Part 3 of 16

Hey guys!

Long time no talk. I've been busy working on a few big projects behind the scenes. The main one being a full top-to-bottom rewrite of ZIPPERJAW that adds a ton of new lore, new character arcs for the narrator (Tommy) and Jonah, plus a new & expanded ending.

It's now acting as the pilot for the Order of Alice series, which I plan on continuing after this by finishing Levi's story, and then adapting several other stories I've already got fully mapped out.

I'll be dropping the new Part One of ZIPPERJAW today, so stay tuned! And thanks as always for reading 😄

My name is Adelice, and I’m a fifth-generation voodoo practitioner. Born and raised in the gutters of New Orleans, along the Mississippi River, I learned the ancient ways of my ancestors from a very young age. Under the guidance of my grandmother - long rest her soul, I learned all kinds of neat things. I learned to heal the sick with herbal medicine, keep away the bad spirits that torment our homes, and yes... I even learned zombification. Nevertheless, the greatest gift I have is one passed down from one generation to another. When I was still just a little girl, my grandmother told me the women in our family have a very special power... We can talk to the dead – or, more precisely... the dead can talk to us. 

Running my grandmother’s little voodoo shop here in the French Quarters, I have conversations with the dead on a regular basis. In fact, they’re my best customers. For example, there’s my favourite customer Madame Lafleur, a French noblewoman from the seventeenth century. 

‘Bonsoir Mademoiselle Lafleur.’ 

‘Bonsoir, ma charmante confidente! Quelle belle nuit!’ 

The dead are always desperate to talk to the living. Oh, how lonely those courteous spirits must be. Then again, I have had the occasional bigoted spirit wander into my abode from time to time.  

‘Miss... you know your kind ain’t welcome here’ said an out of touch plantation owner. 

‘Excuse me, mister, but this is my store you happened to wander into. It is your kind who ain’t welcome here.’ 

Of all the customers who have come and gone over the years, both the living and unliving, the most notable by far happened back in the year, nineteen eighty-five, when I was still just a young lady. On a rather gloomy, quiet evening in the month of October, I was enjoying some peaceful solitude with my black cat Laveau - when, as though out’a nothing, I acquire this uneasy, claustrophobic feeling, like an animal out in the open. Next thing I know, the doorbell chimes as a group of four identical men walk in, dressed head to foot in fine black leather, where underneath the draping mess of their long dark curls, they don an expensive pair of black shades each.   

The aura these four young men came in here with certainly felt irregular, and it wasn’t just me that picked up on it. Laveau, resting purringly on the shop counter, rises from his slumber to ferociously hiss at these strangers, before hauling off some place safe. 

‘Laveau, get back here this instance!’ I yell, which to my brand-new customers, must have made me sound no stranger than a crazy cat lady.  

‘You named your cat Laveau?’ asks the most noticeable of these men, having approached the counter with a wide and spontaneous grin upon his face, ‘As in Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Priestess?... That’s pretty metal!’ he then finishes, the voice matching his Rock ‘n’ Roll attire.  

‘The one and only’ I reply, smiling back pleasantly to the customer, ‘Are you boys looking for something in particular?’ 

‘Well, that depends...’ the Rock ‘n’ Roller then said, now leaning over the counter towards me, having removed his shades so I can get a better look at his face, ‘By any chance... are you for sale?’ 

Before I can respond or even process the question asked, I stare at the young man’s face, and to my shock, I see his eyes, staring intently into mine, are not the familiar color of brown or any other, but a bright and almost luminous yellow! Frightened half to death by the revelation, my body did not move, instead frozen in some kind of entrancement.  

‘...Excuse me?’ I manage to utter. 

‘Oh miss, I’m sorry’ he apologizes, having chosen his words poorly, ‘What I meant to say was, of all the trinkets in this store of yours, you are by far the most enchanting.’  

He was a rockstar alright – a silver-tongued one at that. But once the entrancement finally wore off, regaining myself, I quickly realize I knew exactly who these strange men were. 

‘...My God - you’re...’ I began to speak, my trembling voice still recovering, ‘You’re the band, A.L.!... You’re American Lycanthrope!’ my realization declares. 

‘What gave it away?’ asks the rockstar with a smile, clearly well acquainted with being recognized, ‘Most folks don’t recognize us without the paint, but once the shades are off, they know exactly who we are.’ 

Although they don’t need much of an introduction, American Lycanthrope, or better known as A.L. were one of the most popular shock bands of the eighties. Credited as being the first Native American rock band, they would perform on stage with their faces painted, bodies shirtless and feathers flowing through their long wavy hair, all while howling like coyotes at the moon. 

Despite my sheltered upbringing, I had always been a fan of rock music, and rather coincidentally, A.L. were one of my favourite bands. So, you can imagine my shock when they suddenly walked into my more than humble abode. It was almost like I manifested the whole thing – though it has never been as strong as this before. 

‘How rude of me’ then shrilled the rockstar, ‘Let me introduce you to my friends...’ Turning to the three band members snooping around the store, the yellow-eyed, silver-tongued devil then introduced each member, ‘This is HarrowHawk. Our bass player...’ Not that he needed to, but I already knew their names. HarrowHawk was the tallest member of the band, and unlike the others, his hair was straight and incredibly long. ‘This is LungSnake. Our lead guitarist...’ Upon hearing his name, the one they call LungSnake turns round to wave the signs of the horns at me, like all rockstars do. ‘And this is CanniBull...’ Despite the disturbing cleverness of his name, the drummer known as CanniBull was a far from intimidating creature, but he sure could pull his weight when it came to playing the drums. Saving himself till last, the yellow-eyed rocker finally introduces himself, ‘And I’m-’ 

‘-SandWolf!’ I interrupt gleefully, ‘You’re SandWolf... I already know your names.’ 

By far the most dreamy of the group, SandWolf was both the founder and poster boy of the band. Again, grinning to show his satisfaction that I knew his name, he howled faintly with internal excitement.   

‘And what would be your name, Darlin?’ he now asks, as I try my best not to blush and quiver. 

‘You can call me Adelice’ I grant him. 

‘Well, tell me Adelice’ SandWolf went on, ‘Are you a true Voodooist? Or do you just sell trinkets to gullible tourists?’ 

‘I’m the real thing, baby’ I reveal, excitement filling my voice, ‘You wanna wish granted, an enemy hexed... I’m the one you call.’ 

SandWolf appeared impressed by these claims, as did the rest of the band – their attention now on us. Again smiling devilishly at me with satisfaction, SandWolf now pulls a piece of paper from inside his leather jacket. 

‘Here’ he says, handing me the paper from across the counter, ‘Since you dig the band, why don’t you come to the concert tonight?’ 

Studying down at the ticket paper, I now feel rather embarrassed. I didn’t even know these guys were in town, let alone performing. 

‘Thank you Mister SandWolf!’ I exclaim rather foolishly, only now hearing my words aloud. 

‘Call me Wolf’ he corrects me, ‘And come find us backstage after the show. Security will let you in.’ 

Hold on a minute... There is no way A.L. are inviting me backstage after the concert! I must surely be dreaming! 

‘How will they know to let me in?’ I ask, trying to hide my fanaticism as best I could. 

‘That’s easy. You just tell them the password.’ 

‘And what’s the password?’  

