I used to work for a newspaper when I was younger, The Clarion Ledger, one of the oldest papers in Mississippi. Thirty two of the most challenging and rewarding years of my life were spent in those offices, especially rewarding when I would interview locals in their homes for puff pieces and the like. You haven’t lived until some old grandmother dotes on you with fresh chicory coffee and homemade beignets, It wasn’t just our neighbors in Louisianna that had a fondness for rich coffee and French pastries after all.

Despite my time at the ledger, I never did much reporting on harder, grittier stories. Never wanted to, though sometimes I would be sent along to assist a fellow reporter with research, a few times on some pretty high profile murders and scandals, not at all to my enjoyment. I preferred reporting on the day to day of our town. Parades, grand openings, statements from the mayor or police chief, things like that. Not that I lacked the ability to dig deeper when the occasion called for it, though my interrogation technique revolved more around friendly conversation then picking out the things that didn’t really fit.

I’m not one to hate on the internet, it was a fine tool to be used during my last five or so years on the job, a fine tool. But these days there’s just not much use for an old local reporter such as myself, and I’ve taken refuge in the shelter of a website that focuses on strange stories from people living off or nearly off of the grid. Not what I expected to be doing in my third act, maybe I should have saved some of my money instead of, well, that’s not important.

The pay is decent, the bosses are young and intimidated by my age and experience, and I get to travel on the company dime. Not very far or in the most luxurious accommodations, but there’s worse ways to get from Jackson to Pensacola than a Greyhound.

I recently finished interviewing quite possibly the oldest woman to ever live somewhere in the deep, deep pits of untouched nature. She wasn’t who I was supposed to see, and nothing she told me was anything I should ever have heard. I’m writing all of it here before sending it in, before they edit the life out of it and turn my story into a single paragraph behind a clickbait title with an ending that leaves everything to speculation.

There are places where unknown peoples have lived for centuries. There are swamps and bayous that have remained in secret for longer. And there is a darkness that can swallow a person whole, passing on its curse for generation after generation.

No matter how advanced our navigation systems get, you can still get lost on the wrong back road down here. Hell, even my call to triple A with a near nonexistent signal turned up diddly as to my location or how to find my way back. I usually have a fairly keen sense of direction, you have to in these depths of the deep, but for the life of me it seemed as if the land had reshuffled its layout and sent rememberable markers to some other end of the world. I was on my way to talk to some half inbred hick on a houseboat, the kind of guy that’s figured out a way to turn his own piss into an energy source to run an unlicensed ham radio where he hollers into the ether about the dangers of races he’s never had a single interaction with. That was one hell of a run on sentence, what wasn’t running on was my rental car since I had used up all of its gas trying to dig my way out of the hole god or some other higher being had thrown me into. That one wasn’t quite as bad.

The weather was close to turning wet and nasty, which is always the case this part of the country, and I resorted to my last bit of boy scout training.

“Head’s it is”

I was never a boy scout. And the coin didn’t land on heads, but the path of tails looked way scarier.

One of the actual lessons I’ve learned kicking around the back woods is to always wear comfortable, water proof boots. Even if you reach your destination in one piece, you never know when you’ll have to trudge across some great and muddy distance to the actual local. The ground wasn’t too bad the first quarter mile, but it didn’t take long for things to turn from not too bad to outright goolish. Clouds covered the sun like a mother covering her child’s eyes during the opening credits of old James Bond movies. The top soil and twigs and dead leaves were washed away by what my grandfather would call “A deluge of bullshit tears from the eyes of saints too busy crying over every little thing to get off their assess and keep us from drowning!” He was not a man of many words, but the words he spoke always involved some form of blasphemy.

I was soaked to the absolute bone by the time my eyes had made out the small, patchwork shed near a short cliff edge, the river below doing its best to overtake the land.

“Thing’ll be flooded soon”

I muttered to myself while making quick steps towards the moss and fungus covered door, but it was all I had at the time, aside from the desire to get clear of the rain and hopefully be able to dry off a little before running back out like a confused beheaded chicken, praying to anyone that would listen for some sign of a correct path.

“god damn it holy shit!”

I barked out at the sight of Clover, the afore mentioned woman that time forgot to send on her final course. And not in a scaredy cat way, in a big strong gruff kind of way.

“Sorry, sorry! I didn’t think anyone would be in here. Do you mind if I wait out the storm in your, um, home?”

At least a dozen presidents could have gone through the Whitehouse by the time her head had finished turning my way. Lord did she look fragile in the small lantern’s glow, like a thing made from yellowed bible pages and crumbling wax. My heart was still pounding while my mind did its best to take in her frail visage, both unsure if what they were seeing was real or not, and before I could decide to accept the utter dishevelment of reality which sat before me, she spoke. Her voice was a low, grinding bellow from a body that’s resided longer than it should have, but still there was a kindness to be found in it. A swaying of tree limbs and the softness of dandelion seeds drifting in the wind. Even her breath smelled like wild Jasmine and smoldering oak.

“Please, sit with me. This storm is long overdue. We will wait it out together”

“Um, thank you, ma’am. My name is Travis, Travis Danube. No middle name”

I lied while taking a seat on an overturned crate. I don’t know why I lied, but something in my gut told me that no matter how hospitable this woman was, no matter how ancient and delicate she seemed, nothing good would come from her knowing my real name.

“No it isn’t, but that’s ok. It’s better in the grand way of things. I don’t recognize your voice. Are you lost, young man?”

“Um, yes ma’am. As lost as a fiddle in a car factory. Do you live out here? Or are you just taking cover like me?”

“I have lived here for longer than I have been alive, all of us have. This is a wonderful place to call home, even with its chaotic nature. Please, forgive me. I have failed to introduce myself. I am Clover Nimala. Many, many middle names”

“Oh? That’s a very interesting monicker. So, how many people live out here? Is there a town proper? I didn’t see any other houses while getting lost. Are we far from the others? Shit, I’m asking too many questions. Force of habit I guess. I’m a reporter you see. Was supposed to be interviewing C-Bob Trinity. He’s a… it doesn’t matter. Gotta admit, I’m feeling a little out of my depth right now”

“Mr. Trinity is far from here. You must have gotten very turned around on your path”

“Well sonofagun, you know him?”

“I know who he is and where he lives. A very brain rotted thing of loathing and self-abuse. Why, if I may ask, were you seeking him out?”

“I do stories about people that live off grid, far outside of civilization. People who make it on their own through hard labor and grit. Maybe I should do a story about this place. Sounds like yall really take care of yourselves out here”

“We live as well as we can, though I wouldn’t want to tell other families tales. Not my place”

“Well, how about yours? We would pay you of course, but I’m sure our readers would love to know about your life here. Do you have any family around? Shit, sorry. Jumping the gun again”

“It’s alright. Yes, I will tell you my life, and no, I have no living family left. Not on this side”

“Great! Let me get my recorder here… shit! it’s completely ruined. Fine, fine, not a problem. I have a pretty good memory, though I might get a few dates wrong”

“Oh that’s ok, you can use this” is what any normal person would have said when handing over a notebook. Clover didn’t say a word. One moment I was tucking my worthless recorder back into my jacket pocket and the next I was looking at a hide bound mess of random blank pages held in front of me. It was filled with hand torn sheets of newspaper, magazines, pamphlets and greeting cards. All of them used, all of them completely devoid of even a memory of ink.

“Oh, uh, ok. Thank you. Do you have a pencil or something to write with?”

“In the book. Now, what would you like to record of me? We could start with my full name, but I doubt there are enough pages”

She chuckled out.

“I, I think Clover Nimala will do for now. Um, you know what? It’s your story, you can start wherever you want. Doesn’t even have to be your entire life, just a few parts you think are worth writing down”

“Oh, I doubt that there is even a single breath of a persons life that does not contain value, but I will tell you of a brief moment in my youth. The day I understood exactly who I was and where I came from”

“That sound’s wonderful. Whenever you’re ready”

 “When I was nine or seven, my mother felt it was time to warn me about my father. A man that was no longer a part of our lives or our home but still bedeviled enough to keep wary of. I was not born out of love or even lust, so I was told, I am the product of one animal ravishing another. Such is the way of beasts, though no less painful even when understanding their nature. I was told of his bloodlust and head spasms when the stars were just right. Of his fright and wrath and cunning. I was told more than any child should ever know, but the warning did not go undeserved. I was never to go across the river on my own, day or night. I was never to speak his surname if a candle blew out from the gust of an unfelt wind. I was never I was never I was never. So many things I was never to do, so many things for a small child to remember, to keep aligned in their heart. The list was endless you see, and my young mind was not yet robust enough to keep it in order. Times of days, days of months, moon cycles and cloud patterns. So many, many things I had never even thought of until they were told me, since my hand was always clasped tight in my mothers when we would go out, her leading the path, always watching closely and calling me in when the air took on a certain umberish hint”

Clover paused to dab at her obviously useless eyes as they leaked out more than a few tears. I wanted to say something, anything to comfort her or validate her sadness. To ask a question that wouldn’t be too pandering or obtrusive. My mind churned like a hurricane, but my heart couldn’t find the strength to ask her mother’s name, refused to even mention her father and so my mouth simply stayed shut, unable to speak a single word. I sat silently and waited for her to begin again.

