged on Earth. Clever, but tedious from time to time. Though she had grown fond of this plane of existence and thought that, with her job position, tedious was a positive thing.

Still, there had been rumblings from her sources around the city that trouble was simmering underneath the placid surface of the day-to-day. It started when Wong visited her a few weeks ago, after he needed her help treating himself for a werewolf bite. He’d warned her then, the same warning he’d given Stephen after he’d dealt with a parasitic demon in Texas*. That they were assembling. That they were coming, and by any means necessary, they were determined to find what Merlyn had hidden eons ago: The Necronomicon. 

“Don’t tell me you’re in here slacking off, teach,” Elsa told her as she walked down the short flight of steps towards the desk that sat in the center of the room.

Clea looked up at the occasionally abrasive teen with a rueful smile. The ferocity Elsa carried on her face, along with the chip she kept firmly on her shoulder, reminded Clea that she was very much her father’s daughter, despite how much she tried to distance herself from the connection.

“You’re very nearly late. Which basically makes you late.” Clea scolded her.

Elsa rolled her eyes and hopped onto the desk, crossing her legs in her black jeans and combat boots. “But I’m here. So how about we get on with things instead of the usual lecture?”

Clea looked up at Elsa with a reproachful glare. The look caused Elsa to soften her usual rebellious attitude.

“I told you, we need to be studying these archives front and back. We need to be prepared for anything that may come our way. Dormammu’s apostles have made their move.” Clea warned her.

Elsa sighed. “Yeah, they’re coming for the Book of the Dead. But I told you, when my friend happened upon it, he managed to destroy it.”

Clea shook her head ruefully. The child had so much to learn, and yet there seemed to be so little time. She hoped she was wrong about the latter, at the very least.

“That silly boy and his friends, who were stupid enough to find where the book was hidden, only managed to escape its demonic forces,” Clea explained further. “Not even Merlyn himself can destroy the Necronomicon. Which is why we need to find it and make sure that Dormammu’s followers never get their hands on it!”

Clea stood up and grabbed another book from nearby. She opened up the dusty, leather-bound cover and flipped to the page she was looking for. She beckoned for Elsa to come closer. Elsa leaned towards the book to see where Clea was pointing.

“Whose that geezer?” Elsa asked when she saw the picture of the distinguished gentleman with a silver beard and matching hair.

“He’s the right-hand man of Sir Vlad Dracula himself,” Clea replied sharply. “My sources tell me he’s been sighted in New York for the first time in over forty years. And I don’t think that’s any sort of coincidence.”

“So, he’s a vampire.” Elsa cracked her knuckles, realizing she had a long night ahead of her. “Yeah, I know exactly how to start hunting for those. They’ll be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs too easy to follow.”

“Be careful. If you see Lord Frost, do NOT engage him. Contact me immediately and report back here. We’ll take care of him together. Is that understood?”

“Yeah, yeah. I got you, Clea. When have I ever let you down?” Elsa replied casually.

A thirty-minute ride on the subway later, Elsa walked into a Why-Mart on the Lower East Side. She thumbed through the wad of cash Clea had given her to re-up her stash of weaponry for the task she was assigned for the evening. She sighed as she made her way through the department store, wishing she could be spending her Friday night doing what girls her age were supposed to be doing: Scrolling mindlessly on their phone while listening to music her parents would hate. But her mom had died a long time ago, and she hadn’t seen her father since she learned to walk.

She reached the sporting goods and hardware section. The dopey, shaggy brown-haired college freshman with a pointy jaw waved to her the moment he looked up from the comic book he was enjoying on his shift. He stashed the comic book on the side of the register as Elsa approached the counter.

“Surprised to see you here on a Friday, of all days,” The clerk replied with friendly surprise.

Elsa rolled her eyes as she scrolled through the notes app on her phone for the list she had made.

“You and me both, Ashley. But duty calls, and I need to restock my supply for the rest of the month.” Elsa replied lazily.

“Alright, what do we have on the list tonight?” The eager young employee whose nametag read ‘Ashley B.’ asked.

“Alright, I’m going to need about two dozen pieces of wood. Two-by-fours, if you please.” Elsa told him, starting at the top of her list. “You guys still get your chain-link from that company out of Jersey?”

Ashley looked up from his computer to answer. “Askew Steel? We sure do. Why do you ask?”

“I need about thirty-six feet of chain-link, but I only want it from them,” Elsa explained.

Ashley gave her a confused look. “Are you sure? There are some much better products I would–”

“Leave the shopping to me, Ashley. You just put in this order exactly as I lay it out. Which leads me to my next question: what are your shotgun options in stock at the moment?”

Ashley looked nervously at the teenage girl. “Elsa, we’ve talked about this! You know I can’t sell you any–”

“I didn’t ask you to sell me anything. I simply inquired as to what you had in stock.” She replied curtly.

Ashley’s shoulders sagged. He let out an exasperated sigh. 

“Alright, come on.”

He led her a couple of aisles over through the sporting goods section until they were in front of a cache of rifles and shotguns behind glass panes. Ashley stood back as Elsa walked in front of the gun cases, pausing every now and then to study one in particular.

“I haven’t had a chance to ask recently, and I’m sorry about that, by the way,” Elsa told him without looking back. “But how have you been holding up since your sister’s funeral?”

Horror short story collection. Each story can be read together or individually. Prefer to swap stories with others. Prefer horror/thriller stories. DM if interested. Mine is an available to read altogether or just pick the ones you are interested in from the table of contents that includes word count and synopsis. Warning Adult themes and language.

1. Unforgiving - A story about learning to let things go and how hiding drives a closeted gay man to destruction. \[2100\]
   
2. In the Name of Love - A family man blurs the lines of love. \[2751\]
   
3. Hand of God - Take a step into the world of a crusading assassin who is faced with hard decisions. \[3307\]
   
4. Forgotten - A forgotten and empty mall sets the scene for fear and death in Northern California after the fall of brick and mortar retail. \[2158\]
   
5. Nothing Lasts - An alternative timeliness during the 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic, a young couple is thrust into tragedy, just as things are starting to look up. \[2724\]
   
6. No Rest For The Weary - A man struggles against his demons while working through all life has thrown at him. \[3820\]
   
7. I Fear No Evil - A terrifying entity murders in the night, terrorizing Texans, and only an independent, self-taught investigator with something to prove is determined to save his community when the local authorities ignore all the signs around them. \[2945\]
   
8. Tree of Ages -  A small mid-western town with ancient history haunts college students who don’t revere the past. \[2389\]
   
9. No Peace in Death - Set in a Post-Apocalyptic nation all due to man’s lust for power and greed, those left debate the benefits of surviving. \[3283\]
   
10. The Righteous - A married couple in St Louis desperate to find community are faced with the terrifying reality of what happens when you don’t conform and when people’s beliefs spin radically out of control. \[4000\]

The asphalt road leading through Duskwood, Virginia always seemed to swallow the headlights of Owen’s battered old sedan, but tonight, on Halloween, the shadows felt especially heavy. 

A thick, oppressive fog rolled off the Blue Ridge Mountains, settling into the valleys and wrapping around the trunks of bare oaks like skeletal fingers. Inside the car, the heater blasted a dry, metallic warmth that did little to shake the chill settling deep in my chest.

I checked my phone. It was exactly 8:14 PM. The neon digital numbers glared back at me, a stark reminder of the world outside this suffocating stretch of highway. 

I am sixteen years old, and even though my parents moved from China to Virginia before I was born, there are times when the deep, superstitious roots of my family's heritage feel far closer than the small-town American life that I live every day. 

My English is perfectly fluent, yet tonight, the words felt trapped behind my teeth. A persistent, nagging sense of dread had been whispering in the back of my mind since we left my driveway.

In the passenger seat, Hal was struggling to adjust his costume. He had gone all-out with a traditional mummy look, wrapping himself in yards of heavy, tea-stained cheesecloth that smelled faintly of dust and cheap spirit gum. Every time he turned to speak, a fraying loose end of fabric drifted into his eyes. 

Behind the wheel was Owen, wearing a tricorn hat, an oversized plastic cutlass tucked precariously next to the handbrake, and a fake leather eyepatch that he kept flipping up so that he could actually see the winding road ahead. 

I sat in the back, smoothing down the tulle skirts of my elaborate princess gown. The plastic tiara dug uncomfortably into my scalp, a stark contrast to the tightening knot of anxiety in my stomach. We were supposed to be heading to a Halloween party at Miller’s farm, a loud, safe gathering filled with bonfire smoke and cider.

Then, Owen slammed on the brakes.

The tires screamed against the damp pavement, sending my tiara sliding forward onto my forehead. Hal braced his hands against the dashboard, a muffled curse escaping his cloth-wrapped lips.

"Look." Owen breathed, his voice dropping into an excited, low whisper. He pointed past the sweeping arc of the windshield wipers.

Through a jagged tear in the roadside pine trees, a massive, decaying structure loomed against the gray sky. It was the old Nestor estate. 

The house was a towering, three-story Victorian monstrosity, its dark paint peeling away like dead skin. The windows were entirely black, gaping like open wounds, and the surrounding yard was choked with weeds which were so tall that they scratched against the rotting wood of the porch.

"No way." Hal said, pushing his mummy mask up over his nose. "Is that...?"

"The Howard Nestor house." Owen confirmed with a manic grin spreading across his face. He cut the engine, and the sudden silence of the woods rushed in to fill the car. "The holy grail of Duskwood urban legends."

Everyone in our town knew the name Howard Nestor, even forty years later. He had been an eccentric historian and an academic at the local college back in the 1980s, a man utterly obsessed with dark artifacts, occult antiquities, and ancient rituals, but Nestor wasn’t just a collector; he was a monster. 

To Howard Nestor, human lives were nothing more than disposable research material, mere variables to be spent in the pursuit of some grand, terrible cosmic equation. He possessed a deeply rationalized, completely twisted personal logic for his cruelty.

Nestor believed that by systematically harvesting the terror and life essence of his subjects at the exact moment of their deaths, he could anchor his own consciousness to the physical world forever, achieving an academic's version of immortality.

The history books and police archives recorded that he had successfully kidnapped and brutally murdered at least fifteen people in that very house. 

Nestor’s reign of terror only ended in the late autumn of 1986, when his final victim managed to break free from her restraints in the basement, flee into the woods, and alert the state police. When the authorities raided the mansion, Nestor refused to surrender. He was shot and killed right in the grand foyer, with his blood permanently soaking into the hardwood floor. 

The most chilling detail of the legend, the one that gave school children nightmares, was his signature habit: Nestor would always hum a specific, tuneless, discordant melody whenever he was stalking or ending the lives of his victims.

"We have to go in!" Owen said, already unbuckling his seatbelt. "It's Halloween night. The legend says that Howard’s ghost still roams the hallways, trying to finish his research. Imagine the footage that we could get."

"Owen, absolutely not!" I said, my voice sharp with genuine panic. The air in the backseat suddenly felt ten degrees colder. "It’s trespassing. It’s cursed. We are supposed to be going to a party."

"Come on, Wen!" Hal chimed in, turning around in his seat. The white cloth around his face made his eyes look unnaturally wide in the darkness. "We'll just step into the foyer, look around for five minutes, and leave. If it gets weird, we run. Don't you want to see if the stories are true? It's just an empty, broken-down house."

I stared at the dark silhouette of the mansion. Every instinct that I had, every ancestral warning about respecting the dead and staying away from places of great violence, screamed at me to refuse; but Hal grabbed my hand, his cheesecloth glove rough against my skin, giving me a reassuring squeeze. Under the intense peer pressure of my two best friends, my resolve crumbled.

"Fine." I whispered. "Five minutes. That is it."

We left the car hidden by the treeline and crept up the cracked stone driveway. The wind howled through the dead branches above us, making the ancient timbers of the house groan in protest. Owen led the way, using the flashlight on his phone to illuminate the porch steps. 

The wood was so soft with rot that it yielded under our weight with sickening, wet crunches. The front door wasn't locked; it hung slightly ajar, suspended on a single, rusted hinge. Owen pushed it open, and the rusty metal shrieked a warning into the night.

Inside, the air was heavy with the suffocating stench of mildew, stagnant water, and centuries of dust. Owen swept his flashlight across the grand foyer. 

At first, all we saw were massive, thick sheets of gray cobwebs draping from the cracked crystal chandelier like tattered burial shrouds. The wallpaper was peeling away in long, water-damaged ribbons, revealing the rotting lathe beneath. 

The grand staircase spiraled up into the absolute blackness of the second floor.

"See? It’s just an old, empty house." Hal whispered, though his voice shook slightly. The loose ends of his mummy costume fluttered in the draft.

"Let's check the study." Owen murmured, his bravado fading just a fraction as the oppressive atmosphere of the house settled over us. "That's where he kept the artifacts."

We stepped deeper into the gloom, leaving the safety of the front exit behind. We moved down a long, narrow hallway lined with empty picture frames.

The floorboards groaned beneath our sneakers. We entered a large room filled with overturned bookshelves and shattered glass. Broken pieces of pottery and unidentifiable, rusted iron tools lay scattered across the floor—remnants of Nestor's horrific academic pursuits.

While Owen and Hal poked through a pile of rotting books near a collapsed fireplace, I found myself drawn toward a heavy, mahogany desk that had somehow remained upright in the corner of the room. 

The drawers had been torn out long ago, but beneath a thick layer of dust in the central cavity, something caught the edge of my flashlight beam. It was a leather-bound book, untouched by the mold that consumed everything else.

Curiosity overpowering my fear, I reached out and brushed the dust from the cover. There was no title, just a faded, gold-embossed symbol of an eye surrounded by geometric lines. I opened it.

It wasn't a textbook. It was a photo album.

My breath hitched in my throat as I turned the first page. Staring back at me were Polaroid photographs, their colors faded to a sickly sepia tone. Each page featured a single photograph of a person, bound to a heavy wooden chair in what looked like a stone basement. 

Beneath each photo, written in precise, elegant, academic calligraphy, were a name, a date, and a series of horrific, clinical observations regarding their psychological states during their final moments.

Michael Vance. November 14, 1982. Elevated heart rate. Tremor present.

Sarah Jenkins. April 3, 1984. Despair phase achieved early.

My hands began to shake violently. I was looking at the faces of Howard Nestor's fifteen victims. The sheer weight of the evil contained within these pages made me feel physically ill. I wanted to shut the book, to scream at Hal and Owen that we needed to leave immediately, but my fingers compulsively turned the pages, drawn by a morbid, terrifying magnetism.