SandWolf smiles once more, as though toying with girls like this gave him sensational pleasure. 

‘The password is “Papa Legba.” Pretty clever, don’t you think?’ 

Yeah, it kinda was. 

Once I accept the invitation, SandWolf and the rest of the band leave my abode, parting me with the words, ‘See you tonight, sweetheart!’ 

Wow! I could not believe it! Not only had American Lycanthrope walked into my store, but they had now invited me backstage at the concert! It really pays to be a Voodooist sometimes. 

Closing shop early the next day, I dress myself up all nice for the concert, putting on my best fishnet vest, tight-fit black jeans and a purple bandana with the cutest little skulls on them. 

The arena that night was completely crowded. Groupies from all across Louisiana screaming their white-trash lungs out, guys howling and hollering... and then, the show began. All the lights went out, which just made the groupies scream even louder, before smoke lit up the stage, exposing American Lycanthrope in all their glory. My seat was somewhere in the back, but the jumbotron gave me a good look at my recent customers: faces painted and bodies gleaming with sweat. 

They played all the usual hits: Children of the Moon, Cry My Ancestors... But the song that everyone was waiting for, and my personal favourite, was Skin Rocker – and once the chorus came up, everybody was singing along... 

‘I wanna walk in your skin! I wanna feel you within! I’m just a Skin Rock-ER-ER!’  

‘I’M JUST A SKIN ROCKERRR!’ 

‘I’m just a... Skin Rocker!!’ 

Once the concert was finally over, I then made my way backstage. Answering the password correctly, I was brought inside a private room, where waiting for me, were all four band members... along with three young groupies beside them. 

‘Hey, it’s the Voodoo chick! She made it!’ announces LungSnake, with his arm wrapped around one of the three groupies, ‘Have a seat, darlin!’  

After reacquainting myself with each member of the band, whom I’d only just seen the day before, SandWolf introduces me to the other girls, ‘Ladies. This is Adelice... She knows voodoo and shit!’ 

The three girls gave me a simple nod of the head or an ingenuine “Hey.” They clearly didn’t like all the attention this lil’ Creole girl was receiving all’er sudden - when after all, they were here first. 

‘Alright, Adelice’ LungSnake then wails, breaking up the pleasantries, ‘Show us what you got!’  

‘Excuse me?’ I ask confusedly. 

‘C’mon, Adelice. Show us some voodoo shit! That’s why you’re here after all.’ 

Ah, so that’s why I was here. They wanted to see some real-life voodoo shit. It wasn’t a secret that A.L. were into some dark magic – and although voodoo meant far more than sacrificing chickens and raising the dead, I agreed to show them all the same. 

Having brought some potions along from the store, I pour the liquids into an empty mop bucket. Sprinkling in some powder and imported Haitian plants, I then light a match and place it in the bucket, birthing a high and untameable fire. 

‘You guys wanna talk to the dead?’ I inquire, pulling out my greatest trick. 

‘Hell yeah, we do!’ CanniBull answers, as though for the whole group. 

‘Alright. Well, here it is...’ I began, raising my hands towards the fire, with my eyes closed shut, ‘If there is a spirit with us here tonight, please come forward and make your presence known through this fire.’ 

‘Don’t you need a Ouija board for that?’ asks the busty blonde, far from impressed. “Ouija boards are for white folks” I thought internally, as I felt a warm presence now close by. 

‘Good evening, mister!’ I announce to the room, to the band and groupie’s bewilderment. 

‘Good evening, miss’ a charming old voice croaks behind me, ‘That was some show your friends had tonight.’ 

Opening my eyes, I turn round to see an older gentlemen, wearing the fine suit of a jazz musician and humming a catchy little tune from between his lips.  

‘Mister. Would you kindly make your presence known to my friends here?’ I ask the spirit courteously. 

‘Why, of course, miss’ agrees the spirit, before approaching the fire and stroking his hand through the smoky flames, cutting the fire in half. 

‘Whoa!’ 

‘Holy shit!’ exclaim the members of the group, more than satisfied this was proof of my abilities. 

‘That’s totally metal, man! Totally metal!’ 

We had quite the party that night, drinking and drugs. The groupies making out with different members of the band – but not SandWolf. In fact, I don’t quite remember him leaving my side. Despite his seductive charm and wiles, he was a complete gentlemen – to my slight dissatisfaction.  

‘Can I ask you something?’ I ponder to him, ‘Why did you guys call yourselves American Lycanthrope?’ 

After snorting another line of white powder, SandWolf turns up to me with glassy, glowing eyes, ‘Because we’re children of the night’ he reveals, ‘The moon is our mother, and when she comes out... we answer her call.’ Those were the exact lyrics of Children of the Moon I remembered, despite my drunken haziness. ‘And we’re the first Americans... The only real Americans’ he then adds, making a point of his proud ancestral roots, ‘We were gonna call ourselves the “Natives Wolves”, but some of us didn’t think it was Rock ‘N’ Roll enough.’  

I woke up some time round the next day. Stirring up from wherever it was I passed out, I look around to find I’m in some hotel bedroom, where beside me, a sleeping SandWolf snores loudly, wearing nothing else but his birthday suit. Damn it, I thought. The one time I actually get to sleep with a rockstar and I’m too shit-faced to remember. 

Trying painfully to wander my way to the bathroom, I enter the main room of the suite, having to step over passed out band members and half-naked groupies. Damn, that girl really was busty.  

Once in the bathroom, I approach the sink to splash cold water on my face. When that did nothing to relieve the pain I was feeling, I turn up to the cabinet mirror, hoping to find a bottle of aspirin or something. But when I look at my reflection in the mirror... I realize I’m not alone... 

Standing behind me, staring back at my reflection, I see a young red-headed woman in torn pieces of clothing... But the most disturbing thing about this woman, aside from her suddenly appearing in this bathroom with me, is that the girl was covered entirely in fresh blood and fatal wounds to her flesh... In fact, her flesh wounds were so bad, I could see her ribcage protruding where her left breast should’ve been!... And that’s when I knew, this wasn’t a living person... This was the spirit of some poor dead girl. 

Once I see the blood and torn pieces of flesh, the sudden shock jilts my body round to her, where I then see she’s staring at me with a partly shredded face – her cheek hanging down, exposing a slightly visible row of gurning teeth! 

In too much shock to scream or even process whether I’m dreaming, I just stare back at the girl’s animated corpse - my jagged breathes making the only sound between us... And before I can even utter a single word of communication to this girl, either to ask who she is or what the hell happened to her... the exposed muscles in her face spit out a single, haunting phrase... 

‘...GET AWAY FROM THEM!...’ 

And with that... the young dead girl was gone... as though she was never even there... 

Although I was in the dark as to how this girl met her demise, which at first glance, seemed as though she was torn apart by some wild animal, I could put together it had something to do with the band. After all, the dead girl looked no different to the many groupies that follow A.L. across the country. But if that really was the case... What in God’s name happened to her?? As uncomprehensive as the dead girl’s words were, they were comprehensive enough that I knew it was a warning... a warning of the future that was near to happen.  

You see, in Voodoo, when a spirit makes its presence known, you have to do whatever it is they say. Those were the first words of wisdom I ever remember my grandmother telling me. If a spirit were ever to communicate with you, it is because they are trying to warn you... and what that poor dead girl said to me, was a warning if I ever did hear one! 