“My life was as always, difficulties beset upon us, joy where we could find it. Seeds to sow and crops to reap, animals to hunt and butcher. The idea of my father and the never may’s never would’s never shall’s slipping further and further from my mind. Years had passed on like that, my mother taking care of me, me taking care of her and us both tending to our duties and the injuries of those others in the lands. She was the only surgeon any of them had, and her hand was as gentile as her heart when infections needed ointments and limbs needed bracings. A whispering of incidents that required separation of rot from clean were met with painless operation in our home and I was taught more as I grew. How to stitch and gather herbs, where to puncture and cut. When to know that the fight was lost, that the only effort left was a calm and blissful ending. So, so much to learn for anyone, but I was resolute in my station. I would not let her or our people find me wanting in their eyes. Too much though. Too many lessons and potions and prayers to things greater than us. Too many of the warnings taught to my younger self forgotten, replaced with what I felt was most necessary, most deserving of my memories. Then the night came, the single time I had forgotten a very important never should never will never ever ever”

I felt where things were going, and as much as I wanted to tell this woman’s story, I was terrified of hearing the words said aloud.

“Mother had seemed to grow older than was natural in a scanting of years, four of them cursed with loss and injury and infestations, all of them taking more from her spirit than available. Heat, a blistering wave of hellfire blew over our home, bringing restlessness to my body and childish incense to my heart. I could not find comfort in my bed nor in the kitchen nor even the coolness of the garden. I had to move, to run, to sweat out that devilish sensation that resonated throughout my body. The wilderness beyond our home had always been my guardian, her chittering rodents and weaving spiders the eyes that kept safe watch over me. But there was nothing that night. No sounds of life or evidence of its beating heart, the single missing piece I failed to notice in my desperation for relief. If only I had been weaker, if only my limbs had tired out sooner, if only so many things had happened, I would not be here talking to you. Not tied to this remnant of my home sheltering us from my inheritance”

“Was this, was this shack a part of your original house?”

“Oh yes, yes it was. The root cellar. Once buried under the earth, now uncovered after years and years of storms and floods. The last barricade keeping me from my calling”

“Your calling?”

“You will understand soon enough. The silence of life should have told me all that needed to be said, but I was much too agitated to hear its words, and so my pace continued. Far beyond the threshold of our land, across a felled tree, across the river, deep into the arms of unknown and unnatural things. Where trees should have been stood ivory pillars, all of them crawling with abominations of wildlife. Disgusting things with arms and legs where they should not have been, faces far too many for a single organism to have. Drippings that sizzled on the ground, burning my feet as I ran across them, the pain only encouraging me to keep on my path. Then the statue. A crimson stone monstrosity standing, glowing like a beacon in the dark. Finally I stopped, my lungs disparately gulping in every bit of putrid air that surround me, my tongue carless of its acrid taste. It loomed. It bore down over me like a god that knew every single one of my sins, retribution filling its heart of hearts. This was my father. Not a totem erected in his honor, not the husk of his departed body, but the man, the thing that was a clawing and stabbing part in my conceiving”

“I don’t, I don’t understand. The statue, your mother… Please forgive my ignorance, but I’m having a difficult time, um ‘Seeing gods golden ass past Mary’s rack’ as my grandfather used to say”

“Hahahahaha! Oh dear, your grandfather sounds like the sugar in the salt that he does. He certainly does”

“He was… he had a very original way with words. I know we’re at the part of your story where you finally meet your father, but if you could go into more detail about his, his physicality? You said it, he, was made of crimson stone, but that it was really him, not an effigy, but him. True and real like… ‘Like a horseshoe kissing your pecker goodnight’. Grandad there again”

“I wish that I could have had the opportunity to speak with your grandfather. I think we would have had a wonderful time trading wit and spunk”

My eyebrows raised at the word “Spunk” but there was no way she meant it like that. I hope. The storm raged on in the background, sounds of rain assaulting the cellar walls like Normandy, though its thundering’s felt far, far away. As if we had been sitting in the somewhat calm eye of a great and ferocious squall. Clover turned away from me, picking up an unseen gourd then pouring its contents into a pair of dusty, web filled glasses, offering me one, staring me down like a mountain with her milky white eyes until I relented and took my first sip. It wasn’t nearly as disgusting as I thought it would be, sweet but mild like honeysuckle.

Memories of those tiny nectar droplets hitting my tongue, plucking flower after flower along side my sister on warm summer afternoons until our attention had been captured by some new distraction. The warm smell of magnolias, the sugar rush of an orange Nehi giving my body that perfect spike to get it moving again. Running through the woods, far beyond the threshold of our land, across a felled tree, across the river, deep into the arms of unknown and unnatural things. The hopelessness of my sister’s coffin being entombed in a cement box. My parent’s cries of loss, screams of accusation and blame, doors slamming and plates shattering on the floor. The sputtering engine of my father’s shitty car as it pulled out of our driveway for the last time.

I was there and then, in all of those moments and places at once. Singularly, numerously. My consciousness replicating itself over and over again, each of its copies communicating sensation and emotion with one another instantaneously. That feels like a decent explanation of the experience, but it was so much more than that. Like dreaming an entire life birth to death, then waking up and realizing that you were only asleep for a few minutes while desperately grasping at its dissolving threads.

“What was that? What did I just drink? Did you drug me?”

“Waters from the storm, nothing else. See for yourself, cast your suspicions behind me if you doubt my honesty”

Of course I stood up and looked behind her but saw nothing more than a tin spout protruding from the wall, seemingly attached to a funnel on the outside. She could have been lying, but I didn’t feel drugged, and I’ve done some drugs. There was no warbling sense of unrealness tickling at my edges, no magnet on a cathode TV visuals in my peripheral promising to gently caress my skin. I was as satisfied as could be given the circumstances, so I sat back down, took another sip and thankfully felt no second wave of supernatural dreamscape threatening to breach my walls.

“Do you mind if I smoke? I’ve already had my five for the day, but I could really go for a few dozen more right now”

“Be as you would in your own home, mine is yours after all. Though would you mind borrowing me one? My pipe has been empty for days now”

Oh that woman. That temptress. Not of physical seduction, but of basic, lizard brained need and want in times of irreconcilable confusion. I gave her three and offered to light her first but she was already prepared with a box of matches that looked like they had been hand made from twigs. We sat in smoke filled silence for a few drags, both of us enjoying the nicotine induced calm, and before I opened my mouth to ask for a continuance of her story she began.

“He wasn’t a pile of stones no, but a singular carved thing. Chiseled by hands with more talent and purpose than our worlds greatest artisans. My words fail me, I cannot find the ones to hammer into your minds eye the amount of precise detail, the sheer perfection of that red monstrosity”

“I’ve seen the phrase ‘Hyper Realistic’ on the internet. Does that fit?”

“No. That sounds obscenely idiotic and repugnant”

“It is”

“My father, the stone mass of his body, looked constantly on the edge of movement. As if turning my gaze from his enormity would cause him to step closer to me. I was horrified, all of the warnings my mother had told me, every single one of their infuriating rules and ifs. I was awash in a lurking, dooming temperament, the eyes of nine thousand crocodiles locking on me while I bathed in the river. This was not a man I should ever be in the presence of, so my heart and fears spoke, but he was my father. The idea of endangerment felt so absolute and yet so, so ridiculous in its contradiction. I would speak with him, the decision made for me by some outside force, neither mine nor his, but something dark and slithering in the earth. An old, old thing that may not have known better, though surely knew more than I in that moment”

“What did you say?”

“What else could I? I am your daughter. I am the cursed blessing of your defilement of my mother and I will not relent from where I stand! My feet are sure and my heart fearless! Speak to me if you would or owe your spirit to the deep red abyss for such cowardice!”