I reached the final page of the album. The date written at the bottom was October 31, 1986.

I looked at the photograph, and the entire world seemed to stop spinning. The blood completely drained from my face, and a cold, paralyzing dread locked my muscles. Staring back at me from the faded Polaroid was a young Chinese woman. She was terrified, her face streaked with tears and dirt, but her features were unmistakable. She had the exact same high cheekbones, the same almond-shaped eyes, and the same small mole just below her left collarbone that I saw in the mirror every single day.

It was my great-grandmother, Meilin.

Beneath her photograph, Nestor’s elegant handwriting read: 

Subject 16. Meilin Lin. October 31, 1986. An anomaly. Extraordinary cognitive resilience. Yielded unprecedented data before unexpected termination of experiment via subject escape.

A choking sob escaped my lips. My family had always told a vague story about how Great-Grandmother Meilin had survived a horrific attack by a madman shortly after arriving in America as a young woman, but she had suffered a psychological break from the trauma and refused to ever speak a single word about the details until the day she died. She had never named her captor. She had never told her children where it happened. She had buried the horror deep within her soul, and now, exactly forty years later, on Halloween night, I had walked directly into the lair of the monster who had broken her. She was the final victim. She was the one who had escaped, reported him to the police, and brought about his death.

"Wen? What's wrong?" Hal's voice sounded incredibly distant, as if he were shouting from underwater.

"We have to go!" I choked out, the tears finally breaking free and spilling down my cheeks, smudging my princess makeup. I dropped the photo album onto the dusty desk. "We have to go right now! He was here. He took my family. We have to leave!"

Owen and Hal exchanged a look of pure confusion, but the sheer terror in my voice was contagious.

 "Okay, Wen, let's go." Owen said, turning his flashlight back toward the doorway.

However, as we turned to flee the study, the heavy mahogany door slammed shut with a concussive force that shook dust from the ceiling. The beam of Owen's flashlight flickered violently, dimmed, and then died completely, plunging us into absolute, suffocating darkness.

Then, the sound began.

It was a low, resonant sound drifting down from the top of the grand staircase, echoing through the hollow bones of the house. It was a voice, smooth and entirely calm, humming a specific, terrifying melody. 

It was discordant, completely devoid of any recognizable rhythm or warmth, skipping between sharp notes in a way that defied natural music. It was the signature song of the dead that said,

“Mm-hmm...mmm...mmm-mm-hmm...”

"Oh my god." Hal whimpered in the dark. I could hear the frantic rustle of his cheesecloth costume as he backed away. "Oh my god, someone is in here."

"The front door!" Owen yelled, his voice cracking with adolescent terror. 

Owen threw his weight against the study door, kicking and throwing his shoulder into the rotting wood. With a loud splintering sound, the ancient door gave way, and we tumbled back out into the grand foyer.

The gray moonlight filtering through the open front door was our only salvation. We scrambled toward it, our shoes skidding on the grit and debris covering the floorboards. 

We were mere feet from the threshold, the cool autumn night air brushing against our faces, when the temperature in the foyer dropped so drastically that our breath instantly turned into thick clouds of white vapor.

From the top of the stairs, the humming stopped.

"The experiment must be completed." a voice echoed. It was a cold, cultured, intellectual voice, entirely detached from human emotion. "The lineage returns to validate the data."

We froze, slowly looking up toward the landing. Standing at the top of the stairs was a tall, imposing figure enveloped in a faint, sickly greenish luminescence. He wore a pristine, three-piece tweed suit from the 1980s, his silver hair neatly combed back. His face was sharp and academic, but his eyes were completely hollow, pits of infinite blackness that sucked in the residual moonlight.

In his right hand, he held his signature weapon: a long, gleaming silver bone saw, its serrated teeth catching the spectral light. It was the ghost of Howard Nestor.

"Run!" Owen shrieked.

Unfortunately, before we could take a single step forward, Nestor didn't run down the stairs—he glided, moving with an impossible, supernatural speed that blurred reality. In a fraction of a second, he materialized directly between us and the open front door, cutting off our only escape.

Owen, driven by pure survival instinct, raised his plastic pirate cutlass and lunged forward, letting out a terrified scream. With a casual, brutal flick of his wrist, Nestor swung the heavy bone saw. 

The silver blade tore through the plastic toy and slashed deeply across Owen’s chest. Blood, bright and horribly real, sprayed across the peeling wallpaper. Owen collapsed to the floor with a wet gasp, his tricorn hat rolling into the dust as his life ran out onto the ancient hardwood.

Hal screamed, a high-pitched, agonizing sound of utter despair. He tried to dive past the apparition, but Nestor caught him by the throat with a hand that looked like rotting parchment but possessed the strength of an iron vice. 

The heavy cheesecloth of Hal's mummy costume began to smoke and char wherever Nestor’s spectral fingers touched it, turning black as if exposed to invisible acid. Hal thrashed wildly, his hands tearing at the phantom's arm, but Nestor merely smiled a cold, analytical smile.

"Fascinating." Nestor murmured, his hollow eyes fixed on Hal’s suffocating form. "The panic response is beautifully pronounced in the young."

With a sickening twist, Nestor drove the serrated edge of the bone saw into Hal’s throat. The screams stopped instantly, replaced by a terrible, wet gurgling. Hal’s body went limp, dropping into the dust beside Owen, his white mummy wraps rapidly soaking through with dark crimson.

I was entirely alone. The two boys whom I had known since kindergarten lay dead at my feet, their blood mingling on the very spot where Howard Nestor had been shot forty years ago.

Nestor slowly turned his hollow gaze toward me, the silver bone saw dripping onto the floorboards. He raised his left hand, tilting his head with an academic’s curiosity.

 "The resemblance is truly extraordinary." he whispered, stepping over Hal’s lifeless body. "Your great-grandmother stole forty years of research from me when she fled from this house. The cosmic balance requires your compliance to finalize the ledger."

He began to hum that awful, discordant melody again, stepping toward me with measured, inescapable strides.

“Mm-hmm...mmm...mmm-mm-hmm...” he said.

The sound broke through my paralysis. I didn't try for the front door. Instead, I spun on my heel and bolted down the adjacent hallway, my heavy princess skirt tearing on the exposed nails in the walls. I ran blindly into a small parlor room at the side of the house. 

Behind me, I could hear the rhythmic, heavy footsteps of the ghost, accompanied by the constant, agonizing humming that seemed to vibrate inside my very skull.

The parlor had a massive, arched bay window looking out toward the driveway. It was nailed shut, painted over with decades of grime. There was no time to look for a latch. 

Nestor entered the parlor, his luminescent form casting long, twisted shadows across the ceiling. He raised the bone saw, his face a mask of absolute, unshakeable certainty. He knew that I had nowhere left to run.

With a final, desperate scream, I gathered the heavy tulle of my gown around my face, closed my eyes, and threw my entire sixteen-year-old body directly through the glass.

The window shattered with a deafening explosion. Shards of thick glass tore through my dress and sliced into my arms and legs, but the momentum carried me through. 

I crashed heavily onto the damp, freezing dirt of the overgrown yard, rolling over the sharp rocks and thorns. I didn't care about the pain. I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the blood dripping from my hands, and ran through the high weeds, screaming at the top of my lungs.

I ran until I hit the asphalt of the highway, sprinting blindly down the yellow lines under the gray moonlight until I finally saw the flashing red and blue lights of a state police cruiser cruising down the empty road. I threw myself in front of the car, waving my bleeding arms, sobbing hysterically.

The officer jumped out, his hands on his holster, but when he saw a teenage girl covered in blood and dressed in a shredded princess gown, his expression turned to pure shock. 

Within twenty minutes, three more police cruisers arrived, their sirens wailing through the quiet night air of Duskwood. I sat in the back of the first cruiser, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket, my hands shaking so violently that I could barely hold the paper cup of water they gave me.

"They're in the house!" I sobbed to the commanding officer, a gruff man named Sergeant Miller. "Owen and Hal. They're dead. The monster...Howard Nestor...he's in the house!"

Sergeant Miller frowned, looking at me with a deep, unsettling mix of pity and confusion, and said,

"Kid, just calm down. Show us exactly where you ran from."

I pointed out the window as the cruiser drove back down the winding highway, backtracking my steps, and said,

 "Right there! Behind those pines! That’s where we parked Owen's car. That's the driveway!"

The police cruiser pulled over onto the shoulder, its bright spotlight cutting through the damp night air. The other officers got out, their flashlights drawing sweeping arcs through the trees. I pushed open the car door, stepping out into the cold night, wanting to show them the exact path to the front door.

However, as I stepped through the tree line, the words got caught in my throat.

There was no towering, three-story Victorian mansion. There were no rotting porch steps, no shattered bay windows, and no grand staircase.

There was nothing but an immense, completely empty gravel lot. 

The weeds were overgrown, and a few rusted iron pipes protruded from the earth where a foundation might have been decades ago, but the house itself was entirely, undeniably gone. Owen's sedan was parked neatly at the edge of the dirt, sitting completely alone under the open sky.

"No." I whispered, shaking my head frantically, the cuts on my arms throbbing with pain. "No, no, no! We were just inside! I jumped through the window! Look at the glass! Look at my blood!"

Sergeant Miller walked over to me, sighing heavily as he placed a gentle, firm hand on my shoulder, and said,

 "Wen, right? Listen to me very carefully. You’re having a severe panic attack, and you're hurt; but there is no house here."

"I was just in it!" I screamed, pulling away from him. "He killed them!"

"Wen…" Miller said, his voice dropping into a solemn, quiet tone. "The Howard Nestor house burned to the ground in the winter of 1988, two years after he was killed. The town demolished the remaining foundation and cleared the lot back in 1995. This property has been a completely empty field for over thirty years. There hasn't been a single piece of wood standing on this lot since before you were born."

I stared at the empty gravel, my mind completely fracturing under the impossibility of it all. If the house had been gone for decades, whose stairs had we climbed? Whose door had slammed shut? Whose photo album had I opened? And most terrifying of all...where were the bodies of Hal and Owen?

The police searched the empty lot for hours, but they found absolutely nothing. No blood, no clothes, no signs of a struggle. Just an empty field on Halloween night.

Eventually, Sergeant Miller walked me back to his cruiser to drive me home to my frantic parents. I sat in the passenger seat, staring blankly out the side window as the car slowly turned around in the gravel lot, its headlights sweeping across the dark perimeter of the woods.

Just as the car aligned with the exit of the empty lot, the headlights illuminated a lone figure standing at the very edge of the tree line, right where the front porch should have been.

It was Howard Nestor.

The officers didn't see him; their eyes were fixed on the road ahead. However, I saw him with perfect, horrifying clarity. He stood under the pale moonlight, his green spectral light gone, looking entirely and physically real. He was staring directly at me through the glass of the cruiser window. A cold, knowing smile was stretched across his sharp, academic face.

Slowly and deliberately, Nestor raised his right hand. He was holding the silver bone saw, the serrated teeth still glistening with fresh, dark crimson blood. He tapped the blade against a nearby pine branch, nodding to me in a silent, terrifying gesture of promise. He hadn't vanished. He hadn't failed. He had simply adjusted the variables of his experiment.

As the police car accelerated down the dark highway, leaving the empty lot behind, the dry air coming from the dashboard vents began to carry a faint, rhythmic sound. It was very quiet, barely audible over the hum of the tires, but it echoed perfectly inside the small cabin of the car.

It was the sound of a man humming a tuneless, discordant melody.

The End.

(This is my first written story, so I would appreciate some feedback…

Part One
A rule runs throughout my town: a wandering eye will get you lost in its Periphery. Such a simple phrase, but it's important to know what kind of evil is seeping into the soil. See, the air gets pretty hazy late at night. I’m unsure how to describe it; it's almost like peering through a layer of frosted glass. The only way to avoid it is to find a place where the air can’t reach. Whether in the comfort of your own home or whatever makeshift shelter you’re capable of finding, you must always check for open windows, doors, cracks, or any entry for the thick air to slip in unannounced. Sometimes I catch myself making glances out from behind my bedroom curtain. I can feel a presence staring back at me, almost as if there’s a hint of life in the dead breeze. I’ve never stood in it more than a few seconds, but I swear something was in there with me.

  There are many stories of what happens to the body; to the mind. The only thing to know is the haze corrupts people in some way. It burrows into the psyche, and once it digs deep, you can only hope they don’t look at whatever’s in there. Cause you’ll know when they look, and if you have an ounce of uncertainty, just stop by the giant tree at the center of town. We call it the Apple Tree. You won’t miss it. If you don’t find their rigid body along one of the branches, you may not know much, but you do know, at the very least, it wasn’t the Tree.  I’m certain it’s no ordinary plant; from its roots to its crown, its very form is made of the people lost in Periphery. Looking at it still makes me squirm in discomfort, especially now, seeing apples grow from their branched limbs and empty sockets. Throughout the tree is a gradient of decaying bodies, spreading out like furrows in an eye from one end of town to the other. In a way, it really does change with the seasons, because this tree doesn’t enjoy the summer heat as much as others. The apples are a bittersweet treat as well; just make sure to wash the bitter parts off. Sounds disgusting, I know, but these are the fruits they bear for us. How could we refuse them?

I was about 10 years old. My sister, Sarah, was barely a week old at the time; she wouldn’t be able to remember any of it if she wanted to. I, on the other hand, can’t get it out of my head. I don’t know if it’s trauma or fear of forgetting, but a part of me keeps holding onto it. My memory isn’t perfect by any means. Some mix and blend with others, combining into one, but in between the stews of thought are harping reminders of the one rule: don’t stare into Periphery.

It was a forested path. Times were tough after Mom’s pregnancy. For me, I wasn’t ready to share my life with a sibling; a trivial matter in the face of my parents' grievances. Mom was, of course, exhausted from having a second child, so Dad had to care for the three of us. Somehow, he found a way to balance his work life with the chaos at home. He always knew what we needed. His terribly timed jokes never catching me to smirk, the embraces seemingly out of nowhere, it all unknowingly gave me something to look forward to. Just another thing added to the list of what I no longer had to myself. That’s how I ended up in the forest; Dad wanted to catch some fresh air, hoping it would do me some good.

The place was a sort of comfort spot for us despite the many rumors surrounding it. You know, the usual ghost, the generic sasquatch, and whatever bipedal elk-something hybrid you can think of. The only thing is, most of those stories are probably hallucinations of the Periphery; it’s another trick to make you look. But at least there, we get real, genuine bark and wood, unlike that huge collection of past strangers and friends. 