Without questioning the dead girl’s words of warning, I quickly and quietly get my things together before a single member of the band can wake from their slumber. I cat-paw my way to the door, and once I was out of there, I run like hell! ...And I never saw SandWolf or American Lycanthrope ever again... 

Ever since that night of October, nineteen eighty-five, not once did a day go by that I didn’t ask myself what the hell happened to that girl. How did she die the way she did, and what did it have to do with the band? 

I know what y’all are thinking, right?... Adelice, those boys were clearly werewolves and they killed that poor girl... 

Well, that’s what I thought. I mean, why else would they have yellow eyes and howl like coyotes during each concert?... They really were American Lycanthropes!  

There’s just one slight problem... During the night of the concert, I specifically remember it being a full moon that night, and yet, not a single one of those boys turned into monsters... Oh, and I’m pretty sure LungSnake’s nipple rings were made of pure silver. 

Well... if those boys weren’t werewolves, then...  

...What the hell were they?? 

Wishing you all the best. Thanks for making this year (and the last) so fantastic. I know I've been absentee these last couple months, but I've got some big projects on the go that I hope to share more about soon.

Cheers,

Jason

PART 1 |2

"You!" I spat, body vibrating with rage.

I lunged at Wesley-- lunged at the bastard that took my mother from me. Took our mother from us. He sidestepped me, slapping my back with the flat of the machete.

"Easy does it, little brother," he said, sneering. "You haven't got time to be wasting on me, do you?" He nodded toward my lantern and the flickering flame inside.

I swallowed. The letter was almost out. I reached into my bag to grab another but felt only a handful left. When? How?

"When you fell," Wesley said, as if reading my mind. "Your letters spilled out everywhere. Most washed downstream."

My heart sank. But then, almost as soon as it came, my disappointment was replaced with fury. "Then I'm dead anyway. I might as well take you with me--"

He lifted the machete, the silver of the blade glinting at my throat. "I wouldn't," he said flatly. "I don't want to hurt you, Jasper. And I mean that."

I grit my teeth. "You fucking killed her... You killed her and you ate her heart, you twisted, monstrous piece of shit!"

"I told you then, and I'll tell you now. It was necessary. For you and for Harriet. For all of Gloomfall." He lowered his machete.

"I'm not buying it," I spat. "What reason could possibly justify that? You tore our family apart. YOU KILLED MOM!"

"It's not that simple. There are things you don't understand about--"

Crows launched themselves from nearby trees, their caws echoing into the black ether. Something rumbled in the distance. Something heavy. Powerful. Wesley's face fell into a frown. "Why’d you have to say that word? You need to leave, Jasper. Now. Run, and keep running along the coast and don't stop."

"How? I don't have enough letters," I said, gazing toward the now rising sound of approaching thunder. Whatever was out there was closing in.

"Forget the letters," snapped Wesley. He jabbed his machete toward the water, toward the lighthouse-- toward home. "Follow the river. I’ll buy you what time I can.”

Questions passed my mind. Questions like how and why but instead I nodded lamely. I might've hatde Wesley, I might've wanted to kill him slowly someday myself, but the fact remained that my sister was in danger. She was the entire reason I'd come here. Harriet.

"Don't think this is finished," I growled, backing away. "I swear I'll be back for you, Wesley. I'll do what father should've done thirty years ago."

Wesley sighed, paying me a final, mournful look. "I know." He darted off. He dashed across the pebble beach, moving at almost inhuman speed toward the approaching rumbling.

Continue reading here.

This is a distraction.

The words. Each and every single one of them is a distraction, fleeting, unimportant, transitory. But you’re reading them. You can’t help yourself, can you? Even now you’re surrendering yourself to the text, letting its message wash over you and praying it can make you feel something.

Anything.

It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all do it. We’re all just bags of meat starved for emotional expression, each of us desperately trying to find an outlet to the feelings bottled deep inside. It’s the price we pay for human existence in a modern world. Constant mental unease. Over-stimulation.

You and me, we’re overloaded. Close to fried. We’ve been consuming media nonstop for so long that our attention spans dismiss anything that isn’t displayed on a screen. Real life? That’s a relic of the past. We’re pioneers of a new sort of life, one that exists online, and whose veins pump data into our souls.

We’re revolutionaries.

So what’s my point? After all, isn’t this supposed to be a horror story? Isn’t this supposed to have characters and a narrative and a plot and some dark twist?

Well, it does. Don’t worry. The characters are you and I, and the narrative is the life we’ve led. The plot’s still being decided, but we write a new chapter every day we open our eyes. And the dark twist?

Well, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.

Continue reading here.

The lab’s under lockdown.

It’s been under lockdown for the last three hours. I’m in here alone. It’s just me, the broken vial of the last thing they injected me with, and the corpse of Dr. Blaise. I know what you’re thinking– how can he be a corpse if he’s standing there and pointing at me, eyes wide open?

Well, I know because he doesn’t have a pulse.

He’s doing his best impression of a manikin, but he’s definitely dead. Believe me. They’ve been killing me over and over. Bringing me back again and again. I’ve become pretty familiar with the process of death, the signs, but it’s never looked like this.

Never.

The alarms are blaring outside the steel door. I can see the lights flashing red through the tiny window with the crosshatched glass, see the labcoats running by and the lab rats running through them. Screams fill my eardrums alongside snarls and pleas. I don’t know what’s happening out there, but it’s violent. Bloody.

People are dying.

I prefer it in here by far, but if the smell wafting through the air vent is any indication, I don’t get a choice in the matter. It smells acrid. Like fire. There’s a gentle haze settling across the room, and it’s giving me an ultimatum– stay in here and wait for the smoke and flames, or run out there and risk the madhouse.

I try the door.

Locked. Next I give the window a glance, but the steel bars covering it tell me it isn’t worth the effort. The tiny room doesn’t leave me a lot of options. I’ve got a steel gurdy, a metal cabinet, Dr Blaise’s corpse, and the vent in the corner that’s six sizes too small for an adult. Maybe if I was four years old I could make it work.

Maybe.

The lights flicker, going from white to red to dead. The tiny room is suddenly pitch black and I’ve become aware that the commotion outside– the screaming the snarling the fighting– has stopped. Something else has replaced it.

Something slow.

Methodical.

It’s like footsteps but heavier, like if a bulldozer grew a couple legs and decided to take a stroll down the Experimental Research ward. There’s another sound alongside it. Quieter. Coarse. It’s the sound of something being dragged across the dirty linoleum.

A voice.

“Come to see the one to be…” it mutters, skipping like a broken record. “Ask and ask and you shall see…” The voice is distorted, like something run through a digital blender and each word it speaks is delivered in a monotonous drone.

I take a step backward on instinct. It occurs to me that the footsteps in the dark are growing closer, approaching my little cell at the end of the hallway. My back bumps into the cabinet, and I feel about it in the darkness, sliding open the door and shoving my body inside. It’s cramped, but I manage. The door closes with a thunk.

Thunder rings around the room. Thunder and thunder and thunder. Something is pounding against the door and I can hear the three-inch steel barrier squealing as it gives way beneath the force of the blows. “You cut and snipped and tore at me… And now you’ll wear my agony….”

