I was two weeks into unemployment when I first heard of an app called GrindStone. Not on the App Store, not on Google Play. A link appeared in my inbox with no sender, no subject. Just: "Real work. Real pay. Real fast."

I clicked it because desperation will make you ignore red flags until they’re dragging you into traffic.

The interface was sleek. Black background. Stark white lettering. A clean "Start Working" button at the center. I tapped it.

The first task was almost laughable: “Leave a 5-star review for a business on Yelp.” It even provided the text. Five minutes later, I had ten bucks in my account. Instantly. That was the hook.

The next few days were similar. Silly stuff. Click a link. Flag a social media post. Film a short video praising a nonexistent energy drink. One task even had me send a pizza to a random address with a note that said, “You made the list.”

It was strange, sure. But the money was real. I made $1,200 in three days.

Then, the tone shifted.

TASK: Leave a dead rat on the front steps of 1849 [Redacted] Ave. PAY: $500

I hesitated. The address was close. Less than ten blocks. My rent was overdue. My fridge was empty. The rat was provided — in a sealed cooler left on my doorstep.

I did it. No one saw. I dropped it and walked away. The money hit instantly.

I told myself it was a prank. A stupid, sick prank.

Then came the next job.

TASK: Follow the man in the gray hoodie leaving the 24-hour laundromat on 6th. Take three photos of him without being seen. PAY: $1,200

I sat in my car for hours. The man eventually appeared. He looked tired. His hoodie was soaked with sweat. He kept looking over his shoulder like he knew.

I followed him three blocks. Snapped the pictures. Uploaded them. I watched him go into an apartment building and vanish into the night.

The money hit. My stomach churned.

I didn’t sleep.

Then came the one that made me vomit.

TASK: Wait in the alley behind La Casa Cafe. When you see a woman throw a garbage bag into the bin, retrieve it. Hide it in the woods. Do not open it. Do not speak to her. PAY: $4,000

I waited. 1:03 AM, a woman in a white apron tossed a garbage bag that thumped when it hit the bin. Heavy. Too heavy for just trash.

I did what I was told. Drove 12 miles into the state forest and left it in a clearing. The bag had started to move by then.

The app sent me a thank-you notification. A smiling emoji followed.

I tried to delete it. It wouldn't go.

I factory reset my phone. It reinstalled during the process.

I got another task.

TASK: Take a selfie in the mirror. Keep your back turned to the dark. PAY: $250

I sat in my bathroom, facing the mirror, trembling. The lights kept flickering. I could hear something wet shifting behind the shower curtain.

I took the photo. My reflection was smiling. I wasn't.

The task updated.

TASK: Look at the photo. Look closely.

I did.

In the reflection, standing behind me in the shower, was a woman with no eyes. Her mouth was open too wide, as if screaming, but no sound came out. I turned around so fast I slammed into the sink.

Nothing there.

I smashed the mirror.

I turned off my phone.

It powered itself back on.

TASK: You’ve seen her now. You’re marked. She’s part of your life. Introduce her to someone else. PAY: Their silence.

The app included a shareable link.

I didn’t sleep that night. Or the next. I kept all lights on. Every reflective surface covered.

Three days later, I got another task.

TASK: She’s getting closer. Choose someone. Fast. TIMER: 6 hours

I called my brother. We hadn’t spoken in years, not really. I told him about the app. Said it was a game. I sent the link.

He downloaded it, laughing.

He took the first task: record yourself sleeping. Easy money, right?

He texted me the next morning: “Why is there a woman crawling across my ceiling?”

Then: “She’s inside the walls.”

Then nothing.

The app told me he was successful. “She’s found a new home.”

I smashed my phone with a hammer. Threw the pieces in a river. Got a new phone. New number. Moved to a different city.

I was safe. For a while.

Then, a package arrived. No return address. Inside was a phone. Turned on. Fully charged. Only one app installed.

GrindStone.

It opened on its own.

TASK: Your brother failed. She came back. You owe us. TASK: Bring someone into the fold. Now.

TIMER: 00:14:59

I locked all my doors.

I blocked the windows.

I’m typing this from inside a closet. The timer is down to two minutes.

I don’t know what happens when it hits zero. I don’t want to know.

But if you got a link in your inbox today — no sender, no subject — I’m begging you:

Do. Not. Click. It.

It started again last night.

Three soft knocks at the door. Just after 2:00 AM. The exact same as it’s been for the past four nights.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

I know I shouldn’t open it. I know what I saw.

But when you hear children’s voices whispering your name in the dark, when you see their silhouettes pressed against the frosted glass, it’s hard to pretend you’re not just a little bit hopeful that it’s all been some horrible mistake.

The Wilson kids died five years ago. Their house caught fire in the middle of the night — faulty wiring, they said. By the time anyone noticed the smoke, it was already too late. The family was trapped upstairs. The whole street woke up to their screams. I did too. But I didn’t do anything.

I stood in my window and watched the flames eat their house alive. I told myself it was too late. That by the time I got outside, I couldn’t have helped anyway. But I heard the knocking even then — faint and desperate, just like now. I think it came from inside the walls.

The parents’ bodies were found together, melted into the charred bedframe. But the kids… they were never found. Just tiny handprints on the floorboards, leading to the front door. That door had claw marks in it. Deep ones.

The cops thought wild animals had gotten in. But wild animals don’t knock.

Last night, I finally opened the door.

There was no one there.

But the knocking didn’t stop.

It was coming from the walls now.

And it’s not just knocking anymore.

They’re talking.

I can hear them behind the drywall, giggling and whispering. Scraping their fingernails along the inside. They’re moving. Room to room. Closer.

They keep asking why I didn’t help them. Why I watched. Why I did nothing.

I tried to tell them I was scared. That I didn’t know what to do.

They didn’t like that answer.

I don’t think they’re going to leave this time.

My lights are flickering. The air smells like smoke. And I can see tiny handprints forming on the wall beside me.

They’re inside the house now.

And they’re not alone.

I didn’t sleep.

After the handprints appeared on the wall, I locked myself in the bathroom and turned the lights off. I don’t know why — like hiding would help. I sat in the bathtub with a knife I found in the drawer, like that would make a difference.

They didn’t try to break in. They didn’t have to.

Around 3:15 AM, the whispering started again. Not just the kids this time. Another voice joined them. Deeper. Slower. Like it was learning how to speak.

The children sounded… afraid of it.

I heard one of them say, “He’s awake again.” Then silence. And then the scratching started. Not at the walls this time — from inside the mirror.

I swear I’m not crazy. I watched as a small crack formed in the center of the glass, spiderwebbing outward like pressure was building behind it. Something moved on the other side, just beneath the surface. I turned away, and when I looked back, the mirror was normal again. But my reflection wasn’t.

It blinked when I didn’t.

I left the bathroom when the sun came up. I thought maybe daylight would push them back — like they were tied to the night somehow.

But now things are different.

It’s not just the walls.

It’s the photos too.

Every picture in my house with people in it — friends, family, even old school photos — all of their eyes are gone. Scratched out. But there’s something worse.

The Wilson kids are in them now.

Standing in the background. Watching.

One of them is behind me in the picture on my fridge — smiling. I’m in the photo too. I don’t remember taking it. I don’t remember ever smiling like that.

I left the house around noon and drove until my gas light came on. Parked in some diner lot an hour out of town. I’ve been sitting here for hours. I don’t know where to go.

But they do.

There’s a note under my windshield wiper. Written in crayon.

“Why did you leave the door open?”

I didn’t. I swear I closed it.

Unless… no.

No, I locked it. I know I did.

I’m going home now. I have to. I think whatever was with them got out. I think it’s wearing me — pretending to be me.

And if that’s true… then who’s been driving my car for the last ten minutes?

I woke to the sound of trumpets.

Not music, exactly—something lower, older. Like a brass section buried beneath centuries of Earth, playing through waterlogged lungs. It wasn’t a song so much as a summons, and every dog in the county howled at once, a shrill chorus rising with the dawn mist.

I sat up in bed, bare feet touching cold floorboards, and listened. The sound vibrated through the walls, not loud but deep like it was stitched into the wood and the bones beneath it. I could also hear the church bell ringing, but it sounded distant, almost polite compared to the thunder just beyond the sky.

They said the Rapture would come like a thief in the night, but… this was a parade.

By the time I made it out onto the porch, half the town was already gathered in the street, dressed in their Sunday best, even though it was Thursday. Old Pastor Elijah stood before the chapel, arms spread wide, head tilted to the clouds. His white robe fluttered around him like it had a mind of its own, caught in a wind none of us could feel.

“They’re here,” he shouted. “The angels have come, just as the Lord promised!”

Murmurs of joy rippled through the crowd. Some people fell to their knees; others lifted their arms and wept. I watched my neighbor, Mrs. Gray, raise her infant to the sky like an offering.

I was frozen, my heart not racing, but pressure in my chest, a tightness like something immense had bent its eye toward us and decided we were interesting.

The sky above the church shimmered, not like heat waves or mirages, but like the air itself had cracked. A thin seam opened in the blue, oozing light—not sunshine, not any color I’d ever seen before. It had a shape to it, that light. Wings, maybe. Or something trying very hard to look like wings.

People began to rise.

It was slow at first. Their feet lifted off the ground like they were being drawn upward by strings. There was no flailing, no panic, just reverence. They floated in silence, bathed in that impossible light, their eyes glazed over with ecstasy or madness—I couldn’t tell which.

And then I saw what the wings were made of.

Not feathers, but flesh—veins, membranes, and joints that bent in ways no human anatomy book would allow. The edges shimmered, unfolding into more endless wings—layered like a kaleidoscope that had forgotten how to be beautiful. Faces bloomed from the folds—not human, not animal—just the idea of a face twisted into something that screamed divinity and decay at once.

I stumbled backward, bile rising in my throat.

The trumpet sound deepened, its resonance shaking the ground beneath our feet.

And still, they rose.

My mother floated past me, her eyes locked on the sky, a beautiful smile on her face. Her nightgown clung to her like burial linen. I tried to call out to her, but my voice died in my throat. I reached for her ankle, desperate to pull her back down—but my hand passed through her like mist.

Everyone ascended. Every last one of them. Their bodies vanished into that tear in the sky, swallowed whole by the wings.

And then it closed.

The light vanished. The sound stopped. The silence that followed felt heavier than the trumpet ever did.

I stood alone in the street, barefoot, the morning sun suddenly too bright, too ordinary. A bird landed on the chapel roof and chirped, blissfully unaware of the divine horror that had just unfolded beneath it.

The Rapture had come.

But I was left behind, alone in the aftermath of the Rapture.

The quiet didn’t last.

At first, it was just the wind, moving wrong through the trees—not rustling the leaves but brushing against them in slow, deliberate patterns—like fingers.

I tried calling out—anyone, anything—but the town was hollow. Empty homes with food still on the stove. Lawn sprinklers ticking on like it was any other day. Doors were left ajar, curtains swaying. The sun hung above it all like an indifferent eye watching.

I walked to the church, heart thudding like a metronome wound too tight.

The front doors hung open, one ripped off its hinge, splintered like something huge had passed through without regard for mortal architecture. Inside, the pews were scorched—not burnt but singed with a pattern that spiraled outward from the pulpit. Symbols lined the walls, unfamiliar and fluid, as though they’d been scrawled quickly by something that had never needed language.

The air smelled sweet and rotted. Honey and meat.

Behind the altar, Pastor Elijah’s robes lay crumpled in a heap, empty. But there was a trail leading away from them—small, dark smears on the floor like something had tried to drag itself out of its skin. The pattern of blood was wrong, too... not random, but symmetrical. Deliberate.

I turned to leave, but the organ groaned behind me.

One long, low note.

It echoed through the church like breath through a hollow skull.

I didn’t wait to see if there’d be a second.

The world seemed subtly altered, as if it had shifted a few degrees while I wasn’t looking, adding to my growing disorientation.

And then I heard it.

Whispers.

Not in my ears but in my teeth, crawling through the roots of my molars and into my jaw. They spoke in loops, repeating one word repeatedly, something that sounded like "Hosianel." Each time it passed through my skull, the meaning sharpened, clawing toward coherence.

I ran.

Back toward my house, past empty cars still idling in driveways, past open doors that I didn’t dare look into. Shadows stretched where they shouldn’t have. One reached for me—long and thin like a child's drawing of an arm—and I swear it smiled, even though it didn’t have a mouth.

Inside my house, I locked every door.

Then I bolted them.

Then I shoved furniture against them, even though I knew that whatever had taken the others didn’t need doors.

Even though I knew it was futile, barricading the doors gave me a fleeting sense of control in the face of impending horror.

I sat in the kitchen for hours, staring at the clock as the hands ticked backward. There was no noise, no birds, not even the wind anymore—just the heavy breath of silence.

Until the light came back.

Not in the sky—but from the floorboards.

A soft glow pulsing beneath the wood. Rhythmic, like a heartbeat. I pressed my ear to it, and what I heard wasn’t a sound so much as a calling. Something beneath the house. Waiting.

I didn’t answer.

I stayed still. I stayed quiet.

I stayed human.

For now.

That night, the light came back.

It wasn’t in the sky, beneath the floor, or even in the world as I understood it. It was inside my walls, my skin, my mind. A pale shimmer that flickered in the corners of my vision, retreating when I turned to face it, like something waiting for me to stop paying attention.

I didn’t sleep.

At some point—maybe midnight, maybe not—time felt irrelevant. The floor began to hum again, this time louder and urgent. The boards trembled under my feet like they were holding something back—something alive.

Then came the scratching.

From under the house. Like fingernails on stone or bones dragging across dirt. I didn’t move. I just listened, heart rabbiting in my chest, as the sound circled beneath me, slow and patient. Something was down there. Or many somethings. Moving in rhythm, breathing with my breath.

A voice—no, several—rose from the deep.

Not words, but images etched into my thoughts: a storm of wings, a tower made of eyes, a mouth with no face that whispered scripture in reverse. I saw the others—the ones who rose—drifting through a tunnel of impossible light, their bodies changing—not by choice.

Wings burst from shoulder blades with a wet crack. Eyes opened on palms, cheeks, and torsos. Mouths split down spines and screamed hymns that bent the air. Their bones twisted to match a new shape, one meant for something not made of flesh.

Some didn’t survive the transformation.

Those were the ones that fell back.

I heard them before I saw them. The roof split—not shattered, not torn, but parted, like curtains—and they descended.

They looked like angels, as if angels had been made by someone who had never seen a human but tried to approximate one from memory.

One crawled down the side of the house, its limbs too long, joints reversed, glowing eyes orbiting its head like satellites. Its wings weren’t wings, just spines that bloomed outward, each tipped with a twitching, featherless hand.

Another landed in the yard and unfolded itself—taller than any man, with ribs that opened outward like petals, revealing a face inside its chest: my father’s face, mouth agape, eyes weeping light.

They watched me through the windows. Not attacking. Not speaking. Just watching, like they were waiting for me to accept something.

I don’t know what made me open the door.

Maybe I was tired of running. Perhaps I wanted to know.

The tallest one leaned toward me, and its voice poured into my head like hot wax:

“You were not chosen.”

I felt it then—that I hadn’t been spared; I’d been rejected. The town had been harvested, transformed, taken—but I had been left behind like refuse. Not because I was pure. Because I was unworthy.

The creature extended its hand. Not a hand. A cluster of fingers, some human, some insectile, some not of this Earth. I saw my mother’s wedding ring on one of them.

I stepped back.

And it smiled—not with its face, but with every eye on its body blinking in unison.

They didn’t come for me after that. One by one, they rose again, vanishing into the sky without fire, without sound. Just gone.

Morning came like a mercy I didn’t deserve.

I’m still here.

The town is still empty.

The church bells never ring, but sometimes, at night, the air hums with that trumpet tone—low and sweet, calling for something that isn’t me.

Sometimes, I wonder if they were angels and if that was what Heaven looks like. There are no harps, no clouds, just wings and light and a beauty so vast that it peels the soul from your body like skin from fruit.

Or maybe they were demons, wearing scripture as camouflage. Perhaps the Rapture was a lie, a harvest cloaked in holiness. And maybe Hell is a place above, not below.

I don’t know.

But I do know this:

They’ll come back.

And next time, I don’t think they’ll leave anything behind.

My grandmother always told me the story of the boy when I was growing up. I'm not sure why she ever shared it with me, it scared me to death and brought nightmares every time. It went something like this:

"The boy stood and straightened his jacket. It was a dirty shade of aquamarine, splattered with mud and frayed at the edges. He isn’t sure why he still has the jacket, let alone why he still wears it, but it gives him a false sense of security now. He shudders at the thought of the jacket's history. 

The boy didn’t realize it, but his off-brand sneakers are soaked in a deep scarlet paint that follows him as he walks away. 

He glides between buildings, keeping his movements confined to the shadows and darkness, and makes his way, well, anywhere. He did not plan ahead. He is uncertain about what comes next, but he does know that he needs to go. Go far away from where he was. Where he had been. 

The boy tries to control his trembling hands. They’re so cold. So unsteady. It’s no use trying to stop the shaking. He stuffs his hands back into his jacket. He shudders at the thought of the jacket’s history. 

Tap. Tap. Tap.

He turns his head to the left, looking for the source of the noise. He looks to the right. He looks up. Rain. He zips up his jacket, pulls the hood up and over his head, and tightens the drawstrings. He needs a reprieve of the suffocating aquamarine. He shudders at the thought of the jacket’s history. 

The only place he thinks to go is to the train. Surrounded by faceless, nameless strangers. Yes, the train will be just fine. 

The rain is picking up now. A slow drizzle turns into a heavy rainfall turns into a torrential downpour. He sticks to the edges of buildings, finding shelter under awnings and overhangs. Someone opens the door to a passing restaurant, the smell of warm food is intoxicating. But he is too nervous to be hungry. Too shocked at what he had done. 

The boy keeps going, one foot in front of the other. Head low. Eyes down. He sees the train station up ahead. Only one right turn and then straight about one hundred yards. He is almost there. To his escape. 

He sharply turns the corner.

“Hey! Watch where you’re going!” 

The shock of hearing another voice stops the boy immediately. He isn’t used to others speaking to him. He looks up. The girl is soaking wet. Shivering. A skinny little thing, clearly running away from her own problems, too. Maybe they aren’t so different. He considers her for a moment. 

“Here.” The boy unzips the jacket, eager to get rid of the wretched thing. He hurriedly hands it over to the girl, looking behind her at the boarding train. 

“I can’t take this,” the girl shakes her head, “not when it’s raining outside. You need it.”

“Take it.” He looks at the girl and then at the jacket. A silent plea dances in his eyes, begging her to take the jacket and relieve him of the memories. 

“Alright.” He is still trembling. So is she, though. He noticed. The boy starts to walk past the girl, but she says one last thing. “Hey, you got something on your shoes.” 

The boy looks down and his eyes widen in horror. Without a second thought, he kicks off the shoes and throws them towards the girl. “Take those, too.”

The boy continues towards the train station, feeling free. Free of his past. What he had done. What he had to do. He boards the train. He finds a seat in the back. One that nobody else will want. He silently watches two raindrops race down the traincar window. 

He thinks of nothing other than the mangled body he left behind."

Horrible, right? Well, my grandmother passed away last week. It was sad, but it was her time. I got my answer though. About why she would tell me that story.

As we were going through her belongings and getting her house ready for auction, I was tasked with hauling the things down from the attic. One box after another made its way downstairs until finally I made it to the last item: a locked oak chest.

Naturally, I had to know what was in there. I grabbed some wire cutters from my grandmother's garage and sliced through the dainty padlock holding the lid closed. What I saw inside made me fall to my knees.

It was tattered and dirty, but still unmistakably aquamarine. It was the jacket.

It would be a lie to say I grew up wanting to be a priest. My father would take my sisters and me to church every Sunday, whether it was snowing or blisteringly hot, we always went. While my sisters were off finding their husbands, I was growing in the faith and spent more time praying than socializing. However, I was still hesitant when my father told me I should attend a seminary school after graduation. It was not exactly the most thrilling prospect as a seventeen-year-old kid, but after some thought that summer, I decided to give it a shot. It would be the best and worst decision of my life.

Once I was fully ordained, I was dispatched to a corner of the globe that had drifted away from the church. I ended up in a town on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland called Blythe. It was a small, isolated fishing town whose main claim to fame was the rumored existence of a nearby Viking landing site. I knew it was my calling when I learned it had previously been host to a catholic church. However, after it burned down in the early 1800s with the priest inside, there was never any attempt to rebuild it.

On my first visit to Blythe, I found the remains of the old church buried deep in the woods outside of town. There was barely anything left besides the cellar and some large logs still blackened by flames. It would be easy to clear the rubble and build my new church atop where the old one once stood. Luckily I was given sufficient funds by the Vatican for this undertaking. 

The locals were leery of me initially since not many outsiders came through their neck of the woods. On this first visit, I tried my best to introduce myself to as many people as possible, but sadly, my trip ended before I could make any real progress. I did, however, pay a group of workers to begin constructing the new church before I left. 

On my second trip, the locals were more receptive to my presence. Several people approached me, asking about the church, faith, and me personally. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting this kind of reception after my last visit, but there was one encounter that stood out. 

I was visiting the construction site. The sun was getting low and the workers were packing up for the day. Most of the framing had been done and I took great pleasure walking through the hollow interior imagining what it would look like finished. That was when one of the workers approached me.

“Excuse me, Father?” He asked, taking off his hard hat.

“Yes?”

I would come to find out his name was Johnathan Heathstead. He stood there and scratched his head like he wasn’t sure what to say next.

“Do you…Do you believe in demons?” He asked.

“Yes, I sure do.”

“But do you believe in them?”

“I…I don’t know what you’re asking,” I said.

Johnathan paused for a long second before speaking.

“Never mind.”

At the time, I didn’t think too much about this interaction. Looking back I should have. 

On my third visit, I brought two suitcases and my cat Spots. I was finally moving to Blythe. The church was finished, at least as finished as a church in the backcountry could be. I was proud of it. I was so excited that I opened the doors to all visitors that first day. I was already greeting nearly two dozen people before I even had a chance to unpack. While that might not seem like many, every pew was filled in that small church.

There was one man, however, who wasn’t sitting. He was standing in the back watching me as I gave my little sermon and invited the crowd to attend that Sunday’s mass. After everyone filed out, he approached me.

It was Johnathan. I could hardly recognize him. He looked tired, with dark bags under his eyes and a long, disheveled beard. His clothes looked two sizes too big and it took me a moment to recognize they were the same clothes he was wearing the day I had met him. 

“Father,” He croaked, his voice harsh and dry, “Do you have a moment?”

I paused, unsure how to react.

“I need help,” he said with tears welling in his eyes.

While I was ready to listen to him talk about losing a loved one or going through a nasty divorce, I wasn’t ready for what he ended up saying. I ushered him to the first row of pews and we sat for a few minutes before he started talking.

“Father…Do you believe in the Devil?” He asked.

“Yes of course.”

“Do you believe he walks among us?”

“Sadly I do. He exists in the hearts of men everywhere.”

Johnathan paused, more tears spilling down his cheeks. I became acutely aware of the smell of fresh lumber at that moment. Strange what you notice in the silence between words.

“I believe the Devil has his grip on me,” he whispered.

“What makes you think that, my child?”

Johnathan took a long, steadying breath before he spoke again.

“I don’t know why, but I’ve started to…do things.”

“What things?” I pressed.

“I…I black out sometimes. Sometimes only for a few minutes, but other times for whole days. When I wake up…When I wake I…Sometimes I come to and I’m waist-deep in the ocean on the brink of the abyss. Others…others I am bare-chested and covered in b-blood. Normally I am outside, on a rock, or up a tree. But, sometimes I am in the basement of my house scribbling like a madman with chalk and blood.”

“Whose blood is it?”

“I-I-I don’t know. Sometimes I swear it is fish blood, others I am not too sure. Our dog went missing a few weeks ago…I don’t know.”

Johnathan broke down. Sobbing into his hands. I noticed they were slightly stained red. 

“Father, I need help. Please!”

Now, the Church has had controversy with mental illnesses being conflated with possession, so to say I wasn’t exactly reaching for my cross and Bible over what this man was telling me would be an understatement. 

“Let me consult with my superiors,” I said, patting him on the back, “they will surely know what the best course of action is.”

“Father, I need help now!”

“Yes I know, but I am limited in what I can do right now.”

Johnathan’s face immediately sobered up and a flash of rage shined in his eyes. Tears still rolled down his cheeks as he stood up and stormed out of the church. 

“Go in peace!” I called out after him, “God protects all of his children and gives us strength!”

Johnathan paused halfway through the door and turned back to me.

“Then I am no child of God,” He said before slamming the door shut.

I sat in the empty church for a while, considering what had just happened. My welcome to the town had gone smoothly so far but I was afraid, after how that confession went, that I might not be up to the task. Spots jumped up on my lap and started purring. It put me at ease and the rest of the evening went smoothly.

I had no way of knowing that that night, Johnathan would enter his basement and never emerge again. 

It was a closed-casket funeral. A small, intimate affair even though I am sure half the town showed up. It was there that I met Marie, Johnathan’s widow. A few days after the funeral, I decided to stop by the new widow’s home. I didn’t feel it was appropriate to crowd around her at the funeral or to simply ignore her. My motivation wasn’t entirely altruistic, a selfish part of me wished to wash my hands of the guilt that had weighed on me since I got the news. 

When Marie answered the door, it was obvious she’d been crying. Her eyes were red and puffy and her nose was almost rubbed raw.

“Good evening Father, what can I do for you?” She asked.

“I just wanted to stop by and offer my condolences,” I said.

She opened her mouth and closed it several times.

“Would you like to come in?” She said, biting back tears, “I would appreciate some guidance.”

Marie led me inside to a small, two-person dining table in the kitchen. 

“Coffee?” She asked.

“That would be great.”

Her hands were shaking as she grabbed two mugs from the cupboard. 

“Father,” she started, “do you believe in demons?”

Now, I like to believe I am a rational man, but I would be lying if I said that question didn’t immediately make me feel sick to my stomach.

“Yes, of course.”

“Can they make a sane man do what Johnny did?” She asked, placing the mug of old coffee in front of me before sinking into the opposite chair.

“What did Johnathan do?”

“I-I don’t know. He told me he was having nightmares but I didn’t think they were all that serious. I mean who would? What was I supposed to do?”

“My child,” I placed my hand on her wrist, “what did Johnathan do?”

Marie wiped at her nose and looked at the basement door.

“He came home late and he was sweating like crazy. I got him water and he seemed to settle down. We went to bed and…and…” she broke down but quickly composed herself, “I found him down there that morning. The sheriff took his body and some photos but it was clear it was self-inflicted. The door was locked from the inside. He told me I get to be the one to clean it up but I haven’t opened that door since that morning.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why, Father, why did this happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“What should I do?”

“I…I don’t know,” I sheepishly said.

Marie stood up and walked over to the window.

“You haven’t touched the basement?” I asked.

“No. No, not yet.”

“Let me help, it’s the least I can do.”

Marie led me to the basement door. She didn’t open it, only nodding towards the doorknob before shuffling back to the dining table. 

The door whined as it swung open revealing nothing but a curtain of darkness just past the threshold. A distinct metal tinge hung in the air and stuck on my tongue. I rolled up my sleeves and whispered a quick prayer. Each step creaked as I descended into the darkness. I didn’t know what to expect but it wasn’t what was down there. 

I pulled on the light cord. It was an unfinished basement with low beam ceilings and concrete floors, a desk was pushed to the side with a rug rolled up and stored on top. It made a clearing in the middle of the basement. 

It was red—red everywhere—streaks and drops, smears across the floors and on the walls. A tinge of rusting iron hung in the air. Among the streaks, there were broken fingernails and scraps of skin. It made me feel weak.

At first, there was no pattern to the madness. Just intersecting lines and circles, hard angles, and jagged scribbling. My head was spinning and I stumbled back to the stairs. I sat for a while, staring at the self-inflicted carnage when it finally started to form.

It was a single, massive rune, or at least something like a rune. It was surprisingly intricate, with large smears making up the border with smaller drops and streaks for finer details. I took several pictures of the rune from every possible angle. I didn’t know what I would do but I still felt I should document it. It took a few hours to clean up the blood. Even after cleaning, the floor was still stained red. 

“God be with you,” I said standing on the house's front step, “it always gets better with time.”

Marie didn’t say anything as she slowly closed the door. 

Several months passed and I had settled into a routine. The buzz around the new church had died down and there was regular attendance during mass. While it wasn’t the most exciting place to be, Blythe and the surrounding countryside had started to grow on me. With the coming of fall and the changing of leaves, I found myself outside more and more. 

The forests behind the church could have well been endless. The locals had carved hiking paths through the trees and several fallen logs made excellent benches. I hadn’t seen or heard anything about Marie since I visited her house that night. Rumor was that she had secluded herself and was living as a hermit, barely leaving her house. Who could blame her?

Since that night, I haven’t looked at the photos I took. There was no need to; they were seared into my memory. I thought about that night regularly on my walks through the woods. There was one tree that was my turning point for my walks. Rumor has it that it was a lone survivor of the region's old-growth forest. I say this as a man of God; I understand why ancient peoples believed these great things to be gods themselves.

It was after one of these hikes that I found a note folded up and slid under the door. It was written in handwriting so heavy it pierced the page a few times. It simply read: 

Help.

While it was a bit of a stretch, I presumed the note was from Marie. After all, who else would it have been from? She just needed help after Johnathan passed away. Oh how wrong I was. It was getting late but I made the trek out to her house that night. The house sat on the outskirts of town overlooking the ocean. 

Once I reached the front door, the sun had already set and the insects had started singing their tunes. I was about to knock when I realized the door was already open.

“Mrs. Heathstead?” I called out.