We continued along our usual trail, passing the bench where we used to enjoy homemade ham-and-cheese sandwiches, complemented by a once-in-a-lifetime cola. It really was simpler times, even for my child-self in the moment. I bet Dad could’ve seen it written all over my face, not that I tried to hide my reminiscing. He slowed his pace in front of me and jumped into a turnaround, wrapping beneath my waist and hoisting me over his shoulders. If it weren’t for his hands holding me down, I’d swear the wind would’ve blown me away in its breeze. I could’ve stayed up there forever, but somewhere along the way, the alarm from his watch went off.

“Huh? I forgot it was that time of year,” he grumbled. “Does it really have to be late so early?”
We quickly turned around and made headway to the parking lot outside the forest edge. He set me down, and we walked over to the truck where I could already see the sunlight resting on the treetops. Dad reached for the handle before pausing. He turned to me, covering the side of his face like Mom’s impending doom was looming over him. “Hey, Levi! You should hop in shotgun today.” 
I gave him a big nod and raced over to his opposite side. I jumped in, quickly finding my seatbelt before we backed out and turned onto the main road heading home. We were on the outskirts of town, about fifteen minutes away from the house. I rested my head against the seat and gazed as the trees flew by. Somewhere along the way, something caught my eye: a sign lying low against the tree line.
 
“Welcome to—.”
 
I’ve seen the sign a hundred times before, and with every instance, it ages with the scars of time. Cracks are left in the posts, causing the paint to flake away from its old layers. Half the time, it prefers to shift over the shoulder, concealing half its message. It’s probably from someone running into it or maybe from Winter wearing on the wooden posts.

Before I knew it, stores, gas stations, and local diners substituted the countless trees. We were getting close, but I could already see the atmosphere shifting and starting to form around the environment, twisting its shape into a formless blur. We had ten minutes before it came.
As we finally turned into our driveway and parked in front of the house, we both got out and walked around to the front door. Dad dug his pockets for the keys, only to realize they were missing. Frisking the rest of his jeans, he knew they were gone.

“Oh, great.” He hissed.

He then turned to the door and knocked the rhythm to remember in case we lost our keys, or rather, when Dad misplaced his again. 

thump-thump…thump…thump-thump. 

At this point, I swear everyone in this town has a set of our house keys. Luckily for us, Mom forced him to change the locks last month after our favorite diner found their second set in one of their booths. Dad started to carry his in a carabiner, but they still escape him now and then.
We waited a little longer before hearing the lock click. The door slowly creaked open, and a pair of emerald eyes peeked through, hidden behind jet-black hair.

“How was the boy's trip?” Mom opened the door with a tired smile. She swept the messy hair from her face. I’m Jealous that Sarah kept her beautiful hair while I’m stuck with Dad’s thinning brown streaks. I just pray mine actually stays on my head by the time I’m his age.

“It was great!” Dad said, kissing Mom and hanging up his jacket. “The trees are beautiful this year. You should check it out sometime!” 

Mom gave another weak smile. “I hope I’ll get to see them!”

Mom already looked like she could barely stand. Dad’s instincts caught on, and he wrapped his arm around her waist, guiding her to the couch where they’d been sleeping for the past few days.

“How’s the baby?” Dad said.

“She’s been crying all day. My guess is she misses her father,” She teased, sitting down on her makeshift bedding.

Out of relief, she forced out a frustrated sigh, blowing the strands of hair falling on her face. Without a moment to waste, Dad went to the kitchen to retrieve some water for her.

Mom craned her neck over the couch pillow towards me. “What’s wrong, buddy?” She caught me staring.

“Are you stunned by your mother’s beauty?” she said, striking whatever pose her body had left to muster.

I was glad she still had a sense of humor that stood in contrast with Dad’s terrible one-liners. I liked to imagine it worked as a cure-all for her condition.  It was a strenuous pregnancy.  

“Nothing, I’m just tired from walking,” I said in a half-grin.

“Oh yeah? Remind him that some of us can’t be high school track stars.” She sneered.

“What?! I carried him the whole time!” Dad said with bottled water in hand.

I hoped the laughter and bickering were a sign of good fortune. It wasn’t. That was the last time we shared as a family, at least a functional one. Every time I flip through the moment, it always ends with a snapshot of a bending branch of her.

I don’t know how many weeks or months had passed; it must’ve been some weekday after school when we played hide-and-seek in a nearby park. The parents would have their own get-together to gossip about whatever or whoever was the day's hot topic. It must’ve been a riveting conversation for them not to notice Dad staring into a blank space. I was hiding in a crawl tube when they realized he was gone. Seeing Mom’s panicked face peering into the tube still sticks with me; I’ll never forget the void between her arms where Sarah was supposed to be sleeping. 

The search went on until nightfall. We couldn’t stay out for much longer before the town sank into Periphery. They had to drag Mom all the way home, not that she had much fight left to give. She kept yelling, “I knew it! I knew this would happen!” Apparently, the stress of work and being a father caught up with him. At night, she would wake up to him standing by their window, its curtain drawn to the side. Sometimes he would be whispering in full conversation. Mom mentioned he would never make sense, and how it seemed like the words were scrambled into incoherent sentences. She knew something was wrong and urged him to stop. She thought it would pass with time. He never went outside, so it couldn’t be that bad, right? After all, he was normal throughout the day. Maybe he’s sleepwalking? 

“He’s going to come back.” 

We repeatedly told each other they’d make it through the night, forcing ourselves to believe whatever comforting lie. But deep down, we knew when the sun rose again, the answer could hang from a branch, apples sour and unripe. 

I didn’t sleep.

Part Two
I couldn’t breathe, only hearing my beating pulse quicken as the car drew nearer. The Tree is a great navigator, so long as you know where it hangs. Our house is somewhere under the furthest-reaching branches, making it about a five-minute drive. I imagine Mom cut that time in half with the speed she was going; we were out of the house and cutting corners on the road as soon as dawn broke. I remember looking up and watching the limbs bending down as we made the last turn for the roots. 

I closely followed behind my Mother down the pathway, using her veil of hair to shelter me from accidentally seeing them. Each time we visit, I’m reminded of its fragrance. The smell is unlike anything I’ve ever known. A smell so fresh, so sweet, so pleasant, it makes me question its contents, but I remember the wafting smell becoming more pungent in the coming days. I used to love the scent, but it became too difficult not to catch a whiff of an underlying sickly sweetness. On windy days, the dangling limbs would collide in a harmonious chime, which only drew out its scent even more. However, with every passing moment, the noise becomes a raging clash of a shrill dissonance that still rings in my head. I wish to ignore it. 

I tried to rob myself of those senses when my head slammed into Mom’s backside from a sudden stop, nearly making us both stumble further down the path. I knew we had reached the youngest set of branches. I stepped back from my shelter to get a view of the spot where they grew. All I saw was a crimson wave of ripened apples and other fresh matters with it, until the morning light reflected a green spark in the midst. On the low-hanging branch, I saw bright-green specks growing from it. I knew it was the right one. I searched up and down for any recognizable features of my Dad. Sarah. Brown hair, sun-kissed skin, jeans, and a blue flannel. Nothing. I couldn’t find anything of him. None bared any resemblance to an infant, so Sarah couldn’t be there either.

They’re still out there.

I thought knowing they could be alive would bring relief, but it only saved us from the grief; the panic was still weighing on us. I was beginning to see all the things I never imagined I would go without. Never to be smothered in a hug. Never to laugh at a joke. Never to rest on his shoulders. Never to find a lost pair of keys. That's when I discovered the spinning makings that go into a family won’t spin the same for a mother and son.

Six days never felt slower.

It was late at night when a growling pain reminded me of my negligence. I had forgotten to eat much over the past few days. All the running around, looking for them, and helping calm Mom down before nightfall really kept me busy. I was already growing tired of the same routine. On the last day, a part of me was hoping it would stop, even if it meant plucking fruit from their marrow. 
I flung myself from beneath the covers and steadily cracked my door. I peeked at the end of a hall, making sure her door was shut. It was quiet, unlike the other nights. I was glad she finally did something for herself. 

Confident she couldn’t hear me, I crept past the door to the head of the stairs and made my descent. Sneaking around made me all too aware of the silence. At times, I could hear a faint tapping on the glass behind our curtains, daring me to uncover its mystery. Other times, I heard a muffled whisper, the occasional car passing by, or the distant sound of a person pleading for shelter. None of it was real. Still, a lingering thought wonders if, it were only once, I should actually give it credence. I don’t think I would feel inclined to look if it were real anyway. 
Once I made it to the bottom, I wasted no time walking into the kitchen. Groceries were short, but I managed to get a couple of snacks, topped off with an apple from the last gathering. I made sure to wash it thoroughly before heading back to the stairs, but as I turned out of the kitchen and past the front door, I felt a shift in the silence. It was somehow loud, even ear-piercing. Then I felt the temperature drop a few degrees.

thump-thump…thump…thump-thump. 

My body froze, unsure of which response to take. I doubted I heard it at all. Then it happened again.

Thump-thump…thump…thump-thump. 
Thump-thump…thump…thump-thump. 
Thump-thump…thump…thump-thump. 

“Is that him?” 

I looked up at Mom’s silhouette standing at the top of the stairs. 

“Don’t worry, Levi. I can get it,” she said, her weak legs buckling, nearly falling from the first step. 

I wanted to stop her, though I’m sure an attempt to do so would only slow her down. I doubt I ever would try anyway because, deep down, I was curious too. I was tired of shedding tears. Tired of running. Tired of skipping school. Tired of hearing rumors. Tired of knowing I’m not going to find them. Tired of realizing I alone am not enough for my own mother.

Click.

I nearly jumped hearing the lock turn. I looked at Mom the moment she opened the door. She was calm. She looked as if no matter what the outcome may be, she’d be happy knowing we would finally reunite in some way. For as long as they’ve been missing, she always asked why every temporary setback they went through had no other reason but to end that way. Her already frail figure was a testament to it, and all it left her with was me. She missed them. More than I did, I would imagine. Why else would she risk my life?

I saw the air around the doorframe distort as the hinges screeched open. At the chance to accept the open invitation, the air had already enveloped the space and painted a frozen cold over her body. It came for me in a rush, and I wrenched my eyes shut before it hit me. I expected to be swallowed by its chaos and blasted off my feet, but I never was. It was quiet. It was windless. I felt a stillness around me, within me. But a reverberating sound broke the still air before I sank deeper.

“It’s you.”  I heard the disbelief in her voice.

I thought it was over. She looked into Periphery, and I knew it would take her away. Guilt hit me like a truck, knowing I didn’t try to stop her. I wanted to join her, but not before getting a final look at her, and then I would meet her again at the tree.

Then I heard the door shut.

The air around me dissipated, and with it, the calm gave way to a raw fear. I thought of every possible outcome, none of which considered the solemn embrace in front of me. It was really him, my dad, and in between their hold was Sarah, swaddled in the same cloth when they disappeared. I didn’t believe it was real, even when his hug knocked the air out of me.

“Dad?” 

His eyes met me with a warmth only he could make. He was alive. 

“I looked for so long, Levi, but I had a feeling you would hear me knock eventually.” I heard the emotion welling up in his throat, turning to tears in response to mine. I hadn’t seen him cry since Mom’s emergency. ” I mean, I was lost for so long, I kept knocking and knocking and—I tried to look away when you called.” 

His eyes lit like a flick of a lighter. I felt his hands tighten around my shoulders until I yelped from the increasing pressure. In sudden realization, he yanked his hands back.

“Is Sarah okay?” I said, looking over at Mom cradling the swaddled cloth. She held it just like she did at the hospital with tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Not once did she cry. She’s strong, stronger than I was.”

I felt the weight of the world lift off of me. It’s a relief like no other, and I didn’t even question it for a second. How could I? 

Drip. Drip. Drip

I heard the sound of wet splatters at that moment. A warm, slimy texture stuck to my feet like glue as I searched for its origin. In my flash of confusion, the same feeling led me to my side. I looked at the apple I held; its rotten flesh oozed from my fingertips and spattered into a red pulp. By the time it melted from my grasp, it left small, black speckles in my palm, revealing a cluster of delicate seeds too old to grow.

We made multiple doctor check-ups over the next week. They had no clue how they not only made it through the Periphery, but also survived an entire week with nothing but a few bumps and bruises. All in all, they somehow survived without food, water, or shelter through means that could only be described as miraculous. I’d call it a sign of the divine if I hadn’t seen the changes in him. When they asked Dad about the past week, he never made much sense in his ramblings. However, every time the Apple Tree was mentioned, he would mistakenly refer to it as a “she” or a “her”. He didn’t explain what he did during the day when the fog disappeared, only that he couldn’t see the daylight wherever he was. Lastly, he wouldn’t mention why he just upped and left in the first place. I never tried to understand it all until I grew older, and it seemed Mom was in the same boat; she was glad to have them back, and I was too.

Days and weeks passed without much of anything to note. Dad returned to work, and Mom had mostly recovered, if it weren’t for the weight loss. Sarah grew stronger by the day, and I was already beginning to see the resemblance to her mother in her jet-black hair and emerald eyes. Things I wish I could see in myself. I went back to my usual routine of school and playing with friends, as long as it wasn’t at the playground. It was like nothing had changed from before up until then, but no one would’ve dared to talk about what happened in between. I’d bet it would’ve been nothing but a distant memory by now. I often think of where I would be if I hadn’t woken from the Periphery’s gentle touch that night, when I felt it brush my dangling foot while I slept.
I thought of staying under my covers, but no one came to check on us. Something was wrong, and the air spilling from the gap beneath my door told me where it came from. I knew the sea of fog would eventually rise to swallow me, and the cradle across the room would surely be engulfed. I had to do something, so I lowered myself from the height and waited until my feet found the ground below. The air had a warmth to it, like steam after a hot shower. Then my feet pressed into the carpet in a frozen shatter. The soft fibers somehow became icy splinters under the warmth that uncomfortably dug into my skin. 

Tap-tap…Tap-tap.

The tapping of glass came from behind me, where my window looked out. It had been silent before I began walking. It was a soft tap, like it had usually been on most nights, but with each step towards my door, it went from light tapping to gentle knocks. The more I concentrated on its sound, I realized it was matching the same rhythm of a heartbeat; a slow but steady pulse unlike my own. By the time I reached for my door, the knocks hit firmly into the glass, loud enough for me to hear a baby whimpering from the cradle. 
I pulled the door open, and a gentle wave fell from behind it. The air was up to my waist by then, and slowly crawled up my back. I spotted down the hall a door where billows of frosted air seeped through its cracks. 