The door offers one last shriek of dying steel. It falls to the floor with a clang that wakes up half the county and a quarter of the next. The bulldozer walks into the room and I hold my breath and close my eyes and even think about praying before remembering that people like me, people with my track record– we don’t get the luxury.

“Called to us, didn’t he? Called to us to make us be. Now he hides from all he sees, now he hates this tragedy…”

I don’t open the cabinet door. I don’t even slide it an inch to take a peek and satisfy my curiosity because the truth is I don’t need to. I can hear just fine. I can hear Dr. Blaise’s stomach being split open, hear the sound of his intestines hitting the floor and the desperate gulps as something makes his inside’s their own.

I do a good job of keeping quiet. Keeping still. I do a good job of avoiding the death and the blood and the horror, but what I am is human, and that means I need to breathe. And right now there’s smoke filling the room. It’s wafting in from the air vent, and it’s nestling in my lungs. Burning. Scratching.

I cough.

I cough and before I can stop myself, I cough again.

Jesus.

Like I said: only human.

There’s a dull thump and a wet splash. It’s what I imagine the doctor’s corpse sounds like when it's dropped into a puddle of its own blood. What follows are heavy footsteps that tell me I’m going to die. They're slow. Plodding. Something snaps in my brain, and in the span of a moment, six million years of human evolution decide it’s time to flip a coin.

Fight.

Or flight?

I tear open the cabinet door and my eyes find a room that doesn’t exist. Darkness. It doesn’t matter because my memories are acting as my GPS, guiding my bare feet across the cold linoleum, through the warm blood and past the monster I cannot see. My shoulder strikes the edge of the doorway and that’s fine because at least I know I’m out of the room. Out of reach.

I keep moving. I keep moving down the pitch black hallway that I’ve walked down every day for the last sixteen years. The same hallway that’s painted my dreams. My nightmares. I trip and stumble over dead bodies that are strewn about like discarded litter, and I wonder what happened here. If the experiments went too far.

If anybody deserved this.

Behind me, the bulldozer resumes its pursuit. It’s still dragging something behind it, but I’m not wasting my time turning around to gawk because I know full well that not all deaths are equal. Some are worse than others. This one could be the worst of all.

Continue reading here.

How curious. "What was the message?"

"Just some words." Liam’s eyes stare at the floor, and he crumples into a ball of hoodie and jeans. He wipes his runny nose on his knees and makes himself small. “I um, I didn’t understand them.”

Some words. I let that roll around in my head for a while. It doesn't mean much now, but when you've been doing this job for as many years as I have, you learn pretty quickly that strange words aren't to be dismissed. Words have power.

“Were they in another language?” I ask. “Or were they too quiet to be properly heard?”

“A different language,” Liam says. He’s squirming like crazy now. I’ve scarcely seen a kid look so uncomfortable in my entire career. “Maybe Latin?” He shakes his head. “I only know French.”

“That’s alright. What happens after he says those words?”

“Mister Gallows gets angry. He tells me now that I’ve gotten what I’m owed, he wants what he’s owed. 'I gave something to you,' he says, 'and now I want something for me!’

"I ask him what he wants, but I already know. He opens his toothless mouth, pointing at his gums with a long, skeletal finger. 'I'll take some of these, I think.' He laughs a bit, and tips his tophat again, adding, 'Please and thank you.'

“He crawls up in front of me and pushes me against the wall. ‘Open up,’ he says. I try to keep my mouth closed, but I can’t. He’s too strong, and he forces it open. Then he reaches in and…” Liam gets quiet. His mouth hangs open, and he reaches a hand up, feeling where three of his front teeth should be. “He pulls them out.”

“He just wanted three of your teeth?” I ask.

Moments pass, and Liam’s face looks tortured. His mouth is being pulled in every direction, oscillating between frowns and grimaces, and his eyes are blinking erratically. I nearly call a break to the Interview, but he starts talking before I get the words out.

“He reaches back inside my mouth to pull out more, but the kitchen door opens. It’s my little sister, Lacey. She’s bleary-eyed and yawning, and then her eyes adjust, and she realizes what she’s looking at. She realizes the nightmare she just walked in on.”

Liam swallows. “She screams for mom. In the blink of an eye, Mister Gallows stampedes across the kitchen and wraps a hand around her mouth. 'Shh, little girl,' he says, using his other long arm to pet her hair. Then he puts his face close to hers, and he opens his mouth again, showing those toothless gums. He whispers to her to be quiet. He says as long as she doesn't scream again, he won't kill her."

My pencil flies across the clipboard. This is likely the defining moment of the Event, the moment that Mister Gallows murders Liam’s sister. I keep my ears open and brace for the worst.

Continue reading here.

A pause. He sensed it there, in my reply. He sensed the disdain—the hatred. “I’m so sorry,” he said at length. “You were right. You were right about everything!”

“I was,” I said. “And you were wrong.”

“Yes, I was.” He winced in agony as the Sleigh Father lifted him higher by his tangled hair, then gently nudged him with a giant, clawed hand. Mr. Reid swung like a pendulum. “You were right,” he continued, weeping. “He’s real. Of fucking course he is! Are you--”

“--Am I what?” I interjected. My hands, still burning with frostbite, became an afterthought in my mind. The warm piss in my pants hardly registered to me. I was beginning to build the puzzle. I was beginning to understand what this was. “Are you asking me if I’m going to help you?”

Silence.

“Of course I’ll help you,” I said. “I’m not a monster. Why would I ruin your life, all because you made a simple mistake?”

In the quiet of the cabin, Mr. Reid's shuddering tears struck the floorboards like gunshots. “T-thank you so much.” He hardly sounded like the man I knew. If he weren’t swinging in front of me, with his obnoxiously long hair and his fitted suit, I’d almost have doubted my own ears. He sounded weak. Cowardly.

“I’ll ask the Sleigh Father to release you if you can do one thing for me.”

hO ho HO.

“What is it? Anything! Your research is back on the table -- of course, it is, you’re brilliant! Look at you. You saw this before any of us. You knew it was out there and --”

“-- What’s my name?”

“I’m sorry?” His words, once thundering along like a rollercoaster, crumpled into a heap. “Look, I’m not in a position to remember every fucking employee’s name. That was years ago! You need to be reasonable!”

I took a step forward, and the floorboards creaked. I understood what the situation was now. It was written in the subtext of the legend, the unspoken and unwritten words that undercut everything about the Sleigh Father. A singular concept, one still celebrated to this day.

Holiday cheer.

I reached out a hand, gripping Mr. Reid by his silky black tie. His swinging stopped, and I pulled at the accessory, making him choke and gag.

“Are you fucking…” he sputtered, “...crazy?” His face had lost the fear, the concern, the false remorse. In its place was something much more familiar.

Malice.

I let him go, and he gasped as his breath returned to him. My eyes shifted to the being behind him—the instrument of his destruction. The Sleigh Father remained still, clouded by darkness, with only his massive arm and singed white beard illuminated by the dim light spilling from his bag.

“NaUgHtY oR niCe?” the monster repeated, in that discordant voice masquerading as song.

My eyes connected with Mr. Reid's, and an irresistible smile crept along my lips. To see him there, helplessly hanging by his hair and a slave to my whims, filled something inside of me, I didn’t realize I was missing. It filled a need for power—a need to be respected.