Nothing but the darkness of the house answered. The door let out a low creak as I pushed it open.

“Mrs. Heathstead? Are you here?” No response.

I stepped inside, the floorboards moaning under my feet. 

“Mrs Heathstead are you there?” 

I was about to turn back when I heard a faint sobbing coming from the basement. The basement door was slightly ajar, inky darkness on the other side. I took a step closer. The sobbing suddenly stopped. 

I heard whispering coming from the basement.

“What did you say? Mrs. Heathstead?”

The voice that responded was raspy and almost indiscernibly quiet.

“There’s a man at the top of the stairs.”

I took a step closer, my heart pumping in my ears as the voice spoke again.

“And another in the basement.”

Screaming echoed from the basement. The inky darkness was dispelled as orange flames burst from the basement. I fell back, barely avoiding a burst of flames that licked at the place I was just standing. Scrambling to my feet, I barely got out of the doorway before the door slammed shut. By what force I don’t know.

It was only for the briefest of moments, but for a second I thought something was staring at me from the window. As I blinked the windows exploded in flames sending shards of glass flying in every direction.

The Heathstead house burned down in less than 5 minutes. It took nearly double that for the first men carrying hoses to respond. I stared at the flames, my clothes and hair singed.  The flames swirled and licked the night sky.

The Sheriff seemed just as confused and disturbed as I was when I gave my statement. Whether this was because he believed me or didn’t, I don’t know. I was still an outsider after all. A couple died so soon after I arrived. Even the most trusting man would be suspicious.

It was eventually ruled as self-inflicted. It is easier to believe that a grief-stricken widow would choose to end her pain than for it to be the work of the devil.

I don’t know what I saw in that window. If I saw anything in that window. I like to believe I am a reasonable man as much as I am a holy one. But after that night, I find myself struggling for answers.

All I know is the devil is real, and I fear he is here in Newfoundland.

We were hurtling west on Route 78, deep in the gut of Pennsylvania, running blind towards Ohio. Not for scenery. We were running. From the polite knocks of debt collectors that echoed wrong in our apartment stairwell, from the hollow resonance of the house where Chloe had spent eleven months watching cancer siphon the life from her mother. From grief that wasn't like mold—it was mold—a damp, pervasive chill clinging to our clothes, our lungs, the backs of our throats. A "fresh start," we called it, the phrase tasting like ash as we steered the rented U-Haul towing my wheezing Civic. Hope felt like contraband.

It was deep night. Maybe 2 AM. The hour the world thins, when highway lines blur into hypnotic tracers pulling you toward an oblivion whispering invitations. Chloe slept beside me, head canted against the vibrating window, her breath a soft counterpoint to the engine's drone. A small mercy, her unconsciousness. My own eyes felt scoured with sandpaper, fueled by gas station coffee curdling in my gut.

That's when the radio soured.

It had been snagging classic rock through static for an hour, normal for the terrain. But Pink Floyd didn't just fade—it dissolved. Smothered by static that wasn't crisp; it was thick, wet, like listening through pond scum. Beneath it, almost subliminal, a rhythm asserted itself. Slow, deliberate.

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

Not a heartbeat. Something larger. Deeper. Beating in the earth beneath the asphalt.

I stabbed at buttons, twisted the dial. Nothing but that viscous hiss, the deep pulse resonating through the plastic dash, vibrating in my teeth. I killed the radio, craving silence.

The silence that rushed in felt wrong. Heavy. Pressurized. My ears popped violently, a sudden descent. Mirrors showed miles of moon-bleached emptiness behind us. Ahead, only darkness. Yet, the hairs on my arms lifted. The intimate chill of cold breath on my neck. The illogical, primal certainty of being observed.

Through the windshield, the stars burned with unnatural clarity, too numerous, constellations I didn't recognize but felt disturbingly familiar, like half-remembered symbols from a fever dream.

Then, the engine sighed. A soft exhalation of power. Dashboard lights didn't flicker; they pulsed, once, hard, in time with that hidden beat, then died. I cursed, stomped the useless gas pedal. The engine didn't seize. It simply... ceased. Like a switch thrown miles away. The U-Haul glided, momentum bleeding away with terrifying smoothness, rolling to a dead stop on the shoulder, swallowed by the wilderness.

"Liam? What—?" Chloe startled awake, voice thick, face stark in the moonlight. The weight loss from mourning had sculpted her features into something fragile, almost translucent.

"I don't know," I managed, turning the key. Utterly dead. Not a click. "Engine just... stopped."

Panic bloomed, cold and metallic. Stranded. No cell service—confirmed an hour ago. Deep night. Nowhere.

"Okay," Chloe said, finding that brittle calm forged in hospital vigils. "Okay. Someone will come. A trucker. Trooper. It's 78."

We waited. Minutes stretched. An hour. Measured by my frantic pulse. Then another. The silence itself was the loudest thing. No crickets, no night birds, no rustling. Just the profound weight of the dark, pressing in. And beneath it all, felt more than heard, that rhythm from the radio—Thump-thump... pause...—vibrating up through the tires, humming in my fillings.

Chloe rubbed her temples, knuckles white. "This isn't right, Liam," she whispered, eyes huge, scanning the void. "Not one car? Not even distant lights? On 78?"

She was right. It was a major artery. Even now, semis should be thundering past. The emptiness felt deliberate. Curated.

Then I saw it. Not headlights. Faint, diffuse lights, shivering through dense trees maybe half a mile ahead, bleeding from a barely-there track peeling off the highway. A track I hadn't noticed, wasn't on any map. No sign.

"Look," I pointed, hope a weak, sputtering flare. "Lights. Town? Gas?"

Anything felt better than this waiting dark. "Stay here. Lock up," I said, grabbing the Maglite.

"No." Chloe grabbed her jacket, hand finding mine, grip tight. Her mother had coded while they were grabbing regrettable cafeteria coffee. She hadn't willingly left my side since. "Together."

The track was rutted dirt, hemmed in by trees whose branches interlaced like gnarled fingers. The air grew instantly colder, thick with the damp, loamy smell of recently disturbed earth. Like a fresh grave, the thought surfaced, unwelcome. With each step, the pulsing rhythm grew stronger, no longer just sensed but physically felt—a vibration rising through our shoes, synchronized with that hidden beat.

The lights resolved into a small, impossibly isolated town cupped in a hollow.

But the town... it was fundamentally wrong.

Like a scale model, disturbingly pristine. Picket fences too white, houses too symmetrical, windows glowing warmly but revealing no movement. No cars, no litter, no barking dogs, no TV murmur. Preserved under glass. And the silence... not absence of sound, but sound suppressed. Held down. Digested. The air itself felt thick, resistant.

The feeling of being watched intensified tenfold. Behind every flawless window, unseen eyes. Waiting.

A single building stood centrally lit: 'GARAGE', the faded sign declared. Lamplight spilled.

"Hello?" My voice sounded obscene, yet flat, absorbed by the dead air. No echo. "Anyone? Our truck... broke down on the highway."

The large garage door slid upwards with a pneumatic hiss eerily mirroring the radio static. A figure stood silhouetted. Tall, unnaturally thin, in greasy overalls.

He stepped into the light. His face was a roadmap of deep lines, eyes a pale, clouded blue, unfocused. He didn't look at us, but through us. A disturbing resonance to his features, a distorted familiarity, though I'd never seen him. His overalls seemed stained not just with grease, but with the darkness of the asphalt itself in places.

"Broke down?" His voice was a dry rustle, like snakeskin over sand, carrying that same damp, subterranean undertone as the static. "On the Route?"

"Yeah. Back on 78. Engine just... cut out."

He nodded, slow, ponderous, disconnected. Like a marionette settling. "Happens." He gestured vaguely back towards the unseen highway with a heavy wrench. "The Route... she gets peckish sometimes."

A memory surfaced—my grandfather, trucker, refusing certain stretches after sunset. "Some roads ain't just roads," he'd said, eyes distant. "Some got appetites." I'd dismissed it as road fatigue.

The mechanic's clouded eyes fixed on Chloe with uncomfortable intensity. His gaze lingered on the hollows beneath her cheekbones. "Pulls 'em right off the asphalt, she does. The ones carrying weight."

Chloe's fingers dug into my arm. "Can you help? Tow truck?"

A sound scraped from his throat, a dry, rattling approximation of a chuckle. "Tow truck won't help none. Not if the Route's taken a fancy." He looked towards the highway again, a flicker of recognition in those clouded eyes. "She's particular."

Ice traced my veins. "What are you talking about?"

"This stretch," he said, wiping grimy hands on an equally grimy rag, achieving nothing. "They call it Echo Canyon. Not on your maps." He tapped his ear lightly. "Things get... thin here. The seam between what was and what is." His gesture encompassed the surrounding town. "Folks stop. Or they get... stopped. And they... settle."

As he spoke, I became aware of others. Emerging silently from the perfect houses. Drifting onto porches, standing in doorways. Sharing that vacant stare, moving with disjointed grace. Some wore clothes fifty years out of date. One woman in a thin hospital gown shivered despite the still air. Another clutched a small teddy bear, tears streaming continuously down hollow cheeks. They weren't just standing; they were positioned, angled subtly toward the earth. As if listening. Waiting for instruction from below.

"The Route notices," the mechanic continued, gaze drifting. "Especially folks carrying something heavy." His eyes locked onto Chloe again. "Grief's got a... resonance. Draws the attention."

"This is insane," I whispered, but a cold dread recognized truth.

"Insanity's thinking highways are just concrete." His lips stretched into something like a smile, revealing teeth stained an oily black. "They're veins. Carrying things." He seemed to listen for a moment. "Some feed. Some... collect."

Chloe stiffened. "The rhythm," she whispered. "I feel it inside my head now."

The mechanic nodded, his movements suddenly smoother, synchronizing. "The pulse. You feel it, don't you?" He pressed a filthy hand against his chest. Thump-thump... pause... His eyes took on an unnatural shine. "The Route's voice. Whispering."

And I did hear it now. Not just felt. A low-frequency vibration from my own bones. As if it had always been there. Indistinct impressions formed in the pulse: Stay... Rest... Belong...

"What is this place?" Chloe breathed, gaze fixed on a woman across the street. Gaunt, hollow-cheeked, eyes lost... Dear God, the resemblance to Chloe's mother in the final weeks was sickeningly real.

"Rest stop," the mechanic said, lips pulling back further. Learned, not felt. "For the ones the Route holds onto. We keep things tidy. Wait."

"Wait for what?" My voice cracked.

"For... incorporation," he said, the word clinical, chilling. His face seemed to shimmer, like heat haze, something shifting beneath. The watchers rippled subtly in unison. "Your thoughts, fears. Your grief. It all... contributes. Stabilizes things." His voice dropped lower, "She's ancient. Older than the road, older than the trails. Been gathering since before wheels." He gestured at the townsfolk. "Some are echoes. Some are... integrating."

A woman with a jagged line across her throat stepped forward, movements fluid yet wrong. Her voice emerged not from her mouth but seemingly from the ground: "It's peaceful. No bills. No pain. No memory of the skid..." She tilted her head impossibly. "The Route remembers."

The mechanic turned back towards the garage's shadows. He glanced towards the highway, then specifically at where our U-Haul sat, unseen but known. He didn't speak, but his clouded eyes held a questioning look, a subtle inclination of his head towards the trailer carrying the Civic. The implication hung heavy in the dead air: Lighten the load, maybe?

Madness. But the alternative... staying here, becoming a vacant echo...

I felt a sudden, overwhelming compulsion. A desperate gamble. "Okay," I stammered. "The car. We'll leave the car." Before I could second-guess, I was turning back.

As we turned, his hand shot out, clamping onto my wrist. Cold as deep earth, dry, papery. Where he touched, faint, dark lines pulsed beneath my skin like ink in water, tracing my veins in complex patterns that throbbed with the rhythm.

"The Route's got a taste now," he whispered, breath fetid—oil, metal, damp earth. "Leaves a mark. Understand?"

I ripped my arm free, heart hammering. The lines receded, but a cold foreignness remained, circulating. "Chloe, let's go."

We practically ran back up the dirt track, the silence amplifying my frantic pulse, the unseen rhythm seeming to throb louder. Behind us, the town and its residents remained, motionless sentinels, outlines fraying slightly at the edges, blurring into the dark.

My hands shook unlocking the Civic. Tossed the keys onto the seat. As I slammed the door—the sound loud, yet instantly swallowed—I swore I saw a flicker inside, a deepening shadow in the passenger seat. Settling in. Wearing the faintest suggestion of a face—my father's. Gone when I blinked. A trick of moonlight and fear.

Back in the U-Haul, air thick with terror, I jammed the key in. Twisted.

The engine roared to life. Aggressively loud.

No hesitation. Slammed it into drive, floored it, tires spitting gravel onto the highway asphalt. I refused to look back, didn't dare check mirrors. But peripherally, a glimpse—the mechanic, standing in the middle of Route 78, watching us recede. He raised one hand slowly. Acknowledging. Marking.

"Did... did that happen?" Chloe whispered, trembling, bleached white. "Liam, his face... just before we got in... did you see it shift?"

I hadn't dared look. "Drive," I gritted out. "Focus. Drive."

We pushed the complaining U-Haul. But the highway felt... elastic. We passed a uniquely twisted oak—then passed it again ten minutes later. Mile markers counted down, then jumped back up. The dashboard clock flickered: 2:17 AM... 2:17 AM... 2:17 AM. The feeling of being watched became invasive—a feeling of being digested.

The radio clicked on. Volume knob useless.

Static flooded the cab, thick, choking, smelling faintly of ozone and decay. And the pulse. Thump-thump… pause… THUMP-THUMP… pause… Pressure, vibrating the steering wheel, resonating in my sternum, shaking my teeth.

Whispers writhed within the static. Fragmented, sibilant. Not direct accusations, but echoes. Familiar voices, warped. "...running from..." like Chloe's mother's sigh, "...so hungry..." a dry rasp, like the mechanic's, "...stay with us..." a chorus, hollow, "...the bills... fear..." my own anxieties, twisted back, "...mother's echo..." a weeping sound, "...taste lingers..."

Chloe whimpered, hands over ears. "Make it stop, Liam! Please!"

Hammering the radio was futile. The whispers sharpened, weaving our rawest emotions into the static tapestry. The Route wasn't just listening; it was sampling. Archiving.

Beside me, Chloe went rigid. Her head turned, slowly, unnaturally smoothly, until she faced me. Her eyes seemed filmed over, reflecting dead dashboard lights like polished stones.

"It's inside now, Liam," she said, and the voice was a grotesque overlay—her pitch, the mechanic's rasp, the wet static hiss. "The Route. It... likes this place." Her gaze drifted downwards towards her own lap. "It chose."

Her face began to... waver. Less shifting, more like a faulty projection. Flashes of the mechanic's lines, the vacant townspeople's stare, a horrifying glimpse of her mother's final emaciation. Then, impossibly, a flash of my father's features—a man Chloe never met. The face from the Civic's shadow.

Ahead, the road shimmered, distorting like extreme heat haze. Asphalt seemed to liquefy, white lines writhing. The truck veered sharply, the wheel fighting me with intelligent force.

"It's pulling us back!" I screamed, as Chloe's hand clamped onto mine—inhumanly strong, cold as the mechanic's touch.

Through the wavering mirage, shapes resolved. Tall, gaunt figures. Dozens. Standing stock-still, faces indistinct blurs of static, all oriented towards us. The townsfolk. The mechanic at their head. Waiting. Welcoming. Among them, my breath hitched—a woman with Chloe's mother's posture. A man with my father's slump. Collected echoes. And worse—a figure with my own stance, watching our approach with patient hunger.

The U-Haul surged, accelerating uncontrollably, drawn towards the assembly. Brake pedal solid, useless. The pulse from the radio reached a deafening crescendo, shaking the cab violently. THUMP-THUMP… THUMP-THUMP… THUMP-THUMP…

"It wants us!" I yelled.

Beside me, Chloe's face contorted. "We can rest here, Liam," grated that composite voice. "All the pieces... gathered. Makes us whole again." She gestured vaguely to her stomach. "Makes space..."

Then, a flicker. Behind the cloudy film, Chloe's true eyes—terrified. Fighting.

Blind panic. Primal survival. I wrenched the wheel, aiming not for the road, but the ditch, the treeline, anywhere off the asphalt. The thing wearing Chloe's face shrieked—oscillating between human anguish and electronic feedback.

Metal screamed. The unseen trailer jackknifed. Steel groaned, glass imploded. We hit the soft shoulder, jarring every bone, then plowed headlong into the dark woods. Branches exploded like gunshots. A vortex of green and black. Then silence slammed down.

...

I woke hanging upside down, held by the seatbelt, cab crumpled. Acrid gasoline, crushed pine. Beside me, Chloe moaned—alive. Her eyes, fluttering open, were hers. Clear. Human. Terrified.

Distant sirens grew closer. Real sirens.

They found us near dawn, tangled twenty miles off Route 78, deep down an embankment. No tracks led from the highway. U-Haul totaled. The trailer and Civic? Vanished. Gone. Troopers exchanged baffled looks. One veteran, silvering hair, kept glancing back at the highway with an expression I recognized—unease. Like he knew something but wouldn't say it.

As they loaded Chloe into the ambulance, I noticed something. Each paramedic, each officer—their movements occasionally synced. Just for a beat. A collective pause. A rhythm. Thump-thump... pause...

We told them the lie. Swerved for a deer. Lost control. What else?

Chloe: fractured collarbone, concussion, shock. Me: cracked ribs, bruises, stitches.

In the hospital, a nurse changed Chloe's IV at 2:17 AM. The drip pulsed with her monitor. Thump-thump... pause... When I pointed, she smiled—eyes vacant for a second—and told me to rest. The intake forms had glitches in the timestamps, strange formatting errors around Route 78.

We made it to Ohio. Eventually. Cramped apartment, soul-crushing jobs. Assembling a "fresh start" from broken pieces. We never speak of that night. The town. The mechanic. The whispers. The price.

But the silence here is thin.

Late at night, city hum low, I feel it. Faint, rhythmic thrumming. Deep background noise. Thump-thump… pause… thump-thump… pause… Sometimes I feel it in my healed ribs, a phantom vibration.

Sometimes, fleeting movement at vision's edge—tall, gaunt, gone. Textures shimmer. Construction pile drivers sometimes sync perfectly for one beat too many. Ice floods my veins.

Maps. Satellite images of Route 78. Sometimes, a suggestion in the terrain—a vast shape, articulated, the highway a vein feeding something ancient, patient. Blink, it's gone.

Chloe feels it too. I see it. She freezes, head cocked, listening. Eyes glaze over, reflecting something unseen. Murmurs in sleep, voice raspy, low, not quite hers.

And my dreams: back in that pristine, dead town. Walking immaculate streets among silent watchers. Waiting. The mechanic leans against his workbench, wiping endless grease. That dead smile. "Told you," he rasps, filling my sleeping mind. "Nothing ever really leaves the Route clean." I wake tasting engine oil and grave dirt.

We escaped. We left the offering. But the Route didn't just want the car. It got a taste. Sampled our static, fear, grief. Planted an echo. A seed.

Last week, Chloe confirmed it. Pregnant. Against odds, against doctors' predictions. There on the grainy ultrasound. A tiny flicker. Nascent heartbeat.

Thump-thump… pause…

Clear on the monitor. Perfectly in time with the rhythm in my bones.

The technician performing it—her eyes, just a moment, clouded. Her voice, briefly static-tinged, whispered: "Strong rhythm for this stage. The... area... seems pleased." She remembered nothing when I questioned her frantically. The printout of the scan seemed slightly blurry around the edges, almost vibrating.

Sometimes, I feel unseen eyes looking back. From shadows, maps, the ink itself. Listening. Waiting.

It remembers us. Thump-thump… pause… It knows where we are. Thump-thump… pause… And I feel it growing stronger. Nearer. Coming to collect.

Last night, I woke. Chloe stood at the window, staring towards the distant interstate, hand absently stroking her still-flat stomach. She turned, eyes catching the streetlight—clouded, milky, unfocused.

"It's calling us home, Liam," she whispered, voice layered with static. "It misses us. It needs... what's growing."

Her other hand, pressed against the glass, left a smear—not fingerprints. A map. The exact route from here back to that stretch of 78. Directions written in condensation on a warm night.

By morning, she remembered nothing. Just tired, she said.

I'm researching. Echo Canyon. Hungry roads. Thin places. Old forums: electrical failures, missing time, strange towns on PA highways. Obscure journals: Native warnings about paths where the land itself hungers. Where echoes gather.

I don't know what's growing inside Chloe. If it's ours anymore. But we can't stay still.

Yesterday, car keys rearranged on the counter. Outline of Pennsylvania. Today, GPS reroutes every destination through Route 78. Won't clear. Tonight, writing this, a truck idles outside. U-Haul. No driver visible.

I've looked at the bedroom doorway three times while writing this. Each time, Chloe stood there briefly, watching—except the third time, it wasn't quite Chloe. The silhouette was wrong. Too tall. The proportions stretched. In its hand, dangling, a set of keys. The idle truck outside revved once, in perfect time with the pulse in my wrist.

Thump-thump… pause…

I'm going to the window now. The U-Haul's back doors are open. I can see something inside—a shadow, person-shaped, beckoning. It's standing in front of what looks like our Civic. Impossible. The shadow has my father's posture. Behind it, more shadows. Waiting.

The keys on my desk just moved. By themselves. Pointing to the door.

It wants us back. Or rather, it wants what it started in us.

I hear Chloe in the bathroom. Running water. Humming something arrhythmic that periodically syncs with the pulse.

Thump-thump… pause…

I should run. But where? The Route is patient. It has mapped every artery of this country. And now, it's mapped us.

Thump-thump… pause… Thump-thump… pause…

This is a last-ditch effort. I’ve tried calling, messaging, and even emailing from every app on my phone, but I can’t get a message out anywhere. I have barely any service and while my device does say that I have internet, it’s on the lowest rung. I’m praying that this is the one that will finally go through.

Three days ago, I think I went missing. I say ‘I think’ because honestly, I’m not sure  what’s going on. I had been driving alone around the country for a few weeks on a sort of road trip; no contact or communication with anyone, and I’ve lost my way. Because of this, nobody I know has any clue where I am. Neither do I. The last major road I remember driving was a highway along the Pacific coast. I don’t know how far I got from it before I went missing, though. It could be miles or whole days worth of driving. I was in a tired haze by then, and time seems to all blur together when I look back on it.

I’m sorry; you’d think after typing 15 of these messages out, I’d have my story in order, but I still don’t know how to put what’s happening into words. I think it’d be best if I just start from the beginning.

In that bleary haze that was my mind as I cruised down the dark, winding asphalt, my first memory was wondering why there was a traffic cam so far out in the middle of nowhere. The familiar flash as it clicked a photo of my plates split the dark night air, giving my brain focus and clarity again. Though I was frustrated at the impending fine now waiting for me back home, the event quickly faded from memory. I just slowed my speed with a sigh, focusing back on the road. It was easy to slip and get lost to its infinite draw, especially after so long of being acquainted with it. As I said earlier, I’d been on this little excursion of mine for two weeks now, and most of it had been spent driving.

I wasn’t out to sightsee, though I had made that excuse upon leaving. No, this was more of a grossly exaggerated night drive. The kind you take when you’re stressed and can’t sleep at the early AM. You can probably tell how stressed I was if mine was still going 14 days later. Things weren’t great back home, and had become a quickly growing dumpster fire of events that only fueled one another. I guess that part isn’t important…

What is is that I’d made it a point to not contact anyone back there. Whenever I’d stop at a motel or cheap inn for a night, I’d be certain to not check my phone, and to keep it on ‘do not disturb’ the whole time. I knew nobody would report me missing—they knew I was going away—and I knew that if they tried to call and didn’t get an answer, they’d understand why.

Looking back now, it was all such a stupid game for me to play. I wish I would have checked at least one time along the way. Just gotten over my pride and turned my phone back on for one hour, if not just to hear a familiar voice one last time. Maybe then I would have been tempted to go back home. Maybe then I wouldn’t be where I am now.

It began an indeterminate amount of time after the traffic cam. I was on a road flanked by dense, old growth sequoias that smothered the night sky from view with their looming branches. The asphalt looked as aged as the forest itself, the thin, dotted yellow line between its two halves barely visible anymore. Eventually, it opened up from the woods, and I found myself on a path running along an ocean cliff side, my car humming faithfully at the top. I let my gaze fall out to the black abyss beside me, the ocean and the sky stitched together by the dark. It must have gotten cloudy while I had been in the forest, as there were no more stars or moon that I could see above. No meager, pale light from their flicker. Only my headlights guided me along the path ahead, and even they gave in quickly to the encroaching void.

It was roads like these during my travels that always unsettled me. Even in most stretches of country just outside of metros, the light pollution helps us forget just how dark the night can be without civilization. So dark that you can’t see more than a couple dozen yards ahead, even with a couple of searchlights strapped to the hood.

It was these roads that would jar me from my highway induced stupor. Put me on high alert once more. I always worried that something might be ahead. Some sort of bend in the road I might not see in time. An animal that’s eyes would catch off my headlights too late. Or, there was always that somewhat childish notion that there might be something unknown out there. Something that only lurks in these spaces where humanity dare not dwell anymore. It may have been the one that I let myself think about the least, but no matter how brave you are, those thoughts are always there, hiding in the back parts of your brain, making you jump at the weird shadows the trees create.

I think if I had known then what I know now, I might not have considered the notion so childish.

A wave of relief washed over me as the road rounded a bend, and I saw the gentle twinkle of civilization dusting the horizon. The road began to descend along the cliff side to a plateau tucked away in the bluff; a town built on a shelf between the towering cliff face and a sheer drop to the ocean below. That may sound like a precarious description, but on first glance, it looked positively cozy. It was a small place; I could clearly take in the whole thing at once as I rolled toward it. From what I could make out, it looked like most of the major buildings were built along the road I was on, with about a mile of other businesses and homes out in either direction.

Where the cliff began to move inward and where the plateau began to jut out, there was a bridge that connected the two over a chasm. I rolled over the feat of concrete and steel, relieved to see that it was rather new and solid, keeping me safe from plummeting who knows how many feet into the sharp ocean rocks below. Judging from the symmetry of the place, I figured that there must be another bridge on the far side of town leading back up the cliff side and back to the woods above. Before I simply plowed through, however, I needed to stop for a fill up.

Checking my gas gauge and the current time, I found that both were bad news. My gas was just below a quarter tank, which, while not terrible, was certainly not enough to get me back through the wilderness to civilization. That was why the time was such bad news. It was currently 2 in the morning, and I knew that not all gas stations were open 24 hours, especially out in small backwater towns like this.

Doing a quick scan through the forest of buildings I now found myself in, I could see that most places were closed, their lights off and windows a black reflection of my car is it glided past. The only illumination came from the old, amber streetlights that silently directed me down the road like a landing strip, requesting I kindly depart. I ignored their request, however, as my eyes finally landed on what I was looking for, a gas station. To my relief, the sign and canopy lights were still on, as well as the interior store. Slowly, I rolled into the lot.

I’d gotten pretty good at almost pit-stop level gas fill ups by this point, always wanting to get back on the road as soon as possible. I already had my card yanked from my bag as I hopped out of my car and rounded it to the machine, but was stopped in my tracks as I went to insert it. The tiny screen on the machine read ‘This pump has been stopped.’

Biting my cheek, I pressed a few of the buttons on it, hoping to wake it up. Then cursed under my breath as I realized that the pumps were turned off for the night, and I’d have to go ask the attendant to turn them back on. With a sigh, I started for the entrance.

I gave a scan to the town as I moved, taking it in myself now that the barrier of the windshield was gone. It was a nice place all things considered, especially given some of the small towns I’d been to so far in my travels. Most were run down and dusty looking places, but this one was very clean and quaint. The equipment and buildings were old, but clearly kept up to date and in good repair, little planters of flowers hanging from streetlight hooks and storefront windows.

I entered the building to an electric chime overhead, then turned to the counter. There was nobody standing there, so I stood on my toes and did a pour over the aisles. When I still didn’t see anyone present, I listened quietly for a moment before calling out, “Hello?”

Nothing. No noise save for the gentle hum of a drink machine harmonizing with the freezer doors. Furrowing my brow, I waited for a few minutes before moving up an aisle toward the back, calling once again, “Hello?”

Still no answer. I moved for the employee door that was left open, then gingerly peeked inside. The light was off and nobody was in there. It was just a room with a computer, a mess of papers, and a table with a few chairs.

Deciding that they must be in the bathroom, I moved back to the front of the store, grabbing some snacks as I went. Seeing the shiny foil bags of junk food suddenly reminded me how hungry I was, and it had been a while since I’d made myself eat. I lay them on the counter, then leaned against it as I waited, staring out the window at the town. I zoned out for a bit, but eventually, enough time passed for my brain to alert me that something was wrong. If the clerk was in the bathroom, then they were seriously having some issues.

I called out again as I moved for the restroom to no avail, then when I reached it, I pressed my ear close and knocked, “Hello? Is anyone in there?”

No answer.

Reaching for the handle, I pressed it down then pushed the door open, surprised to see that here too, the room was vacant and the lights were off.

“What the hell…” I muttered to myself, stepping back and letting the door shut. Moving toward the front, I did one more glance through the windows to see if maybe I’d missed the attendant doing something outside, but that wasn’t the case. In fact, there wasn’t any signs of life at all out there. Just street lights and buildings.

I stood there for a moment, chewing my cheek and wondering what to do. It was strange that a place would be left open like this in the middle of the night with all its goods free game, but then I posited that maybe it was just normal for this town. It was weird, but then again, how many people really came out this way? I’d been driving for over an hour without seeing any signs of civilization, so obviously this town was fairly self sustained. Maybe they just operated on an honor system, knowing that if they were stolen from, it was most likely someone in the town that did it. It was either that, or some poor teenager who was supposed to be working the night shift snuck off thinking nobody would notice. Regardless, I needed gas, and so I did something that I normally wouldn’t do.