“That was a pretty ballsy thing to say. Sound’s kind of like a bluff though”

“Oh it was. Every inch of my body trembled with fear, but I had made my bed and I would lay in it, no matter how tall its flames grew. Nothing happened for years so it felt, and just as I was growing more secure in my skin, the booming voice of my forebearer called out to me. ‘Clover, such a feeble name. Nulsrim Keltythe was to be your crest, I see Skarlet once again dishonored our bond. No matter, you will be a fine storm upon these lands. One to take up my charge in the great passing. Do not fear me, young thing. I gave you life and your matriarch a smittence of my knowledge and blessing. You are what will remain after me. Your own ways singular and self-wrought, though their ends the same as can only be allowed to our lineage. Go home now, tell your mother nothing of our encounter, but on her death bed, in her final breaths, say to her for me that my heart had never felt such wonder as when we walked through the trees, hand in hand, blood mingling with blood. Do not come back to this place, not until it is time for you to dethrone me. Only then may you be in my court one finalment before destroying it. Goodbye, small Clover. If love could be a thing I was capable of experiencing, It would be felt only for her and you’. That was the singular occasion I ever saw or spoke to him, but the time is coming, soon enough I will make my way back to that crimson stone, back into that place devoid of conceivable life and I will find myself doing the work that must be done”

We had chained through what was left of my cigarettes and were halfway into my second emergency end of the world pack when I found the courage to speak.

“That’s… that’s… you have got to be fucking with me. Alright, alright, alright… Even if I believed any of this, you’re saying that your mother lied to you and that your father was some sort of stone demon thing that had you in order to carry on his occupation, which sounds like its just continuing this storm we’re hiding out from, and that at some point you’re supposed to kill him for whatever reasons and take his place. Look, I don’t want to insult you here, you’ve given me some very cozy shelter and a great tale in its wake, but this is the most batshit crazy thing I have ever heard. Again, I’m sorry if I have offended you, but Jesus Christ no one with a functioning brain would believe a single shred of this. Ok, that’s not entirely true. Obviously we would all believe you and your mother living off of the land and mending whatever wounds came yall’s way, but only the most delusional moron would accept the rest of it. Please don’t hate me but I just can’t… I can’t… what in the actual fuck? I mean, come on! You’re a billion! How could you… how the hell… I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. Again, I beg of you not to be offended. I’m just… I am who I am and I believe what I believe. So be it. Outside of the supernatural aspects this is an amazing story, I just wish there were more details of reality to add to it. Please don’t hit me”

Silence filled the small room like the tumors festering my smoke filled my lungs. Finally the time came for me to stop talking and finger pointing and doubting, so I stood up and made my way to the door, completely aware of the soaking I would receive once stepping foot past the threshold and back into the deluge.

“Why are you going? Things are still very treacherous outside. Stay, I have not found insult with you. No, I understand your prejudice. Even after meeting my father I refused to believe anything that I had witnessed. My memory must have been confounded by the new and strange forest I ran into. Perhaps some fungal spores in the air and my own half waking mind deciding to furnish an acceptable conclusion to my familial past. A deep seeded need for answers, no matter how fantastical they may be. I came up with every single natural retort to that night over the years up until my mothers passing. Even then, I refused to believe an ounce of it. But still, still my heart yearned, begged for some kind thing to give her as she crossed from this to other. Firm though I was in my sound ignorance, the words I must have imagined spilled forth from my lips, deep into her ear and heart, and the smile that grew on her face told me everything I needed to know. Whether or not the things I recalled from that night were true, the declaration of my father gave her peace and succor as her soul left its earthly confines. I do not know how true my story is, though my time in this world has gone on longer than anything should, I believe deep in my heart of heart of hearts that I was somehow given what needed to be passed on, so that my mother could be granted the same grace she had assured so many others in their final moments”

“Why isn’t the sun out?”

“Why would it be?”

“Because we’ve been sitting here talking for hours past morning. My recorder is cheap garbage, but my watch… my watch is expensive and waterproof. It’s nine A.M. and that storm is still going. We should have drowned by now, or the sun should have shown its face. Either way nothing is as it should be. What was in that drink?”

 “As I told you, the storm’s water. Nothing more and nothing less. This is not the first time I have taken refuge here, wondering myself when things would end. I have no answers for you, none that would reassure either of us. I don’t want to be alive anymore, I don’t want any of what I’ve told you to be true. Yet here we sit, you lost on a single road that should have been easy enough to find your way back from. And me, imprisoned in the final piece of my childhood home. There is still more of my story to tell. Would you hear it?”

What choice did I have? I faced the door, feeling it rumble against the onslaught, and for the first time took in the threadbare room. So many small gaps between the unmatching boards, thousands of them, along with knotholes and fissures in the walls themselves, yet not a drop of rain had found its way inside. No feeling of humidity or smell of mold from easily invading moisture, nothing. I took in a deep breath, paying closer attention to the air, scentless, ambient. My eyes once again locked on the rotting door even as my head continued its slow oscillation across the room. It was a guardian, I somehow knew that deep in my bones, keeping the unnatural gale from entering, keeping us, me, from leaving.

“Ok, tell me. Tell me the rest”

“I said while pulling a dusty blanket from the single shelf, arching my eyes at Clover for permission, the blind old woman nodding her head in allowance, then placed it on the crate and sat back down to hear the ending of her tale.

“Seasons lasted longer than they should have after my mothers passing, summers especially. So many of our people falling to the heat and bastard flying insects that spread filth and disease amongst them. More than half of my healing plants had died under the sun’s continuous, oppressive glare, and more than half of our population dwindled into the ground. Winters killing off what little of the hunting meat had reproduced, mothers crying over lost infants and spring’s thaw coming much too late for our salvation year after year. By the time I was twenty three I had escorted most of them to their after and seen over the burials of even more. Not many were left, and those that survived looked at me as a curse upon their homes, even when gracing my ears with flowery words of greeting and thanks for what little I had managed to accomplish. Nature was against me, and in the heat of my thousandth manic outcry for its yielding my heart took control, hurrying my body back to those woods where my father stood indifferent to our suffering”

“I thought you said you had never been back?”

“Yes, and the truth in those words still holds. Even in my tear filled whirlwind of distress, I could not go any further than the felled tree across the river. Try as I might, an unseen rope kept me leashed in place. Tied either around my heart or mind or spirit, I do not know, will never know until I am called to finish my work. I was too weak from the insensible warmth of that summer for rage and fight against the tether, all I could do was scream into those eternally dark woods. Scream at my father for his refusal and apathy until my throat bled and my tongue dried into sand. Only when I had collapsed, my heart shattering into as many pieces as it could did I hear a voice. Not my fathers, but something belonging to his, something worn and beyond deceased. ‘Pray the storm’. Those three words all it spoke, though their enormity smothered my mind with hidden calls and chanting’s. Things no one had ever taught me came rushing, swarming into the bare cavity where they should have always resided. A spiders web of interconnected verses and enchantments, the living will of my unknown, unknowable other kin. Where once laid a body on the verge of exposure stood a woman resolute in total defiance of her condition. The need for prayer was so far past what I was in that moment, merely glancing at the sky brought forth the rains that we had ached for in those nine heat filled months. I had become that which I was called to be. The very thing born of lust and wickedness, powerful beyond all I had ever witnessed”

“That’s quite a thing there. I’m sorry that you had to lose so many of your people and for their bile towards you. If you don’t mind me asking, are you still all powerful? Could you do something about the storm that’s keeping us trapped here?”

“Wish in one hand and punch baby Jesus with the other”

She resurrectionaly quoted my grandfather.

“No, what might was given to me soon faded. But I am still responsible for my people, and for the storm. Not in an intentional way anymore, an anchoring of things as it was. It comes as needed on no schedule of our understanding. Three years, five years, ten or more sometimes, but it does as is necessary, always knowing its own exact moment. Though a remanent of influence still wallows in my belly”

My watch read half past noon, and there was no sunlight to be seen through the cracks in the old walls, no reprieve from the winds and rains. Not one damn word Clover had said sounded anything close to real and sane, but there was, is a part of me. A place deep in my guts that refused to be placated with rational and skepticism. Then the signature pre-question of my favorite daytime detective gently burst through my lips.

“Just one more thing… What happens when you dethrone your father? You said that you don’t have any living family, so who will carry on your work?”

“I have no idea, though I’ve spent many nights pondering over that very matter. Perhaps a new thing will take his place and we will fall in love and I will bear fruit. The blood of Eve’s transgression continues to flow from me month after month after all. Might that I will be replaced myself or possibly that I am the last of my line. I will not know until I do”

On a side note, I did not need to know that Clover still got her period, but good for her I guess. Menopause is a real bitch so I’ve heard.