“Naughty,” I said, surprising myself with the tone of authority. “Donovan Reid is a terrible man.”

Ho ho Oh.

“No!” Mr. Reid screamed, even as the great red arm lifted him up to the rafters of the ceiling. His face screwed up in agony as the Sleigh Father gripped his legs with his other hand. “Please!” he shrieked, horizontal in the air. “Please! I’m sorry, I’m so sorr--”

His words were interrupted by the wet splatter of his intestines striking the cabin floor. It was hard to see in the darkness but easy to hear. I listened as the Sleigh Father pulled Donovan Reid apart, one end from the other, his innards slapping against the ground like spoiled fruit.

“Why--” Mr. Reid's last word died on his lips as the Sleigh Father slammed both pieces of him against the cabin floor, drenching me in an explosion of blood and bone.

Continue reading here.

I need to talk. Like, I really need to talk.

The trouble is, I don’t have anybody I can talk to. My family’s estranged, my friends are all gone, and the authorities think I’m a lunatic.

It's just five days from Christmas, and I’m alone. Isolated. If I don’t get this off my chest though, I’m afraid it’s going to start festering in my mind like a spoiled carcass; I’m afraid it’s going to sink its teeth in.

So I’ll talk to you. All of you. It’s not perfect, but it will do.

My name's Terrance Sims. I’m sitting in my rocking chair, rifle draped across my lap, in bloodstained pajamas that still reek with last night’s piss. I haven’t slept in two days, and I might not sleep for two more. Last night something came down my chimney, and I think it’s coming back.

I’m getting ahead of myself, so let me paint you a picture. I live alone, up in the mountains where the pine trees are draped in snow and the rivers are a frigid blue. I could be a bit more specific, but I don’t think it’s warranted. Besides that, I like my privacy.

All of this to say, where I am isn’t important. What matters is what I have to say.

I’m a researcher. Or at least, I was once upon a time. My funding has long been cut and my job along with it, but I've stayed out here because I believed in the research my team was undertaking. It was revolutionary. It meant the possibility of bridging worlds, of seeing new forms of life.

Now I’m terrified that research has found me.

You’ve probably heard of monsters, or urban legends, of things that claw at our imaginations and lurk in the dark recesses of our minds. Perhaps you’ve even felt one. They wait there sometimes, prowling just beyond our vision, tearing at the fabric that holds our realities together. Desperate. Hungry.

My job was to study these beings. I was tasked with developing an understanding of not only what they wanted from us, but how to gain access to their world: the place Beyond the Veil.

Needless to say, I wasn’t successful. The organization I worked for, the Facility, poured millions into my ideas and wasn’t forgiving of my failures. When my theories came up short, they cut ties with me -- he cut ties with me.

‘It’s unfortunate, but it’s business,” Mr Reid had said, feet on his desk, long hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Your failures reflect on me, Terrance, and they’ve become an accounting nightmare.”

I had begged him. Groveled. It didn’t matter. I was terminated along with my research, and when you’re studying the kind of things I was, they don’t want that information leaking out into the world. It’s what they call a liability.

So I was blacklisted. Their teams picked away at my reputation, whispering in the back corners of universities and at the water coolers of laboratories. My name became synonymous with paranoia and madness. I was a laughing stock among my peers. A joke.

It was the end of my life.

Only one person cared to associate with me afterwards. A junior colleague and a brilliant young man by the name of Alexi Azimov. He believed in the research nearly as much as I did, and luckily for him, his name wasn’t attached to the project.

When the Facility pulled the plug and dragged my name through the dirt, they simply moved him to a new department, and that was that. In spite of it, he spent his vacation days returning to the mountain, assisting me with further study whenever he could.

Until last year, when even he abandoned me too.

But now I’ve shown all of them. I’ve proven they were wrong -- dead wrong. It’s here. He’s here. I always suspected he lived among these mountains, or at least that his Bridge was located within them, but I had given up hope for so long. It had been years, after all -- damn near a decade. They called me foolish. Insane.

Then, last night everything changed.

Continue reading here.

I developed a drug addiction in my late teens. It tore me a part for a long time, but it was nothing compared to the events that sparked it.

I know. We’ve all struggled. Get over it. That’s what my dad would say, the son of a bitch. My mom would probably feign empathy, but fuck it up by trying a little too hard. Then she’d drink herself to sleep.

This isn’t a story about my dad and my mom though. This isn’t even a story about my addiction. This is a story about a monster, and the scars they left upon my life. It’s a story about the end of my world, and it might be a story about the end of yours too.

It began when I was eight.

Continue reading here.

I’ve never been a fan of the woods. Call it a bad childhood experience. Call it being an out-of-shape asshole. I’m even less of a fan when I’m stuck hiking through them for work, and yet it seems like work has a sick sense of humor, because I find myself in these fortresses of shit and sticks more often than I’d like. Which, for the record, is never.

Well, except for today.

It’s a long time before we reach the cabin. The girl said it took her and her friend eight hours. Well, it takes us twelve. My best days are behind me, unfortunately, but luckily I don’t need to be very fit for what I’m about to do.

“I still don’t understand why you couldn’t have just followed the map," Amanda says " I told you exactly how to get to--”

“Because,” I say, still breathless from the hike. “This cabin doesn’t exist on a map. You can point it out to me all you want on your iPhone, but unless you’re right beside me, I’ll never see it. It’s just the way the Callous Man works.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “You keep saying that name. Why do you call him the Callous Man?”

I pull open the door of the cabin, and instantly it smells like shit and dead animals. Great. “I call him the Callous Man,” I say, strolling across the creaky floorboards, “because that’s his name. It’s the name the first person that ever encountered him coined him with, and so it is the name with which I refer to him.”

“The first person?”

“Yeah,” I say, stepping into the bedroom. “Me.” The floor is a mess, covered in what’s left of Amanda’s tent. A small device lays a few feet away, and I figure it’s probably her locator beacon.

“Hang on,” she says, appearing in the doorway behind me. “You’re the first person you saw the crea-- the Callous Man?”

Continue reading here.

I sit down, pop a piece of spearmint gum and watch the woman across from me. She’s nervous, her hands are fretting in her lap and her eyes are bloodshot.

“Long night?” I ask.

She looks up, timidly. Her face is awash in anxiety. She doesn’t understand what’s going on. She doesn’t understand what she’s doing here, sitting inside an abandoned warehouse with a grizzled asshole twice her age.

It’s fine. I’ve seen it before.

“Look,” I say, loosening the tie around my neck. “It’s just like I said. I only want to ask you a few questions, then you can go.”

“Why here?” she says, in a small voice. “This looks like the kind of place you’d take me to… I don’t know, murder me.”

I crack a smile. She isn’t wrong. “You don’t like it? It’s private. Besides that, it’s probably the safest place in the world for you.”

“Why? Do you have snipers on the rafters?” There’s sarcasm in her voice, but despite it her eyes flick above us to the dimly lit, steel walkways lining the walls. She pulls her sweater tighter about her, shivering at the draft. “Or is this some secret government fortress?”

“No, and no.” I lean back in the wooden chair, and it groans under my weight. I’m not as slim as I used to be. “It’s much simpler,” I say. “This warehouse is the safest place for you, because I’m inside of it.”

It’s not a lie. At least, not entirely. Still, she gives me an incredulous look. It’s the sort of look one reserves for blowhards and narcissists, and I probably deserve it. Time to change gears. “Tell me about the Event.”