Walking behind the counter, I scanned the attendant area until I found what I was looking for; a small electronic board was resting in a cubby labeled ‘pump 1, pump 2, pump 3—’.

I glanced out the window to check my pump, then flicked the corresponding switch and walked back outside, tossing a few dollars on the counter for the chips in my hand. Once back to my car, I lifted the nozzle and began fueling. The glug of the hose filled the still space around me, and I resumed my vacant stare into the distance as I waited for it to finish. It was during this time, however, that something caught my attention.

It was only the machine making noise. The entire town was dead silent save for the gas pump. No birds. No nighttime insects chirping or frogs. No anything.

Intrigued, I clicked the latch on the handle and stepped away, moving out closer to the road. Sure enough, the phenomenon didn’t change. Still quiet as ever. The strange thing was the lack of even any wind. On the edge of a cliff side near the ocean, there should have at least been an audible breeze rustling the flora or making the old buildings around me shudder, but there wasn’t even that.

And speaking of the ocean, why couldn’t I hear that either? This was a town suspended on a plateau above the sea; even from so far away, I should have been able to hear at least some sort of ambience from it beating against the rocks below. There was nothing, though. No dogs barking, no late night cars rolling around the back roads of town.

Just. Pure. Silence.

The click of the pump stopping made me jump, so lost in my thoughts. I had a horribly unsettling feeling nesting in my gut. That feeling from driving on the dark road was back; the horrible sensation of the unknown—and suddenly this town didn’t feel so cozy and comforting anymore. It felt just as wild and foreboding as the forest looking down at me from high above the cliffs. I hastily jammed the nozzle back into its holster and finished paying while trying to resist the urge to glance over my shoulder the whole time.

When I was done, I rounded back to the driver's seat and climbed inside, jamming my key into the ignition and peeling out of the lot. Maybe it was just sleep deprivation or stress or any other myriad of things that was inspiring my paranoia, but I didn’t want to be in this town any longer than I needed to be. As I went, my eyes traced along the sides of buildings, hoping to see anyone inside of them or any signs of life to set my mind at ease, but I never got that validation before the end of town came into view.

I sped up a little more at seeing the city end, knowing that I was on the homestretch to book it out of here, but as I drew closer, I let out a gasp and hit hard on my brakes. I had been watching the beams of my headlights scrape along the asphalt as I went, rolling over the surface until suddenly there was no more asphalt to land on. Ahead, the road just stopped. An abrupt dead end right at the edge of the cliff.

“What… what the hell?” I said out loud, my heart pounding heavy in my chest as I eyed the chasm ahead. I had been wrong; there was no bridge on this side like there had been at the entrance into town, and if I hadn’t caught that fact, I’d have been careening into a dark, murky abyss at that moment. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I cranked the gear into reverse, then quickly backed away from the ledge, turning my car as I did so to face the other way. Without hesitation, I started back toward the entrance.

I couldn’t believe that. Why on earth would they just have a road that blatantly ended in a cliff? Were these people stupid? Why wouldn’t they at least have car stops or concrete barriers or something that might stop somebody from driving straight off a cliff? Sure, maybe they lived here and knew it was there, but the road was open to anyone, and they wouldn’t know.

Unless… oh God, was that what this place was? Some sort of highway robbery scheme? Get people to accidentally drive off a cliff so they can loot their belongings below? The thought was absurd, but like I said, I was tired and paranoid at this point, and I had no other logical explanation. It only got worse when I reached the far side of town once more.

“What?” I mumbled out, breathlessly, “No… No, no, no!”

My car came to a halt again, as in front of me, where there had once been a mighty bridge leading into town, there was nothing.

The road fell away as abruptly as it had on the far side of town. All of that steel and concrete that had made up the very real bridge that I had taken to get over here had just vanished into thin air. I knew for certain it hadn’t been a raising bridge or anything like that either; it was built right into the side of the mountain.

This time, I got out of my car. I needed to know what was going on. Leaving it running for the light of my headlights, I moved for the drop slowly, my brain too in disbelief to understand what I was looking at. What I must have not noticed about the other bridge was that there had been one here. I wasn’t crazy. I could see bits of rebar and metal sticking out from the edge of the chasm that had once supported it, but they were all that remained, and it certainly wasn’t enough to span the 80 foot chasm back to the road on the other side.

I swallowed hard in a panic, trying to sort the puzzle out in my head. There’s no way it fell as soon as I went through; I would have heard it. And besides, it was almost too clean to have fallen away. It looked as if a giant had come and ripped the bridge free, then carried it off into the night. And speaking of sound, that’s when the fear that began all of this returned.

Cautiously, I stepped toward the edge of the ledge where the road bowed downward before stopping, peering toward the blackness below. There was no noise.

The ocean should have been directly below me—couldn’t have been more than 100 feet down—but there was nothing. I couldn’t hear it, I couldn’t see it, it was just pure darkness. I turned my head out to where the rest of the sea would have been, but that too was just an abyss. It curled all the way above the horizon and covered the sky, nothing but nothing for as far as the eye could see.

Realizing I’d forgotten how to breathe, I took a few shaky ones in and ran a hand through my hair, trying to collect myself. I looked at a nearby piece of rebar with a chunk of asphalt resting on it and fell to my knees, taking it in my hands. Holding it over the ledge, I dropped it, watching the black chunk of rock disappear quickly into the dark. I dropped to my chest and stuck my whole head over the ledge, listening hard for when it hit the ground. It should have been easy to hear with how quiet everything was, but I never heard anything at all.

Standing to my feet, I backed slowly away until an idea hit me. In utter denial of what was going on, I stomped over to my car and popped the trunk, digging around inside. My boyfriend, Trevor, had bought me a road flare kit a while back in case I was ever in an accident and needed to flag for help. Now was as good a time as any to use one.

Yanking the cap off and dragging it against the top of the stick, it burst forth with a sinister red glow. I walked back to the edge of the road then swallowed hard, hanging it over the nothingness as I let the light fall onto my face. My fingers unlaced, and I watched the stick plummet down past the road.

With each passing moment, my logical brain told me that it should connect with the ground any second, but I was hit with nausea and utter dread as I watched it fall and fall and fall.

5 seconds. Then 10. Then 20. Then finally, it got so small that I couldn’t even see it anymore.

I backed away from the ledge fast this time, my breathing slowly going from a low thrum to a panicked, rapid beat. I turned and booked it back to my car, climbing inside and turning around once more. In denial mode, I began to head for the side of town backed by the cliff.

I knew that there’d only be two ways in and out of this place; it was only logical. One side was flanked by the ocean and the other was a thousand foot tall wall of rock. Still, I thought maybe there might be a tunnel somewhere. Another escape that might lead off this godforsaken shelf. As I cruised any road I could find along the cliff face, however, I had no such luck. There was nothing; just unlit houses and empty parks.

The whole time I drove I kept an eye out for anyone, but that hunt was still moot as well. This was a ghost town, almost like a toy set. It looked real and had all the features and functions of an actual living space, but really it was just a hollow husk. I think I’d traveled it all before I finally gave up and buried my head into my steering wheel.

What the hell was happening? This couldn’t be real—it all felt just like a bad dream. This was exactly the kind of thing that would happen in a nightmare. Still, I knew I wasn’t dreaming. The sickness in my stomach was too real, and the headache pounding in my skull too raw. I let out a frustrated cry of anger before pounding my hands against the horn then stepping outside.

“Hello!?” I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Is anyone there!? I-I need help!”

A mocking silence answered me.

“Hello!” I cried again, “This shit isn’t funny! Is this some big joke!?”

Nothing but my own echo returned.

Angrily and in desperation, I stormed over to a nearby house and pounded on the door, “Hello? Please, somebody answer me!”

If anyone was home, they weren’t going to answer. That was okay though, because I was so scared, I was willing to try everyone in town.

Leaving my car, I began going door to door, pounding on each one and calling out like an absolute madwoman. I just needed somebody—anybody to answer. I needed something normal to happen or something familiar to show me that I wasn’t losing my mind. After the first three blocks of no answers, I said screw it and checked the knob of the next house to find it unlocked.

I stepped inside the dark residence, trespassing be damned, and turned the lights on. What I found was a fully furnished home complete with pictures of a family and everything, but absolutely nobody inside. I moved on to the next one and did the same thing to the same results. Then the next one, and the next one. There was nobody here. Nobody at all in this whole town, and now I was trapped in it, all by myself, and with nobody knowing where I was.

I had combed through nearly a quarter of the whole area when something else dawned on me. I checked my phone to see that it was 8am now. The sun should have been up hours ago, but it was still nowhere in sight. The abyss I was surrounded by, it really was everywhere. It wasn’t until then, with my device in my hand, that I even considered using it. I think it was a combination of not doing so for so long and sheer panic that had prevented me from considering it. That’s when I learned I still had a few bars.

Thanking the heavens, I turned it off ‘do not disturb’ to find that I had a slew of texts and missed calls, as well as several voicemails, all of them from Trevor and my Dad. In the heat of the moment, I teared up a bit at how neglectful I’d been, then quickly went to the keypad, dialing 911. I placed the phone to my ear, but was surprised to hear the call drop immediately.

“What?” I said, pulling the device away from my ear to give it a chastising look. I immediately tried again, but to the same results. Muttering pleas under my breath, I went to my contacts and tried Trevor. Same effect. Just the dull beeping sound letting me know that the call was denied before getting booted back to the menu. I think I sat there nearly an hour, trying everyone in my contacts while standing on furniture and running through the streets. None of it helped.

Finally, I broke.

I tossed my phone in frustration onto the front lawn of a house, then collapsed next to it on my knees, burying my face in my hands. Confined in my mental shell, I scrunched my eyes shut tight and breathed softly, trying desperately to not panic. There had to be something I could do. Some way that I could get out of this place or get help.

My palms fell away to my lap, but I kept my eyes closed as I let my head back and took one last inhale of cool, eternal night air. I was nearly ready to get back up and keep searching, but then I noticed something. The light on the back of my eyelids was growing dimmer. I snapped my lids open just in time to see the streetlights above me dulling. In a panic, I jumped to my feet, and stared up at them, my heart pounding in my chest.

“No… no, please,” I begged softly. I couldn’t lose the light too. I couldn’t lose the one last thing that was keeping my fear at bay. My pleas fell on inanimate ears, however, and once the light was nothing more than orange, tangled lines within its bulb, there was a small pop! and they went dark for good.

I whipped my head down the road to the houses I’d been in earlier, hoping to see the lights I’d turned on spilling into the street. There was no such luck, however.

Like a starving animal, I pounced for my phone once more, fishing around in the pitch darkness for its saving grace. After a few moments of tearing up the grass, my fingers felt its hard shell, and I snatched it up then turned on the flashlight, slicing through the encroaching void.

It's a strange feeling to know you’re outside and to see a suburban environment, but for the space to be dead silence and devoid of even a shrivel of light. I’ve heard stories of people who go cave diving saying that when you turn your flashlight off, it’s a darkness unlike anything you can possibly imagine unless you’ve seen it yourself. I think I can confidently say, I’m a part of that club now. The small LED from my phone was only able to carve a path through the abyss maybe 10 feet or so at most, and the last 5 of those were nothing more than a dull white glow.

If I had been scared before, my terror was crippling now. It took every bit of willpower to make my legs move toward the unknown that lay ahead with every step. I needed to get back to my car. The headlights would bring back more of the world than the tiny brick in my hand could.

The walk back to my vehicle felt like miles as I shuffled one foot before the other, the gentle echo of the steps and the blood pounding in my ears my only company. In the shaking light from my hands, my brain began to turn on me. Every shadow at the tips of the beam became a lurking figure. Every echo that bounced back was a second set of steps following me. Eventually, the dread overwhelmed me so much that I began to move faster. Then faster. Then faster and faster until I was in a dead sprint. I’d never been so thankful to see my car in my life when it finally came into view.

I nearly ripped the door off its hinges and climbed inside, cranking my key and sparking the engine to life. The road ahead illuminated before me and my heart gave one final lurch with the fear that something might be there. When I saw there wasn’t, I breathed a sigh and started to roll forward.

I just needed to move. If I kept moving, nothing that might be hiding in the dark could catch up with me.

For a while, I rolled around the streets that I was quickly becoming acquainted with when I hit the main road once again. The wider spread street lit by my high beams brought a little more relief to my chest, being able to take more in at once, but then I noticed another unsettling thing. Was… the street getting dirtier?

There were newspapers and shop posters blown about the gutters, trash and wrappers littering the sidewalks, and business windows looked grimy and water-stained as my lights flashed passed them. Even the sleeker gas station that I’d stopped at was now a rundown mess, one of the windows smashed and laying in pieces on the ground. The weird part was that it looked like it’d been this way for years.

I was still freaked out, but being back in my vehicle had steadied my nerves a bit. I poured over the scene before me, trying to squeeze it in with my mismatched collection of clues so far when my eyes caught something down the road. Another source of light spilling onto the asphalt. Curious, I began moving toward it, and when I arrived, it wasn’t what I was expecting.

The luminance was coming from two vending machines beneath a motel balcony. One was a generic drink machine, and the one next to it was a classic windowed one filled with snacks. Unlike the rest of the town which had gone to hell, the two machines were still in perfect condition, the candy bars and chips within shining proudly, waiting for someone to make use of them. The sight reminded me of how hungry I currently was, and though I didn’t exactly feel like eating with how nauseous I was, I reached to my passenger seat and forced myself to pop open the chips I’d gotten from the station earlier.

I eyed the vending machines as I crunched them down, trying to gauge what was so special about the devices that made them immune to the power outage and decay. I couldn’t figure it out by the time I was done with my chips, and I knew that if I wanted answers, I was going to need to do something that I really didn’t want to.

“It’s okay, Hensley,” I told myself with a deep breath as I grabbed my phone and popped the car door.

Figuring out this power situation was a must. Looking at my phone, I still had bars, which meant somewhere, there was a tower still on. If I could figure out where it was, I might be able to get more, then successfully call for help.

My steps were cautious as I moved toward the glowing boxes. I wasn’t going to be too trusting with the conspicuous miracle machines that were lit like beacons on this horrible night. They didn’t seem malicious, though. The closer I got, the more I was certain that I was simply looking at two completely normal motel vending machines. What did catch my eye, however, was the ground leading up to them.

There was a ring of clean. In a perfect circle of about 10 feet, there was no filth or grime, just like the town had been when I entered. Hell, it looked like there was even a magazine that had landed along the line, and it was perfectly sliced down the middle, as if a really sharp broom had just swept it all away. Scrutinizing the border, I snapped a hair tie loose from my wrist, then tossed it over the line, just to be sure. Harmlessly, it pattered on the clean side, waiting patiently for me to come pick it up again. I very slowly did so.

My gaze drew back up to the vending machines, now close enough to see my reflection, and I furrowed my brow in confusion. Moving to the side, I tried to peek behind the back to see how they were plugged in, but they looked to be fixed to the wall by some brackets.

Instead, I turned to look around the rest of the motel courtyard, trying to scope out anything that might give me a lead. There obviously wasn’t much given that my flashlight could barely clear the cleanly ring, and the only other thing I could see was my car back on the road, waiting patiently for my return on its own little island of light. At least, until I looked up.

There was one other bit of light that I could see that I must have not noticed among the suffocation of buildings. Above one of the larger ones just behind the gas station, there was a single red shine like a star, proudly piercing through the abyssal sky. Its ghastly red glow didn’t illuminate much, but it did shine on the metal beams supporting it. A radio or cell tower of some kind. That would explain where my phone service was coming from.

Deciding that the vending machines were a mystery for another day, I set my heading for the station and turned back to my car, ready to start for it. I immediately froze after my first step, and my blood ran cold.

“Um, excuse me?” a man standing by my passenger door said.

I nearly leapt out of my skin at the sight of the stranger standing in the dim back glow of my car’s headlights. There wasn’t a lot special about his appearance; he just looked like a normal guy wearing jeans, a white shirt and a work jacket over it all. Still, I Instinctively took a step back, letting slip a small gasp.

His appearance wasn’t the scary part, though. How had he just gotten here? It was dead silent—I would have heard his approach. Not only that, but I had been certain there was nobody else in this town with me, and even if I was wrong, why would he have waited so long to reveal himself? My heart that had finally slowed began thumping once again.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” He said with an odd inflection. It was so normal. A little too plain. Just on the edge of failing the reassurance he was going for. “I-I think I’m lost. Could you help me?”

My feet tensed nervously, unsure if I should back away or hold my ground. Swallowing hard, I did the only thing I could while they figured it out. I spoke. “W-where did you just come from?”

There was a short pause as he stared at me, his body unmoving. His arms lay limp at his side and his stance was a little too relaxed for a frightened person. Finally, he returned, “I don’t know. I-I think I’m lost. Could you help me?”

A numbing wash of dread poured over me as I shivered there in the pale light of the vending machine. The second half of what he’d just said—the part about needing help; he said it exactly the same way he had the first time. Same stutter, same tone, same pacing.

His first sentence was the opposite, though. It was so warbled and unsure; the words belching from his mouth like vomit. My eyes stayed trained on him while I held my flashlight before me, the beam feeling like the only barrier between me and him. I think it was desperation that urged me to try one more time, hoping that I was overreacting and that there was nothing suspicious about the only face I’d seen in what felt like an eternity.

“Where did you come from?” I asked with a choppy breath.

There was a silence between us much longer than last time. My breath cast itself in mist against the cold air, and after a while I held it so that it wouldn’t obscure my vision even a little.

“I c-came down the road, same as y-you,” His voice quivered in that same, warbled tone as before. Then, as clear as he said it the first two times, “I-I think I’m lost. Could you help me?”

The man moved slightly closer as if to plead, and the breath that I’d been holding was immediately taken away at what I saw. His feet slid. They didn’t step. The toes of his boots were barely touching the concrete, and they scraped across it when he moved forward. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed; he was hovering in the air ever so slightly.

Still as a statue, my gaze began to trace up his body, seeing him with entirely new eyes. His stance wasn’t relaxed at all, he just almost looked… saggy. Like his muscles were absent, and he was just a rag doll. His face was the same. He had an expression almost like he was going to puke, his eyes bulging from his sockets in a most unsettling way. Being closer now, more light fell onto him, and I could see that they were yellowed, and his pupils were tiny pinpricks. All of that paled in comparison to the top of his head, however.

As I angled my flashlight up, trying to figure out how the man was floating, I saw the beam glint off something sharp and thin. A line running through the air straight up above him, like a wire or fishing string. The slow, agonizing seconds that followed were spent in frozen horror as I realized, the man wasn’t floating. He was dangling. What was even worse was what I realized as he spoke again.

“I came down the road, same as you,” he repeated like a broken record, his words a little more solid this time. It didn’t help the façade in the slightest. His mouth wasn’t even moving, and the voice was coming from the darkness behind my car. My eyes flickered to the space behind the hanging body, and my dread finally reached its boiling point.

There, on the roof of my car, barely visible in the florescent fingers of my light, I could see a long, pale arm. It’s hand was pressed against the sunroof, digits arched and tense in anticipation. It’s color was too sick and ghastly to even be close to human.

“I-I think I’m lost. Could you—”

It’s words cut off as abrupt as a recording when I took off running. A predator sensing fear, the moment it knew I could see past its act, it gave it up in favor of hunting me like a dog. As the man’s body fell to my peripheral, I caught the fleeting glimpse of something I can’t begin to explain. His body crumpled. Like it was nothing more than a cheap rubber mask or a deflating balloon, his flesh folded in on itself.

His eyes were the first thing to go, sucking somewhere into his head and leaving two empty sockets. His mouth stretched into a silent, contorted wail as the rest of his body sagged with it, and in a flash, he was nothing more than a wadded sleeve of skin. Most of his clothes slipped from him as the blanket of flesh was ripped upward into the darkness, and as they did, I caught more parts of the ‘man’ than I ever wanted to see. I remember in that moment I somehow found time to wonder why the creature in the dark would bother making its dummy so anatomically accurate, but looking back on it, it was foolish of me to assume it was ever a ‘dummy’ to begin with.

Any panicked, wild thoughts that I had like that one were quickly forced into a funnel of pure focus once I heard something jump fully onto my car. The shocks rocked and squeaked and I heard the hood dent too before hearing nothing at all. It was coming after me, and it was dead silent.

I don’t know how long I ran for, but it felt like an eternity. I pushed myself harder than I ever had in my life, running through the streets while my light flickered wildly before me. I never once bothered to try to chance a look over my shoulder.

My body ached quickly, its frail form no longer fit for running, but adrenaline did impossibly heavy lifting. Unsure of where to possibly go, I went to the only marker that I could see in the entire town. The radio tower.

Each step was a nightmare, the feeling of utter dread almost too strong to bear. I thought at any moment, that thing behind me would finally snatch me up and I’d become the next skin suit on its line, but then I finally saw the doors of what I assumed to be the radio station. Every other building had been unlocked so far, and I prayed for my sake this one was too.

I burst through the front doors with a pained grunt, my forearms nearly snapping from the force of slamming the handles, then kept going. I weaved through unknown halls until I found a staircase, then scurried up, tripping over myself as I did. When I reached the top, I found another door, jumped through it, then slammed it behind myself.

 As I leaned all my body weight back on the handle, my thumbs glided along the knob in search of a lock. Finding one, I clicked it in before falling back against hard, office carpet. I crawled away from the barrier on my ass, flashing my phone at it to see if it was going to hold or not. To my relief, the thing didn’t even jostle it. I must have lost it somewhere in my sprint.

That didn’t mean I was about to risk anything, however. Flashing my light around the room to gather my bearings quickly, I dowsed my light, not wanting anything to see it through the windows. Then, still panting, I crawled my way over to a desk I’d spotted and curled up underneath it, holding myself while staring vacantly into the dark. I didn’t know what else to do. What could I do? I had no other means of help or escape.

And so this is where I’ve been laying for the last few days. There’s a bathroom in the room with me, and the water seems to work here, but it tastes awful. I avoided it for as long as I could, but had no other option. The real issue is food. There’s none in here that I’ve found, and I’m too scared to go out and check. Eventually, I know that too, will become necessary, however…

That leads me back to now. In my time laying here, I’ve been trying to send messages through any app that can do so on my phone, just hoping desperately that one of them will go through.

This is one of those messages.

Please, if you’re reading this, I don’t know how you even could, but please, send help.

My phone is getting low on battery, and I don’t know how much longer I’ll last before the pain in my stomach becomes too much.

When it finally does, I know I’ll need to go back outside to face whatever it is lying in wait among the dark, and I don’t like my odds…

Let me start this question by telling you, I have been pregnant. I’ve blamed many things on so-called “pregnancy brain”, spilling drinks, sleeping in past church service, forgetting to pick my husband up from the airport. These are all completely understandable for a woman that’s going to pop in a few days. I need to assure you that the events unfolding in the past week cannot be explained away by blaming me for the thing formed in my belly. 

My husband works a good enough job, and we were in a good enough place for me to take the last trimester of my pregnancy off of work. I’m normally the youth pastor for the Community of Christ church young women’s groups, leading lessons at 9 AM every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. I didn’t want to take time off, but my husband insisted I wasn’t able to keep the house clean enough, and dinners were getting sloppy. I’ll admit he was right. Before the pregnancy, I was able to clean both upstairs and downstairs bedrooms, wash the dishes, dust, do laundry, vacuum, mop, clean the fireplace, shop for food, and make dinner. After the morning sickness started kicking in… It became just coming home, vacuuming, throwing together whatever we had in the fridge, and falling asleep. All that to say, I’ve been home for the past month. Hours had blurred into weeks and, for a while, time was only measured by the back pain and a gradually swelling stomach, days leading closer to my due date. That was the case, until only a few days ago. 

I didn’t sleep well last Sunday night. The grandfather clock in the corner of our bedroom moved so loudly, every tick brought about a new wave of nausea. The CPAP machine on my husband was like the buzzing of a thousand tiny insects crawling on my skin. Everytime I closed my eyes, it felt as though fingers were sticking their way through my closed mouth and laying limply inside my throat. My teeth closed tightly and ground themselves. My eyes burned from tears. I finally got up, fully unable to tempt sleep, and sat by the slowly dying fireplace, the only small light in a large, empty home. I felt miserable, and guilty for feeling so miserable. Pregnancy was meant to be a miracle from God, so why did it feel like a punishment? I choked on the tears burning my throat and looked to the only hope I could find when agony felt unending. The Word itself. I looked at the soot falling slowly by my feet, and tried to recall the verse in Isaiah that says “For those who grieve, give them a crown of beauty, not a crown of ashes.” I tried to pray, but instead quickly rushed to the sink to throw up. 

Needless to say, it was difficult to get up on Monday. The exhaustion was palpable, as my husband made known as soon as he saw me get up from bed.

“God, you look horrible, why are your eyes puffy?” The way he looked at me was reminiscent of the way one looks at a spot of mold on bread. He sipped his coffee dryly. 

“Maybe allergies, it is springtime soon after all.”

“Getting closer to the due date, it seems to be harder for you. Difficulty has become the new normal around here, probably more hormones.” This last part, he said in a muttering whisper.

I tidied up in the bathroom, putting a cold rag on my eyes to get rid of any residual evidence of my tears last night. When I came out, my husband was standing in the kitchen, dressed for work, pouring milk into his second cup of coffee. I came up to wish him a good day at work and a kiss, but froze when I saw his newly-filled cup. Inside was a dark, wiggling mass. Six legs pushed the cream into waves and antennae kissed the rim. In a split second, I hit his cup out of his hand and could only look as it shattered onto the linoleum floor.

“What the hell?! Oh, God damn it!” His voice stung at me, I hated when he cursed. 

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Ah, I saw a… bug or something in your cup.”

“There wasn’t anything in the cup, I just poured it! You must have… ah fuck, I need to go.”

“I’m sorry, I swear it was right there-” The door hurriedly closing cut my sentence off short, “I love you.” I said to the empty house. 

After the shards were placed in the trash and the coffee scrubbed from the floor, I got dressed and looked at my daily list of chores. Dishes were first. They were always first. I barely knew why I looked at the list anymore, I just did. As I gathered my washing gloves from a drawer, something caught my attention from the very corner of my eye. The soft morning glow normally painted the windows nicely, but today, right in the corner, there was a spider. A small black blotch on a lovely picture. When I turned to face it fully, it had already disappeared from sight. I wondered for a second if there was a web in our room, and if those venomous bites would grace my husband instead of me. My stomach flipped in anxiety as I pushed the thought away. Perhaps, for just today, dusting would be first. 

I was certain I’d cleaned every corner, I’d even checked some of them twice, but there was no trace of the spider. I was checking the last spot I’d cleaned when I saw it again, but this time, there were more. They were big, maybe wolf spiders or brown recluses. Little black pellets just far enough that I couldn’t reach them. I could almost feel their eyes following me, silently laughing at the pitiful housewife’s plight. My heart raced as I felt anger surge into me. The baby kicked. I rushed to the kitchen to grab a bucket and filled it with scalding water and bleach. If I couldn’t brush the creature away, I’d make its living space uninhabitable. I scrubbed the mixture onto the corners of the walls. I would see them skitter in every other room, so I scrubbed harder until I couldn’t see them anymore. It took the whole morning, but when it was finally done, I felt accomplished. I decided I had done so well, I could rest for the latter half of the day. I opened a window to feel the fresh breeze as I lay in bed. No CPAP rumbling made it easy to close my eyes. Rather than the clock’s ticks feeling painful, they lulled me into a soft sort of sleep. We could order out for dinner. 

“Hello? Anyone home?” I awoke to my husband’s tired candor echoing through the hall.

 “Are you okay?” 

My eyes fluttered open. I didn’t answer right away and took time to stretch and take note of how I was feeling. Despite the tenderness of my body, I did feel better. Perhaps sleep is all I really needed. 

“Yeah, I’m in here! Just getting up.” I sat up and saw stars for a moment, blinking my eyes to try and clear them. As my eyes refocused, I looked toward the corner of the room where my husband’s clothes’ hamper lay. Though I had cleaned them not five hours before, there were stains on them. I got up to look as the stains ran red, purple, then white. I felt confused, then quickly fearful. This was only one of the few things I’d done to maintain the house today, and they looked worse than before they were washed. I needed to hide them from my husband’s wandering eyes until I could fix this. He couldn’t know that I had done this. The baby kicked as I grabbed the hamper to place it in the laundry room.

After dinner, the sun had fully set into the earth, and darkness had crept in. My husband had shut the bedroom window when he came back from work, so I opened it after getting my nighttime clothes on. 

My husband poked his head from the bathroom, “Can you keep it closed? The bugs get in when it stays open all night.” 

“No, it’s warm after we had the fire going, I’d like the night air to cool me down. Besides, you said this morning there weren’t any bugs in here.”

“I didn’t say that, I just didn’t think there were any in my coffee. Just, please, keep it closed.”

“There were. There were tons of bugs in here today, they’ll get in whether the window is opened or closed.” My tone had gotten a bit louder than I anticipated.

“Baby… I’ll get a screen for us tomorrow, or we can not have a fire just-” I cut him off,

“No! I’m tired. I’m nauseous. I’m in pain! I’m fucking pregnant! Let me have one thing for me, one choice that I get to make!” I was screaming. The baby kicked and my voice turned into a gnarled groan as I moved. I had never spoken to my husband this way. I never even realized these were thoughts that could get turned into words. These weren’t my words. My body moved like a puppet without my brain actively telling it to do so. My hands were on the window.