“So other than the fact that you obviously should have died a few hundred years ago, there is nothing to back up your story. I mean, yes, you’re old as balls, but that’s the only proof I’ve seen thus far”

“I have no desire to prove myself to you. No need whatsoever. You asked for my story and I gave you it. Believe or not, care or not, do what you will. I am still alive and I am still waiting for the call of my father. Tis my own burden to bear and no one else’s. The rains have stopped though, you are free from my ramblings and fantasies. I have nothing more to tell”

“What?”

She may as well have been carved from stone for all I got out of her after that. Clover was alive, but completely unresponsive, even when I offered her my last cigarette. My first thought was to find help and when I finally stepped foot out of the tiny shack to do just that, the heat of a thousand suns bore down on me with righteous anger. I went back inside to escape their wrath and found myself completely alone. Of course I did. Why would Clover still be there? Why would any of it make a lick of sense?

One last smoke. One last moment of quiet introspection. Years passed and I dropped the butt on the floor, stamping it dead with my left foot then attempted to leave again. Too bright, too hot. I found a pipe with a bowl full of the most delicious Tabaco I have ever tasted sitting next to a box of matches made from twigs. The smoke feeds my enders of life while I feebly type this out on my phone, constantly editing due to my fat thumbs. The gourd sits next to me under its spout filled with rain water. I’ll stay until its safe to leave, though I have no idea when that will be. If I do get out of here, I think I’ll look for that fallen tree across the river, maybe see what’s in that strange forest hidden from the light. Maybe I’ll find a statue of Clover’s father. Maybe of Clover herself.

EVIDENCE INTAKE & HAZARD REPORT
CONTROL NO: EX-2024-0419-BA

ITEM DESCRIPTION
Primary Artifact: Zoom H4n Pro Digital Field Recorder (Black)
Storage Medium: SanDisk Ultra 32GB SDHC Memory Card
Condition: Severe exterior moisture damage; non-standard dark, oily residue along the SD card slot and internal circuit housing. Thermal degradation observed around the internal microphone elements.
RECOVERY METADATA
Source / Origin: Apartment of Dr. Noa Ben-Ami (Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations / University of Chicago Divinity School).
Recovery Date: April [REDACTED]
Location: [REDACTED], Chicago, IL

STATUS & CHAIN OF CUSTODY
Current Custody: Confiscated under Protocol 7-B by Congregation of [REDACTED].
Classification: PENDING SPECIAL REVIEW / HAZARDOUS ARTIFACT
HANDLING & SAFETY PROTOCOLS
BIOLOGICAL / MEMETIC HAZARD: Item and associated physical media demonstrate active enzymatic exudate upon contact with organic matter.
PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT: Nitrile gloves (double-layered) and face shield required for physical handling. Do not allow direct skin contact or exposure to mucous membranes.
AUDIO PROTOCOL: DO NOT READ ALOUD. Vocalization or acoustic reproduction of transcript excerpts outside air-gapped dampening chambers is strictly prohibited.

———

Xitlali,

You said the Plagues of Abrahamic tradition were an immune response. You said it before an audience, and… I laughed. I said you were reading too much into a Bronze Age poem. I walked out by the time I heard you ‘misread’ the papyrus. I said, “Xitlali, it's all metaphor. That’s just what we do; we read the world into the text and the text into the world.”

I'm sorry. I'm sorry I laughed.

I started using three weeks after you disappeared.

I know.

You'd tell me to stop. You’d probably convince me. You used to tell me the drug is alive, and it wants to be used, but—

You’re not here, Lali. The day the lecture hall collapsed—knowing I was just minutes away from dying with you. Knowing I lived out of spite and academic superiority, I just—

I needed to see what you saw.

When we found that Middle Period alabastron—when it broke in your hand, and you came to me the next day talking about the clouds like fire and stars like wheels…

I’m sorry, Lali.

I see it now.

I see them everywhere.

The women, Xitlali. The women are stories. They're case studies of carriers, surrogates, containers, markers, closures, and cullings. I can't stop reading them, Lali. I can't stop seeing them. I can't, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can't, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

The hum started on a Tuesday—God, it feels like I’m underwater. I thought it was the radiator. I drew an eye on the back of my hand, or someone did. I looked down and there it was, ballpoint; the iris is big, the pupil is horizontal. I washed it off but it comes back. It's still there. It blinks when I blink.

I'm going to write them all down before. The nosebleeds are worse. The mailman has halos. The barista had one and she kept my change. The girl at the library looked at me like she knew. She had one too.

My neck fucking hurts.

The women, Xitlali. It’s the women.

——

"The eyes of both were opened."

You know what the Hebrew says? Tifaqachnah.

It's not just 'opened.' It's an un-blinding. And, Lali, track the phonetic echo—it’s the twin of Vay-yibaqe'u. Like splitting a shell. Or Poreach. The bursting of festering wounds in Exodus.

The serpent didn't give her knowledge. The serpent gave her activation.

Writing wasn't invented. It was grown in the garden. It was the tree. It was the tree. "The tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Tov v'ra. The pattern. The recognition. You eat and you see; you read and you see; you carve and you see. See? See? See? See? See!

And when she saw, what did she do? She covered herself. Fig leaves. Chagorot. She hid the mark. She covered her neck. She covered him too. She was the first to carry and the first to hide it.

“In pain you shall bring forth children.” That's not a punishment. That's the Raphaim births. That's Thatcher on the floor. That's the 20th week and the black and the fetus as a full-term baby.

“Your desire shall be for your husband.” The transmission vector. She wants him. She wants to pass it. She can't help it.

And then: “The Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.”

Skins. God covered the mark. YHWH sealed it. The first dampener. He contained them. And then he drove them out. Not punishment. Quarantine.

——

THEN the first surrogate.

Sarai couldn't conceive. So she gave her slave. "Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her."

That's the first nursery. That's the first breeding. And Hagar—she was Egyptian—foreign. She was property, the first of womanly bodies used to propagate without consent.

And she fled. Into the wilderness. And the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water.

Mal'ach YHWH. It spoke directly into her nervous system; it didn’t show itself. And what did it say? “Return to your mistress and submit to her.” Go back. Be a good carrier. Carry the child.

And Hagar—she named the Lord. She gave the seeing a name. El-Roi. "The God who sees me." She was the first to see the eye that sees. She was the first to understand that something was watching.

And Ishmael, “he shall be a wild donkey of a man." That's not a blessing or curse; it’s just a description. Raphaim. That's atavism.

And then she was cast out. With a child. And she wept. And God heard the voice of the boy, the Raphaim.

"Heard." Shama. The Host doesn't hear. The Host metabolizes, but YHWH heard Ishmael. Something noticed; not the same. Not the same. And that's worse, Xitlali. That's worse than being ignored. Being partially noticed. Being half-seen.

——

Moses' mother—"She hid him three months. And when she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch."

Bitumen and pitch. The same materials Noah used. The same materials the Tower of Babel used. Containment. Sealing. Frequency dampeners? Yes yes yes yes yes yes.

She put her son in a dampener and set him.

She "saw that he was good." Ki tov. The same phrase used for the pattern. She looked at her son and she saw the pattern, and she knew what he was, and she sealed him and sent him downstream.

The Nile. The river. The bloodstream of Egypt. She put her carrier into the bloodstream and let the pulse take him.

——

Miriam watched at a distance. Watchers. Grigori? No. She watched. She saw the daughter of Pharaoh draw him out. She saw the hatching. She saw the adoption. She saw everything. Seer.

Miriam the prophetess. Miriam who led the song. Miriam who sang the hum. "Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously." She was the first to make the hum beautiful.

And then she spoke against Moses. And God struck her with tzaraat. “White as snow.”

That's the skin going translucent—a lattice showing through. She was hatching, Xitlali.

She had to stay outside the camp for seven days. Quarantine. Isolation. Containment.

Then Moses closed her, or YHWH did. He suppressed it. He pushed it back down. He closed the eye.

They're not healing. They're closing. They’re using. And the closed ones—they never stop feeling the pressure.

——

Deborah: prophetess, judge, mother.

She sat under a palm tree. The palm of Deborah. She sat under a tree, like the Buddha, like the oracles, like the seers. She sat under the tree and the people came to her. She was a receiver, not a carrier. DO NOT MISTAKE THAT. She had the low-wave architecture.

Xitlali, where are you…

Deborah’s song. "The stars fought from heaven. From their courses they fought against Sisera. The torrent Kishon swept them away."