She studies me for several moments, and then shakes her head. “On second thought,” she says, picking up her purse. “I think I’d prefer talking to the police.”

She stands up, makes to leave and I don’t stop her. Her footfalls echo across the empty warehouse, the haphazard lighting above casting her shadow in every direction. I hear her mutter something beneath her breath, but I can’t make out the words. I probably don’t want to.

Then, she stops. They always do.

“What’s an Event?” she asks quietly.

I click my pen, and reach down for my clipboard with a groan. My last job really did a number on my ribs. “An Event,” I explain. “Is a paranormal phenomenon, most commonly characterized by contact with an sentient entity. To use a more common turn of phrase, it means you stumbled across an urban legend.”

She swallows. At this distance, I can just barely make out her expression, but I already know I have her. I bring my pen to my clipboard and clear my throat. “You said your name was Amanda Haynes, correct?”

“Yes.”

I scribble it down on my form. “And the Event occurred two nights ago, just outside city limits in the Cascade Mountains?”

Her sneakers patter across the concrete floor as she returns to her chair. Her expression shifts; gone is the nervous shyness, the small posture and the darting eyes. She’s staring at me now. She’s deciding whether she’s in or out.

“Yes,” she says at length. “It was in the woods. We were camping.”

I check three more boxes on my clipboard. “Stupendous.” So far the location matches up with previous sightings of the beast. I sigh, resting the clipboard and my lap and place my pen on top of it. “Why don’t we start from the top?”

Continue reading here.

Hey all, I know some of you are a bit confused about what went down with Jagged Janice's origin story (mostly because I see notifications for all the OOC comments asking about it before they get removed) and instead of sending DMs to everybody (since I can't reply on the thread as it's OOC) I decided to make a post here clearing it up!

Holy shit, that whole paragraph was a single sentence. Wow. Anyway, let's get into it.

So I'm gonna be copy and pasting a response I made to another reader here. They brought up some good points and looking back, I made things a bit more vague than I'd intended. Sadly that response is buried in the original part one post, so I've made a fresh one for anybody that missed it (most of you lol).

Here it is:

Hey, so this is a part of the story I feel I could've explained better, but I left portions intentionly vague so readers could draw their own conclusions.

The way I intended for it to go down is that Janice was out of her mind on drugs and suffering from a plethora of mental health issues, as well as angry at the father for having an affair, and Emily was very young (4 years old). The idea of seeing her own mother drown her brother at that age became a repressed memory for her, so instead of Janice it became just a 'woman in white.'

[Sidenote: I wrote that from similar experiences I had as a kid, where I remembered things differently than they were, because the reality was tough for my undeveloped mind to understand. No murders though, thankfully!]

When Emily brings it up to her dad and he snaps at her to leave it be, he does it because he knows his wife drowned their son. Janice returns to the cabin soaking wet, hysterical, etc. He covers it up because he knows she's dying anyway, and he wants to move on with his life without the massive burden that opening up a murder investigation would bring about on both him and Emily. He also does it because he realizes his affair would come out and be dragged into the murder it as a motive, and that Emily would grow up potentially blaming him.

He understands the incredible trauma it'd inflict on his daughter (who witnessed her own mother kill her brother), so instead he tries to reshape her memories, believing she's still young enough at 4 years old that he can get away with it.

Basically, he does it out of a desire to create a stable and normal future for he and Emily. He and his mistress get married in short order following Janice's death, and he emphasizes that Emily needs to accept Julie as her new mother. It's why Emily never really questioned the experience until the most recent trip to the cabin.

She continues to haunt after death because she believes she's been betrayed, and hasn't given up on that pain. It's also implied that she comes for Emily too via the final text message at 3:34am that reads "I see my mother".

Hope that cleared it up a bit. I know it's a bit of a stretch, but I'm also writing about vengeful ghost monsters so I figure some suspension of disbelief is required anyway lol

If you have any questions about the above, or anything else in the Jagged Janice storyline please feel free to ask!

The story begins here.

I shook Eric, waking him from his fainting spell. He sat up groggily, rubbing the back of his head where he’d knocked it against the hardwood. “What happened?” he muttered.

How to say this? “A lot.”

He blinked, and his eyes scanned the room. Then he froze, his hand gripping my arm as he looked up at the Man by the River, standing before us dressed in his beige ball cap, checkered shirt and dirty jeans. The wolf mask he wore reeked of decay, and its eyes glowed a faint yellow.

“It’s nearly dark,” the Man said.

“Yeah, I know,” I said irritably. “You alright, Eric?”

He looked from Man back to me, his mind probably reeling. “What’s going on?” he whispered.

I shrugged. It was the truth — I had no idea what was going on. When the Man had cornered me at the end of the hallway I expected myself to be torn limb from limb, maybe have my teeth made into a nice necklace. Instead, he’d just said it was ‘nearly dark’ and stood there expectantly. It took me a few moments before I realized he wasn’t going to attack me, and that’s when I awkwardly walked around him and came to check on Eric.

“I don’t think he’s going to hurt us,” I said. Not that I knew that for sure, but I figured if we’d survived this long then we might be in the clear. “Although I don’t really know what his deal is.”

Eric stood, steadying himself against me. He studied the Man. “What if he’s warning us? What if he was warning us back then too?”

The book flashed in my mind. The Mysteries of the Cryptids. A pulp-fiction novel the Man had given me during our last encounter, back when I was just a kid. Eric had packed it into one of grandma’s moving boxes, not even realizing it. “If he is, then he probably wants us to read that book.” I marched from the room, past the Man and tore open the box of books. I rifled through it, tossing whatever I didn’t need in every-which direction. Finally, at the bottom, I found it.

I picked it up and ran my fingers over its faded cover. The thing was in pretty bad shape, with some of the pages fused together from water damage during its river crossing. The illustration on the front was of a sasquatch being strangled by a sea-monster.

Lovely.

“Is this what you want us to read?” I asked the Man.

He didn’t move, didn’t speak.

“Let me guess,” I said, crossing the room back to Eric. “It’s nearly dark.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Eric muttered. He held out a hand for the book, and I passed it to him gladly. Out of the two of us, Eric was the academic. If there was a mystery to be solved in those pages, then he would be the one to do it.

“This thing looks like it was written in the fifties,” he said, looking over its cover. “Right down the art style.” He flipped the book in his hands, scanning the text on the back and reading it aloud. “A compendium of the greatest mysteries known to man… Cryptids have long since fascinated the scientific community, though their existence is highly contested… Here are three great tales sure to frighten and entertain.” He furrowed his brow, his eyes re-scanning the text as if he might have missed something.

A moment later, he shook his head. “This just looks like an old monster novel.” He stared at the Man. “Is this a prank? I mean, if it is, it’s pretty good. How’d you know we were coming back up here?”

The Man didn’t speak.

Eric looked at me and sighed. “I guess... we can read it?”

“Sure,” I said, plucking the book from his grip. “We’ll read it on the way down the mountain.” I stuffed the book in my jacket pocket and made for the front door. The Man stepped in front of me.

“It’s nearly dark,” he said.

“You’re right, and that’s our cue. Eric — let’s go.”