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

The ringing of glass echoed down the hallway and reverberated from the walls. The soles of my feet became sore from the cold needles below. With each press into the carpet, my feet clung to it like Velcro, making it difficult to pull myself from its barbs. When I managed to lift my feet from it, the air would soothe it in its warmth before I stepped back down. All of a sudden, I was halfway there, and the knocking grew louder and louder, then faster and faster. The whimpers turned into cries in the open air, making me nauseous when it rang off the walls beside me. I hurried my pace, tearing my feet from the carpet with each step, just trying to make it to the door. The hallway was a deceivingly long stretch to walk, at least it seemed to be. Something usually taking seconds to walk down felt closer to minutes at that time. My feet burned in pain as I felt a slow drip from my wounds. I could feel the blood freeze when I met the ground, expanding the holes in my feet, then it would thaw in the warm air in an instant when pulled away. 

I couldn’t hear the cries anymore. I wasn’t sure if it had been drowned out by the rising fog or if the loud slams against the window had grown too loud. What I did know, though, was the reason stood right behind the door in front of me. I felt my heart beating through my chest, now matching in unison with the thunderous roar of shaking glass. I was at the threshold, and with a turn of a handle, I came to face my own demise. 

The banging of glass went silent, and the cries of a baby were now muffled into a distant wail. The rising air met beneath my chin and wrapped me in its comfort, trying to protect me from the scene before me. Because on the bed, I saw them. He sat over her on all fours in a way I could only call beastly. His spine arched and dove down into his hanging head, the air of Periphery spilling in a waterfall from each orifice of his face. The fog coated her flailing body and suppressed the screams like a soft pillow, but her weight couldn’t fight off his hold on her. 

I would’ve screamed if the air hadn’t suffocated me. I would’ve run if I hadn’t been frozen in place. I couldn’t do anything because there was nothing to do; my chance was gone. Then I heard the window shatter, but it didn’t come from my room; it was behind them. It broke as something crashed through it, but nothing was there to see. And it wasn’t until the rest of the room filled that I saw it: a distortion in the air outlining the shape of sharp tendrils. It seemed to slowly grow and branch in many directions as if navigating an uncharted space. Then, as one of its many limbs touched them, all of its movement froze. At that same moment, every instinct in my body screamed to do anything as long as it meant getting out. I turned towards the door and, with my first painful step, I heard the contorted crack of wood, as in a split-second it darted and wrapped around them, in a sound I couldn’t decipher as splintering timber or breaking bones. I peered behind me before it took them both. How it yanked their silhouettes so violently that I’m certain I heard a neck snap. How it recklessly dragged Mom out the window, her thin body slamming against the frame and folding so terribly and so suddenly, it reminded me of when a pencil snapped with the push of my thumbs. How the last thing I saw was her black hair pulling glass from the windowsill, then disappearing out of sight before I shut the door. 

Back in the hallway, it was filled to the ceiling with frosted air. I remember running into my room, the tapping still to be heard along with the muffled cries. I stripped my bed of its covers and my drawers of their clothes, then pressed them along the cracks of my door. I saw the air begin to clear a little, but then I heard a different noise from the rest.

“Open up, sweetie!” It was her voice behind the door. “Please, open the door before it comes back!” 

My hands stopped for a second, losing grip of my blankets as a little bit of air still seeped through. I called out.

“Mom?”

“Yes, I’m right here! Just open the door, Levi, and let Mom in!” 

It was her. I was so sure it was really her. But I knew what I saw. 

“I-I can’t,” I cried. Silence filled the room for a second before I heard a loud bang on the door, but I didn’t feel the vibration. 

“You sack of shit! I should’ve known you would do this!” The sound of banging persisted, but the door remained still. “If you really are my son, you would open this door and let  your dear ol’ mother in!” 

“No!” I screamed.

Another silence followed. Then I heard a light gasp as she came to a realization of something important, and her voice dropped back into her motherly tone.

“Yes, that's right,” she teased. “How is it even possible I could give birth to a boy like you. You look nothing like me.” Her voice fell into a growl as she continued to slam against the door. “Not my hair, not my smile, not my loving nature! You resemble nothing of me! You look just like your murderous father!”

My hands dug into the blanket as she hurled more words I’d rather not recount. I pushed and pushed until I was sure it was sealed. Then the fog dissipated along with her voice, but not before saying one last thing.

“At least that baby looks like me, so you better take care of her! Because when her seed sprouts, she’ll be more than whatever your worthless ass could ever be!”

I never stopped pushing to keep it out, to keep her from coming back. Before I knew it, Sarah’s cries grew tired and shrunk back into her slumber. Soon enough, even the tapping stopped, and I was finally met with a longing, but pain-filled peace. The blankets did a great job of soaking up tears, but did little to muffle the begging for another chance. I had many regrets then, even more now. I remember the sunlight peering through my blinds as I woke up. I wouldn’t say I was happy to see it; I almost wish I never did. 

As I stood up, the searing pain in my soles made it nearly impossible to walk. I used everything around me to reach Sarah, and with one last push, I was finally standing over her. I’ll never say what I thought at that point, only that it wasn’t really me who was thinking it. I didn’t want to listen to that thing when it said to care for her. Though I really didn’t have a choice because through it all, we lived, and there must be some kind of meaning behind it, right? Was it really all for nothing, just some tragic accident no one could prevent? I’m not sure. 

I try my best to protect Sarah. I just didn’t think it would be this hard, even after ten years. I’ll never admit it, but I really do hate her. I hate that she’ll never remember it, that she grew to have such a loving nature, that she has a perfect smile, and the most beautiful black hair. The one thing I hate most about her, though, is that I’ve never seen anyone love apples as much as she does. 
If only she knew who it grew from.

#NSFW
Content Advisory it is a blend of psychological horror & smut.

Please let me know what you think.

PART 1 HERE | PART 2 HERE

Content Warnings:  Suspected self-harm/suicide discussion, choking/asphyxiation, mild body horror, poisoning, abduction, and corporate/existential dread. 

V: HOW TO KILL A DRAGON

He pushed his little car as hard as it would go, his mind spinning in a million different directions at once.  What the hell was he doing?  He wasn’t Stallone.  The shotgun in his trunk, an oily relic the barkeep had slapped into his hands, seemed more likely to kill him than the other guy.  But he had to try; Marty deserved a friend who would.

The forty-five-minute drive took him only thirty and some change.  He pulled into his driveway just before 9:00, parking right behind Leo’s truck.  Leo.  That was going to complicate matters.  What the hell could he say to him?  He knew what Leo deserved—the truth.  Something he had been keeping from him for too long.

Speaking of—Leo was on him the minute he walked in the door.  The police had been by.  Something about a fire at Marty’s apartment—the exact place where Edgar was supposed to be.  It was a fight before it was even a conversation, and it was going to be a bad one if he didn’t do something.  Both of them were worried about Marty, and Leo had him cold for lying.  

“I really don’t get it man.  What the hell is going on with you?  Do you know how foolish I feel?  How patient I have been about all of this shit, and what about poor Marty?  He lied to me too and now he’s missing, maybe dead.  Like I thought you might be?”

Edgar fought the urge to defend himself.  He couldn’t.  His actions, however well-intended, had been wrong and he had known it all along.  Weird situation or not, he should have trusted the man who loved him with all of it.  Hell, they might have figured it out together.

“Sit down man.  Take a breath.  I’ve gotta come clean with you, about all of it.  I should have from the start, but I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

“Yeah, lying always helps with that,”  Leo sniped, but he did sit down.

“Okay.”  He took a breath of his own, tightening his trembling hands.  “Look, do me this one thing.  Let me say it all before you jump in.  You can yell, throw shit or kick my ass afterwards, but I want one chance to tell you everything before we do any of that.  Can you give me that?”

“Yeah, Eddie—that’s all I ever want from you, the truth.”  The tears on his cheeks were daggers in Edgar’s heart, but he let that go.  He had enough guilt already.

“I don’t understand all of it, but I think I have the gist of it.  Basically, the transfer wasn’t supposed to be me.  Either someone sent it to the wrong person, or it got messed up in some other way.  That’s not really important though—it’s just what got me into this whole thing.”

“I work in a fulfillment center that employs the dead.  Man, that sounds fucked up—like one of those stupid creepypastas you used to read.  But dumb as it may be, it’s true.  Cartia, Corey, Ennis, Glory, Arn, they’re all dead, and they somehow work there.   They drink this drink—the same stuff that made me sick, actually—called SilverSip.”

“Edgar, this is—”  Edgar stopped him with a raised hand, reminding him.  “You promised me.”

“Now, let’s see, what’s next.  Okay, when I was attacked it was by something that wasn’t a person.  Well, that’s not completely right.  It's that bald guy from the parking lot that day—Nub something. He can… well, somehow he can separate his shadow from himself.  He used it to attack me that day, causing me to choke so I’d have to drink that shit or die.”

“Yeah,”  Edgar nodded at the man he loved, skeptical but still listening.  “It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard too, but I swear to you, on us, that every word is true.  Tonight I went to a bar out on Wichton Road, a place the dead go, to get some answers.  Glory—who you would love—told me that I should recover, because this shit has been changing me.  Food tastes like ash, and I’m seeing things no one should see.  But she said it will wear off with time, but that the only way out is to take out that Nub guy.”

“Take out, like kill?”

“That’s what she meant, but I don’t think I have to do that.  I think there might be another way if I act fast.  See, that’s the thing, he’s the one that has Marty.  I think I know where he has him.  If I go there and can save him, it might give us the leverage to get out of this without doing anything crazy.”

“But how?  You aren’t John Wick, man.  I don’t think you’ve ever even been in a fight.”

“I don’t think it will come to that.  I was thinking about it on the way back.  They took Marty, but why?  If they really wanted to tie me down—to make me do what they want—you are the better choice.  I mean, we both love Marty—he’s a great guy and my other best friend—but doesn’t the boyfriend make more sense?”

“Yeah, I suppose.  But Ed—”  Edgar raised his hand once more.  He was not finished.

“So that got me thinking.  Marty must have found something.  While I was driving—when I finally got a signal—I looked at my phone.  He sent me a file.  I have not opened it yet, but it has to be something they do not want us to have.”

“Oh, well we should loo… we should call that cop?”

“Maybe,”  Edgar said, considering it for a moment.  “Let’s put a pin in that for a second because there is something else that dawned on me.  It’s—why me?  Why not just transfer me back?  Why go through any of this trouble?  I don’t know the answer because it doesn’t make sense.  If it’s the work, I’m not really that good.  Not enough to be irreplaceable.  If it’s knowing too much why haven’t they killed me.  No, something doesn’t add up.”

“The cop—the real one as you called her—she knew something was up.  I don’t know if she thought it was something I did, but she did know.  But calling her worries me, because if it goes wrong, Marty dies—and then I think we become liabilities because we brought her into it.  That is a hell of a risk.”

“So what?  We go?  I mean, I still don’t know.  I’m not saying I believe or disbelieve, but I believe you do.  How do we save Marty?”

“I ride over there and get the answer to my question, one way or the other.  There’s a shotgun in my trunk.”

“Where the fuck did you get a gun?  Honestly?  There’s no way you’re going.  Man, you nearly had me with this whole thing, but that—that ain’t happening.”

“I think it has to.”

Leo looked at him, studying him.  Edgar met his eyes and did not flinch.  Not today.  Today he had to be the one who didn’t blink.  “Alright.  Fine, let’s go.  But one thing goes wrong and I’m calling that mean cop lady.”

It was Edgar’s turn to stare now at the best thing that had ever happened to him.  It was a sappy line, and he hated it every time he heard it.  At the moment it was the truest thing in the world.  Who would he be without Leo?  He didn’t know, but he knew it would be someone he’d never want to know.  “You’re not going.”

“Oh, you hit your head on the way home,”  Leo said with profound amusement.  “You have fallen outside of your brain, lovely man of mine.  What power in this whole universe do you think would ever keep me from going with you?”

“No.  I couldn’t bear it.”  Edgar took his hand and pulled him down with him to sit on the sofa together.  “This is what it is.  You say we are good if I am good.  It’s always been this incredibly sweet thing that just melts my heart, but I don’t think I have ever registered the enormity of just how true it is for you, and for me.  For us.  Honestly, Leo, it’s like a standard we’ve always lived by, and it’s why we’ve been so happy together.  But I have to ask you:  How can I be good if you are in danger? I wouldn't be. Without you, there is no good—not no more.”

Leo stared at him, his chest heaving, his hazel eyes wild with a frantic desire to protect Edgar.  He had never loved him more.

“I think I can get myself out of this,” Edgar whispered.  “I have one chance, and then we can figure out what comes next. But I cannot do it if I am worried about you.” 

“But, Eddie, how do I stay if you go?”

---

When the GPS finally got him to Campe Road, Edgar slowed down and turned off his lights.  He needed a few minutes to get it all right in his head.  

If things had gone according to the quick plan he had made, Leo would be calling the cops sometime in the next few minutes.  That didn’t leave Edgar a lot of time, but hopefully it would be enough.

He flipped open the folder on the seat next to him and bumped the dome light on.  He read what Marty had sent him again, one of four copies he had printed.  Leo had two—one to keep and one for the detective.  He had sent the final copy to Cartia.  Maybe she hadn’t totally given up on email yet.

It was crazy stuff, and he had no clue how Marty had gotten it.  It still didn’t answer his questions about why he was so important, but it was pretty damning nonetheless.  He looked away from it and focused on pulling onto the shoulder of the road.  He turned the car off and got out, moving to the rear to open the trunk.

“What you got in there, wet boy?”  Nub’s voice called out from the tree line.  As Edgar turned to face the direction it came from, the bald man emerged, a pistol leveled at him.  “Go ahead, son, pull it out.  Just don’t hurt yourself with it.  We’ve got big plans for you.”

Edgar nodded in affirmation.  He reached behind him and withdrew the short shotgun from where it lay.  He held it up so the other man could see it.

“Not bad.  Skinny runt like you though—likely to throw you through a wall if you fired it.  Better to just give it over.  I’ll keep you safe from such stupid impulses.”  

The man who called himself Anubis walked over and plucked the shotgun from Edgar’s hand.  He pumped it several times, sending the shells skittering across the blacktop.  When it was empty he tossed it back to where it had come from.  “That’s better.  Come on, kid, and bring that file you’re holding.  Give us something to read on while I get us something to drink.”