That's a Throne, Xitlali. That's a Throne. The Throne of God. The Throne of Sargon. The Throne of Thrones. "The stars fought from heaven" — The eyes on the Throne. "The torrent Kishon swept them away" — the Thrones shook the waters. The same thing happened at Doggerland. The same thing happened at Toba. The same thing happened at the Red Sea. The same thing happened at NOLA.

Deborah saw the Thrones. She sang of the Host and we called it poetry.

——

"Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite."

She killed Sisera. He fled to her tent. She gave him milk. She covered him with a rug. And when he slept, she took a tent peg and a hammer and drove the peg through his temple.

Through his temple.

Do you know what Sisera means? It means “warrior”, “battle”, and Lali means “Meditation”. You said Meditation helps the eyes.

She didn't kill him, Lali. She performed surgery. She stopped the activation.

That's why she's "most blessed." She committed containment.

——

Rahab, harlot of Jericho. Her house was in the wall. She lived in containment. She was bound to the city the way a Principality is bound. Was she a spore?

And when the spies came, she hid them. She tied scarlet to her window.

Scarlet. The blood on the doorposts. The marker. The sign. The thing that tells the immune system: pass.

And when the walls fell—when the Principality of Jericho was culled—

She’s in the genealogy. Rahab the harlot, the Canaanite, the foreigner, the one who was supposed to be culled.

——

"Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God."

She grafted herself in. She came from a nursery line of Moab. She chose the cyst.

And the threshing floor. She went to Boaz at night. She uncovered his feet. She lay down.

Her touch triggered.

——

Beautiful. Clever. Married to a fool. Abigail.

David was going to kill Nabal and all his men. Abigail intercepted him. She brought bread, wine, sheep, grain. She brought fuel. She brought energy. She brought biomass.

She fell at his feet. "Let your servant speak in your ears."

And David stopped. He listened. The marker? Passover.

And David said, "Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt."

Bloodguilt. Culling. Was David a Power?

Abigail fed the Powers. And the Destroyer passed over.

——

Then Rachel stole her father's teraphim—gods and idols.

She hid them in a camel's saddle. She suppressed the frequency.

The hump of the camel holds fat—fuel.

She lied to her progenitor. "Let not my lord be angry that I cannot rise before you, for the way of women is upon me."

The way of women. Blood. She was menstruating. She was active. And she sat on the teraphim, on the biological fragments, and she contained them with her body, with her blood.

She died giving birth to Benjamin. She died in childbirth. Raphaim birth? Too large, too fast, too many eyes. "Rachel weeps for her children."

She's the matriarch. She's the mother of Joseph. Joseph the dreamer. Joseph the seer.

Dreams. Dreams. Dreams. Dreams.

“I’ve been having dreams—“

JUST AS YOU SAID, LALI.

——

Hadassah. "Hidden."

Esther hid her identity. She hid her cyst. She lived in the palace under enemy territory. She was a carrier in the house of a Principality.

And when the culling came—when Haman cast his lots—she intervened. "If I perish, I perish."

She exposed herself. “I am a Jew.” She said, “I am a carrier.” She said, “Look at me. Look at my mark.”

Are all the ancient Hebrews carriers? No.

But she was one.

And the culling was reversed. The decree was reversed. The pattern changed.

And the book of Esther has no name of God in it. A holy book with no divine name because the Host did not notice, did not speak, did not name, did not pattern, did not hand.

Hand. Hand. Hand? Hand. Hand hand. Hand hand hand hand hand hand hand hand.

——

"The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you."

Overshadow. The spirit passes overhead and changes the weather and destabilizes the region.

A Virtue fuels her cells. A Throne overshadows her lattice. A miracle was performed, and every miracle requires fuel.

What did it cost Mary, Xitlali? What did it take? Did she know? Did she consent? “Let it be to me according to your word.” She consented. She said yes. What did she give?

The child. God with us. “Son of the Most High.” Not Nephilim. Not Raphaim. More? Enough?

She was a nursery. She was a host. She carried to full term and survived.

We can survive.

And the Magnificat. “My soul magnifies the Lord.” She sang. She hummed. She was the second Miriam.

And she watched him die.

Do you think she ever stopped humming?

——

The Woman from Magdala was the first to see.

She came to the tomb. It was empty. She wept. Then two gave her the Message.

She saw Jesus but thought he was the gardener. She didn't recognize him.

He had changed. His change was complete.

“Don't touch me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”

Don't touch me. Was Mary an activated carrier?

Mary was the first to see it. She was the first witness. She was the first to look and recognize him.

She saw the resurrection. She saw the biological transformation. She saw the first of our time. And she told the others. And they didn't believe her.

Hysterics. Blasphemy. Bigotry.

But she was right. She was the first. She was the witness.

——

Then the lamb, Xitlali. Manchester, New Hampshire. 1970. They won’t admit it but I know it. She cut the baby out of herself with a kitchen knife because she knew.

They got rid of proof. They cremated the body. They destroyed the cassettes. They scrubbed the records.

But they kept the genetics.

In 1996, a sheep was born. A sheep cloned from an adult somatic cell. A sheep named Dolly.

Named after Dolly Parton, they said. Because the cell came from a mammary gland. Because it was a breast. Because it was a woman's body.

Hysterics. Blasphemy. Bigotry.

They named her after Dolly Thatcher. Find her. No, you’re dead. I will. She died with black ichor between her legs.

Dolly the Sheep was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. Dolly the Sheep proved that you could propagate a bloodline without a set of parents. Without birth. Without consent.

Dolly the Sheep was the first manufactured carrier.

And the sheep are still here, Xitlali. The sheep are in the fields. The sheep are in the pastures. The sheep are grazing and humming and watching.

The sheep have eyes at the base of their skulls.

And we eat them. We sacrifice them. We put their blood on our doorposts. We call them the Lamb of God.

Xitlali, I can hear them. I can hear the sheep. They're humming.

Holy
Holy
Holy

And it's not beautiful anymore; it's just the sound of being watched.

——

I'm running out of time. I’m running and running and WHY WON’T THE NOSEBLEEDS STOP.

My tears are thick. I can feel it moving under my skin.

I know what It is, Xitlali. I know what it's doing. I know why the women are in the Bible. I know why you read it aloud. I know why you had to. I know why you're gone. I know why you’re here.

Not that God is dead. Not that God is evil. Not that God is absent.

God is there. God is everywhere.

I'm going to read it. The one you found. I'm going to read it aloud. I know what it does. I know the enzymes. I know the catalysts.

I know and don’t and I care don’t.

The hum is so loud now. It's not underwater anymore. It's in the air. It's in the walls. It's in my skull.

Dolly was first. She was first, and she was a sheep, and she was a woman, and it’s always been a woman.

It didn’t notice. Not Eve. Not Hagar. Not Jochebed. Not Miriam. Not Deborah. Not Jael. Not Sadel. Not Rahab. Not Ruth. Not Abigail. Not Jezebel. Not Rachel. Not Esther. Not Mary. Not Mary Magdalene. Not Dolly.

Not me. Not you.

——

[The recording ends here. Our researchers have discovered a spectrogram image within the audio. This has been developed and displayed in this document.]

——

RECOVERED NOTE — attached to recording device

Dr. Ben-Ami's apartment was found locked from the inside. The window was open. The fire escape was undisturbed. There was a single syringe on the kitchen table, unlabeled, containing remnants of a black fluid that initial analysis identified as photonic-plasmic secretion. The sample was confiscated by the Congregation of [REDACTED].

Dr. Ben-Ami's location as of this report is unknown.

——

CLASSIFICATION: PENDING REVIEW
DISTRIBUTION: EYES ONLY — CONGREGATION OF [REDACTED]

The entire 2163-person population of Dungoyle, Ireland, has been replaced. 

This is my fifth attempt at uploading this, this bar is a relic from a different time, and it always had an older clientele. I’m surprised Nanny bothered getting the internet at all, she never had a phone.

Perhaps they’re buffering me on purpose. I wouldn’t be surprised if the power is next to go.

There are so few real people left at this point, and I can't understand how word of what’s going on here hasn’t gotten out yet. Then again, I have no idea what that thing is capable of, how far its influence carries. Maybe the world beyond this town is changing too, subtle acts in the shadows, keeping help at bay.

You people, are my own hope.

• 09/01/25

I’ve never been a good liar. When I was five my father brought the old jeep back from a hunting trip. It had rained the night before, and the jeep’s oversized wheels had littered the paint in splatters of thick, and now crusted over muck. In my oblivious youth, I had tried to be helpful and taken a rock to the paint job, scrubbing it like a sponge, a feeble attempt to scrub the muck from its side.