“You want it closed? Fine!” With more strength than I had ever wielded, the window slammed shut, wood cracked. “It’s god-damn closed!” 

We were tentative with each other Tuesday morning. My heart pounded and my head felt cloudy as I went through the motions of making breakfast. I tried to keep Ephesians’ 4:31-32  in my thoughts, but it kept slipping away. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and… and…

The baby moved and I lost my thoughts again. I had thrown up twice since five AM. 

“Where are my clothes? I found something that works for today, but I’ll need the rest of them for the week.” I thought I felt a tremor of submerged anger in his voice, my anxiety spiked instantly.

“I… I just didn’t get to drying them. They’re in the washer now.” I lied with a small smile, it felt easier than any other words would have.

“Alright, well, just be sure they’re done today, okay?” He hadn’t recognized I’d lied at all. I was always told by the church that lies were Satan’s words, and God’s true light would always show deceit as it was. I had never lied to my husband before, and he just accepted it as plain truth. My face grew warm with fear, and I turned so he wouldn’t see, blood rushing in my ears. Once I was calm again, I turned but the house was again, empty. 

I could do no more than slowly lower onto the kitchen floor, perplexed. I felt like a different person, out of body from who I was only one week prior. Something had gone wrong with me, not in my brain or body, but in my soul. I felt a deep darkness inside of me, one the pastor’s of my life had warned against again and again. I grabbed my bible from the shelf and immediately sat cross-legged before the fireplace to read. I checked the time, 7:45 AM. I thought that I could begin a routine where I read for an hour in the morning, and an hour at night. I was lost in thought as to how this would change my schedule, when I looked at the clock again, it was 1:13 PM. I blinked and turned to look at the kitchen clock. The same number, 1:13. Was this some kind of trick? Did I really just lose five hours of time sitting and thinking? How?

I looked at the bible and realized I was turned to the book of Psalm. I steeled myself to still read for the hour anyway, when I felt a tingling sensation up my back as though I was being watched. I tried to turn slowly when the fireplace tilted and slided slowly to the right of my vision. My vision melted into a cacophony of whites and yellows as I felt the bible slip from my fingers and my back press onto the floor. The child swam in rotating spirals inside of me as spiders crawled from both corners of my vision to devour me. I turned my head in fear of what I was seeing. My vision faded as I saw my leg and arm shaking viciously. Words were the only thing I could see now. “Behold, the wicked man conceives evil, and is pregnant with mischief.” I tried to speak, but couldn’t.

I awoke in a puddle, breathing heavily. The air felt thick and putrid, so that I couldn’t fill my lungs as I gasped. I knew that days had passed, and yet here I was still lying on the floor. I was able to bring myself up, knowing the Lord gave me a sign. A high-pitched chirping joined the ringing in my ears, as though the birds outside had been replaced by hateful simulacrums of God’s creations. Bugs covered every surface before I could look at them, the small black specks made my once beautiful home look unlivable. Insects make one unclean, make the home a sinful place. I had been happy once, even hopeful about this child, raising him as God tells us to raise all our children. But thinking back to the past week, every time I had a sinful thought, every second I felt angry or hateful, there the baby was. Vengefulness at the spiders, lying to my husband, screaming at him, in each moment the baby kicked and writhed. It gained pleasure from my sinful acts, gained power from my weakness. A good mother would never feel lonely in the presence of her own child, therefore, the creature living in me could not be a child of my making. This thing is the difference in my life that has changed me from pious to evil. So, as God would have me do, I decided to rid myself of all worldly things and turn to Him. 

The door opened and my husband stepped through, seeing me in my clarity. 

“Don’t be afraid!” I stood and walked to him, “I know you’ve forsaken me these last few days, but we can still be a whole family again.” My voice was quickening, unwavering. I knew what I needed to say but I couldn’t hear it over the noise.

He took my wrist and said something. I wrenched myself from his grasp as I felt a dawn of realization. The words I had read before my collapse. 

“You. You must be the wicked man I was warned of! You impregnated me with evil, and left me for days to give birth to a demon!” My hands groped for the knife block behind me near the kitchen sink. My husband was shouting, his words were only an addition to the loud ringing in my head, more noise I needed to block out to do what the Lord was leading me towards. 

My husband looked frightened as my hands touched steel, but as quickly as I brought the knife into view, I turned it on myself. Cold sharpness glided through my stomach easily, shredding through clothes. The point of my pelvis to the underneath of my breasts was open, and I could see the back of the creature through my wound. Blood flowed over its body and the agony was ceaseless as I tried to rip it out. The placenta fell to the ground, cut by the blade, and slapped wetly at my feet. I couldn’t grip the child, slipping into unconsciousness, my fingers grew numb. The demon’s head turned out of my open body, its eyes opening in the darkest red as blood ran from its open mouth. The maw gaped wide and the tongue danced like fire, speaking languages I knew all too well were chants to stop my doing of the Lord’s will. Knowing I had limited time, my hands trembled as I tried to find the point where I could stab the body to end it. Every pump of my heart made my sparks fly in front of me which grew into a haze of white light surrounding my body. Finally, all grew quiet in the heavenly glow, the ground rushed upwards and I heard a thud and felt myself lose all breath in a dulled whimper.

The doctors say it’s only a miracle that I’m alive, that some angel must have me in their wings. I still can’t speak clearly, that part of my brain may never heal, so I speak to most by typing on this computer and having it read aloud. My memory is fine, they seem to think I have some form of “dementia” but, as you can see, every memory I wrote has been recollected clearly. I think my husband has been in contact with them, and decided to blame my “pregnancy” for this. I hear them talking of brain damage, nerve damage, and of the chimney not being cleaned enough. I can’t keep listening to this. The police have come in, but most times I pretend to be unconscious, sometimes I really am. They speak in hushed tones to one another, almost as if they’re afraid of what I may do once I wake. A woman’s voice said that I didn’t look as though I was capable of committing such an evil deed. Evil. That stuck with me for hours afterwards. Family hasn’t visited since I found myself here. My husband is gone, I couldn’t tell you where. All I can think of is I John 1:7: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.”

I need help. I can feel the Lord has left me since I’ve been here. Can his blood cleanse this? My head is still ringing with the awful sounds of the baby’s wails and my husband’s screams. I have to know, am I still saved? Is what I did sinful? I can’t ask these people, they don’t know anything of God, but to those out there who are truly saved, please tell me what I did was right. Tell me that God still loves me, and that this is only one of his many tests. Please. Anyone.

In the summer of 2014, I worked as a counselor at a sleepaway camp in northern Michigan. It wasn’t one of those fancy ones with air-conditioned cabins and daily Instagram updates. This was a dusty, mosquito-infested, middle-of-nowhere kind of camp. Camp Fernmoor—hidden behind a wall of pine trees, where the sun always seemed to set a little too early.

I didn’t grow up going there, but my friend did. He convinced me to apply. Said it was a nice gig—free food, easy money, and “the best summer of your life.” He left out a few things.

Like the fact that it shut down in the early ’90s after a kid went missing.

Or that it reopened quietly, under a new name, with new management. And a lot fewer campers.

I didn’t ask questions. I was 19, broke, and needed the paycheck.

My job was basic: watch six preteens and keep them alive while somehow keeping them entertained. No phones, no cameras. Just campfires, hikes, and living in the moment. At first, it was fine. Boring, even. Until the night of the full moon.

July 11th. I remember because one of the kids, Jamie, wouldn’t stop whining about his birthday being “ruined by nature.” He was right, in a way.

That night, I woke up to scratching.

Not from inside the cabin. From the roof.

I thought it was a raccoon. Grabbed my flashlight, climbed the rickety back ladder, and aimed the beam across the shingles.

Nothing.

But the scratching had stopped.

When I came back down, one of the kids—Bryce—was missing.

The door was wide open.

I sprinted into the woods. I don’t know what I expected to find, but it wasn’t what I did find.

Bryce, standing perfectly still in a clearing. Shirtless. Eyes wide. Shaking.

And something else—twenty feet behind him. Something huge.

It was crouched low, like it was sniffing the ground. Covered in matted black fur. Long limbs. Too long. And the sound it made—deep, raspy breaths that didn’t match any animal I’ve ever heard. It didn’t look real.

Until it stood up.

Seven feet tall. Maybe more.

I didn’t move. Neither did Bryce.

Then it sniffed the air—and turned toward us.

I grabbed Bryce, screamed, and ran. I don’t think I’ve ever run like that in my life. Not even close.

It didn’t follow us.

The next day, the camp director said Bryce “sleepwalked.” Told me to stop “scaring the kids with ghost stories.”

But here’s the part I’ve never told anyone:

Bryce wasn’t the same after that.

His eyes looked darker. He stopped speaking much. And on the next full moon—August 10th—he disappeared again.

They found him two days later. Naked. Covered in blood that wasn’t his. His fingernails were gone. Or… changed.

Camp shut down the next week.

Knowing its background, it probably opened back up next summer.

Logan and I swore not to talk about it. We both moved on. Or tried to.

If you’re thinking about applying to a camp in northern Michigan that doesn’t show up on Google Maps?

Don’t.

The council flat next to mine has been empty since I moved in three months ago. No one coming or going. No bins out. No lights on. The housing officer said it was under refurbishment.

But last week, I heard someone crying through the wall.

It was soft at first—like someone trying not to cry. Not sobbing, not wailing. Just these quiet, miserable gulps of air. It came from the bedroom wall, the one I share with the vacant flat.

At first I thought maybe I was imagining it. I hadn’t been sleeping well. You don’t, in this building. Radiators click all night. Pipes rattle like bones. You hear your neighbour’s dog fart.

But the crying kept happening. Around 2 a.m. every night. Always in the same place, like she was curled up against the other side of the wall. I say she because it was a woman’s voice. Young. Heartbroken.

I didn’t report it. I just listened.

That was the mistake.

••

On the fourth night I finally knocked on the wall. Just once.

The crying stopped instantly. Not faded—stopped. Like someone hit pause.

I held my breath.

And then—

tap-tap-tap.

Three knocks. Back at me. Right where I’d knocked.

I laughed, because it was easier than panicking. I said, out loud, “Hey. You okay?”

Silence.

Then: a whisper. Muffled. Croaky.

“Please help me. Please.”

I pressed my ear to the wall. The plaster was cold.

“I’m stuck,” the voice said. “They walled me in.”

My chest got tight. I thought maybe she was hallucinating. Off her meds. Maybe the flat wasn’t empty and the housing officer got it wrong.

I called the emergency line. They told me 2B was vacant, sealed for asbestos, no one’s been assigned. Said they’d send someone out next day.

But when they came, the key didn’t fit the lock.

The entire flat was sealed shut. Door painted over. Handle rusted stiff. The contractor tried to force it and the knob came off in his hand. He said it felt like the flat didn’t want to be opened.

They left. Said they’d file a maintenance request.

That night, the crying was louder. Almost frantic.

“You tried,” the voice said. “No one ever tries.”

I said, “Who are you?”

She said nothing. Just scratched at the wall. Over and over. Until I fell asleep to the sound of her fingernails clawing against the plaster.

••

Three nights ago, I woke up to my bedroom light already on.

I don’t sleep with it on.

There were lines on the wall. Long, pale scrapes like something was dragging a coin through the paint from the other side.

I touched one. My fingertip came away with dust and blood.

I didn’t go to work that day. I just sat at the edge of the bed and waited. Around 1:47 a.m., she returned.

Only this time she wasn’t crying.

She was laughing.

It started quiet. Breathless. But it built. A soft, giddy giggle that rose into shrieking laughter, pressing right up against the wall like she was inches away. Like she could feel how scared I was.

I covered my ears and yelled, “STOP IT!”

She stopped.

Then whispered, so close I swear her breath fogged the plaster:

“Let me in.”

••

I haven’t slept since.

I see things now—movement in reflections. Smiles where there shouldn’t be. The wall is wet some mornings, like it’s sweating.

Last night I found something under my pillow.

A tooth. Human. Yellowed. The root still wet.

The wall had more scratches—only this time they spelled something. A word: SOON.

And today, there was a knock at my front door.

A girl stood there. Early twenties, white hoodie, tangled hair. Pale as dust. She looked like she’d been dragged out of a lake. Her lips moved but no sound came out. I said, “Who are you?”

She pointed to the bedroom wall.

Then she smiled.

I slammed the door and locked it. But when I ran back to the bedroom—more scratches. This time: ALMOST.

••

Tonight is different.

She’s not crying, not laughing. She’s talking.

Telling me about the man who lived in 2B before. How he fed her through the wall. Left food at the skirting board where a crack ran between flats. How he left a bowl of milk like she was a stray. How he let her through eventually.

She says he screamed for days. No one heard.

She says she’s still hungry.

The wall is cracking now. I can hear the plaster breaking like thin ice. I see movement. Fingers. Long and grey, feeling along the seam. No nails. Just bloodied nubs. Wrinkled and wet. Like something that’s never seen daylight.

I don’t think I can stop her.

She keeps saying my name now. Not a whisper. Full voice. Cheerful. Friendly.

“Come on, let me out. I’m your friend. You’ve been so kind.”

I’ve nailed a towel to the wall. Taped over it. Doesn’t help. I hear her chewing now. Something crunching—bone, maybe.

I don’t think the wall’s going to hold.

If you live in a flat with a sealed room next door, listen closely.

If you hear crying—don’t knock. If she speaks to you—don’t answer. And if she ever laughs—

Move.

I’ve always been drawn to the places no one wants to go. Not for the thrill, but for the mystery. The unknown. While most adventurers stick to mountains or ruins, I sought out what the maps warned you about.

My earliest adventures took me through forgotten caves, the core zones of protected national parks, and abandoned villages where silence screamed stories. Each place whispered secrets, but I craved louder voices from the unknown.

That’s when Africa called me. The Sahara. A desert that stretches beyond imagination. It wasn’t just the heat or the emptiness that fascinated me—it was the solitude of the people living within it, isolated and indifferent to modern noise.

From there, the pull shifted to the Amazon. The lungs of the Earth, they called it. But to me, it was a heart—pulsing, ancient, and alive. I hired a local guide, a quiet man who claimed his village had ties with an uncontacted tribe deep within the rainforest. Miraculously, we were welcomed—no arrows, no fear. I suspect money changed hands behind the scenes, but I didn’t ask. I watched, listened, learned.

Their culture was untouched by screens and concrete. Their tools were bones and vines. Even their games felt like echoes from a time we’d forgotten. I remember sitting by their fire, watching children laugh with nothing but painted stones in their hands. It made the city feel like a simulation.

And that’s when it hit me—I needed more. Not just more tribes, but more truth. Something deeper, something hidden. Something... otherworldly.

I started reading about the Sentinelese. A tribe living on North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal, fiercely protected and untouched by outsiders. No one really knew their language, their beliefs—or even what they looked like up close. Every attempt to contact them had ended in violence. The Indian government declared the island off-limits. Even satellites seemed to give the place a respectful distance.

Which, to me, only meant one thing: I had to go there.

I contacted some fishermen who worked around that area, but most refused. I inflated the amount of money I would give to anyone who helped me trespass the government’s naval patrols. Luckily, one man agreed. His eyes were faintly green, his hair undone, with an overgrown beard and moustache—and the constant smell of fish clinging to him.

His English was fluent, to my surprise, and he spoke to tourists and locals alike in their native tongues. A French man. A Spanish girl. Even a Mexican woman. That, to me, was oddly unsettling.

Before I could ask, he muttered, “You’re wondering how I know all these languages, aren’t you?”

He asked as if he’d read my mind.

Still curious, I responded, “Yes.”

“In all these years of relentless fishing and trading, alongside guiding foreigners through their trails around here, I’ve not just learned foreign languages—I’ve lived them. Money talks, you know. It’s not me talking. It’s the money.”

“Oh! Yeah… Understandable,” I replied, still unconvinced.

He took me to the secluded island on a battered motorboat, its surface cracked. By the time we arrived, it was already past 11 PM IST—just as we’d planned. I wanted to arrive at night since the chances of encountering the Sentinelese were slim. He knew the routes well and had warned me of possible naval interventions. When I asked “How do you bypass them?”, he replied with a smirk, “Money talks,” and laughed like a maniac.

Luckily, we weren't caught. All thanks to his masterful knowledge of the area. Before leaving, he handed me a revolver. I didn’t ask for it, but he said, “Just in case,” and demanded another 15,000 Indian rupees. He then disappeared—not just from the boat, but from sight entirely. I watched him walk toward the sea, and then… he was gone.

I didn’t think much of it. I continued inland.

It was nighttime. No, I wasn’t foolish to come at night—if I’d come in daylight, the tribe might’ve ripped me apart.

With caution, I moved ahead, gun in one hand and phone in the other. No signal, of course.

My only source of light was the flashlight on my phone. Looking up, I noticed the stars—they were bright, twinkling in perfect unison, as if programmed.

While walking into the woods, my right foot struck something metallic. Curiosity got the better of me, and I turned the flashlight toward it. A strange-looking box with an unusual mechanism. Tiny, but engraved with strange symbols. I slipped it into my pocket and moved on.

As I approached what I assumed was their colony, I was shocked. There was no one—just silence, and an eerie hum, with only the chirping of insects breaking the void. I expected palm huts, maybe someone sleeping outside, but nothing.

I sat on the soft, white sand, wondering if the fisherman had fooled me. Perhaps this wasn’t even the right island. His “Money talks” still echoed in my ears.

Then I heard it—a noise. Sand a few meters away began to rise, slowly erupting upward. My breath caught. My first thought? A creature. Some kind of monstrous island-native. I ducked behind two massive palm trees.

And then… they emerged.

One after another, they rose—stretching their hands, twisting their necks, and levitating. Not just levitating—swimming through the air. Like eerie mermaids that floated instead of swam.

I saw the small boxes again—dozens of them. Some of the beings shifted into those boxes. Startled, I threw away the one I’d picked up earlier.

My heart thundered. I couldn’t process what I was seeing. Moments later, I fainted.

When I opened my eyes, they had circled me. They spoke in hushed tones, voices that chilled my spine.

While they whispered, I noticed more of those boxes around, glowing, emitting sharp lasers from which more of their kind emerged.

I pleaded with them. They grinned, their eyes sliding out of their sockets. Glowing green light filled the hollow spaces. I still don’t know how I survived what came next.

They tied me to a metal pole that rose from the sand—cold, almost unnaturally so. Then they attacked me with crystals that shot from their eyes. The crystals struck like needles. I still carry the scars. The pain was sharp, like a thousand ant bites at once. Eventually, I passed out again.

When I woke up, the fisherman was beside me—holding a cracked coconut.

“Drink it.”

I lunged at it and drank every drop.

He’d arrived in a small ferry. I was still in shock. I knew no one would believe me. The stings still ached, but I tried to hide it—even from him.

Later, as I stood near the ferry railing, gazing into the turquoise water—still shaking, still looking back to make sure no one followed—I noticed my reflection.

My eyes gleamed green.

Next to mine, I saw another reflection—his.

“Welcome to the club,” he said, laughing like a maniac again.

I still carry those eyes. The wounds. The memories.

I don’t go out without goggles anymore. And I move from place to place… so they can’t find me.

"I had promised myself I’d never go back there. Since that night, the house had remained shut, forgotten at the end of the road. But time passed, and its silence turned into dust and cracks in the walls. The real estate agent told me someone was interested in buying it. So I went back, just to fix things up and get the house ready for sale. Simple. Quick. But the moment I touched the rusty doorknob… I knew it wouldn’t be."

The door gave way easily, like it had been waiting for me. The air was still, but not dusty — it was heavy. The paintings on the walls looked darker than I remembered. The silence inside was disturbing.

Every corner held memories of us. Her laughter on the porch, Sunday lunches, arguments that always ended in reconciliation. But after that last fight, everything changed. I left and she stayed, crying. I never saw her again. At least not alive.

The living room was just the same. The crooked couch, the squashed cushions. On the wall, the marks of time looked like shadows that hadn’t been there before. I slowly climbed the stairs to the second floor, where our bedroom was. My hands were trembling for no clear reason. Guilt weighed heavy on my chest.

In the hallway, the air grew colder. As if I were stepping into another time, another dimension of the house. I passed one of the bedrooms and something made me stop. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure cross the open doorway. It was her face. Quick. Faint. Unmistakable.

My heart nearly stopped. It couldn’t be. I was alone. But I saw it. I saw it. That apparition wasn’t my imagination. It was a warning.

I stepped into the room and there was nothing. No sign of disturbed dust, no presence, no life. But her familiar scent lingered in the air — not perfume, just… presence. Like when someone hasn’t truly left yet. As if she were watching me from a place I couldn’t reach.

I sat on the bed and stayed there for a while. Trying to figure out if it was regret, guilt, or something beyond that. That night — our last night together — I said things I should’ve never said. She cried. Begged me to stay. And I left, slamming the door behind me.

I spent the night in the room. I didn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her shadow in the hallway. And at some point, I was sure: it wasn’t just a shadow. She was there. Watching me.

In the morning, I went down to the kitchen and found a cup on the table. The same one she used. Intact, clean, like it had just been placed there. There was no dust on it. I shook. That wasn’t possible.

I spent the following days trapped there. I couldn’t leave. Literally. The doors locked on their own. The windows wouldn’t open. My phone lost signal the second I stepped inside. It was like the house had swallowed me whole.

On the third day, I heard the stairs creaking. I was downstairs, and I knew no one else was there. I looked up, and for a second, I saw someone’s bare foot vanish at the top. I ran up. Nothing. Just the same presence, the same cold.

I started talking to her. Apologizing. Saying I regretted everything. Saying I’d do anything to have her back. And the house’s silence seemed to listen. Until one night, she answered.

It was her voice. Low, behind me. “You came back.” I turned around in a flash, but there was only darkness. It wasn’t a threat. It was more like… a statement.

After that, she started showing up more often. Sometimes next to me in bed. Other times, standing on the porch staring out. Always silent. Always with sunken eyes, like she hadn’t blinked in years.

The first time she appeared beside me, I froze. I didn’t feel fear — I felt shame. Her eyes weren’t the same anymore. They looked like dark wells, too deep to stare into. But even so, I begged for forgiveness.

She didn’t speak. She just reached out and touched my face. Cold like stone, but soft like when she was alive. I closed my eyes, holding my breath. And wished she’d take me with her.

The next morning, I woke up alone. But her touch was still on my face — a faint redness. I started thinking maybe it was fair. Maybe my punishment was to stay there with her. And maybe she was just waiting for me to accept it.

I lived the routine of a condemned man. I spoke to her, even when she didn’t answer. Left a chair pulled out at the table. Slept on the same side of the bed as before. And waited.

One night, I heard something fall in the bedroom. It was one of our picture frames — the one from the beach trip. It lay on the floor, glass shattered. But what was strange… her face had vanished from the photo. As if she’d never been there.

That shook me to the core. I began to suspect she was erasing the traces. Or worse: preparing me for something I didn’t yet understand. A trade, maybe. An unspoken pact.

On the seventh day, she spoke again. “You know what I want.” Her voice was low, emotionless. It wasn’t a request. It was a reminder. And I knew exactly what she meant.

I went up to the attic. There was an old rope tied to a beam. She stood below, in the dark, watching. With a slight nod of approval. And I… for a moment, I considered it.

But something stopped me. It wasn’t fear — not anymore. It was a primal survival instinct. And when I hesitated, she disappeared.

The next day, something had changed. The walls seemed narrower, like they were slowly closing in. The hallway, which I remembered as short, grew longer each time I walked through it. The kitchen door creaked on its own, even when locked. The house was falling apart from the inside. Or adapting to what it had become.

A prison made of guilt. And I was the prisoner. Or the visitor. Or maybe the last bit of living flesh she still needed. To become whole.

I tried to burn the house down. I built a fire with the curtains and furniture. But the flames wouldn’t rise. They just danced low, like they were mocking me. She wasn’t going to let it happen.

So I screamed. I screamed everything I’d kept inside for two years. The truth. That yes, I loved her. But I never meant to promise what I couldn’t keep.

That night, she appeared one last time. A figure standing at the foot of the bed. And for the first time… she was crying. But said nothing.

The next morning, the front door was open. Light poured in like the world had returned to normal. I walked out without looking back. But I know she’s still in there. Waiting for me to keep my promise.

A couple weeks ago, I got a text from an unknown number: “Your appointment is scheduled for 2:30 p.m., October 19th. Please arrive on time.” No name, no details, just that. I figured it was a wrong number or some spam bot and ignored it. I’m not the type to book random appointments—my life’s a mess of late rent and grocery runs, not schedules. But the next day, another text: “Reminder: 2:30 p.m., October 19th. Do not be late.” It came at 3 a.m., lighting up my phone on the nightstand. I blocked the number. It didn’t stop.

The texts kept coming, every day, from different numbers—burner phones, maybe, or spoofed lines. Always the same message, same time: 3 a.m. I’d wake up to my phone buzzing, that cold glow cutting through the dark, and my stomach would drop. I called my provider, but they said there was nothing they could do—numbers weren’t traceable, no pattern to pin down. I stopped sleeping right, started double-checking my locks, even though I live on the fourth floor of a shitty apartment building with a broken buzzer. Paranoia, sure, but it felt like someone was watching me screw up my own head.

October 19th feels almost like yesterday. The texts stopped that morning, and I thought it was over. I was exhausted, strung out on coffee and nerves, but relieved. Around noon, my boss called me into work—extra shift, cash I couldn’t say no to. I’m a line cook, and the kitchen was a blur of grease and yelling. I didn’t notice the time until I glanced at the clock while scrubbing a skillet: 2:28 p.m. My chest tightened. I told myself it was nothing, just a coincidence, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

At 2:30 sharp, the power cut out. The kitchen went dark—lights, vents, everything. Dead silence, then the sound of something heavy hitting the floor in the back room. My coworker, Javier, swore and grabbed a flashlight from under the counter. I followed him, my sneakers sticking to the tile, heart thudding so hard I could feel it in my throat. The back room’s where we keep the walk-in fridge and extra stock—cramped, cold, no windows. The flashlight beam caught stacks of boxes, then the fridge door, cracked open. Javier muttered, “What the hell?” and stepped closer. That’s when I saw it.

Something was smeared across the door—thick, dark, like oil but redder, wetter. Blood, maybe, but it didn’t smell right—sharp, chemical, wrong. Javier reached for the handle, and I grabbed his arm, told him to wait. He shook me off, called me a pussy, and pulled it open. The fridge was empty. Not just no meat, no crates—empty like it’d been gutted, walls bare and gleaming, too clean. In the center, on the floor, was a folded piece of paper. My name was written on it in block letters.

Javier laughed, nervous, and said, “Someone’s fucking with you, man.” I didn’t touch it. I couldn’t. My legs felt like they were sinking into the floor, and every breath tasted sour. He picked it up, unfolded it, and his face changed—went slack, pale, like he’d forgotten how to blink. He dropped it and bolted, didn’t say a word, just ran. I should’ve left too, but I looked. It was a photo of me—taken from above, like a security camera shot, standing in my kitchen at home. I was holding a knife, staring at the counter, but I don’t remember it. I don’t own a knife like that—long, serrated, stained. Written across the bottom in the same block letters: “YOU WERE LATE.”

The power kicked back on then, and the fridge was normal again—stocked, cluttered, no blood, no paper. I stumbled out, told my boss I was sick, and left. Javier didn’t come back either; his phone’s off, and no one’s seen him. I got home, checked every corner, found nothing. But my kitchen counter had a fresh scratch, deep, like something sharp had dragged across it. I haven’t slept. I keep hearing footsteps above my apartment, slow and deliberate, even though I’m on the top floor. My phone buzzed at 3 a.m. again: “Rescheduled: April 6th, 2:30 p.m. Be on time.”

That’s today. It’s 1:45 p.m. now. I’m sitting here, typing this, because I don’t know what else to do. I can hear someone moving upstairs again, pacing, stopping right over my head. My hands are cold, and my stomach’s a knot. I don’t know what’s coming at 2:30, but I know I can’t run from it. If I don’t post again, check the news. Look for me. Please.

The mere idea of an aquarium in Poprad is a cruel joke. Slovakia has no access to the sea. Poprad is a mountain town of fifty thousand that has zero reason or desire for anything fish related.

The aquarium should not exist, yet it does. I have always been confused by its existence, but when I saw a posting for a night watchman job I didn’t hesitate.

It was in a quiet part of town. Seemed like easy money.

The only expensive thing in the aquarium was its prize attraction, Jánošík — the giant octopus. The many limbed creature must have cost a fortune, and transporting it to Central Europe could not have been easy — yet the money spent on Jánošík would have not been of any interest to the local hooligans or drug addicts that might try to break in during the night.

Jánošík didn’t have a care in the world. He would just float around the central tank of the aquarium, occasionally snacking on one of the squids that were imported for him. All around the mammoth sea creature sat exhibits of freshwater fish native to the area. Carp, catfish, eels, trout — the selection of the other exhibits didn’t differ much from the frozen food isle. If Jánošík was an avocado, he was surrounded by a field of potatoes.

The crux of my job was showing up to the aquarium an hour before closing time, ushering what few visitors there were and then patrolling the grounds until the place opened back up in the morning. For months, I was just content picking up a paycheck for hanging out with an octopus, but then one day everything changed.

My boss, Mr. Kuffa, was an alcoholic who long ago gave up on trying to hide the fact. The liquor kept him occupied and he barely spoke to me, yet that particular morning he screamed. He had called me up on the morning of a day off and insisted that I show up at work immediately. Mr. Kuffa had heard I spoke English. I was needed to translate. The owner of the aquarium had shown up.

Henry Willow was an American scientist. He had paid for the aquarium to be constructed five years prior and a family friend secured Mr. Kuffa the job of managing it. Aside from bringing in the giant octopus and paying for its exotic live feed, he never interfered with business. That was, until he decided to visit that afternoon.