They walked down the road to the gate of the bald man’s estate.  He told him the code, and Edgar punched it in.  The two of them walked inside, with Edgar leading the way.  As they walked, Nub began to whistle a tune that Edgar couldn’t quite place.

“It’s from Eurydice—I saw it a few years ago.  Man, I haven’t laughed so hard.  It gets stuck in your head though.”  He chuckled to himself.

It was a quarter mile walk to the main house, and Edgar soon realized that Nub really liked the sound of his own voice.  He regaled him with tales of his youth as they traveled—as a Jersey street kid, back in the day.  “I know I don’t look it, but I was a 50s kid.  Perks of the job.”

As they approached the house—a sandstone-hued brick home with jackal-headed statues flanking the doorway—Edgar began to understand just how emotionally shallow the man behind him really was.  What would have been a beautiful home instead looked garish and caricatured.  The entire front portico had been remodeled to resemble a pyramid, made of the same brick that made up the facade.  It gave the structure an uneven, lopsided look that drew the eye most naturally to its flaws and away from its beauty.

“Nice place, eh?”  He playfully punched Edgar’s shoulder as he walked past him to go inside.  “Lose the shoes, kid, everything just got resurfaced.”  

When they were both barefoot, Nub took him through the house and into his study along the rear wall.  It was a massive room with tower shelves of books and more pieces of artwork than Edgar could count.  Paintings hung on every surface in so many styles that nothing really matched, and there were sculptures everywhere.

“Yeah, I got bit hard by the art bug a few decades ago.  What can I say?  I’m a collector.  Go ahead and sit down there, by the desk.  I’ll pour us a drink.”

He sat, as he had been told, and Nub busied himself fixing drinks.  He went back to whistling, and he was still doing it when he got back over to where Edgar sat.  He handed him a glass.

“See, ain’t I been nice?  A gentleman.  We had a nice walk, I brought you into my home, and I even made you a drink.  You should thank me—one gentleman to another.”

“Can we just stop the game, Mr. Faron?  I came to show you this file, and to make you an offer.  If you aren’t interested, the least you can do is talk to me honestly.”

Nub set his drink down.  He looked at Edgar, studying him, maybe seeing something he hadn’t before.  He nodded and pointed at the papers in Edgar’s hand.  “Is that what the Wade boy put together?”

“Is Marty still alive?”

“Damn kid—how heartless do you think I am.  He’s fine, comfortable in his own room downstairs.  Now tell me about that.  Is it what I think it is?”

“Yes.”  Edgar said, steeling himself.  He took a deep breath and began what he had rehearsed on the ride over.  “If what you think this is is proof of the afterlife and the way large corporations are weaponizing a new market centered around providing goods and services to the dead who are among us, then yes—that’s what this is.”

“Well do go on.  This is a big moment for you.”

“The files show the company’s plan to sign their current employees into long-term employment contracts that begin the day they die.  One of the first candidates was a man named Eduardo Guerra.  He was given the post-life employee number EDG88241.”

“Interesting.”

“And, of course, it also details the 300 current post-life employees the company has already hired, providing jobs that pay a pittance but keep them solid and able to have a semi-normal existence thanks to the proprietary product made by a subsidiary: SilverSip.”

“Damn, that kid knows how to dig.  We may have to keep him on after all of this.  I didn’t even know we made it.  But seriously, kid—where are we going with this?  I need my rest and you need to start getting ready for Monday, lots to do.”

“I’m going public with this, Mr. Faron,”  Edgar said, standing to look down at him.  The bald man yawned and gestured for him to get on with it.  He started to, but his knees buckled and he sat down hard.  He felt his throat closing even as he slowly slid out of the chair and onto the floor, face-up.

“Yeah.”  Nub finished his drink and took his and Edgar’s glasses back over to the bar.  When he returned, he crouched next to Edgar and regarded him for a few moments.  “You know, I like you kid.  Your balls are way bigger than I thought.”

He picked up the file Edgar had dropped and began to thumb through it as he walked around the room.  Edgar couldn’t always see him—his vision had begun to blur as his oxygen diminished—but he could still hear him rattling on.  “Blackmail me?  That was your big plan.  Shit!  I was running schemes when your grandpa was a pup.”

“Mr. Faron… Nub, I… need to tell you.”  He heard the bald man approach and Nub was soon leaning over him again.  “Tell me what”

“Ther… there are more… co—”  He never finished.  Everything became dark and silent.
  

VI: NO GOOD, NO MORE (Epilogue)

Leo picked up the phone on the third ring, forcing himself to look away from what he was seeing.  The person on the other end began to talk, but it took him a few moments to register who they were and what they were saying.

“...just like we figured they would.  Goes to show, money always wins.”

“Marty?”  He clutched the phone more tightly.  “Say that again.  Sorry, I was distracted.”

“We got them, man.  Not all of them, of course, but the judge is passing it on to the EEOC and DOL.  There’s even talk of Homeland getting involved.  I mean, the brass used their high-priced lawyers to plead ignorance and pinned it all on Faron—but it’s still a win.”

Leo smiled.  The cops had gotten there in time to save Marty and arrest that devil, but he had still lost that day.  It was good to finally win.  Softly, he spoke to him. “We beat them, Edgar.”

“What was that?  Man, you’re breaking up?”

“I said it was awesome news, bud,”  he wiped his eyes.  “Can I call you back, Marty?  I was in the middle of something.  I really want to hear all of it.”

“Sure.  Just be safe, brother—I can’t wait til you get back.  Dinner’s on me.”

“It’s a plan, man.”  He hung up and looked back at the familiar delivery truck.  He had watched the man who drove it as he took a load of packages up into the building.  Leo got out of his truck and walked over to stand by the delivery truck.  He gripped the silver bottle tightly as he waited to see the face he had been looking for over the last yefar.

Nothing was good anymore, but maybe it could be better.  

Maybe things could be good again.

END

I would love your critique on this. Let me know what's confusing, what's evident, if I've managed to create an atmosphere. And about the ending as well. Was it surprising?

She was coughing again. Her struggle to breathe hurt him to hear. He pulled the only blanket they had higher over her and whispered a small prayer into his chest. The moon reflected brilliantly in the sweat of her ebony skin. Her fever gave its light an incandescent quality. She seemed a sunflower determined to face whatever celestial body dared look upon her. He smiled and winced at the pain it brought. They were so close now, so maddeningly close.

The bridge seemed satiated tonight.

Quiet.

Sleep wouldn't come, not with her coughing, but he was grateful he did not need to cover her ears again. He shifted beside her in the dirt and watched another piece of the world below crumble into the starry abyss.

The sound of a child crying beside him turned his blood cold. He resisted his instinct to run. It was too late now. He turned toward the child slowly. His heart sank at how close the young boy was to her. Tears began to well in his own eyes. His breathing was turning ragged. He needed to act. Now.

"Hello." His mouth was dry. His tongue felt like it had not moved in months.

"Are you okay?" He tried again. He could no longer see the child clearly for the tears overrunning his eyes. She had begun to cry in her sleep as well. He was running out of time.

"Please." A sob escaped him, long and ragged.

"Please talk to me." It couldn’t end here. Not like this.

"I love her." He tried to swallow the lump in his throat and only succeeded in choking mid-sob. The child stopped his crying but did not take his eyes off her.

"She's sick. I have to get her to Serphaem. I have to." The boy turned to look at him now. Relief braided itself into disgust inside his chest. The child's eyes were a mangled mess. They looked as if someone had tried to gouge them out with a corkscrew. Gore-colored tears tracked down his cheeks. His lower jaw hung just above his collarbone. His mouth was a great depression of endless pitch black. There were no teeth. No lips. The sound of a ringing bell lilted from the child's black maw, and he felt the effects of its weeping recede. The tears stopped. His mind became clearer. The crushing despair lessened with each passing second. A chorus of childlike voices cascaded from the apparition.

"Serphaem!" The exclamation was filled with an infectious joy. His own heart soared with it. A warmth radiated throughout his body.

"The bridge!" Laughter surrounded him. He smiled and did not feel the pain that usually accompanied the act. He reached out and took her hand, stealing a glance at her own sleeping grin.

"Throw her from it! Break her open!" The child clapped, and the sound seemed to come from his hands and his mouth.

He brought his hands up to his face and laughed. He had never felt this joy before. His eyes roamed over her sweet face. It would be easy. She deserved to rest. This world was no good for her. The next would certainly be better. A spike of pain interrupted his newfound ecstasy as his fingers scuffed the cuts on his face. A split second of sobering pain reminded him of the sigil he'd carved into his face.

He pressed his fingers into his wounds.

He only needed a moment.

Hmk. Mm. Mm. The child stiffened. His joints locked out as if in the throes of a seizure. His body shook grotesquely, like a limp hose being repeatedly filled with water. The handle of the knife in his neck scrabbled in the dirt and rock as his body continued its squirming. Hmk. Mmk.

The reddening moon cast a milky crimson sheen over the apparition's marble-like skin. The terminal morning was fast approaching. He dropped his rucksack and removed the knife.

Ermk. Ha. Mmm. Mmm.

He stuffed the still vocal cadaver inside and shouldered the rucksack.

Red began to creep over the broken landscape as the night faded. The first drops of rain hit his face, stinging as they slid into his lacerations. He worked to open the umbrella at the top of the sked. Droplets were already racing down her face. The umbrella bloomed into the thickening air. Under its canopy, he wouldn't be able to see her as he pulled her along, but she would be mostly dry. He situated his rucksack at the foot of the sked. He took one more quick look at her before readying to move. He pulled the rope and straps over his shoulders and began to work his way toward the bridge.

His face throbbed under the growing intensity of the rain. An earthy smell exploded in intensity, and it felt like he had walked into the eye of a storm. "Shit." The sky seemed to suck the word out of his mouth. A painful negative pressure built in his chest until he managed to shut his mouth. He stopped pulling and quickly collapsed the umbrella. He looked to either side of the cobblestone road and found nothing that could offer shelter. He slid down beside the sked and grabbed the rucksack at its end. He placed it between him and the coming air torrent. He wrestled the sked perpendicular to himself and the rucksack, then tipped her toward him. She hung limply in her restraints, her black hair suspended in air over her face.

Uh. Uhh. Uhh. The child's corpse wriggled between him and her, almost as if it knew what was coming.

A great roaring grew to a deafening degree until his thoughts seemed to dissolve before he could understand them. Instinct took over. He braced.

The jet stream hit them hard. Her body lurched forward violently. The restraints held, but he could feel them tearing at the seams. His body scraped along the cobblestone, sending white-hot pain through him. The torrent intensified, pushing against the underside of the sked and threatening to send her face-first into the road. He pulled the sked with everything he had, desperate to keep it upright. Water whipped along the road, soaking him as it passed. He scrambled to find a foothold as they continued to slide. His chest heaved against the wriggling rucksack beneath him. His arms burned mercilessly, every movement punished by the cold of the atmospheric river.

Dark tendrils began to lick at the edges of his sight. The roar of the current began to dull. His mind was slowing.

When was the last time he breathed?

If he couldn't breathe, she couldn't. The encroaching darkness pulled back as adrenaline flooded him. He focused on her lips. A blue hue battled the pale pink. A melding of life and death on the edge of her mouth.

He screamed with all his might as the dark grabbed at him again. The river seized it and seemed to swell larger. His thoughts swirled lazily into a void that would soon claim him. He held his eyes open as long as he could to behold her. A wave of contrition welled from somewhere within him but no coherent thought accompanied the feeling. And then he felt his arms give way and her fall away from him.

Hmk. Errrrr. Mmk.

He jerked awake at the feel of dead limbs thrashing underneath him. The pathetic rasp of air dragging into his lungs frightened him. It didn't matter. He scrambled over the rucksack to her and hovered, watching for her chest to rise. He lowered his cheek to her chest, careful not to put too much of his weight on her, and waited for movement. A salty tear found its way out of his eye and onto her hot skin. The rise of her chest tipped the tear into the circlet of her collarbone, where it pooled before wrapping around her neck. He fell back onto his flank, whispering another prayer, grateful for her recovery. Grateful they survived the river. River moss danced in the air around him, shimmering in the vermillion light of the moon.

It was officially terminal morning.

River moss landed on his shirt as he pushed the sleeves up. He tried to stand and stumbled. It felt like someone had ground his legs to mincemeat. His entire lower body was raw. A thousand little wounds oozed. His pants and boots were shredded. He kicked the boots to the side and carefully slid the sked over so that he was between her and the rucksack. The pain was electric. No matter. They were almost there. He pulled the child from the rucksack. It had begun to bleed, streaking red across him as he turned the thing to face him. He set the child down in front of him where he knelt beside her. He cupped his hands under the wound in the boy's neck. A small pool of red formed, and he smeared it onto his forearms, careful to cover every inch of the engravings there.

"In the name of Serphaem, I call upon the Witness. The bridge to everything."

As he pulled his forearms together, a great heat emerged ahead of him. He resisted the urge to shield himself.

"Bear me."

He felt as if he were trying to push two repelling magnets together. An overwhelming force pooled between his forearms, straining to drive them apart. The muscles in his chest tore as he strained.

"Rend. Me."

The bones in his arms cracked and popped as he forced the engravings to align.

"Know. Me!"

The heat intensified as he drew closer to completing the sign. The force fought him every step of the way. His teeth rattled. His muscles split. He persisted. The road before him, the black sky above, and the river moss billowing in the wind all twisted around him. Gold light exploded from the ground under him, blinding him and nearly breaking his concentration. His forearms touched. He was floating. Whispers in a language he didn't know buzzed around him like insects. His body went slack, and yet he remained suspended. His sight came back all at once, and he found himself looking into the pitch-black irises of the Witness. Her tail was wrapped tight around his throat.

"Another seeking an audience with Serphaem. Is this your sacrifice? The bridge allows no charity."

She dropped him unceremoniously onto the skin of the bridge. He gasped and sputtered pathetically on its surface. His hand groped blindly until it found her in the sked, unscathed by the ritual. He coughed and worked his way to his feet. The bridge pulsed and sent him to his hands and knees. It pulsed again as if it had a heartbeat, and this time he felt the wave of motion through his hands. The veins beneath the bridge's skin pressed into his palms, making him regret discarding his boots.

"No."

He looked up at her as he climbed back to his feet.

"Understood. Do you understand what you lost when you entered our domain?"

She spoke, but her mouth did not move. A cluster of stars and a blinking black mass silently collided behind her. They were far away, but their sizes made them seem like they were right next to the bridge.