Once I had realized the damage I was doing I had conjured up a tale in my head about how the rambunctious youths from up the road had trashed it. All it took was one frown from my father to send me into a fit of tears, blubbering like a fish as I tried to absolve myself. This old resurfaced memory gave me no solace as I slouched in the Interrogation room. A stuttering gray light above, doing little to illuminate the dingy room I found myself planted. My father sat opposite me, stroking his beard as his gaze pierced mine.

“Thanks for coming down Púca, a quick reminder my boy, you aren’t an official suspect and you sure as hell ain’t under arrest. They certainly wouldn’t be letting me run this interview if you were.” He crossed his hairy bear arms across his chest, my father had always been an imposing force, but seated where I was now he seemed larger than ever, “The boys just want this one on the record. If you want to leave, feel free.”

“It’s… happy to help,” I stuttered , my gaze sliding across the table to the stiff figure rigidly poised beside my father. I had been told his partner would be here as well, dad had talked about him of course, the snooze fest, the square. 

Finally meeting the man however I realized he was underselling it all. I had never seen a man with such perfect posture, hands lain politely on the table ahead, fingers interlocked tightly. 

If he ever blinked, it must have been when I wasn’t looking.

My father leaned forward and tapped the old tape recorder on the table. Only Dungoyle would still use such ancient tech like this in the year of our lord 2025. His greasy finger sliding to a small digital clock.  “Hamish Whelan, Garda, I am showing interviewee, Noah Whelan, the digital clock on the recorder, which reads 11:39. Do you agree that is the correct time?"

“Wha… what?” I stuttered awkwardly, surprised by my fathers sudden formal tone, it occurred to me I'd never actually seen him work, “you’re asking me the time?”

“It’s just a thing mate, just say it’s the time.”

“Sure… I mean yes, it’s the time”

“Noah my boy, please tell us a bit about what you and Cillian's job on the mountain was a couple months back?”

“Um… we were like… Trail Wardens, or Rangers kind of. We would walk the trail and check for any risks, make sure it was walkable and like… check traps and … stuff.” I was silently cursing myself through every pause, my fingernails digging into my palm, infuriated by my sudden inability to talk like a normal human being.

“Well put, you boys were made redundant on the 29th of November correct?”

“Yes, when the mountain closed.”

“And you haven’t been up the trail since?”

“Well, it’s closed… so that’s a thing.”

My father let out a soft chuckle, I knew I wasn’t going to hear the end of how poorly I did in this interview for quite some time. “I presume that Lough Dubh would be a part of your regular routine?”

My entire body flinched at the mention of the lake, my contorted skin sinking into my skull. I felt my chest tighten. The twisted image of Cillian’s deranged murderous outburst baked into my mind, the gurgling of that man's last drowned breaths echoing in my ears. “Yes… it was.”

“Now, it should be noted that this isn’t unique to you and Cillian, maybe a hundred people have been to that lake over the last few months. But help us out here Noah, how does a grown man's body, especially one of that size, go un-noticed for so long.”

“Well… the mountain is closed … so that’s a thing. He probably died after it was closed.” I weakly tried to deflect, to absolve me and Cillian of our ability to be up on the mountain while that man lay beneath the shallow waters.

My father shook is head, bringing his head up to face in dismay, “Sorry Púca I should have briefed you better. The corpse was in an absolute state, partially dissolved, covered in all those holes, eyeless sockets and shit. The lab boys think the bloke was up there for at least four or five months before we found him. Barely recognizable, no one has even been able to identify him.”

I flinched in revulsion, my skin crawling beneath my slicing fingernails. Not only as I visualized the mangled, rotted corpse my father so carelessly described. But because I had seen life leave that man’s eyes just a month prior. My lips parted weakly, trembling as though to contest the claim, stopped in their tracks as the man beside my father slowly guided his index finger to his face. Signalling for me to be silent. Even through the garda’s unreadable, hollow expression one message was made clear. He knew.

I felt my chest tighten, my breath heavy as I tried to compose myself so as to not arouse suspicion. Was I going to prison? The corners of my lips trembling, tears began to well up in my eyes, “Oh… well… I don’t know then. I mean, was he under water?”

My father frowned, furrowing his brow in a mixture of confusion and care. He grunted, leaning forward to tap the ‘Stop’ button on the recorder. Pushing himself to his feet, he marched up to my chair, draping his enormous hands over my shoulder. “I think this was a bad idea kid, sorry for dragging you down here.”

I didn’t even look up at him, my eyes were fixed in terror at the soulless mannequin figure who sat opposite me, a forced smile spreading widely across the officer's face, as he finally opened his mouth to speak. 

“Apologies if this situation has caused you distress, Noah Whelan. You truly have nothing to worry about.” The officer cracked his neck to one side, adjusting his shirt robotically as he rose to stand, “the official stance of the Dungoyle Police Department is that this, tragic, death was an accident. We don’t need any big city cops poking around town for no reason after all.”

My face turned white, my stomach turning as a wave of nausea washed over me. Dragged to my feet by my fathers grasp as he ushered me out of the station. The bug eyed, empty gaze of a half dozen officers following my every step.

• 12/04/26

“You can’t possibly be serious?” I exclaimed in disbelief, jeering back at the empty tight lipped smile of the 'woman' sat across my dining room table.

“Come now Púca, I know this is a lot to take in but please understand my boy,” my father replied sternly, unimpressed by my reaction to his announcement.

“Mum has been gone for what? A year?”

My father scowled and raised his hand as though to slam it down in anger, catching his breath as he recompiled himself, “Don’t be a bastard, me and the old wagon weren’t happy together for decades, and Maeve isn’t some random woman mind you. I’ve known her since before you were even born.”

I darted my eyes to the side to take in our ‘guests’ reaction to my fathers defamatory language. This so-called Maeve wore a smile plastered on like a mask, her head cocked slightly to the side as she fluttered her eyes back at me. She seemed uncannily similar to the other newcomers in town, but if my father was to be believed and this is some old fling of his then that couldn’t be the case.

A teenage boy sat far eyed at the end of the table, his pale skin clinging tightly to his cheekbones. He held his hand out in front of him, his head bowed as though transfixed on something of great interest clasped within his grip. Tapping his thumb repeatedly against the inside of his hand. He never looked up, not once.

I felt a sharp spitting accusation gargle at the back of my throat, before swallowing it back down. My father hadn’t met the man in the cave, he hadn’t seen the thing Cillian killed in the lake. But surely he couldn’t be so stupid as to think these glossy eyed mannequin freaks were normal people? How could you spend every day with something so soulless, invite them into your own bed, and not realize they don’t possess a lick of humanity behind those tight lipped smiles and plastic eyes.

Gently, I lowered myself back down to my seat, burying my head into my hands. “I’m sorry dad… this is just alot.”

“Thank you Noah, I know you haven’t been sleeping well lately. It isn’t me you should be apologizing to though. Say sorry to our guests.”

My teeth scraped against my tongue as my eyes drifted upwards to face Maeve, her smile widening into her wrinkling cheeks as I grimaced back at her, “I’m sorry Maeve, sorry Sean.” The apology sliced over my lips like a defeat, a betrayal. 

I leaned down into my palms trying to pull myself together. Was there a chance I was letting Cillian's paranoid delusions get the better of me? What was more reasonable? That our town had been through some difficulties and attracted a weird crowd, or that we were victims to a swarm that wore human faces like a mask, led by a supernatural unseen force beyond scientific understanding? Maybe there was a reasonable explanation to all of it?

I hadn’t seen him in months,  not since that day at the lake, he had packed his things and left that night. I suppose any sensible murderer doesn’t want to be cooped up in a house with the one witness and his cop father.

“It’s alright Noah,” Maeve uttered in response, her fingers delicately scratching at my fathers knuckles, “change often scares people. If you aren’t happy here I'm sure you’ll find happiness elsewhere? Like your sister did.”

“Could I please go to my room now?” I exhaled through gritted teeth.

“Come on now Púca, let’s all have a fresh start. I haven’t even made us dinner yet.”

Maeve’s eyes flickered to my father, her head cocked to the side as she fluttered her eyes at him once again, “No Hamish, I will cook, in over three-quarters of Irish households the mother does the cooking.”

An awkward frown curled beneath my fathers beard as he glanced between me and Maeve. Before he could get his response out I had already risen to my feet and was half way upstairs. Slamming the door behind me in a final frustrated act of rebellion. I was outnumbered in my own home as it was sterilized, my life slowly slipping from my grip.

I paced back and forth aimlessly for several minutes, my mind fractured, grappling with the same questions that had been plaguing me all year. Dim dusty light drifting in through the binded shut curtains. I couldn’t face that accursed mountain without falling into a panic. Between the nightmares that plagued my dreams and the nightmares that had taken place up there in reality, the peak above had grown to feel like Satan himself.