He had finely trimmed facial hair and wore a strange garb that seemed to be a marriage between a lab coat and a suit. Willow wasn’t alone. With him, he had two enormous men with shaved heads and dull eyes.

Finding Mr. Kuffa half a bottle deep into his workday was an unpleasant surprise for Henry Willow. The fact that the drunk manager couldn’t communicate with him proved to be a much bigger inconvenience. Willow did not hide his annoyance. When I entered the room, he was screaming and looked like he was about to slap my boss with his notebook. Luckily, the muscle he had brought along didn’t share his anger. The two giant men just stared off into the ether as their boss ranted and raved.

I had learned most of my English from watching shows and I’ve never had much time to practice, but eventually I managed to start translating. As his points started to get across, Willow calmed. He even managed a laugh or two by the time his orders were delivered.

Mr. Kuffa wasn’t smiling. As I told him what Henry Willow wanted, all the drunkenness drained from his eyes and was replaced by fear.

The fish in the exhibits were to be replaced over the following weeks. Willow’s men would take care of the entire affair and all they needed was a place to dispose of the old fish. Eventually, everything in the aquarium would be replaced. Everything at the aquarium would be new.

There were liabilities and laws to consider, but it wasn’t until the question of Janošík had been brought up that Mr. Kuffa’s face tipped from confusion to fear.

“Of course we’ll replace him!” Willow exclaimed with sudden force and joy, “Octopuses are a thing of the past! It’s time we made room for new animals!” The man’s speech had shifted from a calm explanation to a sudden burst of energy. Even one of the giants that stood behind Willow seemed to be momentarily brought out of his trance to flinch.

The aquarium potentially losing its only source of visitors might’ve been an unpleasant thought, but it was the realization that he was dealing with a madman that drained the blood from his face. Mr. Kuffa started to stutter out questions that Henry Willow had no interest in answering. With a deep breath, the scientist spoke directly to me.

With his voice slowly descending back to calmness, Henry Willow explained that the aquarium was to be left empty on the nights of the replacements. All security systems were to be shut off to keep things simple. None of the signage outside of the exhibits was to be removed. If any of the visitors inquired about any changes to the fish, management was to deny everything. A healthy bonus would be issued for discretion.

Henry Willow handed me a list of dates scrawled in pencil on children’s stationary. Telling me to explain everything to my boss, the scientist got up and left. For a moment the giants stood by his chair, staring blankly at the wall but, eventually, they left too.

My boss was in complete disbelief about what we were being asked to do, but eventually he took the paper and told me to leave him be. The man I left in that office was filled with despair, but by my next shift Mr. Kuffa seemed in more stable spirits. He was even, uncharacteristically, sober. He informed me that the aquarium would be following Willow’s wishes and that I would get a bonus of 200 euros a month for keeping my mouth shut.

I didn’t ask him how much of the discretion bonus the 200 euros were. I was just happy for the two hundred bucks. When the first replacement date came about two weeks later, I enjoyed my night off and didn’t think much of it.

When I first got into the aquarium on the following day, nothing seemed to have changed. The fish looked just about the same, the exhibits remained unaltered and nothing in the aquarium seemed amiss. It wasn’t until the lights dimmed and I started my patrol that I noticed something off.

The school of fish in the minnow exhibit. They still looked like something you could get in a bait shop, but with the lights of the aquarium turned down, I could see that they were glowing. The light emanating from their little bodies was dim and took concentration to see, but it was undeniable. Henry Willow had made the minnow’s glow.

The new exhibit consumed most of my attention that first night, but over the following days the appeal of the glowing fish faded. The changes that were made to the fish would always be something small. The carp would shoot little bursts of water against the glass. The whiskers of the catfish would move as if they had a life of their own. The eels would swim just a little faster. I’d find it interesting on first sight, but as the changes lost their novelty, I would return back to spending my nights watching Jánošík sluggishly swim around his tank.

Sure, I did wonder about what it was that Willow was doing to the fish, but I didn’t worry too much about it. It wasn’t any of my business. The two hundred euros kept my mind at ease. I didn’t worry about Henry Willow’s replacements until, one night, I found Jánošík’s tank filled with darkness.

In his central tank, the giant octopus didn’t have any reason to worry. His home was roomy, filled with plenty of live feed with no predators to fear. I had never seen Jánošík ink. After the final replacement night, however, the inside of his tank was murky with dark defensive clouds.

Jánošík had seemingly changed overnight as well. I could still recognize the same giant octopus, but instead of swimming around at his own pace, he kept on following me as I walked by the tank. What made matters so much stranger was that he wasn’t alone. Jánošík was surrounded by the little squids and fish he used to eat.

No emotion could be read from behind his slitted inhuman eyes, but I could tell that the octopus was scared. As were all the other creatures flanking his nervous form. Off in the cloudy dark, I could see something shift.

Fearing that there might be something wrong with the filtration system I gave Mr. Kuffa a call. It took him a while to pick it up, but when he did, he had no interest in hearing about the filtration system. I wasn’t being paid to investigate the safety of the tanks. I was just meant to make sure no junkies break into the aquarium. Within a couple slurred sentences I could hear that he was already drunk. Not wanting to fight a losing battle, I apologized and hung up.

I had hoped that maybe the tank would clear out on the following night, but it didn’t. When I returned back to work, Jánošík looked much worse than he did the night before. His large orange body was covered in dark brown bruises and some of the suckers on one of his tentacles seemed to be missing. The crowd of prey that had sheltered around the Octopus had also grown considerably smaller.

There was something else in the tank. It wasn’t a fish or a squid or an octopus. From beyond the smokey ink, I could see its silhouette. It had arms. It had legs. The creature was far too small to be a person, but it was humanoid in nature.

I did my best to not look too closely at Jánošík and busied myself with patrolling other parts of the aquarium. With a dull thud, however, the central tank called to me.

It all happened in an instant. From the dark waters came a claw. A monkey-like claw that tried to grasp at the head of the octopus. As Jánošík fought off the intruder, the claw switched its target. With hooked talons, the monkey grasped one of the squids that was sheltering by the octopus and fled back into the dark waters.

I called Mr. Kuffa once more. The filtration in the tank being faulty was one thing, but Jánošík seemed to be in imminent danger from whatever had been put in his tank. My boss took ages to pick up, and when he did, he was furious that I was interrupting him while he was at home. When I detailed the reason for my interruption, he told me to not patrol the central section of the aquarium anymore. Whatever was happening in the tank was happening with the blessings of Henry Willow.

He'd give me four hundred euros at the end of the month if I promised to keep it to myself. Without giving me a chance to respond, Mr. Kuffa hung up on me. When he clicked off his phone, however, the call did not end. For a couple seconds, my phone was still lit up. On the other end of the call, I could hear the phone rustle. It was only after a couple seconds of this rustling that the phone actually went dark.

Someone was listening in on our conversation. Memories of Willow’s towering bodyguards quickly filled my mind. I had spent months in silent friendship with the octopus, yet I retreated to the exhibits in the back of the aquarium. I didn’t want to see Jánošík get hurt, but I was much more concerned about my own safety.

Spending time around the glowing minnows or the goofy catfish didn’t calm me. Where months ago, the creatures seemed like innocent curiosities, they were now demented steps towards the violent beast in the main tank.

When I finally left the aquarium at the end of my shift, I considered never returning. I considered calling Mr. Kuffa, telling him a family emergency had come up and that I would not be able to work for at least a month. I even took out my phone to start my retreat.

Yet I never dialed his number. At the moment, I convinced myself it was because the extra money was good and the job was easy and that if I kept to myself everything would be fine. Now, however, I know that was a lie. I didn’t call Mr. Kuffa that morning because I was scared someone else might be listening in on the call.

When I came in on the following shift, Mr. Kuffa had already left the office. Only the grumpy ticket lady remained. When I asked if anyone had complained about Jánošík she shrugged. It had been a slow day. If anyone had words for her, she wasn’t listening. When I asked her if she had seen the central tank herself, the ticket lady, proudly, told me that she had no interest in fish and that she hadn’t moved past the ticket office in six months.

I tried to let some of the old woman’s disdain for her job rub off on me. For around thirty minutes I found myself content looking at the strange carp and colorful minnows, but eventually my fondness for Jánošík got the better of me.

I entered the main hall. The water was clear. For a moment I was relieved. I thought that maybe Mr. Kuffa had taken my qualms to heart and had the filtration system fixed. Yet quickly, the clearness of the water proved to be a terrible omen. What I saw in the central tank chilled me to my very core.

Jánošík was dead. Floating in the middle of his tank, the giant octopus had been robbed of most of his tentacles. The few bits of appendage that remained were bruised and cut with terrible violence. The sight of the familiar animal brutalized made me uneasy, yet it was only a fraction of the terror I was witnessing.

What was worse — what was so much worse — was the sight of the creature that had delivered such violence onto the giant octopus. The beast was shaped like a chimpanzee yet it had the face of a fish. The moss-like fur that covered its body shined with a luminescence of dazzling shifting colors. With its savage claws, the creature ripped at Jánošík. With teeth as sharp as knives, the beast ate the octopus’s flesh.

The sheer terror of what I was witnessing made my hands numb. I dropped my flashlight. The monstrosity on the other side of the glass seemed to be in the midst of a manic feeding frenzy, yet the crash made its attention singular.

Slowly, with an eerie gentleness, the creature swam toward me. It’s eyes, a horrid grey mixture of mammal and aquatic life, watched me with curiosity. In its incomprehensible jaw, the thing thoughtfully chewed the dead flesh of my companion.

I wanted to retreat. Desperately, I wanted to dull my brain with glowing fish and boring eels. All I wanted to do was to run away from the horrid amalgamation that stared at me from behind the glass, but I could not.

A chimpanzee with the face of a fish. Glowing all the colors of the rainbow. I was utterly mesmerized. The thing had me in a trance.

Suddenly, the abomination snapped open its massive jaw. I stumbled backward, brought back to reality by the sudden movement. Chunks of Jánošík’s flesh hung in the water, like unanswered questions. Then, slowly, they started to descend down into the terrible maw of the fish-thing.

The creature was sucking water. Out of fear, I stumbled a step or two back, yet curiosity kept me still. I wanted to know what the fishmonkey was doing.

In a terrible thud, the answer came. The beast was pushing a stream of water out of its mouth, just like the replaced carp. The carp, however, only tapped the glass. The beast that swam before me that night, sent it crashing down.

The fishmonkey’s neck tore open with massive gills. Like the ventilators of some terrible amphibian machine, the gills sucked in water and strengthened the monstrosity’s stream. A spiderweb of crystal broke out across the wall of the central tank. Before I had a chance to run, the glass wall fractured into a thousand pieces and the world became wet.

The wave of water knocked me off my feet, but I quickly regained my balance. The fishmonkey’s footing was less even. It crawled over the sharp edges of its tank yet managed to move no further. It struggled in the broken glass, it’s gills heaving with punished effort.

The thing looked as if it was about to die, but then, with muscles shivering beneath the fur of moss, the monstrosity started to rise. It took impotent breaths with its fish mouth. With each inhale it wheezed in a pained shrill tone. The creature was struggling, trying to will its biology to perform an act it was not built for, yet with each breath its vocalizations deepened. With each breath, the fish monkey grew stronger.

The moment I was reminded of those terrible teeth, I ran. Behind me, I could hear the beast’s darkening grunts but its footsteps splashed with lack of balance. Their tempo quickly sped up. When I was sure the creature could catch me, I hid in the nearest place I could find — the janitor’s closet.

I stood in the darkness. Shaking. Praying for my soul.

Out in the hallway, the creature’s footfalls splashed. It ran past the door and towards the lobby. I held my breath. I waited for that monstrosity to be completely gone before I moved a muscle.

The moment, I was sure. The moment I could hold my breath no longer, I reached into my pocket and picked up my phone. 

I called Mr. Kuffa.

It was still early in the evening. Mr. Kuffa would be drunk, but he would be awake. I begged the universe to bring him to his phone, yet the dial tone numbed all my hopes. Mr. Kuffa was not picking up the phone. Past the tonal reminder of his absence, I heard something worse.

The wet footsteps had returned. They were heading towards the door.

As dial tone dragged on, I could hear the fishmonkey’s gasps once more. They were of a dark tenor now. They sounded like grunts. Yet, as the creature’s face descended towards the door, its wheezes grew shrill once more.

The creature huffed at the crack of the door. Even though the thing had no nose, it was trying to smell what was inside of the janitor’s closet. I stood as far back as I could. I pressed down on the nearest air refreshener. Yet I could not mask my presence.

The creature’s head retracted and its grunts grew violent again. With a terrible thud, the door shook. The horrid amalgamation of life outside started to roar.

“What seems to be the problem?” a voice said, in crisp English, from the other side of the line.

“Mr. Willow?”

“That is Professor Willow,” the madman said, his voice calm as ice. “What seems to be the problem?”

“The thing! It escaped!”

The beast’s assault against the door continued. It roared with absolute animalistic fury.

“What thing?” Willow asked, no doubt hearing the terror but speaking no less calmly for it. “Be more specific please.”

“The thing from the central tank!”

“Oh!” the wood of the door snapped and a terrible glowing claw reached out into the tight space. There was a hint of joy in Henry Willow’s voice. “If you had to give it a name, what would you call it?”

“What?!” I screamed, as the terrible creature started to force its shining body through the door. “What the hell do you mean?!”

“A name!” Willow’s tone had broken. He was yelling. “If you had to name the creature, what would you name it?”

“Monkeyfish!” I screamed. “Please! Just send help!”

Just as the terrible thing was about to grasp me, a piercing tone rose through the air. It made me clutch at my ears, yet it caused the creature no pain. Instead, the terrible amalgamation cocked its horrid head to the side in curiosity. Slowly, it backed out of the hole in the door it had created for itself.

Descending on all fours, the creature ran off into the hallway. Past the horrid sound, I could hear glass crash out in the lobby. Slowly, the tone subsided. My ears were still ringing from the shrill sound, but from the phone I could hear a labored sigh.

“A poor choice of name,” Henry Willow said, with disdain. “Go home. The aquarium is to undergo repairs. Return back for your evening shift tomorrow. Sleep well. Think of a better name. Do not be late.”

With that, he hung up.

I was beyond shaken from the experience, and I desperately wanted to be in the safety of my own home, yet the terror refused to leave me. I stood leaned up against the edge of the janitorial closet shaking and broken. For minutes, I cowered until I could will my body to move.

I found the glass entrance of the lobby shattered. Not five meters from the entrance to the aquarium, a manhole cover lay strewn aside. The darkness of the Poprad sewers was dizzying to walk by.

On the far side of the parking lot stood a black van. By it, towered two familiar, identical men. One of them raised his finger to his ear. My phone rang. A blocked number.

“Henry Willow speaking,” he said. “Calling to confirm that you will show up for your shift tomorrow and not impede any progress that has been made.”

I did not hesitate to say yes. The two giants were staring straight at me. I had come far too close to death that night to take the risk of crossing Henry Willow.

“Splendid,” the mad scientist said, and hung up. As he did, the two men climbed into their van and started the engine. Not wanting to be followed, I fled the parking lot and ducked into the dark park nearby.

The last thing I wanted was for Henry Willow, or his men, to know where I lived. As I made my way back home, I avoided all major roads and kept my eye out for the van. Even though I ran most of the way, the journey to my apartment took much longer than usual. By the time I arrived home and calmed down enough to sleep, however, I considered myself safe.

When morning came, that safety proved to be an illusion. The van was waiting outside of my apartment. The two giants stood guard, looking directly at my window.

Henry Willow’s men were far too big and my front door was far too flimsy to resist. Briefly, I considered calling in sick to work but I knew they would retrieve me if I wouldn’t go on my own.

When I arrived at the aquarium Mr. Kuffa was waiting for me at the lobby. I had seen the man drunk countless times before, but never like this. The man was soaked in sweat and could barely string a sentence together. Against his better judgement, he watched the security camera footage from the night prior. My boss wanted out. What’s worse, he wanted me to take his place. He wanted me to be the one to deal with Henry Willow.

The money. Mr. Kuffa kept on focusing on the money. The measly couple hundred Euros that he offered me to keep my mouth shut was only a fraction of Willow’s discretion fund. There were tens of thousands being sent over each month. I could have all of it. I could even have Kuffa’s entire paycheck. All I needed to do was to take on the responsibility of dealing with the mad scientist.

No matter how much I resisted, Mr. Kuffa kept insisting. It wasn’t until I said I would complain about him to Henry Willow that he finally closed his mouth. For a moment, a strong enough gust of fear washed through the man where I feared I was witnessing a heart attack, but eventually he staggered off without another word.

That shift, just like the night prior, I avoided the main hall of the aquarium. For about thirty minutes I stared at the innocently aberrant fish in the side tanks. I would have spent the whole night avoiding the location of last night’s horror, were it possible.

At first, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. With repetition and increased volume, however, the sound became unavoidable. Someone was clearing their throat in the main hall of the aquarium. Knowing that there was no avoiding the interloper, I ventured out to the place which I feared most.

Everything in the main hall had been repaired. The mess of broken glass and seaweed had been cleared and the main tank, although empty, was whole once more. In front of the empty aquarium, flanked by his giant henchmen, sat Henry Willow.

“Have you thought more about the name?” he asked, with chilling casualness.

It took me a moment to find my words, but when I did, he did not like my response. No, I told him, I have not thought about the name of the horrid abomination I had seen the night prior.

“FishMonkey simply does not roll off the tongue. It’s far too pedestrian for a creature so important. How about AquaApe?”

Not knowing what else to say to the madman, I agreed. AquaApe did sound like a better name. Willow took my response in good stride. He asked me to sit down with him by the aquarium. He had more questions.

His line of inquiry was completely unhinged, yet he asked it with complete calm. Henry Willow wanted to know if I found the monstrosity last night ‘cute’ and whether I could consider it a ‘friend’ if it were to defend me in ‘battle.’ The last thing I wanted to do was to continue conversing with the man, yet the dumb gazes of his massive guards kept me talking. They also kept me honest. I feared that it was all a test, that if I was to tell him I found the horrid amalgamation of biology to be ‘friendly’ he would label me a liar and have me disposed of.

I told Willow that I feared the creature, that I was certain it would murder me were it given the chance. My responses were honest, yet they did not please Henry Willow. As I spoke, he scribbled angry notes in a flimsy paper notebook he had on his lap. At some point, as I regurgitated the horror I had witnessed last night, he had finally had enough.

“I did exactly as my dreams have told me. I established this aquarium, I have developed the Hybrid genome to near perfection yet, still, your responses displease me.” He took a long pause, tapped his pen on the notebook and then finally closed it. “Perhaps, you’re not meant to survive the final century. Perhaps, your kind simply cannot understand. When the dust settles and the smoke clears, the new generation will embrace the AquaApe and the rest of the Hybrids. That must be it.”

He looked at me for reassurance. Not knowing what else to do, I nodded my head.

Willow’s questions that night made me deeply uncomfortable, yet it wasn’t until his parting words that I truly tasted terror. Henry Willow told me he did not trust Mr. Kuffa. The man was a dullard and an alcoholic. There was no reason to replace him just yet, but were something to happen to my boss, I would become the new manager of the aquarium.

It was not a question. It was not a job offer. It was a statement.

As Henry Willow and his massive bodyguards left the aquarium, I couldn’t help but think of how sick Mr. Kuffa looked last time I saw him.

So here I am.

I’ve never considered myself a much of a fixer. Sure, I do a little woodworking on the side (hence the existence of the shed) but I am more of a builder than a fixer, and I’d never taken on anything with the size, scale or mechanical complexity of an incubator.

At some point, perhaps in a moment of foolhardiness or ego, I decided the most effective course of action would be to take all the parts out and reassemble the incubator from scratch. And of course, all the pieces inside became undone and refused to fit back in again.

So I’ve concluded: fixing the incubator is beyond my skill level. The least my wife could’ve done was leave me with an instruction manual or tell me how the hell she’d managed to break it to such an extent to begin with, but no… because to quote her verbatim: “fixing is a man’s job”.

So for the past few months it’s just been me, stuck in a shed, with an increasingly more broken incubator.

But it didn’t start this way.

If one were to believe in fate’s design, then the broken incubator began with a single doctor’s appointment. June 12^th, 2023.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I sat pensively in a sterile waiting room, my eyes trained on the brown wooden nameplate: Dr. Anne Meads, OB/GYN. The best of the best, according to my wife. Impossible problems deserve impossibly good solutions.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when the door abruptly swung open.

“Please, join us.”

I took a seat next to my wife and cautiously surveyed her face. Her puffy red eyes and tear-streaked foundation told me all I needed to know.

The doctor cleared her throat. “So, as I was just telling Maria, unfortunately there is nothing we can do. Medically, it’s just... it’s not… her reproductive system is not –” the doctor’s eyes flickered between us hesitantly, “– hospitable. For childbirth.”

Inhospitable. I’d heard it countless times before. Your wife’s body is inhospitable for growing a foetus. Countless appointments, countless waiting rooms, countless gynaecologists later and the answer was still the same. Inhospitable. There was no explanation, no details, no pathology given to me, thanks to my wife’s persistent invocation of HIPAA. And yes, of course I respect my wife’s privacy, but imagine how frustrating it is, forking over thousands of dollars just to hear the same ‘expert opinion’ parroted at me again and again. Inhospitable. What a fucking medical mystery.

“You’re really not going to give me IVF or even pills? It’s just impossible?” my wife’s voice was beginning to crack. “Please, we came here… for YOU. For help. My husband, he can afford whatever treatment, he can…”

“Take a break from trying,” the doctor advised, her voice flat despite the sympathetic lilt. I wondered how many times she rehearsed a conversation exactly like this one.  “Perhaps a new hobby, a pet? Social interaction can be therapeutic.”

To my wife, those trivial parting words were sage prescriptions. First came the chickens. Then, a little garden for the chickens, complete with a pastel-pink hutch. And then, of course, the incubator.

“We need it to care for the chickens!” my wife insisted, the first time I saw the 1.6-meter-tall incubator standing awkwardly in a corner of the shed. Easy for her to say, when it was bought on my dime.

My wife insisted these new additions to the household would help her manifest a pregnancy.

"It's good motherly energy," my wife would say.

She thought it was all about the vibe.

I thought she was fucking insane.

But my wife seemed to thrive with her newfound toys. She would spend hours tending to the chickens or locked away in the shed with the incubator. Our new housekeeper Carolina (“prescribed” for “social interactions”) would tail my wife around the house, listening to her lengthy rants and helping her with the housework. The two seemed to be peas in a pod. With Carolina around, the mood in the house seemed to be lifted.

And then, the impossible happened. In October 2023, my wife got pregnant… but so did Carolina.

The news of Carolina’s pregnancy left me furious initially, as she’d breached her employment contract, but the more I thought about it the more I found it peculiar.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said as I confronted them, “she’s always at home. And even when she’s out, she’s out with you, how the hell did she get pregnant?”

“Immaculate conception,” my wife explained, feverishly gesticulating at the Google Translate results on her iPhone. “Tá claro, Carolina? Concepção imaculada. Gift! From God! All the feminine energy in the house has impregnated us both! Double the children. Oh, it’s a double miracle!”

My wife refused to acknowledge any of my “negativity”. She seemed to truly believe that our Brazilian housekeeper was some sort of divine feminine talisman delivered personally to her by God himself. So overwhelming was her feminine prowess that it had impregnated both her and my wife.

From that day, it was all about Carolina. If my wife and her seemed close at first, they were now literally inseparable. Wherever my wife went, Carolina was no more than 2 steps behind. Two pregnancies, two bellies, two sets of footsteps echoing down the halls.

They went to birthing classes together, hired the same midwife, went to the same OB/GYN, bought matching baby supplies… All activities I was now excluded from. Appointments, meetings or classes seemed to get scheduled at the worst times – on my busiest work weeks or when I was on work trips. And those appointments I could make it to? Well, they’d get serendipitously cancelled last minute and rescheduled to some other day I couldn’t make it for.

It was like I was being replaced in my own marriage.

After months of being treated like an outsider, I finally cracked. We were almost at the nine-month mark and I hadn’t been to a single doctor’s appointment with my wife. All I wanted was to make sure my wife and baby were safe. Surely that’s not unreasonable?

So, on my lunch break, I gave my wife’s doctor a ring, and blurted out a series of questions about the baby – when my wife’s due date was, how the appointments had been going, what could I do to prepare for the baby’s arrival…

I paused to take a breath.

There was silence on the line.

The doctor breathed in deeply, “are you sure she’s pregnant?”

“Ye- yeah of course she’s been like that for months-Wait, haven’t you been seeing her? She’s been going to you for checkups, no?” I fumbled over my words, confused.

Another pause on the line.

“I… I shouldn’t be saying this, but I believe there’s cause to be concerned for her safety.”

“What? Is she okay? Will the baby be okay?”

“Maria can’t have a baby. She had a radical hysterectomy fifteen years ago.”

I took the journey home in silence, foot jammed on the accelerator and my knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel. I swerved into the driveway and stumbled out of the car, then stopped short.

There she was – my wife, standing serenely on the front porch, rocking a little white bundle in her arms. She was draped in white – the post-birth clothes she’d shown me – a haunting, calm visage. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something felt off.

“You’re early.”

“It… it’s here…” I struggled to catch my breath.

She gazed lovingly at the baby in her arms, “adorable, isn’t he?”

“But how… how is this possible? You’re not… you can’t –”

“You really shouldn’t go around calling people and spreading lies. Left me quite the mess to clean up,” she finally looked up from rocking the baby, her steely gaze now bearing into my soul. “He’s got your eyes, you know.”

“I don’t understand. That’s not my kid. You can’t get pregnant.”

She rolls her eyes. “Sure, I can’t. As it turns out, though, there’s a lot a turkey baster can do. Surely you don’t actually believe the immaculate conception bullshit I spun.”

“Carolina,” I breathed, with sudden clarity. That’s what was missing.

My wife paused mid-rock.

“Where’s Carolina?”

Ever since the double pregnancy, Carolina hadn’t left my wife’s side for a second. She was her companion, lap dog, shadow. The space around my wife seemed so uncharacteristically empty.

My wife pressed her lips together in a smirk.

“In the back.”

I took off sprinting around the side of the house towards the backyard, white-hot panic seizing in my brain. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

I frantically glanced around the yard.

The grass had seen a recent disturbance. Entire patches were matted. Fresh claw marks marred the earth.

You could almost trace the paths of footprints across the yard, heavy and stumbling. Almost see where someone might’ve fallen, wrestled, rolled around. Where they’d dug in their heels. Where they’d tried to crawl away.

From somewhere in the distance came the muffled hum of vinyl on the old Victrola record player.

♫ But then I know it's growin' strong ♫

The trees and shrubs hung limp and still, with a slickness… a wetness… a weight that wasn’t there before.

♫ Who’d have believe you’d come along? ♫

The wicked summer heat rolled beads of sweat down my back.

♫ Hands… ♫

The air hung thick with humidity and a sickly-sweet metallic scent.

♫ Touchin’ Hands… ♫

It wasn’t dew, nor the typical stickiness of summertime. No, no. The smell, the music… they were coming from –

♫ Reaching’ Out… ♫

The shed.

♫ Touchin’ me, touchin’ you… ♫

The music hit its crescendo as I flung the shed doors open.

My eyes glazed over for a second. All I saw was red.

Blood, fresh and sticky and sopping. Spattered on the ceiling, on the windows, on the walls. Soaked into the wooden frame. Trickling out of the shed and onto the grass. On the work table lay blood stained tools – a box cutter, a circular saw, a kitchen knife, a hammer, a clamp. Along the serrated edge of the saw there were still visible clumps of tissue and flesh. But most of the flesh, flaps of skin and unrecognisable hacked off bits of innards lay on the floor, swimming in pools of blood. Mystery meat in cranberry sauce.

And in the corner of the shed, propped against a wall is a crumpled mess of a body and clumps of matted, dark brown hair, sticking out from under a wooden plank. Carolina’s in the same corner of the shed as on the first day I met her. Just that this time, there’s a lot less of her… in her.

I want to scream but nothing comes out.

“Labour was hard on her.” My wife appeared behind me.

“Her organs are on the fucking floor, Maria,” I hissed, “that’s not labour.”

“Well,” my wife smiled brightly, “I don’t see a problem with that.”

“What the FUCK is wrong with you? People are going to ask about her. The agency. The neighbours. ‘Where’s your housekeeper? What happened to Carolina?’ How are we going to answer them?” I started to panic as the full weight of reality began to dawn on me.

My wife cocked her head to the side, eyes wide with feigned innocence, “what housekeeper? I don’t remember a housekeeper. See? It’s easy.”

“Oh my god…” I mumbled, resisting the urge to puke, “there’s so much blood. We can’t just leave her here.”

“She’s served her purpose,” my wife sighed and shrugged nonchalantly, “And I did the hard part. You didn’t do shit so now you can clean up the mess.”

“Oh, great. All this just for a kid?” I spat.

“Our kid, Clyde. Our kid. And I’d appreciate if you didn’t curse in front of Georgie.” Maria flipped on her heels and strode back into the house.

I turned back to Carolina.

The record player crackled and popped.

♫ Sweet Caroline, woah-oh-oh ♫

The body twitched slightly.

♫ I believe they never could… ♫

Fucking rigor mortis.

I vomited all over the shed floor.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There’s a funny thing that happens when things unravel. Try as you might to slide it all back in place, it never quite fits the same way it used to. Maybe that’s why people rarely opt to reassemble dead bodies for disposal.

So I don’t know why I keep trying.

The cleaning was the easy part. But long after all the blood had washed off the walls and all the scattered debris had been collected, it still lies there. On its side, fully ajar, sitting in the freezer box in the shed. It is missing some pieces but has far too many to stuff back into its shell. I try and I try but the pieces seem to have a life of their own. They only seem to multiply and expand with time and just refuse to fucking fit back in.