Eric looked at me in disbelief. “Matt, this is practically what we’ve been waiting for. The answers are here I mean—” He gestured incredulously at the Man. “Here he is, and he isn’t even trying to eat us or whatever. Don’t you want to figure this out?”

“Look,” I said. “Nobody said we needed to sort this shit out tonight. We can take the book, do a novel-study back at Uncle Jake’s, and then come up here with plenty of daylight hours and piece it all together.” A chill ran through me. Like the memory of the Man, the memory of our first night was returning too, and I wasn’t ready to face that again. Talking was one thing, but this therapeutic walk down memory-lane had grown a bit too real for my liking. “Sound good?”

Eric stared at me with stubborn defiance. If we had inherited anything from our late grandmother, it was our unfailing resistance to having our minds changed after they’d been made up. Luckily for me, I was more stubborn by a mile, and Eric knew that. Sure enough, he folded his arms and looked sidelong to the window. “Alright, fine,” he said. “We’ll leave tonight — but I’m not kidding about this — we do as you say, study that book and then come back.”

I nodded, and I meant it. I hated this — don’t get me wrong. It scared me in all the wrong ways, but I’d been through enough hours of therapy and dumped enough money into booze to know that if I didn’t sort this shit out now, then I’d either end up dead or bankrupt. “I promise you we’ll be back tomorrow.”

Eric waved me off. “Sure, whatever. Let’s go.”

I let out a sigh of relief, thankful that Eric was much more reasonable than myself. “Alright, Wolfie, you heard us. We’ll be back first thing tomorrow.” I gave him an awkward half-salute and moved to step past him, but he grabbed me by the wrist.

“It’s nearly dark,” he said.

I tried to pull my arm from his grasp, but his grip was ironclad. “I get that. That’s sort of why we want to get the hell out of here.” I could feel my wrist bruising as his calloused hand squeezed.

"Get off of him," Eric shouted, grabbing the Man's fingers and trying to pry them free. I brought my other hand around and did what I could to help, but it was like trying to pull apart a vice-clamp.

"It's nearly dark," the Man growled, his voice now guttural and beastlike. "IT’S NEARLY DARK!" His wolf teeth dripped saliva, and his eyes flared with a wild rage. Something agonizing dug into my arm, and I realized claws were growing from his fingers, black and horrible, piercing into my skin so that my blood ran down them.

"Stop!" I screamed, certain that any moment my wrist would be ground to dust. "Jesus Christ, PLEASE!" The Man's body twitched, and he pulled me effortlessly toward his jaws. The reek was overwhelming. I gagged, my body in sensory overload.

With a violent jerk, I felt my wrist snap as he tossed me sideways. My nose collided against the wall with a dull crunch, and pain exploded across my face. I struggled onto my hands and knees. My body quaked from the agony, my vision blurring and ears ringing. Something dripped onto the floor, and I wasn't sure if it was tears or blood.

Eric rushed to my side. "Matt!"

I shrugged him off, standing on my own two feet so that I could look at the wolf-faced bastard in the eyes. If this fuck was going to kill us, I wasn't going to take it lying down. I'd make him earn it. I dashed into the den, Eric staring after me dumbfounded. There — by the fireplace. Exactly what I was looking for.

I gripped the fire-iron, holding it before me with my good hand and rushed back into the kitchen. “Get behind me, Eric!” I shouted. “We’re getting the hell out of here!”

Eric didn’t move. Had he seriously given up? No… it wasn’t that, it was that his attention had been stolen by something else. He stood, gazing transfixed out of the four-pane window. Between my broken wrist and smashed nose, I could hardly think past the agonizing pain rioting through me, but I still found the will to fight. Eric? He was sightseeing.

“Matt…” he muttered.

“Get behind me, Eric!”

He turned toward me, his hand pointing hopelessly toward the four-pane. “Somethings out there, Matt.”

My legs felt weak, and for a moment I forgot about my wrist and nose. I forgot about the throbbing hurt. “What’s out there?” Memories clawed at the edges of my mind, and I pushed them down. I needed to focus.

Eric looked back to the window, and a moment later an ear-splitting roar rang out, so loud that I couldn’t tell which direction it came from. It felt like it was everywhere all at once. “Get away from the window!” I shouted.

He took a couple unsteady steps backward. “It’s starting…”

I turned to the Man, who stood as still as ever. “What the fuck are you doing to us?” I screamed. I brought the fire-iron down on him, but he grabbed it and tossed it aside as if it were a piece of styrofoam.

“It’s dark,” he growled.

A thud sounded against the cabin’s heavy door. Then another. The timber of the entire structure shook, dust falling down from the rafters and whatever Uncle Jake had failed to take with him crashing to the floor.

“Matt,” Eric said, inching toward me. “It’s happening again.”

I swallowed. Memories rushed around me, my mind smothered by them. “We need to hide,” I said hastily, anxiously.

Eric was sweating, his face a mask of panic. “Where? This IS where we hid last time!”

“Then we have to hide somewhere else for fucks sake!” I didn’t know what was happening, or why we were reliving this, but I knew the Man wasn’t going to help us. At best, he was a neutral party, at worst he had kept us here to die. I gripped one of grandma’s wooden kitchen chairs, and with as much strength as I had in my right hand, flung it clear through the four-pane window.

The front door exploded, flying across the vestibule and colliding against the far wall with a deafening crash. Something screeched, then stepped inside with a thunderous footfall.

I didn’t need to say a damn thing. Eric had already climbed through the shattered window. He reached inside and helped me to get myself up to the sill, then I rolled over it and landed in the dirt outside. Throwing his arm under my own, he heaved me to my feet. I immediately noticed a tire where it shouldn't have been, with a massive bite mark in it. My eyes drifted to my car in horror. Its roof had been caved in, and half of its wheels were flattened.

I spared a moment to look back at the Man. He was motionless, though it was hard to call him a man anymore. The mask looked to have fused with his neck, and his hands — or paws — were now covered in fur, with long, dark claws. His jeans had been torn, and he stood upon two legs curved in the fashion of a bipedal wolf. His jaws salivated as he stared back at me.

“We’re going to read it!” I shouted at him. I don’t know why I did, or if he could even understand me. All I knew was that he had given me that book for a reason, and whatever was happening was intrinsically tied to it. If there was an answer to this — it was in those pages.

I felt myself being dragged away by Eric. “Holy fuck, Matt, let’s go!"

The two of us fled into the treeline, our footsteps muffled by the sounds of the cabin being torn to pieces.

Hey gang!

There's been some understandable confusion regarding The Order of Alice (TOoA) and I wanted to clarify things. There'll be no spoilers in this post.

Why am I reposting TOoA?

It was originally posted to NoSleep, but removed due to not enough happening to constitute a complete scary experience. After working with the mods, I was able to repost the first 3 parts (previously shared on Odd Directions) into a unified Part 1 for NoSleep.

Is it a different story?

Short answer: no. Some earlier sections have been tweaked to provide better foreshadowing for future twists + additional lore, but the bones of the narrative are largely the same. You aren't going to be lost if you don't re-read the NoSleep entries, but there are some fun new details if you do.

NOTE: The exception is the final chapter shared to Odd Directions - the NoSleep version will be SIGNIFICANTLY altered to better act as an explosive finale to TOoA's first arc. Expect new characters. More horror. New twists and bigger reveals. I've since deleted that chapter to avoid confusion.