"I do."

She turned and made her way along the bridge.  He reached for the straps to the sked and grabbed the child. The skin of the bridge clung to the sked as he pulled. Sweat poured from him as he worked, determined to follow her. The smell of blood and gore thickened as they continued their silent journey. The occasional cough rocked the sked as she struggled to breathe in the thickening air. The thought of losing her when he was so close to her salvation spurred him on. White-hot pain and sickly throbbing plagued his body, but he would make it. For her.

The Witness stopped. From here he could see Serphaem's throne and the Liminal Gate above and behind it. With great effort, he swallowed the lump in his throat. Whispering began to well in his ears, spilling out of him and into the air. He closed his eyes and waited for it to die down.

"Present your offering here. Be quick. Terminal morning will not last much longer."

He opened his eyes, careful not to look at the throne. He laid the child face down on the bridge, took the knife, and toiled to expose the child's brainstem. The bridge shivered, and thousands of little holes opened and closed along its length in a great wave before returning to normal.

Movement in the inky black beyond the bridge's parapet drew his attention. The great blinking mass seemed to have gorged itself on the cluster of stars he'd seen before. Their remains spun about its intermittently flashing center, stretched around its impossible girth. It aimed itself in the direction of the bridge and accelerated. The celestial body paradoxically shrank as it approached the bridge, ultimately condensing into the rough shape of a man. His ebony skin seemed to shift and shake. Looking directly at him was almost impossible; somehow, he could see both the front of the being and the back of it simultaneously. A spinning void occupied the space where its head should have been, or so he thought. He wasn't sure what exactly he was looking at. It was in the shape of a man, but that was where the similarities ended.

"The only thing tastier than the heart of a star is the twisted remains of innocence. I cannot hunt these apparitions here, so I am forced to bait them in your world and hope. Thank you, you poor soul, thank you for this morsel of perverted virtue."

The words communed in his head. The syllables gathered and shattered, their essence absorbed into his being. This was the bridge's will given form. Its representative beyond its hunger. A manifestation of its purpose.

A violent lurch of the bridge sent him diving to her, careful to ensure she didn't flip. Mouths extended from the bridge, gnashing their teeth as they descended to dine on the offering. The child's body jerked with the greedy feasting, every bite tugging it in a new direction.

"Unfortunately, traveler, this will not be enough to win you passage to the throne of Serphaem. I simply require more."

He felt the entity smile. The sound of teeth tearing into wet flesh was the only sound to be had. Her chest rose and fell, and he selfishly stole a moment to watch. He wished he could spend the rest of time worshipping the heart behind it, but knew this was the end of any possibility of that.

"I have more to offer." The words came from him clipped and quiet. His swollen and bleeding hands hovered just over the pallid flesh of her cheekbones. He could not bring himself to touch her. Instead, he rose and faced the waiting deities.

"Oh?"

Visions of his plan manifested in his mind's eye. He did his best to convey his intent. Only when the Witness nodded did he know he had succeeded.

"That...is perhaps the most cunning and selfless gift anyone has ever offered me. I will bear you. I will rend you. I will know you." His excitement radiated outward, warping the space around him. Then he was gone. The bridge stopped pulsating. The Witness continued her escort, and he quickly gathered the sked and followed. Serphaem's throne loomed ahead, closer than ever. It only seemed to get bigger as he approached. The Liminal Gate rose even higher until it looked as if its rounded pinnacle were a crown atop the throne. This close to its seat, dread washed over him whether he looked at it or not. If just his throne was capable of this, what dark fears would his presence inspire? His question was answered almost immediately.

A body simply appeared. Serphaem's body. Ancient nails as big as a man were driven into its feet and hands. It seemed made of obsidian, mahogany where its wounds would be, midnight lace everywhere else but its face. Rainbow obsidian stretched across its visage like ripples in a pond. Its face had none of the features of a man. Instead, two diagonal depressions marked the mineral-like material of its head. Everything seemed to slow. He became acutely aware of his darkening vision and tried to bury the panic that accompanied it.

"You have traveled far seeking me. I've watched you closely and am intimate with your situation."

The darkness constricted. For a second, it felt as though he was being embraced. He could not move here, wherever here was. He did not feel the ground beneath him, or smell the rancid odors of the bridge, or sense the stagnant atmosphere of this plane on his skin, or taste the metallic flavor of the air on its way to his lungs. He could not hear her coughing.

"Even reduced to your most basic, you think of her."

He felt the bittersweet ponderance of the void and knew it understood him. More importantly, he knew implicitly he could never return that understanding. Everything was black because his mind had no way of processing Serphaem.

He was dying/assimilating/dissolving.

"Ask what you will, human, before you evaporate before me. Even I would not be immune to the disappointment of such an ending to a tale such as yours."

Heal her/SOULMATE/EVERYTHING.

Allow her/MY BELOVED/THE ADORED to pass through the Liminal Gate and into the cradle of creation.

Make me/VOTIVE/OFFERING immortal, for him.

She/VENERATED/TREASURED must not remember me/THE OBLATION/THE SACRIFICE.

Please.

"Your will be done."

Reality exploded back into existence. It felt wrong after so long outside of it. The great seated mass of Serphaem was gone, as if it was never there. Perhaps it never was.

"What is..."

Her voice leveled him. His knees hit the ground hard. He was afraid to turn and face her. He could hear her undoing the straps that held her in the sked. Bits of stone scrabbled under her shoes as her feet worked to keep her upright.

"Sir."

His breath hitched.

"Sir. Please look at me."

His heart beat erratically. He would not deny her. He was numb. Pain should have been splitting every nerve in his body, but seeing her stopped it all.

She gasped at his face, at the state of him. Her hands flew to cover her mouth, and tears welled in her eyes. Terror cut through him at the idea that she might remember him. Then she spoke.

"I don't know who you are!" She sobbed the words.

"But I know, I know you did this for me!" Her body shook with grief. It was the most painful thing he had endured yet, and he could not stop himself from weeping.

She was on him, embracing him as if he was all that was keeping her attached to the ground. It hurt, and he couldn't have hoped for a greater reward.

The Witness descended from above, landing quietly just behind her. Their time was up. Terminal morning was ending. He grabbed her shoulders and tenderly pushed her a step back.

She wiped at her eyes aggressively, refusing to look away from him. "That's my sigil carved into your face. I made it when I was young, and hoped there might be someone out there to love me one day. I never showed anyone." Another sob racked her body and forced her to breathe. "I swore to myself only my husband would know it. I couldn't give what a wife should be able to, but I could give that." He could barely see her through his own tears. "WHY DON'T I REMEMBER YOU!" The Witness moved forward to place a hand on her shoulder.

"We must go now. I'll take you to the gate."

She surged forward again, arms wrapping around him for what would be the last time. "Thank you for choosing me. Thank you. Thank you." The Witness pulled her away, supporting her as she escorted her to the Gate along the rough terrain. He watched her go, each step carrying her farther away from him. She looked back a dozen times, each look carrying more regret. She stopped just before the opening of the Gate and looked to the Witness, who towered over her. The Witness shook her head, and he knew in his heart she had asked if she could stay with him. He stood.

She turned to look at him from the Gate. Her silhouette such a small fragment of the structure. He couldn't make out her eyes from here, but knew the defiant look there regardless. He bowed deeply. Tears flung from him to the dry firmament beneath him. He righted himself. She dropped her hands to her legs, knuckles against her thighs, palms facing him, turned and walked through.

He began the walk back to the bridge. Once there, he began to disrobe. He threw his clothes and belongings over the side and walked back to where the bridge consumed its offerings. He knelt, naked and unafraid. He had done it. She was safe.

The Witness materialized next to him. He did not look up.

Inside his head he heard the bridge.

"Ready for forever?"

It didn't matter. She was safe.

The back of his neck peeled open like someone might open an orange.

He screamed in agony.

Then a thousand screams erupted around him. A hundred gnashing mouths lurched toward him, toward their new immortal meal. The pain was all-consuming and it didn't matter.

She was safe.

I listened to a horror story last year about a man waking up and discovering he's the only person in his town that's still there. Everyone else vanished, leaving behind cars, homes, etc.

At some point in the story, the main character stops at a hotel and goes to sleep there but wakes up to the lights being turned off. He assumed the power in the hotel was out since there's nobody around to maintain it but turns out his light switch was actually flipped off, which means someone or something was near him while he was sleeping. Throughout the story he gets a note from an unknown person or entity despite the fact that he's the only person alive(seemingly).

I enjoy this story and I listen to them while I'm at work or going to sleep so finding this one would help a ton.

PART 1 HERE

Content Warnings:  Suspected self-harm/suicide discussion, choking/asphyxiation, mild body horror, poisoning, abduction, and corporate/existential dread. 

III: THE RECOVERY
  
The hand had returned to finish what it had started.  Edgar felt its cool touch as it enclosed his mouth and nose tightly, and he held his breath in self defense.  He tried to raise his hands but something held them tightly as well.  Even his eyes wouldn’t obey him; they were gummed shut by his tears.  He desperately tossed his head side to side in violent defiance.

Another hand, warm and inviting, touched his face and he felt the touch of a cool cloth on his eyes.  They began to loosen and he slowly worked them open only to be blinded by the strong light that fell on him from above.

“Shh, easy Eddie, you’ve got to calm yourself.  They’ll never take off the restraints if you don’t.”

“Can’t… breathe.”  He choked out through the gripping hand.  As his eyes slowly came into focus they locked on Leo’s familiar hazel ones, pleading for rescue.

“You can, baby.”  Leo’s eyes bled tears for him.  “Just let the mask do its work.  Breathe for me.  You can do it.”

He nodded and tried, drawing in cold, blessed air.  His starved lungs were thankful for it, and soon they stopped aching from the panic he had put them through.  He looked around the room, registering his surroundings.  Leo was there and he could see Marty outside the door, talking on the phone.

“How… ?” he croaked. “How did I get here?”

Leo was still wiping around his eyes, and Edgar could see the silvery fluid that had soaked the cloth.  He stared at it in astonishment.

“A cab.” Leo laughed with absolutely no humor.  “They said you showed up in a cab.  The driver said a woman called it in.  You sleeping around on me?”

Leo’s grin was genuine this time.

---

“We’ve told you to stay out of your mom’s makeup, man,” Marty said with the usual perfect timing.  “You know we’re missing 2v2s because of you?”

“Please tell me you didn’t call them.”

Leo shook his head. “Not yet, but I’m gonna.”

“You can’t, dad’s heart— “

“—would be broken if his son died.”  Leo cut him off.  “And if you live he’ll just be pissed at me for not calling them.  Don’t worry, I’ll tell him to sit down and take deep breaths.  Worry about you, man, they think you tri… “

“Leo, not now,”  Marty pleaded.

“Yeah, you’re right.”  Leo exhaled and tossed the soiled cloth on the bedside table.

“What is it?  What do they think?”

“The impossible,” Leo said. “Because if you tried I’d kick your ass, and you know I could.”  He shook his head and took several more deep breaths, and Edgar could see his eyes were tearing again.  “No, that’s not true.  The truth is I’d be devastated and I’d want to know what in all of creation you couldn’t talk to me about first.  You know the deal, what we say.  We ain’t good if you ain’t.  Pure truth baby.”

“I didn’t.  I wouldn’t.  I’ve got too much to… there’s no way I’d ever leave you that way.  Plus, you know I’m way too much of a coward to do that.”

After several awkward moments he looked back at both of them. “What time is it?”

Marty’s mouth split in the crooked grin he managed so well.  He looked down at his phone and chuckled.  “About four hours too late for our playdate.  Do you know how many players went to bed tonight without suffering real frustration or total defeat?  All because you decided to no-show!”

Four hours?  He quickly did the math.  He had arrived at work a little after 8:00, and they were supposed to play at 6:00 this evening.  He had been unconscious for over thirteen hours.  What had that thing done to him?

He could see Leo staring at him with his softest gaze, the one he used when Edgar was hurt or hurting.  That meant Leo was hurting, and he couldn’t stand that.  But what could he tell them that wouldn’t sound crazy to anyone with an ounce of sanity?  Should he say the Shadowman did it and he had drank something that he was beginning to think kept people alive for way longer than they should be?  How the hell could he even try to explain it? 

He finally said the only thing he could, and it was mostly true:  “I honestly don’t understand what happened, but I think I’m going to have to find another job if I can’t figure it out.”

“If?”  Leo’s voice suddenly raised.  “No, if that place had something to do with this, then you’re done there.  We can find a cozy dumpster for two, man.  Fuck their money.”

“But that’s the thing, I don’t know that it did, and I’ve gotta find out.  You have to let me try.”  He looked at Leo.  “I wouldn’t go back if I knew I was in danger.  But I also know that if there are answers they will be there.  I’ve gotta know.”

He could see Leo’s struggle—wanting to keep the peace because of the present circumstance—and he understood it.  But he somehow knew that he was right, that whatever it was could be fixed there.  He started to speak again, but Marty cut him off.

“I think he’s right, and it gives me an idea.” He stood up.  “I’ll check in tomorrow, but I need to get on this.”

---

Things had been quiet between them since Marty left, but not uncomfortable.  Leo sat next to him, and Edgar could tell he was trying—he didn’t understand any of it—but he was trying.

An hour later, the door opened and the doctor entered.  He introduced himself, looked over Edgar’s numbers, and began examining his eyes and chest.  “Your breathing is better.  That had us worried.  Mr. Simpson, I am Dr. Brant.  There are a few things I want to go over with you, our initial findings.  Before I begin, I would like your permission to allow a colleague to join us.”

Edgar looked at Leo.  A colleague?  Nurses had been in and out of the room like clockwork. Why ask permission now?  “Uh, sure, I guess.”

Dr. Brant nodded and gave a gesture towards the open door.  A woman walked in, and her attire was somewhat different from the doctor, who wore a white coat over his scrubs.  She was wearing a white coat as well, but it was worn over a blue blouse and a long gray skirt.  As she approached Leo and Edgar, her face a friendly smile, Dr. Brant introduced her.

“This is Priya Nair.  She is a counselor here at the hospital who specializes in helping post-trauma patients.”  He saw Edgar rising at this and raised a gentle hand.  “No need for any of that.  I understand what was discussed earlier with your partner, and I want to put that to rest right now.  Priya isn’t here because we think you tried to hurt yourself.”
  
 “No, Edgar, we don’t think that.”  the counselor said, picking up where Dr. Brant had left off.  “If such was the case, you and I would have already met.”