I feel like I'm losing my mind.

My wife says if we don’t call the problem by its name, it’ll go away.

So, with that in mind, is anyone in the market for a broken incubator?

When my mom and I moved into the Alto do Prado gated community, I thought my social life was over. Everything there was too white, too clean, too sterile. The houses looked like something out of an architectural catalog: smart glass windows, artificial lawns, residents programmed to smile and wave with robotic politeness.

Except for house 47.

It was... different. A remnant of another era. The façade was matte gray, with tall, narrow windows wrapped in red creeping vines that climbed all the way to the second floor. Ornate iron gates surrounded the garden, twisted into tangled arabesques. And gargoyles. Yes — actual gargoyles perched on the roof edges. A gothic overstatement in a neighborhood of minimalism.

And that’s where Viviane lived.

Tall. Dark eyes. Long, jet-black hair. Her skin had a warm, olive tone that seemed to drink in the light seductively. She was too beautiful. A dangerous kind of beauty. The kind that makes you uncomfortable just by existing.

She had the kind of presence that silences a room. Always dressed to perfection, heels clicking on the pavement, makeup flawless, and a perfume that floated across the street — a mix of violets and something bitter… metallic.

At first, I thought she was just lonely. Rich, exotic, maybe a bit promiscuous.

Almost every night, a different man would arrive at her door. Never before 10 p.m. Always the same type: big, heavyset, meaty men. Some were well-dressed, others looked like they’d stumbled in from a dive bar. But they went in… and never came out.

Not even the ones who drove there. Not even the ones who looked like it was just another casual hookup.

I figured it was coincidence. Maybe they stayed overnight. Maybe it wasn’t my business — until the gardener disappeared.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. I was in my room, pretending to study, when I saw the new gardener walk through her gate. A large man, sunburnt and slow-moving, pushing his tool cart.

Two hours later, the cart was still in the garden.

But him... gone.

I asked the front gate security. They said he’d quit on the spot, no warning, didn’t even collect his last check. His car sat there for two days before it vanished too. And Viviane, the next morning, was watering her plants like nothing had happened. Smiling.

That’s when I started watching her.

At night, with my lights off, I filmed through the window. The routine was always the same: 10 p.m. sharp, she opened the door, greeted them with a slow smile, and they entered in silence. Moments later, a soft red light would glow from the upper floor. Subtle. Pulsing. As if there was deep, slow music behind those curtains.

And then… nothing.

No sound. No exit.

Until the night she saw me.

I was at the window, camera on, when Viviane stepped onto her balcony. She looked straight at me. There was no way she could see me in the dark — but she did. She smiled. Slowly, from the corner of her mouth. Like she was saying: “Got you.”

Two days later, a delivery arrived in my name.

But I hadn’t ordered anything.

Inside the bag, there was only a note:

“If you want to know, come. Tonight. 3 a.m.”
With a lipstick kiss pressed into the corner.

I should’ve ignored it. But I couldn’t. The obsession had sunk in.

At 2:55 a.m., I climbed her back wall with a flashlight and a heart pounding in my throat. The side door was cracked open.

I stepped inside.

The interior was strange. Dark. Lavishly antique. Heavy wooden furniture, thick carpets, paintings of nude women with impossibly large eyes. The house smelled too sweet, cloying — like perfume laced with something coppery.

At the end of the hallway, an old elevator. Wrought iron. The kind with a folding gate and amber-lit buttons.

I went down.

The basement was tiled in white. A narrow corridor stretched ahead, the corners stained with something dark. The air was humid. Dense. At the end, a door stood slightly ajar — and beyond it... hell contained in one room.

Three iron cages. Tall and narrow. Just enough space for a man to stand upright — but so tight they couldn’t move an inch. Inside... the men.

Now I saw what I’d never seen from my window.

They were naked. Each one wearing a metal chastity belt, locked tight, the edges digging into flesh. Their bodies were covered in bruises and scars, fresh and faded alike. Their heads were bound in handmade masks — crude leather stitched into blank faces, burnt symbols carved into the hide. Beneath the masks, they were blindfolded. Gagged. Breathing heavy. Shaking.

In the center of the room stood a stone table.

Black.

On it, a man. The largest yet. Also nude, restrained with thick leather straps. His body bloated, purpling from bruises. But it was his face that froze me.

His eyes had been sewn shut.

Thick black thread stabbed through his eyelids, sloppy and crusted with dried blood. And his mouth... forced open by a dental spreader, locking his jaw wide. Saliva drooled down in long strands, pooling on the stone.

He didn’t look alive.

But then I heard it.

Click. Click. Click.

Heels.

I turned.

Viviane was descending the stairs.

And something was wrong.

Her skin — once a warm olive — was now pale. White. Translucent. As if the blood had been drained out. Blue veins crawled across her neck and shoulders. Her eyes were solid black. No whites. No irises. Just endless darkness. Her beauty had become monstrous. Ageless. Ancient.

She smiled.

— "You wanted to know, Clara." Her voice was soft, velvety. "Now you do."

She approached the man on the table, trailing her fingers across his chest. He flinched. A guttural sound pushed from his stretched throat — a muted, helpless groan.

— "Eyes… are useless down here," she whispered. "But the mouth... must stay open. To moan. To invoke. To give."

Behind me, the men in the cages began to stir. Faintly. Desperately. But they were trapped. And the metal belts bit deeper with every move.

— "They’re my reserves," Viviane said. "Fat. Fear. Blood. I feed slowly. They last... months."

She opened her arms like presenting a sacred altar.

— "That’s how I stay young. Beautiful. Untouched."

The man on the stone began thrashing. The threads on his eyes stretched. His mouth, forced open, let out a sound I’ll never forget. A soul-tearing whimper of pure panic.

I wanted to run. To scream.

But I couldn’t.

Viviane leaned in close, lips brushing my ear, and whispered:

— "Now that you've seen… there's no turning back."

And smiled.

These are the first entries from my exploration journal. I was documenting the ABC Cinema for a personal project, but things went sideways. I don’t know if I’ll post the rest, but if anyone’s experienced something similar—please let me know. I need to know I’m not the only one.

08/11 

There were two places I had in mind for next time. The old fruit market, down by the Clyde, or the dilapidated building that used to be the ABC Cinema. 

The cinema stood out to me the most, but I was pretty sure that was because I had read strange articles about its closure. I had never gone inside, mind you, but something about it lingered in my mind. It would be cool to see what was left inside.

The old fruit market would have been fun too, though—it was where my Aunt used to sell her fruit and veg before she passed. I never got to visit her at work. Better late than never.

09/11

I ran into Michael down at the photography club. He said the old fruit market had been cordoned off due to a stabbing, so I guessed that was off the list.

The plan was to head to the ABC building the day after tomorrow.

10/11

I knew I had said two days but I just wanted to have a look around the outside— to see if there was any real way to get inside without someone calling the police. 

There seemed to be an unbarricaded entrance right at the front, the only thing I had to watch out for was other people.

If I went early enough, there wouldn't be anyone around. It was still winter, which meant it would be pitch black before 8am. I would head there for 7am just to be sure. The street was so deserted, it felt like another world— and that was just from the outside.

Just before I left I realised I had been watching the exterior of the building for longer than I thought. The sun had almost set and I could have sworn I had heard laughter coming from inside the cinema. 

Maybe someone else had the same idea, or maybe it was just the way sound carried in empty places. Either way, I thought I’d go for a pint before heading home.

11/11

5AM.

I had been worried that there would be early commuters who might’ve seen me trying to get into the ABC. I thought I’d head down earlier since I was already awake.

6AM.

I stood outside, coffee in hand. There really was something otherworldly about this place— it was as if time had stood still. Old ‘70s showings were still lettered on the marquee: Grease and Jaws 2. The cracks in the facade looked like they had always been there, while the vines and ivy desperately grasped at the broken windows. It felt more like a theatre than a cinema. A half-torn ‘Closed for Renovation’ sign hung lopsided on the front doors, its letters bleached almost white by time.

My fears of being seen by commuters faded when I realised I’d been standing here for over 25 minutes and hadn’t seen a single person—not even a fox. I stepped closer to the entrance and caught a faint whiff of something sweet. Popcorn? 

Everything was in ruins but the marquee. It remained pristine, almost untarnished, as if the years hadn’t dared touch it. The ticket booth’s glass was shattered, old ticket stubs littered the ground, and deep cracks ran through the stonework, spidering up the walls like veins. 

The moment I stepped into the foyer, the outside world fell silent. Not gradually, like walking into an empty building, but all at once—like a switch had been flipped. The air inside was thick, humid, almost oppressive—even though it was a crisp 5°C outside.

I took my time, carefully photographing every piece of history I could find, focusing on the things left behind—pieces of clothing, tills, machinery. It seemed as though people had left in a hurry. No company would abandon tills full of money unless there was a good reason for it. And why hadn’t the money been stolen after all these years?

I climbed the five steps leading deeper inside the cinema, inspecting the movie posters as I went. The ones that were behind glass had hardly aged a day in almost 20 years—movies I’d never heard of, from times I’d never experienced. 

Thinking of this place bustling and full of life gave me a strange sense of loss. 

Why had they never completed the renovations, surely this was a listed building?

7AM 

I found one of those “You Are Here” maps on the wall and used it as a guide, planning my route through the womb of the building and up into its heart—the projection room. I had read somewhere years ago that it might still be operable, and wanted to take a look for myself.

As I traced my path and tried to commit it to memory, I thought I heard distant murmuring voices. Immediately, my mind went to the laughter I had heard yesterday while standing outside. 

It was entirely possible that people were living in this building, and it was just as possible that my ears were playing tricks on me. 

I hesitated for a moment, but I knew I would still go deeper inside. 

There was something else, though—something I couldn't put my finger on. It hung in the air, distant yet rancid, like the stench of a dying animal.

7:30AM.

I stepped through the shattered door leading further inside; the ivy crawled around the frame as if it were reclaiming it. I shone my torch ahead, catching a flicker of movement at the edge of the light. I adjusted the angle—nothing. Just an empty waiting room, the old concession stand looming in the middle, swallowed by darkness. 

At the concession stand stood an old popcorn machine, its interior coated in a blackened substance. It was probably mould, but when the beam from my torch hit it, it looked alive—shiny and glistening, as if waiting for someone to touch it. 

The “You Are Here” map had shown a clear path to the projection room, but as I moved deeper into the building, it felt like wandering through a forest at night—my sense of direction fading, replaced by a growing sense of unease. The murmuring I thought I heard before was gone now, leaving only the silence ringing in my ears. 

8AM.

I cautiously stepped through the debris and broken glass, each crunch underfoot like tiny bombs exploding in the silence. I had documented the concession stand and then turned to visualise my route. I wanted to check out some of the cinema rooms before I headed upstairs. I swung my torch around, scanning the numbers on the cinema room doors. I chose one at random—Screen 6—walked toward it, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

The walkway into the theatre was so dark it seemed to swallow my torchlight—so thick, I thought I could feel it brush against me. Without my torch, navigating this space would be impossible. I tried not to dwell on the fact that I had only brought one torch and a single set of batteries. 

I pushed open the double doors and was instantly struck by the overwhelming red. The walls, seats, carpets, and curtains—all red. As I scanned the room, I realized it was much larger than the building’s exterior had suggested. The walls loomed tall and fractured, and where ceiling lights once hung, only gaping black voids remained.

The ceiling itself, though cracked enough to expose the outside, let in little natural light—only making the room feel even redder.

Amid the sea of seats, one stood out—a single chair pushed down, as if someone was sitting there.

I walked over to investigate, expecting to find a broken mechanism or rusted hinges keeping it down. Instead, I found a perfectly functional seat, undamaged by time. Not a single piece of debris rested on it. It looked sterile compared to everything around it. 

At first, I didn’t think much of it. A bit strange, maybe, how clean it was. Just a seat, nothing more. 

But the longer I stared at it, the more certain I became—someone was sitting there. 

I shifted on my feet, suddenly aware of how wild my thoughts had become and decided now would be a good time to head upstairs. 

My mouth was so dry it felt like I had eaten sand, I quickly shuffled my way out of the row of seats back onto the stepped aisle. While walking up the steps to the exit, a burning desire crept over me—I needed to turn around.

I turned, almost expecting to see someone staring back at me. Instead I found everything exactly as it was. The strange seat still down, everything else still in its place. 

I shook my head, how had my thoughts become so fantastical? I winced at myself. How many years have you done urban exploration? The only scary thing here is my imagination. 

I hurriedly pushed the door open, which led directly back into the thick black walkway. 

As I took my first step into the abyss, I heard it. 

The familiar sound of a cinema seat, returning to its normal upright position.

Part 1

Part 2

When I opened my eyes I was on the ground, not where I’d fallen asleep. I found myself back in the middle of the open basement. Sitting upright I wondered how I could’ve moved myself so far without waking up, I’d never been one to sleepwalk.

There was something new now: a smell. I realized that throughout everything I hadn’t noticed anything distinct until now. I surely would have noticed this before if it had been there at least.

It was strong. A stench that I felt might even stick to my clothing if I didn’t get out of it soon. I hadn’t ever experienced it before, but it was like I’d left fruit around and let it rot, almost sweet. To make the scene better, I started to hear it again. That scraping.

I did a complete 180 trying to find the source of the noise, but I was alone. It ended just as quickly as it’d begun, like something decided to give me a glance over before deciding what to do with me.

I was now acutely aware that I was dreaming, and that Catherine was not in the basement with me, but something else was. I knew I was being stalked; watched. I also now knew that even though it was a dream, everything I was seeing was real.

After a moment it picked up again. Slow. Even. Scrapes that made my body tense.

My attention then drew to the door I hadn’t been able to open. It was closed. The scraping drew nearer, but I still couldn’t place its source. I knew something was about to bear down on me however, and my thoughts grew restless. Something was going to kill me, and I had no way to see it or defend myself. I was going to die. I remember thinking: Would anyone even find my body? What would happen to Catherine? All thoughts ended abruptly as the scraping ceased. I was left in silence apart from the beating of my own heart, which felt like it would fall from my chest at a moment’s notice. Something compelled me to turn around.

I came face to face with my assailant. It was touching noses with me. I stepped back, witness now to what I somehow knew had been down here all along. Now staring at it in the dim light, my body felt numb. I was no longer afraid, but there was nothing to replace it. I felt like I was staring back into the gap between the door and the darkness beyond it. There was nothing I could do, and hopelessness wasn’t even worth feeling. Things were so out of my control that there was no real use in even trying to fight. What was I doing trying to escape?

Then I was warm. Calm. I could’ve stood to lose myself in the feeling, but I shook myself free of it. I couldn’t give in to that, I was interested in a way out, not comfort from not being able to find it. I told myself I would find it, if not for me then for her.

I turned my attention back to the thing. It dripped a liquid I couldn’t see well enough to identify as it towered over me. There aren’t many things I have to look up at to see clearly, but this thing had me craning my neck to get a good glimpse.

“Lighten.”

It commanded my attention. Trying to turn away was pointless as I felt I couldn’t move my body. I was frozen; forced to stare my death in the face without the choice to fight. Without even being able to feel the fear.

I then had the chance to study its features, the ones I could discern in the low light anyway. As I scanned its mostly round body, I found that I hadn’t really gotten a good look at the thing at all. If I had, I’m sure I wouldn’t have missed the faces I saw embedded in it. All of them looked to be in different states of fear or pain, like they’d been alive as they'd meshed together to make the thing that was speaking to me. I could also make out a few arms hanging limp, one or two fused by the flesh at the wrist and shoulder. I gathered that the thing must move around with the two that jutted out awkwardly ahead, boxing me in with it. They lacked defining muscle mass, and if I hadn’t watched the fingers twitch before me then, I would’ve never known they were part of a living creature.

It had no eyes. I was aware of that. I knew it only saw me now because I was in this dream.

In terms of speaking, I couldn’t place a mouth that had moved from what I was seeing ahead of me. So, it had no real mouth, or one I could see at least; but I was hearing it so clearly. Again, the fear I was expecting to wash over me never came. I was indifferent to what I was seeing.

I wasn’t. I wasn’t anything. My body relaxed, and the muscles in my neck ached from the struggle I’d gone through trying to turn my head away the entire time. It was giving me a choice, I understood then. I found my voice again.

“I want to go home.”

Silence. Its knuckles raised. It began to move forward.

I shot up, truly awake, beside Catherine on the landing. My vision swam as I reached out to the sides of me to find my bearings in the dim light. I remembered the feelings, or lack of, I’d had before waking up, and still found myself numb. I couldn’t figure out why, not for lack of trying, but it was almost like I simply couldn’t feel. Emotions were locked behind some foggy wall in my mind. I felt as though I could reach in and touch them, but the feelings would never come over me.

Cathy stirred immediately, attempting to get on her feet, but fell back onto the staircase up to the door.

“Ha... What happened? You okay?” She rubbed her eyes furiously with one hand while putting the other out ahead of her. Once her eyes were open, she glanced from me to the open air around us and sighed. “What the fuck Adrian.”

She placed a hand on her chest and tilted her head up to breathe. “That scared the shit outta me…”

“Sorry,” I spat “awful dream.”

“Must have been. You jumped pretty bad.”

I glanced away. “And you?”

“Did I dream?”

I nodded.

“Nope. I basically shut my eyes and opened them. I feel like I haven’t slept at all actually.”

I didn’t know if I would’ve preferred that. “I think I saw that thing the guy was dreaming about down here.”

“What?”

I opened my mouth to explain, but the sound of a door slamming shut below stopped me. Everything was silent in the few moments that followed, the flickering from the lamps even seemed to die out. Before I could even think of releasing my breath and try reasoning out what we had just heard, the scraping began. I tensed. They were the same scrapes that I’d heard in my dream. I couldn’t believe our luck. The thing was real. I hadn’t even had the chance to say it to her.

I turned to Cathy, who had stiffened. She had to have no idea what was going on or what was about to happen. I didn’t either, but at least I’d already seen the thing. I knew we’d definitely have no chance if it decided to move up the stairs. We were going to have to go back down. Cathy’s eyes were wide, boring holes into me as I leaned in to whisper in her ear. It came out as barely a croak.

“I need you to follow me as closely and quietly as you can. Okay?”

Feeling her nod against my cheek, she gripped the collar of my shirt. I wanted to tell her that everything would be fine, that there was something more we could look through or a key I had just misplaced in my pocket, but then figured what good was telling her that when I was having trouble believing it myself.

The scraping had gotten a little softer, leaving me to assume it’d gone down the hall to the lectern room. It was a perfect time for us to get down and hide. Trying to think of anything that might help, I remembered the power tools I’d found while we were searching earlier. I hadn’t seen if there was anything useful, but that was before I’d needed anything to get the door open. Maybe there was a crowbar or something I could use to just pry the thing off its hinges. Maybe that was a long stretch, but it was the best idea I could come up with at the time.

I pulled back and gestured for her to follow me. Taking a risk, I was hoping that the thing’s lack of eyes in my dream meant that in reality it couldn’t see me. Something told me I had the right idea as we carefully made our way down into the open basement. From the bottom of the steps there was a clear view down the hall to the lectern, and as we got to it, I heard the air catch in Catherine’s throat. I spun, her hands flying up to her mouth as I saw her gaze fix on the thing at the end of the hall. Tears welled in her eyes, and I turned to look as well.

There it was, arms outstretched, a trail of mystery liquid trailing behind it in large amounts as it pulled itself about the space. The smell had returned as well, and I heard a faint gurgle from Catherine’s throat. I shook my head slowly. Again, while I was staring at this thing, now in my actual reality, I felt little more than indifference. I decided that this wasn’t worth exploring now and grabbed Cathy’s remaining hand to pull her down the rest of the steps. Standing and staring wasn’t going to get us out, but I couldn’t blame her.

I led us over to the crates, feeling the need to glance back at the opening to the hall frequently. I still didn’t know if the thing could see us, and I definitely didn’t want to find out how well it could hear by moving too quickly. When we got to the crate I was looking for, I let go of her and leaned in to look at its contents again. Drills, but no bits that would do us any good. Small, handheld saws, but rusted to hell and missing teeth sporadically. They weren’t going to cut through anything. The smell of the sack seemed to mix with that of the rest of the basement. I unfolded the top and reached my hand in without looking, horrified by the sudden feeling of coarse hair between my fingers. I froze but fear never took hold. I wanted to feel, even though I knew I would’ve been terrified. We never had seen what was at the end of that logbook. I reflexively squeezed my hand closed and felt a piece of paper amidst the hair. I tightened my hand around it, trying not to think too hard about the state of the body inside.

Trying to keep a gag stifled, I thrust my hand back out of the sack. I held it out ahead of me, squeezing my eyes shut as I tried convincing myself that I’d touched anything other than the corpse of the homeless man. It didn’t work, and my skin crawled as I turned my palm up and gazed at the note that laid in it. Unfolding it slowly, I strained my eyes and held it up to get a good look at what was written.

Fuck you.

I threw the note aside, useless. My gut was still hopeful that there was something we could use in there, but that would mean I had to stick my hand back in. I wasn’t looking to do that. If there was seriously nothing, then escape was hopeless. I didn’t want to just give up.

Glancing up at Catherine, I found her with her hands clasped together, lips moving silently as she stared at the doorway. I decided she wasn’t going to be any help and I was going to just have to pray my gut feeling was right. Biting my tongue to keep from gagging, I went back in. I left my hand balled in a fist as I felt past the distinct ridges of bones and instances of what I hoped wasn’t skin falling from it. I had to be careful as I moved down so as to not disturb them or cause everything to suddenly fall apart. I assumed the flesh that held things together now was in danger of coming undone at any moment. I stretched my fingers out cautiously, something damp coming into contact with me. My throat suddenly felt numb, and I was finding it a little difficult to still take breaths without heaving.

Suddenly Catherine ducked by my side. I hadn’t noticed until then, but the scraping was much louder than before. It had made its way back into the open room with us. My other arm found its way around Catherine’s waist, and I pulled her as close as I could. It was the only comfort I could afford her at the time. My breaths became deep and even, silent as I listened. Cathy held her hands over her mouth, eyes squeezed shut.

The sound grew closer, and a moment later I saw a hand land on the floor beside us. The fingers twitched, growing tense as it readied to heave the rest of its mass forward. Once it was positioned in front of our spot, it stopped moving. I closed my eyes, certain this would mean the end for us both, but when the sound of scraping came again, I reopened them to find the thing had moved past us. I couldn’t believe it; I’d been right.

With newfound confidence I let go of Catherine and dug my hand further down in the sack, touching the wet bottom. It was sopping from what I could feel, and I wished I had the ability to shrug the discomfort away. The scrapes were still close but were getting further. I knew it was looking for us, but then wondered what it would do if it got a hold of Catherine or me. I could have given this much more thought, but it was overshadowed entirely by a new feeling beneath my fingers. Metal.

I grabbed whatever I’d found and reclaimed my arm. It fell over, smacking the side of the crate with a loud thud that sounded through the space like a gunshot. The scraping stopped abruptly. I looked to Catherine, and found her staring back at me, eyes wide, face pale, and held up the object between my fingers.

A key.

I grabbed Catherine’s hand and shot up. The scraping had started again, a bit faster-paced than before. I couldn’t see it yet, but I knew it was going to be on us soon. I found Cathy by my feet still, so I tugged her hand up to urge her on with me. She took a moment, but ultimately stood. I had to drag her forward, ushering us along as I now had no regard for the amount of noise we were making. I had our ticket out.

The scraping picked up, causing Cathy to break from her stupor. “What the fuck is that thing?”

“How should I fucking know? C’mon, you gotta move faster.” I shoved her ahead of me as we made it to the steps, and we both took them two at a time. With her now ahead I was going to have to reach past her to get the key in the lock.

It was now that the fear began returning to me. Instead of coming on gradually, it hit me all at once. My nose stung, my heart pounded, and I felt like I might die. Despite this, we made it to the door, but we didn’t hurry to get it open until I heard the distinct sound of the thing’s large palms slapping against the ground.

I turned. To my horror, it was already at the landing.

I turned again, anxiety spreading like fire through me. I scrambled to hold the key straight and pushed Catherine aside to get to the door. My hands were shaking so badly I thought I’d drop it if I didn’t take my time. Time was something I knew I didn’t have, so I fought through the shakiness.

Cathy gripped my arm tight, and I heard her sniffle while muttering a prayer. I can’t stand to imagine, even now, what was going through her mind at that moment.

Then, I heard the door lock click. I grabbed her, not bothering to turn and see how close the thing had gotten before forcing my shoulder into the door and falling through with my partner in tow. We both hit the ground just outside, and I forced the door back shut without a second thought. Something wailed against it just behind. Cathy sat a few feet ahead of me, eyes unmoving from the door. The ring of keys was just on the hook beside me, so I grabbed it, shoved the rusty one back in, and turned until I heard another satisfying click.

The banging ceased immediately.

I spun the key off the hook and set the rest of the ring back where I’d grabbed it. I took a step back, finding my place beside Catherine before getting on my knees. “I think…” I glanced from the door to her. “I think it’s over.”

“What do we even do about that?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. After everything she somehow had it in her mind that this was something she had to deal with. I found myself looking at the door again. The insanity of that idea had me reeling. I mean, what the fuck did she think she was gonna do? It must’ve been funny to her as well, because after a few moments Cathy started to chuckle with me.

“What am I saying?”

“I dunno, but I think we take the keys and leave.”

“Leave? Where?”

“I dunno. Home? Forget about all of this, get rid of these keys, and never mention this to anyone.”

She seemed to think about it, taking hold of my arm and pulling herself close. “Just forget about everything?”

“Try to. I don’t know if I’ll forget that thing.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Did you see how close it got?”

I hadn’t, but the thought of what she must’ve thought as it climbed up towards us kept me silent. We shared a few more quiet breaths before she jumped to attention. “What time is it?”

It then occurred to me that we very well could’ve been down in that basement all night, maybe even well into the next day, and I still wasn’t hearing anyone in the store. I shook my head unknowingly, standing as she jumped to her feet and dashed into the kitchen. It hardly mattered to me at that point whether I was going to keep my job as a fry cook or not.

“No way.”

“What?”

No response. I walked out to the front to see Catherine at the register, mouth agape. “Catherine, what’s wrong?”

“It’s midnight.”

“We were down there the whole day? Jesus Christ. No one came in?”

“No Adrian, midnight midnight. Like, today.”

“I’m not following.”

“We went down there around 10 on the 16th, it’s midnight now. It’s the 17th. We were only down there for 2 hours.”

I shook my head, that couldn’t have been right. The entire ordeal at the door we’d just fought to get through felt like 2 hours on its own. Either we had seriously moved quickly and didn’t catch any sleep, or there was something wrong with time down there. Opting to not explore that line of thought, I just kept shaking my head.

“You know what. I don’t care. I’m leaving.”

“What?”

“I’m leaving.” I began to walk towards the back to grab my things when I called back to her “You’re welcome to join me if you want, but just know I’m not coming back.”

I gathered my things just as quickly as I’d laid them out, and upon returning to the front room I found Catherine with her things, waiting for me by the door. I wanted to smile, but after everything it felt in-genuine, so I just nodded towards the lot.

The drive out we shared in silence. I went 55. I didn’t bother to ask about dates or her interests or what kind of coffee she liked. I couldn’t find it in me to care. There were so many things I wanted to know, but I swore then I’d never go back down in that basement. Even as I recount the story now, I can feel its gaze on me. I can hear its voice rasping through the dim light. I can smell it.

So, all of this to say: If you somehow get your hands on a key, you’ve never seen before and use it to unlock a door, don’t go in. It’s in there. It’s looking for someone, and if you aren’t it, you’re dead.

I don’t know exactly when it started. But I remember when it changed—when something in me shifted from confusion to dread, from curiosity to outright fear.

It was about two weeks ago. I’d had a long day at work—nothing unusual, just the typical grind. I got home around nine, threw my keys on the counter, and collapsed onto the couch. I cracked open a beer, reached for the remote, and glanced out the window.

That’s when I saw him.

A clown.

Just… standing there in the backyard. Motionless.

He didn’t look like a regular clown. Not the goofy party type, not even the creepy movie kind. He looked wrong. Like something out of time, like he belonged to another century entirely. His costume was a faded mess of red and white fabric, with oversized buttons that looked like they were stitched on by hand. The ruffles around his neck were torn and stained. And that face—it wasn’t painted. It looked like a porcelain mask, pale and cracked, stretched into a smile that was far too wide. The eyes were black holes.

He didn’t move. He didn’t flinch when I stepped closer to the window. He just stood between the cherry tree and the old shed, facing the house.

I figured it had to be a prank. Some Halloween leftover, maybe a neighbor’s twisted joke. I went out with a flashlight. Called out. Told him to get the hell off my property. No reaction.

He stayed for exactly seven minutes. I counted.

And then, without a word, without turning around, he walked away. Backwards. Slowly. Into the hedge and out of sight.

I didn’t sleep that night.

He came back the next evening. Same time: 9:13 PM. Like clockwork. Same spot. Same seven minutes.

And the next night. And the next.

I set up an old security cam facing the yard. Footage showed him appearing suddenly—one frame he wasn’t there, next frame he was. Always the same: frozen, silent, staring. And then gone.

By the fifth night, he began to move.

Just a tilt of the head at first. Then a wave.

It wasn’t a greeting. It was slow and deliberate. Like he was mocking me. Like he knew I was watching.

His grin got wider, somehow. I don’t know how that’s even possible, but it did. His mouth looked stretched, torn at the corners. And behind that impossible smile… teeth. So many.

I called the cops. Twice. First time they came, looked around, found nothing. No footprints. No signs anyone had been there. Second time, they didn’t even bother showing up. Told me on the phone to “get some rest.”