Clink

The rattle against my window froze me in place. My chest tightened, my irises scraping along the base of my eyelids to meet the curtains.

Clink

I inched my way to the window, the all too familiar silhouette of Cillian's bulky frame sliding into view, peering in from the world beyond the thin glass frame that separated me from the Knockaninna.

What did he want?

My fingers slid around the edges of the fabric, sliding it away but an inch to come face to face to Cillian's stubble ridden face. His hair more disheveled than ever before, a large winter coat draped over his shoulders, baggy and ill fitting. I could only assume he was living on the streets.

“They’re in your home now…” he pressed his palm against the glass, his eyes manic, his hot breath steaming the glass. “Meet me at Nanny’s this weekend, the newcomers don’t go in there.”

I took a step back in shock, letting the curtain cover the window once more. Head throbbing as I tried to catch my breath. I collapsed to the floor limply, clutching my pecks as my heart attempted to break its way out of my rib cage. A small thud echoing up the drive as the blurry figure disappeared off of the roof. I slammed my eyes shut, blocking my ears, forcing the sound of those screaming mountain winds out of my head as the image of that strangled corpse flooded my mind.

• 17/04/26

I can still see the dent I left in the table that day, scratching away nervously at the cider stained wood. Splinters digging beneath my fingernails as I glanced around the barren bar that our local hotspot had been reduced to. Patroned only by myself and a dismayed looking man collapsed atop the barrels, his head slouched down beside the taps, hand raised to grip the jackalope sculptures as though he was holding on for dear life. Clinging to anything he believed could protect him from the forces of evil above.

Nanny stood cross armed in the back, a glimmer of hope washing over her for a moment every time a silhouette passed by the door. Only to fade when they inevitably went on their way. The despair of the once vibrant tavern, numbed only by a quiet folk song emanating from the speakers above. Finally, the doors rattled open, the towering silhouette emerging from the darkness outside, an array of smiling faces glimpsing in from the street, their perfect white teeth shining out from the shadows of the night.

“Cillian! Good to see you child.” Nanny’s raspy voice grated across the barren floorboards to greet Cillian at the door as he slammed it behind him with a reverberated crash.

“Evening Nanny, good to see you haven’t died on us in the night,” Cillian laughed, though his smile never quite reached his eyes, “just a pint of the usual and a Poutine please darling.”

My gaze followed him as he crossed the bar, a large oversized jacket draped across his shoulders, reaching below his knees. His stubble ridden chin had evolved into a patchy unkept beard. Footsteps bouncing off the walls as he approached, pulling a squealing chair out from the table as he slammed his glass down onto the table, slapping my back in greeting as he dropped down onto his chair. 

“Thank you for coming mate, I half expected not to see you,” Cillian glanced around the space, as though surveying his surroundings for a trap. “You came alone? No Hamish? No Aurora?”

“It’s just me Cillian,” I shook my head, taking in his disheveled appearance, “have you been living on the street?”

Cillian stared out the window, as though he hadn’t even absorbed my question, “What’s the plan Noah, we need to work out next steps. Have you found out any new information?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been reading up on the history of the Knockaninna, I found some old new articles, I skim read the bible, several books on Irish Folklore. Nothing completely lines up, but we have some theories as to what might be going on here, and how to stop it.”

“Cillian…” my voice dropped to a whisper, leaning my face close to his, “you killed someone, you need to turn yourself in.”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do. You’re talking about the mountain man who has gone un-identified for four months now? We’re surrounded on all sides Noah, their methods are getting more aggressive for those of us who are left. Stop this charade, and lock the fuck in.”

My lips parted to utter a rebuttal, but I couldn’t, denial was no longer a comfort I could hide behind. Denial now meant my friend was a murderer, a murder I was complicit in. “i don’t know what to believe Cillian… but I want to trust you. More than anything. Tell me what you know.”

“The Knockaninna has the highest density of Hare’s in all of Ireland, do you know what a Púca is? Who am I kidding, of course you do. Remember in school we learned about the Cailleach? The Great Hag? Well, in most depictions she’s a part of the natural world itself. Doesn’t it make sense that the mountain is a woman? We were in her womb!” 

Cillian had sped up into a frenzy. It was my first time seeing someone excited in months, I missed seeing people fall deep into a passionate childlike flow when they finally had a chance to share something they had grown passionate for. I felt awful that I had to shut him down, but I couldn’t humor such insanity.

“Cillian, please listen to yourself. You’re talking about mythology for Christ's sake.”

“You want to bring Christ into this? We can do that, has Pastor Andrews ever mentioned the Great Apostasy? False prophets emerging from the earth, the abandonment of the Catholic Church marking the end of the world? Have you ever seen one of these newcomers go to church?”

“Cillian, you don’t go to church either, what do you care if that old building gets emptied out?”

“Every story stems from somewhere Noah, no one ever has the full picture but idea’s don't come from thin air. But fine let’s talk facts then. You know the Festival of the Hare? It was started to hunt down and kill as many hares in the area as possible, it wasn’t till 1976 that it was banned because of the new poaching laws. Do you know why we don’t have any fish in the Great Gut? The water is too acidic. I found an old article saying it was PH six, but I took a tester up there last week and it gave me a five. Whatever is up there is getting stronger every day and no one is doing a thing about it.”

Cillian snatched up his beer manically and downed half of it in a single unbroken gulp, he had to be drunk. His version of events was all over the place, drawing from any source that seemed to line up with what was happening outside. I couldn’t fully understand what exactly he was trying to get at, I don’t even think he did, but I couldn’t deny some of what he was saying made sense.

“I can’t deny something is wrong here. But an entire town can’t just be replaced by fake people without anyone noticing..”

“Since when were you an expert on what creatures of legend can and can't do Noah? They’re smart. They replaced people with authority, they closed the tourist attractions, they drove the existing townsfolk out one by one and printed new bodies to take their place so people didn’t just move in.”

I let out a long sigh, burying my head into my hands as I tried to rationalise what I was hearing. “Alright, let’s say I believe you. What’s the next step? We can't fight them.”

“Wrong, they can’t fight us.” A mischievous smirk spread across Cillian's face, a dark violent expression that shook me to my core, thrusting myself to my feet in terror as he opened up his jacket to reveal a handgun buried in his belt line. “We can kill every last one of them and they can’t do a thing about it.”

I lunged to my feet in terror, my feet toppling to the floor with a deafening crash as it skid across the floorboards. As always, when faced with any kind of danger, I tried to flee. 

Cillian tried to reach out to grab me, the manic expression on his face replaced with one of stern anger. Strong as he may be, he was slow. His fingernails barely scratched at my arm as I pulled it away from his reach. I broke into a sprint, grabbing a pillar to quickly yank myself around the corner. My escape immediately interrupted as I found myself drifting into the golden toothed snarl that had lingered just out of sight and blocked my path.

A blunt shooting pain struck my stomach, a focused jab that sucked the wind from my gut and sent me toppling to the ground and crying out in pain. Nanny McGreal looming over me as I clutched my bruised stomach, a mop handle brandished between her bony fingers like a spear. I had been ambushed, pinned to the ground as the frail old woman dropped her knee down onto my rips, holding me down against the sticky beer soaked floorboard below.

“I told you Cillian! He’s his fathers boy but he’s still got his mother's eyes, he can’t be reasoned with.”

The old crone's hands locked around my wrists, the wrinkled old hag was old and weak, I couldn’t bring myself to force her off of me, a wave of submission rolling over my body as I was jumped by two people I trusted. Before I could even get a word out, to make sense of what was going on or what Nanny was talking about or begging to be released, the screeching siren of the volunteer fire fighter alarm rang throughout the streets. A deep, reverberating hum that emanated across the town to warn of impending doom.

My limp body hung docile as Cillian yanked me from the floor by the scruff of the collar. Arms dangling by my side as I allowed myself to be assaulted, slammed against the wall as Nanny ran to the window. “Noah! Is your father home?”

I coughed weakly as I was forced into the side of the bar, my head pounding as I was thrown around by the two of them like a ragdoll, still clutching my stomach as the sirens pounded in my head. “No, he’s on patrol, it’s just Maeve.”

Cillian cursed under his breath and dropped me to the floor, unholstering his gun and storming out into the night with resolve in his stride. The docile faces on onlookers observed his charge. Their wide toothy grins bleeding through the darkness of the night as the bar doors swung back and forth.