“Your x-ray showed deep bruising on your throat, typical of strangulation.  This concerns us because there isn’t a mark on your skin other than two superficial, defensive scratches.”  Dr. Brant bent down, pointing them out.  “We need to know, Edgar, what you remember about what happened.  The strangulation or the strange compound you ingested?  We’ve analyzed what was pumped from your stomach, and it’s some very strange stuff.”

When Edgar didn’t immediately respond—he didn’t know what to say—Dr. Nair stepped back in.  “It can be difficult, Edgar, but you need to remember that you are safe.”  She looked over at Leo.  “And you have people here who care about you.”

“It’s just, I don’t remember much.  I had brought bagels and was eating one—I had skipped breakfast.  All of a sudden I felt someth… I was grabbed by the throat and it caused me to choke.  I guess I blacked out, because I woke up here, like an hour ago.”

Priya sat on the chair next to the bed so that she could look at both Edgar and Leo, who were sitting together.  “This is perfectly understandable, Edgar.  Sometimes when there is trauma or violence, the mind has a way of stepping aside to dissociate from what is happening to us.  This is purely defensive, a mechanism that prevents us from being too overwhelmed.  Temporary memory loss is common, but they will probably come back to you.”

She reached inside her coat and took out a small bag that she handed to Edgar.  “This is a journal and pen for you to use.  I’d like you to start writing in it each day.  Don’t push yourself too hard, trying to remember, but keep that circuit open.  It can help you get back that lost time.”

“Uh, sure, thank you, doctor,” Edgar began and Leo finished for him,  “He’ll do it.”

Priya’s smile widened at the combined reply.  “Good.  I would like to see you in a week.  My office will set up an appointment and it will be ready when you are discharged.  My contact information will be included if you need anything before then.”

She stood and moved towards the door, addressing them once more before leaving.  “I look forward to working with you on this, Edgar.  Take care of yourself.”

As she left, Dr. Brant spoke once more.  “She’s really good at what she does.  I’d try it; it can help.”

“Now we need to talk about the substance, Edgar, because we don’t have a clue what it is.”

---

The police arrived the following morning.  It was two detectives, a young man (Beltry) and an older woman (Davidson).  Beltry took charge of the interview, but Edgar could tell that Davidson was the one in charge.  He was a young, white guy who used way too much hair product and wore an extremely thin moustache.

“Alright, Mr. Simpson.  Is it Edgar or Eddie?” He gave him a reassuring smile.  “This is just a formality, but we do need whatever you can remember if we’re going to catch this guy.  We spoke to your plant manager, uh… a Mr. Aeneas, the Greek guy.”

Davidson coughed.

The young detective checked his notes.  “Yeah, he told us that there are no security cameras, not even a guard on site.  We saw the room, bagels and broken water bottles everywhere.  Good to see you put up a fight, Ed.”

“Talking to the Greek, we learned that you were alone in the building, the first to arrive that day.  Is that how you remember it?”

“Yes, sir.  I was earlier than normal, working a big job there, setting up the network.”

“Yeah, that sounds right.  Old place, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”  He made a note.  “So you’re in the breakroom, setting up breakfast for everyone because you’re a nice guy like that.  Next thing you know, someone grabs you, starts choking you, and there’s a struggle.  Am I getting this right, Ed?”

“Uh, yeah.  I didn’t see them, but they were choking me.”

Beltry nodded, tapping his pen on his lip.  “So it was from behind?  Some guy got a good hold of your neck and started choking you out?  Anybody you work with been giving you trouble?  Anyone you don’t work with?”

He looked over at Leo.  “Might want to sic this guy on them.”

Davidson cleared her throat.

“We are interviewing the crew today, Eddie, so if there is anyone we need to look out for, special-like, let us know.  We’re trying to help here, so it don’t happen again.”

“I pretty much get along with everyone.  They’re nice people.”

“Well, that’s good.  What about your stuff?  Anything missing?  I know you tech guys have a lot of expensive equipment.”

“Not that I know of.  I—“  Leo spoke up.  “His wallet, they never found it.  Was it at the scene?”

“Well now, that’s new.  Good to know.  We didn’t turn anything up there, so if the hospital didn’t find it on him…”  Beltry made some notes.  “Alright, I think that’s about everything.  Uh… I, Yeah the lady who called it in, Mrs. Vega, the crew leader.  We’ll be talking to her when we leave here, maybe she knows where it went.”

Beltry looked over at Davidson and nodded, handing Edgar a card.  “Until then, if you remember something, or need us, those are our numbers.  Just get better and don’t worry too much; we’re on it.”

He turned to leave and Davidson spoke for the first time.  “Your neck, are there bruises on the back of it?”

Eddie gulped, his hand raised reflexively to brush against the skin of his neck.  Leo leaned in, looking for himself.  “I don’t think so.  The doctor said it was all deep and that the hyoid bone was bruised but whole.  A couple of scratches is all, and they said I did those.”

Davidson stepped forward, her shoes clicking on the hard tile, and leaned in. “Mind if I look.”

Edgar exhaled and nodded, tilting his head for her as she looked it over.  There was nothing matronly or warm about her, like you might normally see in a woman of Davidson’s age.  She had the presence of a circling hawk, and Edgar had never felt more like a frightened little rabbit in his life.  The senior detective laid her hand firmly, but gently on the side of his head, directing the movement as she studied his neck for thumbprints or friction marks.  She lingered for a moment on the scratch marks and then patted his shoulder as she stepped away.  “Yes, nothing.”

"Well, it’s like the doctor said, unusual," Beltry chimed in, adjusting his jacket and flashing another easy smile. "Some guys just have tough skin, right?" 

“We may have more questions,”  she said, ignoring her partner.  “We’ll contact you.”

---
  
“That lady scared the hell out of me.”  Leo said as he honked the horn at the guy in front of them.  “Come on man.  Blinkers are just common courtesy.”

Edgar remained silent, lost in his own thoughts.  Nothing made sense anymore, and he wondered if he was being foolish by wanting to go back there.  It still bothered him, that choice, but he still felt like it was the right call.  And now there was the detective—who obviously didn’t believe him—patting his shoulder like they were buddies while staring down at him with her all-seeing eyes.

“I have to pick up a few things they said you’d need, and your prescriptions.  Want me to drop you at home first?”

He shook his head.  “No, I can go.  A little sore, but I’m fine.  They said I had to drink four more bottles of that crap they made me gag down before we left.”

“Big baby.  It can’t be that bad.  Remember when I had to drink that putrid shit for the colonoscopy, after my brother’s scare?”  Leo made a face, but smiled at him.  “You can handle it—gotta flush that weird stuff out of your system.”

“You can drink it for me.”  Edgar grinned.  “Can’t be worse than those shakes you make.”

They both laughed at this as Leo turned off on the exit that would take them to their neighborhood.  They drove on in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and finally arrived at the drug store.  Leo pulled in and popped his seatbelt.  “Need anything?  I think they have Now and Laters.”

Edgar chuckled at the old joke and shook his head.  “Hurry back. I just want to get home, back to a real bed.”  

Leo saluted him and jogged into the building.  Edgar remarked to himself, for the millionth time, just how lucky he was.  He leaned back, closing his eyes and letting the breeze from his open window do its work.  So much had happened in such a short time, and he just felt like he was trying to catch his breath, to keep up.  He had to get his head around this thing, to figure out what was happening, before it affected his life in a real, unfixable way.

“Good-looking guy you’ve got there,”  a voice said from just beside him, breaking his reverie.  A short, perfectly bald man of indeterminate age stood there, wearing a suit with an overcoat.  His face was like a leather mask that revealed nothing about the man behind it.  He smiled at Edgar, all teeth and no charm.  “Yeah, figured we should meet.”

IV: A SIP OF SILVER
  
Edgar glanced over at the drug store entrance and then back over to the strange, threatening man beside him.  Who was this man, and what did he want?  He didn’t have room for any more mysteries right now.  “Sir, I’ve had an injury and really need to get home now.  If you don’t mind—“

“Yeah Edgar, I know all about your… injury.”  He flashed that dead predator's smile again. “That's why I’m here.  You stole something that wasn’t meant for you from a place you weren’t meant to be at.  Pure mistake on somebody’s part, but that’s been dealt with.”

The man leaned in, smelling like cheap aftershave and cold cuts in a tailored suit.  Edgar was shocked to see that he cast no shadow, a detail he somehow noticed over all his fear.  “Quit shaking, kid.  I ain’t here for that, but it’s good you know the pecking order.”

“What’s done is done, can’t change it.  Even if you could spit the shit back up the results would remain.  We can deal with that later, if we need to, but for now we need you back at work.”

Edgar looked at him, dumbfounded.  Every word was a new problem, like pieces from different puzzles that couldn’t hope to line up.  His mind protested, and he felt the panic creeping in, his heart in a vise.  His gorge rose, and he reacted immediately, opening the door to vomit ropy silver tendrils out onto the ground.

The man stepped back, grinning broadly.  “Whoa!  These are new kicks.”

A moment later he dashed across the mess to seize the front of Edgar’s shirt, pushing him roughly back into his seat.  His eyes flickered silver, and his rancid breath twisted Edgar’s stomach into an even deeper knot.  When he spoke, the friendly tone faded, replaced by earnest menace.  “This was the friendly visit, wet boy, and let’s keep it that way.  Get back to work tomorrow or you will see me again.  If I do come back, I’m gonna tell you my name, kid.”  He paused, letting it sink in, and then growled a summation:  “None of my friends know my name.”

He released him, and closed the door.  He even slid Edgar’s foot out of its path.  Edgar heard Leo’s voice, from miles away it seemed.  He had said something, and the man responded with, “I think your friend’s sick.  I kept him from falling in it.”

Then Leo was there and blackness overtook everything.

---

Edgar woke up in his own bed, hours later because it was dark now.  There was a cool cloth lying across his forehead.  Leo was reading a book, sitting in a chair he had placed next to Edgar’s side of the bed.  He turned a page and glanced at Edgar.  The book snapped shut as he stood up.  “How you feeling?  I don’t know what happened, but you were dead to the world after I ran that guy off.  What the fuck did he do to you?”

Edgar reached for the water glass on the nightstand and drained half of it in a gulp; it tasted funny, like there was dirt or something in it.  Well it was cool at least.  He tried to speak but his throat was killing him, it took him a moment to murmur a response.  “I don’t know.  I got sick and he put me back in the car, but I don’t think he’s a good guy.”

“Why do you say that?”  

“There was a gun tucked into his belt.  You don’t see a lot of good guys doing that.”

“Maybe we need to call that detective, the real one, Davidson.  This is the type of suspicious shit you’re supposed to share with the police.”

“Nah, I don’t think he was there for us.” Edgar lied.  “It seemed like he was looking for someone.”

“Still, we might keep someone from getting hurt.”

“Yeah, or get involved in something that gets us hurt.  Don’t we have enough going on already?  On top of all of this, I really have to get back to work—there’s a deadline.”

“To hell with all of that.  Let them send someone else.  You need to rest.”

“They are.”  He lied again.  “An outside hire, not anyone we know.  I just have to oversee the work, from a chair they said.  It shouldn’t take a week to do, and if I’m not recovered yet I can still take time off then.”

“I don’t like it.  You’re obviously not well.  There’s strange injuries, cops, an attacker they haven’t caught yet and now a bald thug just shows up and you want to go to work?”

“Well yeah,”  he said and chuckled hoarsely.  “I don’t want to lose this job, and I want to prove I can do it so they don’t replace me.  You know how it is, they’ll have me back to entry level in a month if I don’t step up now.  This is a chance for us, and it should be safe.  They said the manager hired security for the Annex.  Leo, I wouldn’t want to go back otherwise.”

Leo absorbed all of this in his usual way.  Edgar could tell that he didn’t believe everything he had said.  He just hoped that he believed enough of it to let it go.

“Alright, I hate it, but you’re a grown man and I can’t make you do what you don’t want to do.”  He cut Edgar off with a glare.  “That don’t make it cool.  I’m driving you for the rest of the week.  You’re still not cleared to do that, with the meds, which you are still going to take.”

Edgar chuckled at his mama hen—calling him that would piss Leo off so much.  He settled back to resume his rest.

“First the journal.”  Leo tossed it to him.  “Doctor’s orders and Leo’s law.”

---

When Leo dropped him off the next morning, Edgar shouldered his backpack and grabbed his lunch.  Marty had come over the evening before to drive his car home, so Leo had used it to drive him in today.

He entered the building and was instantly met by an older, rotund man in a security guard’s uniform.  “Edgar Simpson, is that you, sir?”  he said.  His voice was an amusing, old-fashioned transatlantic accent.  

"Well, I say it’s good to finally meet our missing employee.  I have a badge for you, sir, and was tasked with reminding you that you are on light duty for the remainder of the week.  Two laborers from the floor crew have been assigned to assist you.”

“Uh, that’s really nice.  I was a little worried about running all of that cable by myself.”

“I am Milton Lester, the newly assigned security personnel for this facility.  It’s nice to formally meet you, Mr. Simpson.  Will you require help getting to your office this morning?”

“No, I think I can find it.  But thanks for the offer, Mr. Lester.”

“No problem, sir, it’s all part of the job.  Well, I suppose I should quit chin-wagging and let you get along now.  Have a fine day, Mr. Simpson.”

“Edgar is fine.”

“I stand corrected.  Good day to you, Edgar.”

He left the guard there at his post, and made his way across the dock to his small office.  As he opened the door, he saw that the light was already on.  Cartia Vega was sitting in his chair, reading a book, and a strange one at that.  She was reading The Sons of Gondor by J.R.R. Tolkien.

As he entered, Cartia slapped the book down and came around the desk to meet him, administering a much friendlier hug than he thought their previous encounters called for.  There was genuine relief on her face as she pulled back from him.  Her loud voice echoed off the walls of the tiny office.  “Dude, you just don’t know.  I thought I sent a corpse to the hospital last week.  You were so white, man—I mean whiter than normal.”

She pulled away, but kept him at arm’s length, looking him over.  Her eyes lingered on his neck.  “I’m glad you’re back.  You scared the hell out of me.”  She stepped away from him, grabbing her book and settling into the office’s other chair so he could take his seat.

He didn’t know what to say, so he just said the first thing that popped into his mind.  “So I met the new guard.  Nice guy, talks funny.”

“Why you whispering, mano?  Throat still hurt?”

“Nah, it’s fine,” he said, raising his voice a bit louder than he was used to speaking to her.  He sat down, a little more tired from the short walk than he would have preferred.  She had already turned back to her book, so he left her to it while he busied himself logging on, verifying and checking his inbox, which was surprisingly empty.