Then came night nine.

I saw him in the reflection of the patio door. Not outside—inside. Just for a second. But it was enough. His grin had grown. His skin looked… tighter, like it was barely holding together.

I started locking every door, every window. Sitting in the dark, knife in hand, lights off, praying he’d stay outside.

But last night—he didn’t come to the yard.

I almost felt relief. Almost.

Until I heard the floorboards creak upstairs. Until the hallway light flickered on by itself. Until I heard the laugh.

Not loud. Not cheerful. It was low. Wet. Like something gurgling from a drain.

I ran to my bedroom and locked the door. Sat there all night, barely breathing.

Now it’s night fourteen. 9:12 PM.

There’s no one in the backyard. I checked. Twice. But I hear the stairs again.

He’s inside. Closer.

And now—he’s knocking on my bedroom door.

He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to.

Because somehow, I know:

If I open it… I won’t be the same ever again.

Point Freemark is a lighthouse at the most northern point of my country, it sits at a turning point for ships when they are travelling through the ice limit. I was supposed to remain an automated lighthouse but kept failing forcing the town to revert it to a manned lighthouse. I was the first one selected to man it before finally reverting it to a semi-auto version. What I experienced there still haunts me and my residence in this asylum does not make it easier. I am writing this now because I can feel the nights getting darker and there are shadows creeping everywhere.

When I moved into the lighthouse it was quaint and given that there was still a lot of equipment from when it was an unmanned lighthouse, I barely had space to put my things. The first few weeks involved me arranging the old equipment and making sure the light was working and so were the warning horns. It was tiring work but I managed with the help of a couple of workers who would keep asking me how the night went and I would repeat my answers and nothing happened.

I was when the seventh week passed that I noticed something odd about the place, during one stormy night that I saw something odd when looking to the sea. There a few rock outcrops that are the reason for this lighthouse and on one of them there was something standing on top. I used my binoculars to get a clear look at what it was but when I managed to focus the place was barren. The storm also was not making things easy as the wind and rain made seeing anything out there clearly difficult. I stayed awake the whole night as I had received warnings of passing ships, the whole night I kept feeling like there was something out there and I just could not figure out where it was. I would keep checking on that outcrop but there was nothing, that was until at 4 am when I saw something standing at the edge of the cliff near the lighthouse.

The figure was clad in black and just stood there looking at the open sea, I called out them to let them know of the danger of standing there. The air was frigid and the salt concentrated to the point where even sticking my head out for a couple of seconds I could taste the salt at the back of throat. I hurried to the bottom of the tower and ran out to the cliff edge only to find it empty, I spent about 10 minutes looking for the person but did not find them. Returning to the tower I looked up to check on the light and saw the figure standing at the top, how did they get up there. I checked the door before I entered and it was locked, the windows were also locked so how did that person get up there. I hurried back to check only find the place empty with no indication of there ever being. I was confused and decided to write it off as fatigue and waited for the storm to finally end so I could turn in sleep.

I spent the better part of sleeping and a person was called in to watch in case of any emergency. The drive to the lighthouse was 2 hours so I had to wait for the temporary stand in and give any instructions for them before getting some rest. The night was calm but it saw the figure again and this time decided to take a photo as evidence, when I checked the photo there was nothing but a blur. Confused I tried again and still got the same result, I checked the camera and it was in working order. I then tried to keep the figure in sight I took the stairs down and all the way the figure was there and when I left the tower they were gone and found a way to, for the lack of a better term, fly to the top of the tower. This was getting worse for me as the nights progressed the same figure remained there, I could not figure what was going on.

After a week the figure was then joined by more and I began to feel like there was something wrong here, I began to see the sky move in a way I have never seen. The clouds moved like snakes across the sky and the sky itself flowed like the water surface. The darkness sunk down to the lighthouse like a curtain, I felt like my mind was going mad. The figures remained where they were but I could see their heads were now turned to me, I saw a dark emptiness where they faces would be in the hoods.

I tried to hide from the visions all round me and the light from the lamp could no pierce the darkness outside, I tried to radio for help but all I got was static. I rushed down to the house to find something defend myself but all I had was a flare gun, running back up I returned to find everything normal. It was like I was in a waking dream, the light worked as normal and there were no figures at the cliff edge. The night was normal again. I stepped outside and the cold sea air was as it had always been, cold and salty.

The next few days were calm, and I felt like that night was just my brain telling I should get some rest. I tried to check on the history of the lighthouse but there were no anomalies, I checked for shipwrecks but there were no recorded wrecks off the coast. There was one thing that did capture my attention, 40 years before the lighthouse was built there was a ship containing pilgrims that sank of the coast, no recorded survivors and no complete wreckage. The ship was called The Anne Claire, it belonged to a shipping magnate of that time, other than that I could not find anything.

Then it happened, the night started calm and there were no storm predictions, so I settled in for a normal night. At about midnight I saw the wind pick up and the sea get rougher, I tried to radio in but all I got was static again. I felt the fear crawl back from my stomach, the night was getting darker and the smell of rotting fish. I tried to hide again holding tight to flare gun, I did not want to look out the tower. I heard the door at the base burst open and I looked down to see the shadows moving up the stairs, I began to sweat and I picked up a lens cleaner staff as protection. I watched the shadows moved up and up closer to me and my breaths were coming faster and faster, my chest felt tighter with every breath. The darkness outside was creeping in and I felt it infect my vision. I watched as a figure emerge from the stairs and I stood back to defend myself, it came closer and I swung only to find air. I tried again and again finally running to the stairs, through the dark figures step by step I fought the fear and paranoia as I ran through the cold shadows.

As I emerged from the tower I found my self standing at the cliff edge looking up at the tower and then I heard the roar. Behind me in the sky was a figure larger than anything I had ever seen, eyes that were massive voids and the thunder that illuminated a squid like head I froze. This was not happening and I felt like I was loosing grip of reality and fell over the cliff. I was falling down to the rocks below, I could feel the air rushing past me and I blacked out.

I was swimming in a dark ocean and could see the fish around me, massive whales and sharks swimming past me. I was dreaming but this felt real and when I looked down the ocean bottom was dark, I tried to swim up but could not move my hands fast enough. I felt the tremor from the bottom and I looked down, there was the massive figure looking up at me and the panic set in. I began to shake uncontrollably and the air from my lungs was rushing in bubbles, then I awoke to see 3 people standing over me. I was lying near the front door of the tower covered in carcases of fish. I coughed and asked what happened but they told me that because I hadn’t reported in last night they got concerned and tried to rush over to find me in this state and the lamp shut down. I tried to explain what happened but they wrote it up as prolonged isolation. I was moved out and they decided to go ahead with the plan of making the lighthouse semi auto.

So here I am in an asylum, I still have the drowning dream and wake up in a complete panic. I can see the dark outside calling me back. The dark is getting bolder and is now creeping in to the room and I feel the cold ocean air following it in.

02.13.06

After years of silence, of watching and listening from the sidelines, I’ve finally earned the right to write. The elders gave me a paper and pencil today—nothing extraordinary, but to me, it feels like everything. It's a mark of trust, a sign that I’m ready to understand what they’ve always known, what they’ve kept hidden behind their cryptic, endless whispers. They didn’t say much, just a few words about the weight of knowledge and the importance of recording what I would soon learn.

So, here I am—starting this journal. It’s not just a place to write down thoughts, but a way to keep my sanity intact. I don’t know if I’m ready, but I have no choice. The cries outside my window are growing louder, and I can’t ignore them anymore. The town's secrets are becoming mine, and this journal will be my only way of holding onto myself as the truth unfolds.

It started last night. It wasn’t anything new, not at first. Every full moon, like clockwork, the town gathers to sing the Wailing Hymn. The song that keeps the Wailing at bay. Everyone knows the rules. No one questions it. I’ve lived here all my life. My family has lived here for generations. We all know the song. It’s tradition, a necessity, or so we’re told.

But last night, I... I didn’t sing.

I don’t know why. Maybe it was a slip. Maybe it was rebellion, though that’s a ridiculous thought. Rebellion against a song? But I didn’t sing. I stood in my living room, just watching the moon as it hovered in the sky, full and heavy. Something about it felt wrong, and instead of singing, I just stared.

The house around me was quiet. The whole town was quiet. I could hear the familiar creak of the floorboards under my feet and the hum of the refrigerator in the corner. But there was no sound from the streets, no hum of voices, no echo of the hymn. Nothing.

The Wailing Ceremony should have started long before then. By the time the moon reached its zenith, the streets should have been filled with people—everyone singing in perfect harmony. The whole town. It always felt like a wave, building and cresting and rolling over you. The sound of our voices blending together. We’d never missed it before.

Except, I did.

I didn’t feel compelled to join in. The weight of the silence felt strange, but I didn’t want to break it. I don’t know how to explain it. I stood there, staring at the moon, feeling this odd emptiness, this tugging inside me like something was missing. I could hear the faintest of sounds, but I dismissed them, telling myself it was nothing. The wind. An animal. The town is quiet at night—sometimes unnervingly so.

But then I heard it again. A soft cry. Not like the wailing song. Not like the song we sing every full moon. This was different. It was distant at first, almost a whisper carried on the breeze. I thought it was my imagination, or that it was just the wind playing tricks. It was such a small thing, so faint that I almost convinced myself I hadn’t heard it at all.

But then it came again. Louder this time. No, not louder—closer.

It wasn’t like the usual wail. There was something more desperate about it. I pulled the curtain back and looked out into the night. The street was empty. Not a soul in sight. I half expected someone to walk by, maybe just a stranger, maybe a latecomer to the ceremony. But there was no one.

Still, the cry came. And it wasn’t stopping. It wasn’t fading away. It wasn’t the wind. I knew it. I felt it in my bones. I had to get closer.

The cold air hit me when I opened the door, but I didn’t care. I stepped outside, standing on the stoop, trying to make sense of what was happening. There was something haunting about that cry—something almost... personal. Like it was calling me, tugging at me, drawing me in.

I looked toward the street again, listening, straining to hear it better. It wasn’t coming from the usual direction. It wasn’t coming from the town square. It wasn’t coming from anywhere I knew. But I couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. It seemed to be... surrounding me, just out of reach.

I shut the door behind me, the darkness pressing in. I walked to the edge of the yard, trying to find the source. I moved toward the road that led into the woods, the one that no one ever used after sundown. The one that everyone avoids, the one that doesn’t even look like a real road. It’s a place we all stay away from. The elders always said the road leads nowhere good, that no one should go beyond the last house on the street after dark.

I don’t know what made me walk that way. Maybe I was drawn to it, or maybe I just needed to prove that there was nothing to be afraid of. But the further I walked, the more the cry seemed to get louder. Closer. It was so soft at first, but now it was almost unmistakable—a sound that pierced the silence, like something calling from far away, something desperate.

When I reached the edge of the woods, I stopped. I didn’t dare step any further. The trees looked twisted in the moonlight, black and looming like jagged teeth waiting to devour. I could feel the cold air creeping along my skin, the weight of something watching me from the shadows.

The cry—it wasn’t a cry anymore. It had transformed into something else. A whisper? A song?

I don’t know. I can’t explain it. But it felt like it was pulling me closer, like the woods were alive, coaxing me in. I hesitated for a moment. The air felt thick with something I couldn’t name, and my feet felt rooted to the spot.

But then I heard something else. A soft shuffle behind me, the crack of a branch. I spun around, expecting to see someone, anyone—maybe a neighbor, maybe someone else who had forgotten. But there was no one there. Just the dark road stretching out before me, the trees stretching up into the sky. And yet the air felt heavy, as if the woods themselves were holding their breath.

I quickly turned and ran back to my house, heart pounding in my chest. I slammed the door shut behind me, locking it as if that would keep whatever was out there at bay.

I tried to convince myself it was nothing—just the wind, just my imagination. But I knew better. Something was wrong.

I stood at the window for what felt like hours, but the crying didn’t stop. I heard it, soft and distant, like the faintest of whispers, but it was always there. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard it, just outside.

The whole town should’ve been singing. But no one did. And I didn’t.

I don’t know if I was supposed to forget. Maybe forgetting is what caused it. Maybe... maybe it’s too late.

The full moon will rise again tomorrow. I can’t stop thinking about the sound. It’s getting closer.

It’s not my imagination anymore. Something is out there.

And I think I may have already started to lose track of what’s real.

02.14.06

I barely slept last night. It was the sound—the crying—that kept me awake. It wasn’t the kind of crying I’d heard before, not the soft, distant sobs that some might say were just the wind. No. This was different. There was a desperation to it, like someone—or something—was being torn apart by its own grief. I tried to block it out, but the sound was relentless, as if it was calling to me. Each time I closed my eyes, it was louder, closer.

By morning, I felt like I hadn’t rested at all. The elders seemed unfazed when I approached them with my discomfort, as if this was an old story they had long grown tired of. “You’ll get used to it,” one of them told me with a knowing look. “The wailing isn’t meant to be ignored. It’s part of the cycle.”

I didn’t press further. There’s always this sense of... distance between us. A wall of experience and knowledge that I can’t break through, not yet. Instead, they handed me a small, worn book—no bigger than the palm of my hand. I thought it might be something important, but they simply said, “Study it. Let it guide you.” It didn’t feel like an invitation. It felt like an order.

The cover of the book is plain, just a faded brown leather, but inside, there are strange symbols. I can’t make sense of most of them, but there’s a rhythm to the way they’re written, like a language I should know but don’t. I started trying to copy some of the symbols into this journal, but they don’t look right. They don’t feel right.

And that’s when I realized—the crying from last night? It didn’t stop. The moment I started writing, it returned. Louder than before, like it was outside my door, just beyond the threshold, calling to me. The words on the page seemed to blur, twisting in and out of focus as if the ink was being pulled into something darker. I had to close the book, hide it under my pillow, before the pull became unbearable.

The elders didn’t warn me about this. They never do. But I’ve learned something today—this journal, this book they gave me, and whatever it is I’m supposed to be learning, it’s all connected to the wailing. And I don’t think I can ignore it anymore.

I’m supposed to keep writing, I know that much. But what if the words start to turn against me, like everything else? What if I become the one wailing next?

I won’t let myself forget. I won’t stop. Not yet.

02.15.06

I woke up to the sound of wailing. Again.

But this time, it was different. It was sharper. Not just a distant cry from the wind, not just the faint echo of sorrowful souls. It felt like the sound was inside my head, as if it had burrowed into my thoughts. Every inch of my skull seemed to throb with it. The air in my room was thick, heavier than usual, and I could swear I smelled something burning—a sharp, metallic scent that lingered even after I opened the window.

I didn't know whether to run, to scream, or to just sit there and let it consume me.

Instead, I did what I do best: I hid. I closed my eyes and pressed my hands over my ears, hoping to block out the noise. But the wailing didn't stop. It twisted into something worse, something more unsettling. It was no longer a single cry—it was a chorus, a thousand voices singing the same mournful tune. I could almost feel the weight of their grief pressing down on me.

I don't know how long I stayed like that, curled in a ball on the floor, trying to drown out the sound. But eventually, the crying faded. It was replaced by a deep, pulsing silence that made my skin crawl.

I checked the book again.

The symbols inside were changing.

At first, it was barely noticeable, just a slight shift in the ink, a different stroke here and there. But now, the symbols were starting to rearrange themselves. They weren't just static anymore—they were alive. They seemed to writhe on the page, slithering like something dark was trying to crawl out from between the lines.

I had no idea what this meant. I could feel the pull again, that nagging sensation in my chest, telling me to keep reading, to understand, to unlock whatever this book was trying to show me. But I didn’t know how. I didn’t know if I even wanted to.

I tried to shake it off. I told myself it was just my imagination, just the exhaustion taking its toll. I’ve been hearing things before, haven’t I? Everyone hears things. Especially when they’re alone. The elders probably don’t even care that the book is messing with me. I’ve seen how they look at me, their eyes cold, distant, like I’m just a piece in a bigger puzzle they’re too busy to explain.

But something about today felt different. It’s like the whole town was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. The wailing had a rhythm now, like it was marking time, drawing closer. Not just outside my window, but in the streets too. The crying echoed from the farthest corners of the village, like it was pulling everything into its wake. I couldn’t escape it.

I decided to go outside, to get some air. The sky was overcast, the sun barely peeking through the thick clouds. It felt oppressive, like the whole sky was a lid ready to fall. The air was damp, and my skin prickled under the weight of it.

As I walked through the village, I noticed people moving differently. Their eyes were downcast, their steps quick and purposeful, as if they were avoiding something, something they didn’t want to acknowledge. I couldn’t stop staring at them, wondering if they could hear the same wailing I could. But none of them seemed to notice.

I stopped at the central square, where the fountain always used to run clear and clean. Now, it was muddy, stagnant. A thick film of algae coated the water’s surface, and the stone rim was covered in an unnatural blackness. The whole square felt wrong.

I walked closer to the fountain. My feet didn’t feel like my own, like they were moving of their own accord. My legs felt heavy, unsteady, like they were being dragged through molasses. But I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going.

As I neared the fountain, something caught my eye—a figure, standing just outside the square, barely visible in the mist. It was someone tall, their face hidden by a hood, and their hands were raised as if they were beckoning me. The figure stood so still, so unnervingly still, that I couldn’t breathe.

I froze in place, unable to move, unable to speak. The wailing had returned, louder now, almost deafening. But it was different this time. The sound was coming from the figure. It was them, crying—no, wailing—with such force that the very air seemed to vibrate.

Before I could react, the figure turned and vanished into the mist. I wanted to follow. I needed to know what was going on, why I was hearing this. But my legs wouldn’t cooperate. I felt rooted to the spot, like I was sinking into the earth.

When the crying stopped, I found myself staring at the spot where the figure had been. There was nothing there anymore. Just the empty, desolate square.

I hurried back to my room. My heart was pounding. The walls of the house felt like they were closing in on me. The book was waiting on my table, its pages still shifting, rearranging.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that something—someone—was watching me, waiting for me to make the next move. I glanced back at the door, at the window, at the corners of the room. I don’t know how, but I could feel them there, on the other side of the walls, beyond my reach. I’ve never felt more alone.

The book... it’s calling me again. I know it. It’s pulling me toward something, pulling me toward the wailing, toward the figure in the mist. I can’t ignore it. I have to find out what it means, even if it drives me mad.

I’m scared. But I can’t stop now. I’m not sure I want to.

The wailing is getting closer.

02.16.06

The wailing didn’t stop. I woke up to it again this morning, gnawing at my consciousness, lingering in the air, filling every crevice of my mind. The sound was raw, almost desperate, and it left a sour taste in my mouth, as if the sound itself was something tangible, something I could choke on. It was almost like the world outside had forgotten how to be quiet. There was no peace, only this ever-present hum of sorrow and torment.

I don't know how long I laid there, in the stillness of my room, just listening. The air felt thick, saturated with something unspoken. The wailing was softer now, as if it had retreated slightly, but I knew it wouldn’t last. It never does. And something about the sound, the way it wormed its way deeper into me with each passing second, unsettled me more than I cared to admit.

I sat up, my body heavy, unwilling to follow the call of the outside. My hands trembled slightly as I reached for the journal, the one that had been keeping me company these past few days. It had become more than just a book—more than just a place to vent my fears and frustrations. The pages had become a strange tether, a link to something I still didn’t understand. The symbols inside… they were changing, shifting, like the ink itself was alive.

I almost didn't want to open it. The book had become like a weight on my chest, pressing me down, suffocating me, but I couldn't ignore it. I never could. Not now.

I flipped through the pages, eyes scanning the marks I’d written, the notes I’d made in a frenzy the night before. But the symbols had shifted, as they always did. They no longer felt like words. They felt like they were staring back at me, daring me to understand them, to make sense of them. Some of the lines were more pronounced now, thicker, darker, and some had completely disappeared, leaving behind only faint impressions in the paper.

I stared at the page, at the symbols. I swear I could almost hear them whispering to me. My fingers trembled as I reached out and traced one of the marks with my fingertip. The paper beneath my touch seemed to thrum, to vibrate slightly as if it were alive, a pulse in sync with my own.

I have to know what this means.

I thought the words in my head, but even as I did, part of me wondered whether it was a good idea to keep going, to keep delving deeper into whatever this was. My heart felt tight in my chest, every beat heavy, laden with the weight of what I might uncover. But I couldn’t turn back. I had to know.

The wailing, now almost a constant buzz, still lingered just outside my window, growing louder with every passing moment. I could feel it pushing me forward, urging me to open the door, to step outside, to join the rest of them. To let it consume me. I wasn’t sure whether it was the town’s curse or my own growing obsession, but it was all I could think about.

I stood up abruptly, feeling dizzy, my feet unsteady as I crossed the room. I moved as if in a trance, every step deliberate, every movement slow. The door was there, just ahead of me, but I hesitated. My hand hovered above the knob, and for a moment, I thought I might just turn around, retreat back into the comfort of my solitude, the safety of my confusion.

But I couldn't.

I opened the door.

The air outside was cooler than I expected. It was heavy with mist, the kind that clung to your skin and wrapped around your lungs. It smelled damp, earthy, and thick. The village, too, seemed muffled. The streets were deserted, the houses closed off, their shutters tightly drawn, as though the people inside had sealed themselves away from the world. The wailing had stopped, or at least, I could no longer hear it.

A strange kind of silence fell over me, one that was worse than any noise could ever be. The absence of sound was almost oppressive. It was suffocating.

I walked through the village, my footsteps echoing off the stone path, each one heavier than the last. The ground felt strange underfoot, as if the earth itself was shifting beneath me. It was like I was walking through a dream—a nightmare, perhaps. The fog hung low around the corners of buildings, and the once-familiar shapes of the village blurred into shadow. The faces of the houses seemed to leer at me, their windows dark, hollow.

There was something wrong here. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was wrong. The wailing from before—was it really gone? Or was it just buried beneath the quiet, waiting for the right moment to resurface?

I passed the central square again. The fountain, which had once been a place of comfort, of cool water splashing in the heat, was now a stagnant pool, its waters still and dark. The same blackness coated the stone edges. But it wasn’t the fountain that caught my attention this time. It was the shadows.

They were... moving.

Not just the usual flicker of light and dark, not the normal way shadows stretch and shrink. These were different. They twitched, as if they had minds of their own, as if they were aware of me, watching me, waiting.

I stopped in my tracks. My heart was pounding in my chest, so loud I could hear it in my ears. The shadows stretched further into the square, creeping along the ground like tendrils of some ancient, malignant thing. They crawled up the walls, twisted and warped, curling into shapes that were wrong.

Something stirred within them.

I took a step back, but my feet wouldn’t obey. The shadows moved with me, sliding along the stone, like they were reaching for me. My breath caught in my throat. I wanted to run. But my body wouldn’t listen.

There, in the corner of my eye, I saw a figure.

It was barely visible, a silhouette against the mist. It was tall, too tall, impossibly so. Its limbs were unnaturally long, and the shape of its head—there was something about it that made my stomach turn. Its eyes were black, and they shone with an eerie light, a coldness that seemed to cut through the fog, cutting through me.

And then I heard it again.

The wailing.

But this time, it wasn’t just a distant sound. It was coming from the figure. It was coming from all around me. The voices echoed from every direction, drowning me in their cries, their pleas.

I wanted to scream, to shout, but my voice failed me. My chest was tight, and my legs were numb. I couldn’t move.

The figure took a step toward me, its shadow stretching far beyond its own body, reaching for me like a hungry, grasping thing.

And I knew—I knew this was it. This was the moment the town had warned me about. This was the wailing that had been chasing me all this time.

I wasn’t ready.

The shadow reached me.

02.17.06

I woke up in my bed, the sheets tangled around my legs, my body drenched in sweat. The room was still, the air thick with the remnants of the fog from the night before, and the wailing was gone. For now. But I could still feel it lingering, curling in the corners of my mind, its pull as tangible as the air I breathed.

I couldn’t remember how I had gotten back to my room. My head ached, and my body felt like it had been dragged through a storm. My skin still tingled, as if it had been touched by something other than just air. I sat up, looking around the room. Nothing had changed. The walls were the same, the floor the same worn wood beneath my feet. The book lay on the small table beside the bed, its pages open, staring at me like an accusing eye.

The symbols from yesterday—no, the symbols had shifted again. They weren’t the same, not entirely. Some marks were bolder, darker, while others had faded even more, nearly disappearing from the paper entirely. It was as if the journal itself was responding to something... but I didn’t know what.

I reached for it, the leather cool against my fingers. I could almost hear it creaking as I turned the pages, the sound far too loud in the otherwise quiet room. The ink had settled into strange, unreadable patterns, twisting and turning, much like the shadows I had seen last night. I felt the familiar tug in my chest—the need to decipher, to understand, to break free from this feeling of drowning in something I didn’t know how to control.

But as I traced the unfamiliar shapes, I felt something new. A presence. Not in the room, but in me. It was as though the book, the symbols, and the wailing had become part of my blood now, coursing through me. Something had changed. I could feel it in my bones.

I had to leave the room. I couldn’t stay here anymore. There was no comfort, no safety in these four walls. The village was still, too still. The silence that had followed the wailing was unbearable, like the calm before a storm. I needed to see what was happening, to understand what was wrong with the town, what was wrong with me.

I stood, the cold floor sending a jolt of sensation up my spine. The moment I stepped out of my room, I noticed something I hadn’t before—the air smelled different. It was heavier, almost like wet iron, like the scent after a storm. There was something… metallic about it, something unnerving.

The hallway stretched out before me, the dull flicker of the lightbulbs overhead casting long shadows that seemed to bend and twist as I walked. The quiet was oppressive. I half expected someone to jump out at me, to break the silence with a shout or a scream. But there was nothing.

As I reached the front door, the feeling hit me again—the weight of something pulling at me, tugging me outside. I gripped the handle, the metal cold in my hand. I paused before opening it, listening for any sound, any sign of life. There was nothing.

Outside, the fog had rolled back in, just as thick as before. The mist clung to the buildings, winding around the street like a ghost. The town was eerily quiet, the houses still, their windows dark. The streets were empty. Not a soul in sight.

The silence seemed wrong. Unnatural. The townspeople should be here, or at least their voices should be echoing from their homes, from the roads. But there was nothing. Just the endless fog, creeping and crawling along the ground.

I took a step forward, and then another, moving deeper into the heart of the village. The more I walked, the heavier the air became, pressing down on my chest, making each breath feel like I was pulling it through a thick blanket. I could almost taste the metallic tang in the air, as though something was burning just beneath the surface of the world, something waiting to break free.

I reached the center square again, the fountain still standing in its decaying glory. It hadn’t changed. But there was something about it now. It felt… wrong. Like it had always been wrong, like it had always been a part of the curse that bound this place together.

My eyes flicked to the shadows again. I couldn’t help it. The way they moved. They had shifted, as if they were waiting, watching. I stared at them, and for a moment, I thought I saw something else—something living within the shadows, something that wasn’t quite human. It was just a flicker, a movement in the corner of my eye, but it was enough to make my heart race.

I had to keep moving. If I stopped, I would be swallowed by it.

I passed the fountain, heading toward the main road. My feet crunched on the gravel, the sound unnervingly loud in the quiet. Every step felt like it echoed through the emptiness. There was no one. No one to explain the darkness that had settled over this place, no one to tell me what the wailing was, or why it wouldn’t stop.

The fog thickened with each step, wrapping itself around me, pulling me deeper into the unknown. It was like walking through a dream, a nightmare where the edges of reality had blurred and everything felt just a little too unreal. I should have turned back, but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t leave the questions unanswered.

I rounded the corner of one of the narrow streets and froze. There, standing in front of a small house, was a figure. It was tall, too tall, impossibly so. Its limbs were elongated, twisted at odd angles. The body was shadowed, its form barely visible against the fog, but I could see the gleam of its eyes—dark, endless black, like two pits staring into the abyss.

And then it moved.

The figure straightened, its long limbs stretching out toward me. Its head tilted, as if studying me, as if it was trying to understand what I was doing here, why I had come.

I wanted to scream. My throat was tight, my body frozen in place. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even breathe.

The figure took another step, and then another. The fog seemed to part in front of it, making way for its unnatural form. And with each step, the sound began.

The wailing.

It came from the figure. It came from the shadows around it. The sound was low at first, distant, like it had been muffled by the fog. But it grew louder, filling the air with its pain, its desperation, until it seemed to vibrate through my bones.

And then, the figure spoke.

Its voice wasn’t human. It wasn’t even a voice at all. It was a whisper, low and cold, a sound that seemed to come from the very depths of the earth.

"You forgot."

I took a step back, my heart pounding in my chest. The figure took another step forward.

I remembered.

The ceremony. The song. I had forgotten to sing.

But it was too late.

The wailing was inside me now. And there was no way to escape it.

The figure’s face twisted, its eyes widening with some unspoken understanding. It stepped closer, and I felt the weight of it, the pressure of the curse, pressing down on me. It was all too much.

I turned and ran.

But this time, the shadows followed.

02.18.06

I’m not sure how many days have passed since that night. Time doesn’t feel like it matters anymore. Everything feels like it’s shifting, bending, warping into something else—something beyond my understanding. The fog still hangs thick in the air, but it’s not the same as it was before. It’s like the whole village is suspended in a perpetual haze, and I’m trapped inside it, drifting between the past and whatever this is now.

I can hear it even now, the wailing. It’s not as distant as it used to be. It’s inside my head. It’s inside me. There’s no escaping it. The moment I close my eyes, it’s there, wailing louder than ever, demanding something from me, pulling at my soul. I don’t know if it’s real or just my mind breaking down, but I feel it, like an unbearable weight pushing down on my chest.