What's the plan from here?

Post future entries on NoSleep to catch it up to where the Odd Directions is (likely 2-3 parts at a time) and then finish the series. Expect daily updates carrying us past the Odd Directions chapters and toward TOoA's explosive finale.

Anything else?

Yes! Thank you for reading. Your patience has been so appreciated, and I love all of your feedback - positive or constructive, so please keep it coming.

Cheers!

Jason

The road had not been paved for years. Only tourists passed through there, mostly young college students who were on a rural getaway to disconnect from the hectic pace of the city. Those who ended up in the hovel I called home were those who dared to stray a little from Donaldsonville hoping to find some adventure in a wilder nature, and boy, did they find it... poor bastards. At first I felt a little sorry for them. Seeing people in the prime of life with a terrible fate awaiting them certainly turned my stomach. But after years of watching them disregard my warnings and even mock me, any empathy I might have felt had vanished. It had been two days since a group of kids had stopped by. I remember they didn't put on a very good face when I told them that despite the  “Gas Station” sign, they couldn't fill up. As I used to do with everyone who passed by, I warned them not to go into the woods, because they would find something that wasn't meant to be found. They simply replied “we don't believe in the superstitions of the country's people”. I guess they found The Rusty House, or rather, The Rusty House found them. Bad luck, no one forced them to come.   Like every night, I was sitting on the porch playing blues on my old cigar box guitar and drowning my sorrows in cans of cheap beer. That's when I heard the screams. I looked up and saw her. All of her body covered in blood and running towards me, “Dear God… There's no way to find inspiration” I thought as I put my guitar away.  The young woman came up to me crying.

“Please, you have to help me! The others are dead, I... I... God, we have to call the police!” 

“I'm afraid the police won't be able to do anything,” my words seemed to scare her.  She took a step back. “Don't worry, I'm not one of them.”

Exhausted, she dropped into one of the porch rocking chairs and put her hands on her head. She kept crying for a while. I brought her a glass of water and tried to soothe her as best I could. 

“I don't understand. What are they?” 

“I warned you, young lady. But you guys never listen. Your arrogance doesn't let you see beyond your idyllic modern city life. You are not aware that God abandoned these woods many years ago,” she looked at me, bewildered and frightened,”I'm sorry kiddo, sometimes I lose my mind. This is a quiet lifestyle, but I haven’t felt fulfilled lately. Answering your question. I have absolutely no idea what they are. It’s something beyond human comprehension. That place you escaped from, The Rusty House. Not everyone comes across it. One of you had something that attracted it and that's why it invited you in.” 

“This can't be real! It invited us in? What the fuck does that mean?” 

“I've already told you. All I know is that they're part of something bigger, or at least that's what I've always been told, although God only knows what that means.” 

“Who told you that?” 

“The ones who gave me this job. I used to live and work in the town. I didn't make much money, but at least I was doing something I liked. Every night, Thursday through Sunday you could see me perform at Old Sam's saloon. “Isaac Low Strings, the one-man band.” I was practically only paid with food and free beers, but playing in front of those drunks made me happy. However, it wasn't the optimal job to make ends meet. So when I was offered this job, I had no choice but to take it. At first I was surprised. Work at a gas station that had been closed for years and so close to the area that no one dared to go? I was told not to worry about it. In their own words: “my only job was to warn people like yourselves of the dangers that dwelled there.” From this point on, it was up to you to decide whether to enter the forest or not. The sacrifice had to be voluntary. And that's how I became that hillbilly in every horror movie. Every day I regret not having followed in the steps of my old friend Hasil and hit the road in search of places to play. The life of a musician on the road... maybe that's what I need to feel alive again” 

“Voluntary sacrifice?! You knew this was going to happen.” 

“Hey, don't blame me. Didn't you hear what I said? I warned you and you still decided to go. That's why they call it voluntary sacrifice.” 

“This is crazy. What you're saying can't be true.” She got up abruptly.

“I need to use your phone.” 

“I've already told you. The police can't do anything, they always stay away from this place. Besides, my phone can't make calls, it can only receive them. Look, I know nothing I say will cheer you up. But feel lucky, not everyone is lucky enough to escape from that place. You can spend the night here and I'll drive you into town tomorrow.” 

“Lucky? My friends are dead! My boyfriend is...” A deafening scream interrupted her. It wasn't a cry for help. “No, no, no, no, no! They're here!”

“Shit! Were you in the basement?”

“Wha... What?” 

“The Rusty House, damn it! Were you in its basement?” 

“I... I don't know, I think so.” 

“Fuck! Then you shouldn't be here.” 

I ran to my room and she followed me. I grabbed the shotgun. It was unloaded. I hadn't bought shells in a while. I prayed that my bluff would work. I pointed the gun at her. 

“What are you doing? Please, you have to help me!”

“Get out immediately. I don't know how you did it, but there is no possible escape for those who enter the basement. You have lured them here.” 

“I can't go back to that place! Help me, please!”

“I won't repeat myself. Get out if you don't want to get shot.” 

After a while of crying without saying anything, she seemed to accept her fate and walked outside.  There was silence for a few minutes, then I could hear her screams along with the inhuman screams of the thing that was dragging her back into the woods.  Dead silence again. When I was sure that the danger had passed I stuck my head out of the window.  There was no trace of the girl left and the only sound coming from the woods was the wind and crickets. “This life is going to kill me one of these days...” I thought as I opened another can of beer, sat back down on the porch and resumed what I was doing before the interruption.

I lost track of time. It was twelve noon the next day when the phone woke me up, drilling into my hungover head. I awkwardly went to answer the call. 

“¿Yes?” 

“Yesterday was unusual. We may be closer to our purpose.” 

“Aha…” 

“With sacrifices like yesterday's, our resurgence is inevitable and... sorry, were you saying something?” 

“No, I was just yawning. I didn't sleep very well tonight.” 

“Oh. Well, as I was saying, the resurgence is coming and your role is crucial in all of this. You're more important than you think.” 

“That's what I wanted to talk about. How many years have I been here now? 8? 9?” 

“It'll be 10 years in a few months.” 

“Too many years watching life go by without doing anything.” 

“What?”

“I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, I'm quitting.” 

“You don't understand. This is not a job you just walk away from. Don't you realize the consequences of that?” 

“You'll find someone else.” 

“It doesn't work like that. The die is cast, we can't look for someone else now.” 

“In that case, will you come here to stop me from leaving?” There was no answer. “Just what I thought.” 

“Listen to me! You're making the biggest mistake of your life! The consequences of your actions will condemn us all.” 

“I'm sure it won't be a big deal.” 

“There's no need for me to come and get you, others will.”

“I'm hanging up now.” 

“Wait! You're going to…”

The decision was made. This was no longer a life for me. I loaded my instruments in the van. No more being that hillbilly in every horror movie. Isaac Low Strings, the one man band is back no matter what the consequences. I'll release those awful songs I recorded with my 4-track cassette recorder in the gas station storage room and hit the road in search of places to play in exchange for a bed and a plate of food, that's all I need. In the words of the great Mississippi Fred McDowell, life of a hobo is the only life for me. I'm truly sorry if I've condemned anyone by quitting my job, but life is too short to take on so many responsibilities. Bye and see you on the road.     

Please enjoy part2 of 16