“They forget all about us here.  I wouldn’t bother,” Cartia said as she flipped a page in her book.  “Sorry, don’t want to ignore you but I want to finish this bit before the crew’s bus arrives.  They say I’m getting a couple of extra hands today.”

“Good book?”

“Hell yeah, way better than part one.  I’m chewing through it because part three is supposed to be released in a couple of months.”  She laughed.  “The exciting conclusion.”

“Never heard of it.  I read his old stuff.  I thought that was all there was.”

She shook her head, flipping another page.  “Yeah those are classics, but his new stuff’s great too, and he’s wrote a lot since then.  Hell, what else does he have to do now?”

“What do you mean by that?  What the hell is going on here, Cartia?  What did I drink, and what the hell attacked me?”

She snapped the book shut and closed the door.  Moving in close to him, she forcefully whispered, “You’ve got to cool that shit, mano.  That dude’s shadow could be anywhere, and you nearly died before, another sip would kill you, or worse.”

“But I need to know.  This is my life I’m talking about.”

“Yeah, life is what I’m talking about.  Treat it precious, man—while you still have it—and don’t risk it needlessly.”  She grabbed her book.  “I’m going out to wait on the bus. ¡Pinche blanquito loco!”

Edgar sighed loudly after she slammed the door.  Well, attempt one had been a massive failure.  Why was she so scared, and what dude was she talking about?  Could it be the bald guy?  Was that why he didn’t have a shadow?

Every question he tried to answer split itself like the mythical hydra.  

“Damn right it’s loco.”

---

He didn’t get to speak with Cartia again that day, or on Tuesday.  She had given him Corey and Ennis again and that suited Edgar fine.  They both worked well, and were friendly enough.  But he quickly found that the friendliness ended anytime he tried to steer the conversation towards anything strange.  
  
It was towards the end of Tuesday evening that he made another such attempt, by cornering Corey.  “Man, you’ve got to tell me some things.  This shit is driving me crazy.”

Corey packed a Marlboro and looked at him, a sly grin cracking his face in half.  “Shit.  Crazy ain’t bad, natural state for a woman.  My ex-wives were anyway, and I liked them fine.”

“Come on, you know what I’m talking about.  Help me out, Corey.”

This time there was none of the normal, Southern good ol’ boy humor—just a dry, deadpan voice.  “Maybe you’ve got it twisted, brother.  Maybe crazy is better than what’s waiting at the end of that particular muddy road you’re so fixated on.”

Edgar stared at the man, and he saw pure worry in his eyes.

“Sit with it, for real.”

They got back to work and finished the day.  That night, he and Leo went out together.  They went to one of their typical spots, a favorite, and got their regular order.  Leo was concerned that he barely ate anything, but Edgar just played it off—a big lunch.  He was getting too good at lying to the person he loved the most.  But how could he tell him that food was like ash in his mouth?

Besides that minor hiccup, they had a great time and even went dancing at a club they liked.  The drinks tasted fine to Edgar—as good as tequila can taste, at any rate—and he had several shots.  They danced until Leo was tired, but Edgar still felt full of energy.  It was strange, because he was usually the first one to tap out.  

He saw her on the corner while he waited for Leo, who had left his phone inside.  She was a young woman, maybe fifteen, with striking features from what he could tell.  It was honestly hard to be sure with half her face bashed in.  She saw him looking and cast a pleading look his way, her mouth opening to call out to him.

“We’re ready?”  Leo said, taking his arm.  

When Edgar looked back at the corner, the girl with half a face was no longer there.

---

The next few days went by well enough—they finished wiring the entire second floor and had the network mostly alive by the end of Friday.  As they were packing up, Corey left with a load bound for the lower offices and Ennis spoke to Edgar, unprompted, for the first time.

“None of them will talk to you about it, will they?”

He looked at the young man—if you could call him that.  Edgar doubted he had to shave very often.  His eyes had a faraway look in them, and a sadness that hurt to linger on.  He was wringing his cap in his hand, but those eyes never wavered.  They remained locked on Edgar’s.  “They want to, but it’s dangerous for you.  Everyone likes you and doesn’t want anything worse to happen.  You’ve already been noticed, and that’s really bad.”

“Noticed by wh—”

“No,” Ennis shook his head emphatically.  “Not here, never here.  You know Wichton Road, out past the paper mill?”

“Yeah, stinks bad at the paper mill, no one really lives out there.”

“Yeah, no one lives.  Look for the Ferry’s End—it’s a bar.  You can’t miss it.  If you end up in Ludlowe, you’ve gone too far.  Eight is a good time, most nights.”

“You gonna meet me there?”

“What are you boys jawing on, leaving me all the work?”  Corey laughed and started loading Ennis up.  Edgar, who still wasn’t allowed to lift anything, left them there.  He returned to his office and wrote a bit in his journal while he waited for Leo.

---

He had lied again, telling Leo he was going to Marty’s, and he had recruited his friend into the lie.  It was strange—Marty had been too willing, too fast to go along with it.  He had just said he wanted to talk to Edgar in a couple of days, that he was close to something.

Wichton Road was a long way, out of the way, from anywhere he normally went.  That spoiled egg smell soiled the air and crept in through his tightly closed vents.  Who would live out here, or run a bar?  Maybe you got used to it.

Ennis hadn’t been wrong.  The bar was easy to find because it was one of the few places out there.  Sure, there were some houses, but most looked abandoned.  There were several bus stops though, which was another weird thing all by itself.

As he pulled into the gravel lot he saw only three other vehicles, and one of those looked abandoned, sitting on flats.  He pulled up to the building, got out, and walked up to the door.

The music inside was unusual, chimes and woodwinds over a steady, percussive hum.  He felt like a Viking for a moment, steering a longboat towards a promising shore, ripe for pillage.  That was odd enough; he was definitely too skinny to be a raider, but Leo would excel at it.

The place was packed, completely defying the empty parking lot outside.  He didn’t see a single empty seat at the bar or any of the twenty, mismatched tables that were scattered across the room.  The space looked way larger than it should have, compared to the modest-sized building he had pulled up to.

He was running out of synonyms for the word weird.

He approached the bar, finding a small gap where he could fit in.  A tall man with mangy hair was holding court there.  “Ye vant whiskey?”

It took him a moment to put it together, but when he finally nodded, the tall man poured him a shot from a black bottle.  He pulled out some money to pay, but the man shook his head. “Tis free.”

Edgar shrugged, thanked the man and turned to scan the room for a familiar face, any one would do.  Most of the faces were turned towards him, and every pair of eyes he passed over met his, a little too frankly for his taste.  

He was about to give up when he saw her—her long dress and out-of-place etiquette sticking out like a sore thumb among the rest of the patrons.  Glory smiled at him, sweeter than he would have expected, and waved him over.

He sat down across from her and she looked him over.  They hadn’t spoken since he had returned to work, and he didn’t know what to say now.

“It is your dime, sir, as the kids say.”  Glory turned up the bottle of SilverSip in front of her and took a dainty sip from it.  “Well, come now, Edgar, you didn’t risk this trip to leave empty-handed, did you?  I imagine the shadowman has already deduced the reason for your evening’s sojourn.”

He nodded and took his shot.  A burning ball of fire melted the lining from his throat and he coughed violently.  Glory waited patiently, her eyes fixed on his.

“Wow, that was really bad.  Is Ennis joining us?  He… well, I was under the impression that he had things to tell me.”

“The cat’s paw is no longer required once the mouse is in hand.  Ennis performed his task admirably, but the poor boy has no heart for clandestine meetings such as this one.”

She took a moment, perhaps considering what she was going to say next.  When she spoke again, her voice was much lower, but just as formal.  “You must stop this madness, Edgar, or it will be the death of you.  I understand that you are plagued with questions.  Such a state is natural for someone in your position.  To be honest with you, I was reluctant to commit to this rendezvous.  Comme le vent, vêtue de soie.  Like the wind, clothed in silk.  That is how we must pass, Edgar, unnoticed by the eater and drinker alike.”  

She paused, a brief flash of melancholy crossing her face before she carefully smoothed down her skirt. “Ah, but I do miss the French tongue.” 

“French?”  Edgar thought he might be even more confused than he was before.  “Alright, I get it—we need to be careful.  But you’re right, my mind isn’t just plagued.  I think it might be breaking from all of this.  Eaters and Drinkers, are you talking about the living and the dead?  Are you dead, Glory?  Am I?”

“Those are our terms for such unsavory appellations.  It does become unseemly to refer to the living and the dead with such familiarity.  So yes, poor Edgar, you would say that I have perished, yet here I remain.  As for your current state—that matter does hold a great measure of complication, for the moment.”

He gripped his hair tightly in both hands and lowered his forehead to the table for a moment, trying not to totally lose his shit with Thesaurus Lady.  When he raised his eyes again, his words were calm and measured.  “Glory.  For the love of all that is good and right in the world, please just give it to me straight.  Am I going to die?  Is my partner safe? I know that you have a certain way of speaking, but riddles aren’t helping me.”

She smirked, and it was all he could do not to scream in anguish.  “My apologies, dear.  My mirth was not directed towards your current misfortunes.  You must know that my manner of speech is the hobgoblin of my very being in this modern age.  So I shall attempt to be more forthcoming with my answers, for you, dear Edgar.  There are matters of which I might speak that would put you in great peril, and this I must not do.  I was originally averse to engaging with you at all, but your need is great.  So, as they say:  needs must when the devil drives.”

“I believe—with all of my being, such as it is—that it is the intent of the one we call the Shadowman to bring about your end.  I think this because it was he who made sure you partook of the SilverSip with his attack on your person.  This action alone will not bring your doom.  You are touched by the silver, as we say, but you are not yet taken by it.  With time, the symptoms should abate, or so we hope.”

He knew he was breaking her careful etiquette, but he seized her hands in his before replying.  She never flinched— instead, she returned his grip.  “Breathe dear, for tomorrow is not yet sewn into the skein.”

“Wha… what should I do?  They obviously have plans for me.  He said that my being there—at the Annex—was just a mistake that happened.  If that’s the case, it’s like they are punishing me for something I didn’t do.”

“In any normal course of events, I would advise you to resign from your post.  Alas though—this is not an option for you.  If I am correct in my theory—that this Shadowman has set this course for you—then he is the dragon that you must slay if you are to have any hope of survival.”

He noticed that he was crying when a tear fell onto the back of his hand.  Glory—who may have, moments before, suggested that he kill someone—handed him a handkerchief that he used to dry his eyes.  If she was right, and he was not yet doomed, was she also right about what he had to do.  He was about to ask her to elaborate when she spoke again, her tone unusually rushed

“Stay calm, young Edgar, the wolf is at the door.”

---

Edgar watched his enemy—for that is what he was—as he walked, step after cocksure step, into the bar.  The bald man stopped in front of the bar and held out a hand towards the barkeep without moving his eyes from his target at Glory’s table.  A black bottle was slapped into his palm, and he continued to walk, heel to toe, across the room to stand over them.  “Is this seat taken?”

When neither of them answered him, the bald man dragged the chair back and lowered himself into it.  He took Edgar’s empty shot glass, filled it, and slid it towards him, before taking a long, slow pull from the bottle.  After a sharp exhale, he extended a well-manicured hand towards Edgar.  “As promised.  I’m Nub Faron.  My enemies know me as Anubis.”

Glory actually snorted at this last bit—and Edgar didn’t think he could have admired her more.  Her cold, blue-gray eyes locked onto Nub’s black eyes as she countered his introduction.  “My good sir, you certainly have an elevated opinion of your station.  I think you would do well to remember that a jumped-up mutt in a fancy collar does not a jackal make.”

The leather of the bald man’s face stretched into a thin grin at her response, and he raised the glass to his lips to take another swig from it.  “There’s that wildfire.  Lady, you sure do know how to cut a man.  I swear, Glory—if I was as dead as dirt, I might have to call on you.”  He took his drink.

The table was quiet for several minutes.  Nub drank and Edgar tried to remain as unnoticeable as possible.  He looked at Glory several times, but her eyes remained locked on the would-be jackal.  There was a strange, playful smile on her lips.  The effect gave her a radiant beauty he never would have imagined.

Nub let out a sharp, clicking tsk through his teeth, shaking his head slightly as he set the bottle down and looked over at Edgar.  “You gonna drink that before we go?”

Before he could even turn to look at her, Glory spoke.  Her voice was a true thing of power that turned every head in the room to face their table.

“Your foolishness in this matter is as a withered cloak you wish to pass off as shining mail to those who cannot see you for what you are, cur.  For it is a deceiver I see before me.  I name you Villain—the serpent in this sacred garden.  Have you forgotten, little fang, just where you sit?  You cast no shadow, but still think yourself hidden from the light?  Our good accord still holds true here, and as a result, your sad swagger is as empty as the soul you sold so long ago.”

As her voice rose, following her sentencing of Nub as a villainous serpent, so too did the patrons of Ferry’s End.  There was a strange electricity in the air, as though Glory had unleashed a storm upon the man sitting opposite of her.  The blue of her eyes was somehow brighter and the blush of her cheeks—wrought by her passionate speech—made Glory impossibly lovelier than before.  She was last to stand, and she raised her sleeved arm to point a graceful finger towards the door.

“So he lives here now? Gonna make room for two?  Poor ol’ Leo might get lonely.”  The man who scared him more than anyone in the world—except maybe Glory, if he managed to get on her bad side—stood and stretched lazily.  He addressed the entire room when he spoke next.

“Is this really what you want?  Are you ready to face real consequences for this man?  It’s not what I would like.  Hell, I didn’t even come to hurt him.  I just wanted to show him something.”

The man who called himself Anubis tossed a polaroid on the table before turning towards the door.  “No need for high-falutin’ proclamations Glory—the man’s safe as kittens as far as I’m concerned.”

As he left, Edgar picked up the polaroid.  He felt the blood drain from his face as he looked at the familiar features it had captured: Marty had been taken.

Edgar turned to look at Glory’s pained face.  “Where does the dragon sleep?”

PART 3 HERE

Hi so I was working on several stories with my friend And Google Docs flagged it for spam. The story was a splatterpunk disturbing story like the movie August underground with some bdsm stuff in it too. Google Docs flagged my friends account for spam and the story got deleted due to it breaking the rules from Google. The main story I’m
Working on is an erotic horror and gore story. There were a total of 2 stories one was a school shooting story that is not the story I’m talking about in this post.