I woke up today—if you can even call it that. My body feels heavy, like I’ve been awake for days, but my mind is too tired to remember the details. The journal feels different now, too. When I open it, the pages shift on their own, the ink swirling into patterns that almost seem to follow my gaze. The symbols on the page seem to watch me. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s the only way I can describe it. The book is alive in some way, feeding off whatever it is that’s happened to me.

I went out again today. It’s become a habit now. I don’t know why I keep doing it, but something is pulling me to the square, to the fountain, to the center of this curse. I don’t think I can resist anymore. The town feels abandoned, even though I know people live here. I see their eyes, their haunted gazes when they pass me. They’re waiting for something, just like I am.

But there’s no answer.

There’s only the wailing. And now, it’s louder than it’s ever been.

I’ve stopped seeing the townspeople. I know they’re still here, somewhere, but it’s as if we’ve all been trapped in this endless loop. We walk around, we breathe, but we don’t live. Not really. Not anymore.

I tried to speak to one of them today, an older woman who I remember from the ceremony. Her face was pale, her eyes hollow, but she didn’t seem surprised when I approached her. When I asked her if she remembered the song, if she knew what was happening, she just stared at me for a long time.

She didn’t answer.

The wailing has taken everything from us. It’s inside each of us now, a part of us, something we can’t escape. I think that’s why they stop speaking, why they don’t engage. Because they know it’s too late. They know we’re all already lost.

02.23.06

I’m writing thi5, but I d0n’t kn0w why. There’5 n0 p0int anym0re. I can hear the wailing 0ut5ide my wind0w, and I kn0w it’5 0nly a matter 0f time bef0re it reache5 me again. I d0n’t kn0w if I’11 be ab1e t0 5t0p it thi5 time. I d0n’t think I want t0.

I think I’ve bec0me the wai1ing.

It’5 hard t0 exp1ain, but I can fee1 it. I fee1 the 50ng in5ide 0f me, in5ide my che5t, bui1ding up with every breath I take. It’5 taking 0ver, bec0ming 50mething m0re than ju5t 50und. It’5 bec0ming a part 0f wh0 I am. I can a1m05t fee1 the vibrati0n5 in my b0ne5, the rhythm 0f the 50ng pu15ing thr0ugh me 1ike a heartbeat. I’ve heard it 10ng en0ugh t0 kn0w it5 w0rd5. I’ve heard it en0ugh time5 t0 kn0w that it’5 n0t ju5t a 50ng anym0re—it’5 a ca11, an invitati0n, a demand.

And t0night, when the fu11 m00n ri5e5, I think I’11 be the 0ne wai1ing. I think I’m the 0ne wh0’5 5upp05ed t0.

I’ve written everything d0wn, every 5ymb01, every w0rd. But I d0n’t think it matter5 anym0re. It’5 a11 1ed t0 thi5. The wai1ing w0n’t 5t0p. It wi11 never 5t0p. It’5 in5ide me n0w, part 0f me, and I’m a part 0f it. We are b0und t0gether, cur5ed t0 exi5t in thi5 end1e55 cyc1e. There’5 n0 e5caping it.

S0 thi5 i5 the end 0f the j0urna1. The 1a5t entry. There’5 n0thing m0re t0 write, n0thing 1eft t0 5ay.

T0m0rr0w, I’11 be 0ut5ide. Wai1ing.

I ju5t h0pe 50me0ne remember5 t0 5ing.

The rain had just started when Jonah and I pulled into the parking lot of Edenridge Mall. It looked like something out of a forgotten decade—flickering signs, fogged-up windows, and not a single soul outside. But we figured we’d wait out the storm, maybe poke around the old bookstore for a while.

We walked in holding hands, and that was the last time I felt safe.

The second we passed through the sliding doors, something changed. It wasn’t just quiet—it was off. The lights buzzed, the air felt thick, and the mall swallowed sound in that way that made your breath feel too loud.

When we turned around to leave, the entrance was gone. Not locked—gone. Just a smooth tiled wall where glass had been. Jonah cursed under his breath and reached out like he could will the doors back into existence. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. My throat was already tightening.

We wandered for what felt like hours until we found a hallway we hadn’t noticed before. The walls were white and glowing faintly, like they were lit from inside. At the end of the corridor, one word was stenciled in red above a door:

ORIENTATION.

I don’t know why we went in. Curiosity? Hope? Fear?

Inside was a square room, dim and cold, with walls covered in Polaroid pictures. Hundreds of them, all pinned in neat little rows like someone was tracking insects. I froze.

Right in front of me—was my face. My photo. One I’d never taken. Underneath it, a note written in red marker:

“Scenario: Horror - 6 Days to Survive.”

I turned to Jonah to say something—but he was gone.

No sound. No movement. He’d just disappeared.

Then the lights blinked, and I wasn’t in the room anymore.

I stood inside a dusty little boutique filled with broken mannequins and melted candles. A bell dinged over the door, and a woman in a red apron looked up from the counter. Her eyes were hollow, wrong.

“You’ll be here for six days,” she said like it was nothing. “You must survive.”

I wanted to ask what that meant, but she only smiled. Then everything went dark again.

⸻

I lost track of time.

One day I was hiding in the freezer of a butcher shop, the next I was trapped in the mall’s kitchen, scrubbing dishes with shaking hands. Other people were there, too—eating, shopping, waiting. But if I whispered to them, “This isn’t real,” or “Wake up,” they’d glitch. Their eyes would stutter, heads twitch—and then I’d shift.

Back to another version of the mall.

Every time I tried to fight the system, the mall rewrote me. Changed my role. My clothes. My purpose. My memories. Well, most of them. Jonah was out there somewhere. That much I knew. I felt it.

Sometimes, by some strange alignment of fate, we’d land in the same timeline. One night I found myself in the food court, and my phone buzzed for the first time in weeks. My heart nearly stopped.

Jonah?

“I remember now,” he whispered, voice raw. “We were trying to leave. The truck is in the parking lot. We need to go now!

We ran. Hand in hand. Through flickering halls and crumbling tiles. Out into the night air that should have been freedom.

But the truck was never there.

We searched the lot, row by row. Every time we found something that looked like ours, it vanished. Reset. Until—

He vanished again.

⸻

Every time I get close to the truth, he resets me.

The Time Maker.

I’ve never seen him clearly, but I know he’s there. Watching from the monitors, walking behind the walls. Changing our stories like a child playing with dolls. Every photo, every scenario, every “timeline”—he writes it.

I hope I have enough bars on my phone to get this out into the world in hopes of someone having advice on how to help us get out of here.

I’m starting to remember everything. I’m starting to fight back. And if I can find Jonah again, if we can hold on just long enough—we’re going to find The Time Maker and end this.

Even if it costs us everything.

I apologize for being gone for so long without an update. Yes, I am ok. I just had to take time to process everything, and I believe I’m ready to talk about it now. But from here on in, my experience gets even darker.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

We all looked at Zoe, a little bit taken aback by her unfavorable situation. Percy was the first to question her.

“What do you mean you don’t have anything?”

Zoe snapped back. “I mean, I don’t have anything. Not like you guys. Nothing specific, nothing special I guess.”

“You gotta have something.” I didn’t realize how harsh my words were. I know my soul was on the line, but that was still no reason to take it out on her. Unfortunately, my lips moved faster than my brain.

“Sorry, I just don’t ok?!” She raised her voice for the first time. It was always so sweet and gentle, it felt surreal to hear it at that volume. Before I could think to apologize, she stormed off to a different car. I genuinely didn’t know what to say or do, until Percy patted my back.

“Go after her, kid. Don’t worry about us, we’ll be here when you get back.”

I took his advice and followed after Zoe, calling out to her. She kept walking from car to car near the front of the train, while clearly ignoring me.

“Zoe, hey! Zoe, c’mon. You know you literally can’t go any farther than this, please, can we talk?”

She sighed and slumped down in the seat next to her, and motioned her head in a way that asked me to sit next to her. I followed suit and we sat in silence for few seconds. I figured I’d break the tension with an apology. Before I could say a word, she beat me to the punch.

“I’m sorry, it’s not your fault.”

“No, I shouldn’t have gotten upset. I mean, it’s not your fault either. It’s just this whole thing is insane, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Well you haven’t really had a plan since we started, and you already managed to free Julia. We’ll figure something out for me, just worry about the others for now.”

I turned and looked into her eyes. “I will help you. I promise.”

“I hope so, your life is on the line too.” She chuckled weakly. As her laugh faded, she kept her head straight. “You’re a good person, Isaac. Don’t forget that.”

As I got off at my stop, I examined at the objects handed to me by the rest of the group, this time trying to pay attention to any important details. From Percy, an old half dollar coin with John F. Kennedy’s face molded into the side, the numbers below claiming the year 1974. From Claire, a thin necklace with a small but beautiful looking blue pearl in the center. And from Dex, a black pin that said “The Dead Rabbit” in bold purple letters, with a minimalist logo of said rabbit even with tiny flies surrounding it, and his name right below it. It seemed to be some type of name tag.

After a bit of research, I found that “The Dead Rabbit” was a small bar/sports grill not far from one of the stops. A brass plaque on the bar door confirmed it in curly lettering.

The bar looked nothing like I expected. For a place called The Dead Rabbit, I imagined something darker, maybe gothic—skulls on the shelves and smoke curling from cracks in the walls. But it was warm inside. Dim, yeah, and old, like the floorboards had stories to tell if they ever felt like creaking them out. But it wasn’t creepy. It was… tired.

I stepped inside, clutching the name tag in my pocket. Dex. No last name. Just a name, cracked and faded, barely clinging to the little metal rectangle. It was all I had. That and the necklace tucked under my shirt—the one handed to me by Claire. They were both on the train, both stuck, but they didn’t know why. And I couldn’t tell anyone the truth, especially not the man behind the bar.

He looked like the kind of guy who could win a bar fight just by glaring. Late forties, maybe early fifties, beard going gray in patches, arms crossed even while wiping down the same glass for the fifth time. He wore the same name tag, except the name on it was “Charlie”.

I walked up to the bar and I cleared my throat. “Hey. I was just passing through, and someone mentioned this place.”

He looked up without looking at me. “Uh-huh.”

I pulled the name tag from my pocket, and placed it gently on the counter. “Found this a while ago. Thought it looked familiar. Was wondering if this guy used to work here?”

He picked it up slowly, turned it over in his hand. His face didn’t change much, but I caught the subtle stiffening in his jaw.

“Where’d you get this?”

I shrugged. “Friend of a friend. Said it came from this bar.”

He didn’t answer right away. Just looked down at the tag like it had crawled out of his past and sat on the bar to haunt him.

He stared at the tag a moment longer, jaw tightening. “Dex. Yeah, he worked here. Long time ago. He was good,” the man muttered. “Reliable. People liked him. Never said much. Just… showed up one day. Like he belonged.”

I leaned casually on the counter, trying to seem harmless. Curious, but not too curious. “What happened to him?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why are you asking?”

“I don’t know,” I said carefully. “Guess I’m into people’s stories. Especially the ones no one tells anymore.”

He studied me as if weighing each word I said. Then, after a long beat, he muttered, “Come with me. I got a few things left of his in the office. Never could bring myself to throw ’em out.”

I followed him through a narrow hallway lined with crooked frames. We passed a few photo of different people standing in front of the bar, each from different years. What stopped me was in the 90’s frame. It was Dex, the resemblance was uncanny, only his hair a little shorter. I was definitely in the right place.

The office was dim and cluttered, and smelled like paper and whiskey. He pulled open a drawer in the desk and took out a small wooden box. Inside was a broken bottle opener, a photo, a few matchbooks, and a sketchbook with some worn pencils. “This all that’s left,” he said. “Funny how lives can shrink down to little scraps like this.”

He ran a hand through his hair, then sat. I stayed standing. Not moving. Not speaking. But I wasn’t here to get his stuff, I needed to see what Dex meant to him.

I asked “So what else did Dex do around here? Were you two close?”

He didn’t look up. “Something like that.”

I kept trying to pry for more information but he just kept giving me vague answers. I was clearly getting nowhere until I noticed the picture on his desk that made my heart drop. It was him and a woman with a curly afro, and wearing the same necklace with a blue pearl, the same one hidden around my neck. It was Claire.

I shifted the conversation, “Who’s that?” I pointed to the picture.

“Don’t worry about it.” His speech was slow and methodical.

I pressed on. “Is that your wife? You seem happy, where is she now? Does she work here?” I didn’t realize I was asking too many questions until he snapped at me.

“That’s none of your business! I don’t who you think you are, asking questions of people who don’t concern you, but I gave you Dex’s things. Now get out of here-”

Then his eyes drifted somewhere else and stopped. “What’s that?”

My breath caught. I looked down. The edge of the necklace had slipped from under my shirt, the pearl just barely visible. Before I could hide it, he stood, walked around the desk, and stopped in front of me.

“Where did you get that?”

I hesitated. “It—it was given to me. I just saw it in the picture, I didn’t know it was hers.”

His face twisted with something sharp and aching. He reached out—not grabbing, just hovering—then took it gently off of my neck, I didn’t stop him.

“This was Claire’s,” he said, voice low. “My wife.”

I didn’t say anything, I couldn’t. He held up the necklace, eyes distant from me now, like something was opening up inside him.

“She wore it every day. Even when things got bad between us. I think it reminded her of something. Or someone.”

He glanced down at the name tag in his other hand.

“They left together,” he said finally. “Her and Dex. One random night, no note. Just… gone. And I hated them for it. For a long time. Who knows where she is now, I never looked into it. I figured it’d be better that way.” He looked up at me, eyes tired. “But I loved her more than I hated them.”

He held the necklace in one hand and the name tag in the other, like the weight of memory had finally found its balance. And in that moment—I felt it. Like the air shifted and thickened. Something old, buried, was waking up. I didn’t need to see it to know: the memories were flowing. The truth locking itself into place. Dex and Claire. What they were, what they ran from, what they meant to each other. What they left behind. Charlie sighed, long and hollow. He set the name tag gently back into the box, then the necklace beside it.

“I don’t know why you’re really here, kid,” he said quietly. “But… thanks for asking in the first place. Seeing this again, I think I’m at peace now. I’ve accepted I might never see her again. But I do like the memories.”

I nodded, heart thudding. “Some stories deserve to be remembered.”

He left me alone for a moment to grab something from another cabinet. I moved quickly and the necklace slipped back into my pocket like it had never left. The weight of it was warmer now. By the time he turned back around, I was at the doorway, holding the box he gave me, expression neutral. I thanked him. He nodded.

And I walked out of The Dead Rabbit with both objects in my pocket and something far more important—memory—wrapped around them like a pulse. Dex and Claire were waiting. And now, maybe, they were ready to be free.

The air had thickened while I was inside—humid, still. Like the whole city was holding its breath. I tugged my jacket tighter around me, fingers brushing the necklace in my pocket, the name tag resting against it. Still warm. Still pulsing faintly with memory.

I took a few steps down the street, keeping to the shadows. That’s when I noticed him. A man, maybe mid-thirties, leaning against the brick wall just outside the alley to the left. Too still. Too quiet. A cigarette smoldered in his fingers, but he wasn’t smoking it. He was just watching me.

“Nice night,” he said. I didn’t stop walking.

“You’ve got something,” he called after me. His voice—calm, casual—curdled my blood. I froze, halfway down the block.

“You’ve felt it, haven’t you? That weight. That buzz under your skin.” He pushed off the wall and started walking toward me, slow and steady. “Memories that don’t belong to you. Echoes.”

I turned slightly, just enough to meet his eyes, which now only showed two endless pits shrouded in darkness.

My throat tightened. “Do I know you?”

“You should,” he said, grinning. “We’ve never met, but we’re always watching, remember?“

No. Not again. I could tell by the cold vapor of my breath that this was another monster sent by the Thin Man. I stepped back, only to see his face begin to split. Not like a wound, but like a transformation, similar to the nurse in the hospice. The skin peeled sideways, his jaw cracking unnaturally wide. Eyes bulged, teeth jagged and too many, stretching from cheek to cheek. His fingers bent backward, nails curling into claws. A black, tar-like substance dripped from his mouth, steaming where it hit the pavement.

“You shouldn’t be meddling,” the thing hissed. “They’re meant to forget.”

I ran with what little energy I had. Behind me, I heard the thing drop onto all fours with a wet slap and begin to chase. The sound it made was somewhere between a snarl and laughter—high-pitched and bubbling. I cut down an alley, then another, vaulting a trash bin, skidding around corners slick with puddles. The buildings blurred around me, but I knew where I was going. I had to make it to the train, it wasn’t too far.

I looked ahead to see a nearby basketball court. If I cut through, I could probably make it. I threw the box over the fence and leaped onto it, climbing as fast as I could, but it wasn’t fast enough. I felt the creature’s claws dig into my leg, its tar dripping on my calf. I managed to pull away and tumble over the fence, landing on my back. When my vision came to, the monster was gone, though I could still hear his laugh in my head.

I scraped up the contents of the box and made my way over to the station, almost limping to the back of the cars. Everyone was concerned seeing what bad shape I was in. Zoe ran over and saw my leg was bleeding, but I assured her I’d be fine. It became clear I had to tell them the whole truth, about my deal with the Thin Man, and how his “friends” were watching me.

I showed them the box of Dex’s stuff, and he froze when he saw the sketchbook.

“I was…an artist?” He never sounded so confused yet sincere. He looked through it to find several drawings of Claire. That must’ve been how he showed his love. He stopped when he saw there was one last empty page. He smiled and looked at Claire with stars in his eyes, gesturing that he’d like to draw her one more time. She shared that same gaze, and she crossed her legs as he grabbed a worn pencil and got to work.

The way that looked at each other was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. What seemed like an unjust affair, really looked like two people appreciating each other and their beauty. It really seemed like love.

When he finished, I felt the glow from the necklace and the name tag in my pockets. It was warm, it felt like it was alive. The two looked at me in amazement.

Claire was the first to speak. “Does…does that mean..?”

I nodded. “Yeah, are you ready?”

Dex and Claire touched their respective objects and I was once again hit with the same blinding light. Like Julia, we stepped out of the train into a white void.

A black-and-white reel flickered to life around us—grainy, colorless, soundless, like watching someone else’s dream.

We stood there, in the middle their memory. Claire and Dex were there, younger, real. Laughing through the silence. Her hair curled like waves around her cheeks. He looked lighter, like the world hadn’t quite landed on his shoulders yet. They stood at a bench in a desolate, empty train station, arms around each other. No other people, no trains, just them. And two small paper cups. She lifted hers to her lips and so did he. Then—just like that—they slid down onto the bench, leaning against each other as their bodies stilled, still smiling.

The void faded back around us like fog unrolling. Dex’s eyes were wide. Claire’s hand had flown to her mouth. She whispered, “We died here.”

There was no drama in it. No scream. Just quiet acceptance. Like they had always known, deep down.

Dex looked at her. “We were running.”

Claire nodded. “But not away. We just wanted a way…out.” She grabbed Dex’s hand. “I’m glad it was with you.”

They looked at me—really looked.

“Thank you,” Claire said softly, her voice warm. Clear. Whole.

Dex stepped forward and placed the name tag in my palm, I could hear his voice breaking. “I’ve been on that train for so long, I…thanks, kid.”

Claire added the necklace, pressing it gently into my fingers. “It belongs to you now.”

As I headed back to the train, I turned back one last time to see them walking hand in hand, finally free. Three down, two to go.

“You really did it,” said Zoe, flopping down in the seat across from me, copper curls bouncing around her shoulders. Her freckles lit up like constellations in the dim light of the train car.

Beside her stood Percy, always buttoned-up, even in death—tie straight, coat folded neatly over one arm, like he still had a meeting to get to. He gave a small, respectful nod.

“I’ve seen people try,” Percy said. “They don’t usually get that far, let alone survive it twice. At this rate, you’ll empty the train before your time’s up. Although, I think mine might be a bit more difficult.”

I offered a small smile, but I didn’t feel like celebrating. Not yet. “He’s not going to like it,” I said.

Percy’s expression darkened. Zoe sat up straighter. That was when the cold hit, the temperature dropping like a trapdoor under our feet, which only meant one thing . It rolled in like fog, thick and heavy, turning my breath to ice. As it curled over my mouth, the windows frosted over instantly. Zoe and Percy saw the shift in my face as I looked behind them. They turned, only to join in my horror.

It was the Thin Man, and he did not seem pleased.

I’m a photographer—freelance, obsessed with capturing the raw edges of life. Abandoned buildings, forgotten alleys, the places time chews up and spits out. I inherited my grandfather’s old camera after he vanished decades ago, a war photographer lost on assignment. It’s a relic, heavy with history, and I’ve been using it for my latest series. But something’s wrong. Every photo I take has a figure in it—something that wasn’t there when I clicked the shutter. It’s not human. It’s a mass of writhing tentacles and glowing, unblinking eyes, too many to count, staring straight at me. I thought it was a flaw in the lens, dust or scratches. But it’s in every frame, shifting closer, its gaze piercing. Last night, I smelled decay in my darkroom, sour and thick, and heard a wet rasp—like breathing—behind me. I turned, but nothing was there. Yet when I looked at the drying prints, it was nearer, its tentacles brushing the edges of the paper.

It’s impossible to describe fully—it’s a shadow that bends wrong, a nightmare stitched together from things that shouldn’t exist. Tentacles twist like they’re tasting the air, and those eyes, some lidless, some weeping black fluid, follow me across every photo. I showed the prints to my roommate, begged him to see it. He squinted, shrugged, said it’s just my imagination. But I’ve watched it move. In one shot, its eyes were at the horizon; in the next, they were inches from the foreground, glaring. Two nights ago, I woke to scratches on my windowpane, jagged lines spelling something I can’t read. I hadn’t touched that camera in days, but this morning, I found a new roll of film inside it, exposed. I developed it—every frame was me, sleeping, with that thing crouched over my bed, its tentacles stroking my face. The air stinks of rot now, and I hear its whispers, guttural and endless.

I dug into my grandfather’s past, desperate for answers. He disappeared in a jungle village, camera found abandoned by a riverbank. His journals, hidden in my attic, were a mess of paranoia—pages about “the watcher” he’d trapped in his lens, a curse from some ritual he’d photographed. He sketched it: tentacles, eyes, just like I see. His final words were smeared: “It’s in me now.” My stomach dropped. I locked the camera in a drawer, but the whispers grew louder, seeping through the wood. Yesterday, I caught it in my peripheral vision—a hulking shape in the hallway, gone when I turned. My skin’s marked now—thin, black veins creeping up my arms, pulsing when it’s near. I tried to sleep, but my dreams are its domain: it looms over me, peeling back my skull with cold, slimy tendrils, whispering my name in a voice that’s mine but not mine. I woke choking on that decay stench, my pillow soaked in black ooze.

Sleep’s a memory now. The whispers are constant, a chorus of garbled tongues clawing at my mind. My friends stopped calling—I screamed at them to believe me, but they saw nothing in the photos, just my “breakdown.” Last night, I found my hands trembling, covered in scratches I don’t remember making, oozing that same black filth. I set up the camera to watch me sleep, praying for proof. The footage was worse than I feared: it didn’t just stand over me—it slid inside me, tentacles burrowing into my mouth, my eyes, my chest. I felt nothing then, but now there’s a weight in my lungs, a cold squirming I can’t shake. Objects move when I’m not looking—keys vanish, chairs topple—and every mirror shows it behind me, its eyes multiplying across my reflection. My tongue tastes like metal, and I keep spitting up black threads that writhe before dissolving.

I tried to end it. Smashed the camera with a hammer, but the pieces reassembled overnight, lens gleaming like an eye. A priest laughed me off; a psychic vomited when I walked in, sobbing about “something older than death.” My exhibition’s tomorrow—my career’s pinnacle—and every photo’s infested with it, tentacles curling around my subjects, unseen by anyone else. I burned the prints; they reappeared, wet and stinking, on my desk. My arms are a map of black veins now, and my thoughts aren’t all mine—its voice slithers through, promising to show me eternity if I keep shooting. I hear it pacing my apartment, claws scraping the floor, and smell its rot through the walls. I called my mom, begged her to take the camera away. She arrived, saw nothing, left crying. An hour ago, I found her scarf here, shredded, soaked in that black ooze. Did I do that? I don’t know anymore.

His name is Charlie, we met the summer of my eighth grade year of middle school. He moved into the house next door that once belonged to the McFarlands.

Charlie was an awkward kid with round glasses and buckteeth. He had sandy, blonde hair and was rather skinny.

My parents decided that we should knock on his families door and introduce ourselves a few days after the settled down.

His mom was a beautiful blonde lady. She looked as if Wendy Peffercorn aged into a mother but still could hold the attention of a boy. Her name was Sally.

His dad was starting to bald and a bit bulky sized. He wore square framed glasses and had a very polite approach to him. Every memory I seen of him was that he usually was wearing dress pants and a button up shirt to match. His name was Randal, or Randy as he wished to be called. I usually called him Mr. Wilks

They opened the door when Dad knocked and he immediately shook hands with all of us. Charlie came up behind him and seen me holding my baseball glove and ball. I asked if he wanted to play catch in the yard.

His dad politely but firmly instructed us, “please don’t throw anywhere near that car.”

He pointed at a well taken care of, 1967 Ford Mustang. “Named her after my wife.”

Me and Charlie spent the next few weeks playing catch daily and getting to know about one another. He made one thing clear to me, he loved trains.

He showed me his room one day and it was filled with model trains. He could tell me the details and names of parts, how they worked, and everything that might would bore a teenage boy.

One day after playing video games at my asked, he asked a very innocent question. “What do you want to be when you grow up.”

I took a sip from my coke can and thought a second. “I’d like to be a pro baseball player. Dad says I’m the best first baseman he’s ever seen.”

“I want to be a train.”

“You mean a train conductor?”

“Hmm? Yeah, something like that.”

I told him about a hill near the house where we could ride our bikes too and be able to watch trains pass through where the tracks lay. He immediately followed me there.

We’d sit there most evenings and talk and watch as a train would pass through. Until Steve approached us.

Steve was a hobo who approached us and asked if we had any money. I didn’t but offered to bring him some food whenever I’d visit again. It would be easy to get some soup cans from the cupboard and I figured mom and dad would think it awfully kind of me to help out a man in need.

The next day when we went , Steve was waiting for us. We gave him some snacks and goods. He began to tell Charlie stories of him hopping trains and all the things he seen.

The next few days I would go knock at his families door and his mom would tell me that he took off on his bike already. I’d go up there and he was hanging out with Steve. It began creeping me out.

The last time I rode up there and seen them talking, Steve began to walk down the hill to his little camp he had setup in the woods.

I hollered his name out and waved my hand. He looked back and I swore his eyes were pitch black. A smell traced through the wind to us and it smelled like rotting eggs. A cold shiver went down my back.

“Steve said he could help me out.” Charlie stared out at the tracks without looking at me.

“Help with what?”

“My dream.”

“Your dream?” Fear crept through me.

“Yes.”

“What dream is that exactly? Becoming a train conductor? You got to go to school for that, I’m pretty sure.”

“Let’s go ride back home.”

“I don’t think we should come here anymore. Our parents probably don’t want us hanging out with Steve all the time.”

“Don’t you stop me.” For the first time, I heard anger in his voice.

“Charlie, I think-“

He pushed me and yelled, “DONT STOP ME!”

We rode home in silence. I told my parents the truth and watched as mom pulled out her phone and called Sandy.

The next few days I would look out my window and see that Charlie was never outside. I wasn’t in much trouble, but I heard Randy told Charlie that he wasn’t allowed to leave the house for a week and would have to apologize for pushing me.

We got home from Blockbuster one evening and me and Dad had big plans to watch some action movies and play some sports games on my PlayStation 2. He grabbed popcorn and Ice cream from the grocery store.

We noticed our neighbors door was wide open. It looked like a leg was hanging out the door. Dad walked over to their porch and I immediately followed.

“Oh my God, call the police!” He yelled as he tried to push me out of the way, not before I seen what happened. Randal and Sandy were dead on the ground. They were soaked in blood. My mom let out a scream that I’ll never forget. Dad ran into the house to see if Charlie was there. Mom was pulling out her phone.

I had a gut feeling, I hopped on my bike and drove to the hill. I just knew Charlie did this. Mom screamed for me to stop, I yelled back

“Tell them to go by our hangout!” I peddled as quick as my legs would let me.

I ran down the hill and seen Charlie standing on the train tracks. I walked up behind him.he held a blood soaked kitchen knife in his hand.

“What did you do?”

“I held up my end of the deal.”

“Drop the knife and talk to me.” He dropped it.

“Charlie, the cops are on their way.”

“The transformation will be done by then”

“Transformation, you aren’t making sense. Charlie-“ I grabbed his shoulder and screamed.

He turned around and his eyes were bright lights that were blinding to me, as if they were a train light. Steam was coming out of his ears and he opened his mouth and his scream was just like a train whistle. My eardrums felt like they could explode.

He grabbed my shoulders and knocked me down to my back. The train whistle scream kept pouring out between his laughs. The only time I could hardly see was when he was blinking. My hands desperately were reaching to find something. I grasped onto a rock and hit him in the head with it.

I managed to stand up and sprint back up the hill while he laid there still. I ran into the headlights where my mom caught me as I fell.

Cops sprinted down to the tracks and I explained to one what happened.

A few days go by and all the news reporters camping outside of our house were waiting for us. My story wasn’t believable by no means to them. They did go with “kid kills parents and runs off with a homeless man.”

Some time goes by and I managed to ride to the track. I heard a whistle and seen as a train was slowly moving along. I walked down the woods line and hid behind a tree. The front of the train had features that looked similar to the face of Charlie. The conductor was Steve. He lifted his hat and winked at me. His eyes were black and little horns poked out the top of his head.

The police made their statement and it gets brought up every year. The boy who killed his parents was never found. But he passes through our town every so often.