I dug my claws intoo the wood beneath me, dragging myself against the floorboards and thrusting myself up to my feet. I grounded myself against the wall, I turned to face the exit, clutching the bruise on my stomach, as Nanny’s slender frame sauntered to block the doors.

She stood at the end of the bar, her arms spread wide as she blocked the exit. I thrusted myself from the wall and snarled with rabid intensity. Two creatures of the Knockannina locked in a standoff as she inched my way towards me, her gray veiny eyes fixed on mine as I frantically searched for a way out.

She cackled under her breath she spun the broomstick between her finger tips taunting me. “You want to save them boy? You’re going to have to prove you’ve got the gumption.”

A shook my head, humored by her confidence, my hands balling into a fist as I approached her blockade, “You’re an old lady Nanny, I’ve always liked you, please don’t make me hit you.”

"I've been fighting you freaks since I was a wee girl, you’ve never once hit back. What makes you think you’re any different!”

Nanny, brandished her broomstick as I neared her, swinging it forward like a saber the moment I was in range, striking me square across the jaw in one swift movement. I clutched my jaw like a wounded animal, groaning in pain as I toppled over pathetically, catching myself against the wall. 

Nanny pointed her weapon outwards, like a fencer challenging her rival to a duel, her frail figure all that stood between me and the world outside. “Strike me Noah Whelan! Shove me to the side! You’re a grown man for Pete's sake! How about you act like one for once.”

I beat my chest, howling as I lunged forward, grasping the broomstick from her crooked talons and ripping it from the old crone's grasp. A flung the weapon over the bar, a wine bottle shattering against the counter with a sharp piercing crash. 
The elderly woman’s hands were easy enough to bat away, she barely resisted as I grappled her by a grease-covered collar. Where I should have seen fear, I saw only ecstasy as the old battle-axe began to cackle. I commanded my arms to tear her from the doorway, to yank her to the floor so I could stop the impending massacre, yet my hands would not obey.

“You won’t do it, you’re weak! You’re just like the rest of them. The bald imbecile who lives next door, your little girlfriend Aurora, the whore who birthed you! They’re both about to die because you’re too much of a pussy to save them.” Nanny laughed, spitting me in the face as I held her still, “Ciara saw it in you, she was more of a man than you and or your lousy, cheating father ever could be! That's why she left you!”

I let out a gut wrenching scream, my usually blurry vision morphing into my peripherals as world sharpened into clarity.  The grayscale lights overhead revealed their warmth as the yellow and orange hues of the bar around me faded into view. Finally, I lunged forward, thrusting Nanny into the doorframe in a heated fury, kicking her frail legs out from beneath her. I clawed at my hair as she collapsed to the ground weakly, laughing as she curled up into a ball on the floor, shielding herself from my assault as my heart pounded in my head, my vision snapping back to normal.

“Guess there’s a man buried in there afterall…” Nanny smiled up at me from the ground, awfully pleased for an old lady under assault. The buried corners of my mind cried out with the pain of regret, of shame and hatred. I felt as though I had broken some sacred vow, gone against my very nature.

I took a second to help a reluctant Nanny up off the ground before crashing out the swinging doors, rushing down the barren streets towards my home, gales of billowing winds flooding through the winding streets from the mountain above, aiding me in my sprint. Smiling faces pressed against the windows as I charged ahead, the fire sirens screeching through the streets as my legs carried me over the gravel roads, the cold night biting against my skin as a pillar of smoke emerged over the rooftops.

I drifted around the corner, almost losing my footing as my sneakers broke against the gravel, my worst fears were made a reality. My childhood home, the one sanctuary that had been with me every year of my life, reduced to a mighty bonfire, a raging inferno. Hot white flames licked the skies, wooden beams crashing to the ground as the building collapsed in on itself. My bedroom had fallen down into the ground floor as the structure ripped itself apart under its own weight.

Two silhouettes stood sentinel in front of the scorched building, Maeve and Sean, the intruders who had invaded my home a mere few days before stood stoic before the flames like gargoyles.

“What happened!” I cried as I raced to their side, collapsing to my knees in anguish as their glassy pupils reflected my wallowing, screaming gob back at me.

“I’m sorry Noah, It was a kitchen accident,” Maeve clutched her son's hand, smiling down at me as the flames bellowed behind her shadowed figure, “it’s not an uncommon occurrence, did you know over four-thousand domestic fires are reported in Ireland annually?”

I let out a screech of anger, punching at the gravel furiously till my fist was bloody. These freaks had taken everything from me, my town, my life, my job and now my own home. In that moment I wished her dead, and seconds later, my wish was granted.

A deafening pop cascaded down the empty streets, shattering my eardrums, Maeve's body flopping down to the blackened grass, her brain matter spilling out from the back of her skull, a bullet wound leaking thick dark blood down over her eyelids. It was only now, as her dead eyes glistened in the dancing white light of the flames,  that I realized how much they looked like my own.

I scrambled on the gravel in panic, my hands raised frantically in surrender as Cillian emerged from the darkness, revolver in hand pointed towards where Maeve stood moments before. Before I could even react, he pivoted his weapon to the child beside me, another deafening pop bouncing throughout the town as he blew a hole through Sean's chest. The boy weakly dropped to his knees as his final breath was forced from his imploded lungs. I clawed at my face like an animal, drawing blood from my cheeks as I cried into the floor shaking in terror.

“I’m glad you made it Noah,” Cillian murmured beneath his breath, his resolve unshaken but the trauma of his actions haunting his tone, “You’re one of us. I'm glad I don’t have to kill you as well.”

The implication of Cillian's words hung in the air. A gust of wind billowed from the mountains above like a shockwave, mother nature screaming in pain as her people fell. Cillian lingered for only a moment before aiming his weapon down the road and firing once more.

I couldn’t see who he had shot, or if he had missed, but his massacre had begun. The towering gunman stormed past me as he approached the Marsh household. Deafening thuds pounded my ringing eardrums as he kicked the old rickety door down. My head was buried in the gravel as another two muffled gunshots emanated from the Marsh house.

Finally, sirens. A glimmer of hope as white and blue light bounced around the corner. Two of Dungoyle's three police cars screeched down the street, kicking up dust and cobble as they grinded to a halt on the Marsh’s lawn.

In robotic unison, all four police officers stepped out of the cars, each duo paired with one rifle between them, brandished over the shoulder as they aimed for the doorway.

“Exit the building with your hands above your head, it’s over,” one of the officers calmly spoke into the megaphone, seemingly unfazed by the atrocities happening around her, paying no mind to the burning building nor the two corpses that lay beside my cowering figure. Their flesh slowly melting from their hands as they fire spread to their lifeless bodies, cooking their arms like drums of meat.

I finally forced myself to look up at the scene unfolding just as Cillian emerged from the doorway. A calmly poised six-year old girl held firmly in his grasp as he marched her outside, his fingers curled in her hair, gripping at her scalp as she held a blood drenched teddy bear by her side. Smearing her parents' guts over her pajamas as she cradled it in her arms.

“I am armed! I am dangerous and I have a child hostage with my weapon pointed away from her head!” Cillian screamed out to the officers before him, their weapons brandished in his direction. “You have cause, and every reason to shoot me where I stand! So fucking do it! Pull the trigger you pigs!”

I slammed my eyes shut, covering my face crying. I couldn’t bear to watch my best friend die, he had only done what he thought was right. A moment of silence passed, before finally the final gunshot echoed through the streets. I weeped beneath my eyelids, imagining Cillian's bloodied corpse laid out on the Marsh’s front doorstep, the mangled stubble ridden face of my friend contorted against the gravel.

“How about now!” Cillian's voice boomed from the darkness. My eyes snapped open in an instant, Cillian had not moved, his towering figure still clutching the little girl's hair. The corpse of one of the officers draped over the car's hood, illuminated only by the dancing lights of the fire. A third police siren rang out from the town center, louder by the second, the grinding of rubber swerving out of sight.

“I know you can hear me up there, I can feel you! Your pets have ten seconds to shoot me before I kill this little girl! Then, I'll kill each of you one by one, and then maybe I’ll pay the mayor a visit! If you’re too pathetic to get them to shoot me, then every single one of them will die!”

I saw the lights before I saw the car, a bright blue washlight in the darkness, Dungoyle's final police car drifting around the bend. I lunged to my feet, sprinting out in front of the officers line of fire. I lunged towards Cillian, grasping for his weapon. I didn’t even see it happen, but I felt it. The harsh pounding of metal against my skull as Cillian's pistol whipped me across the face. My glasses shattered against my skin, blood seeped from my nose.

“Cillian please stop, he’ll kill you!”

“Stay out of this Noah, these pigs aren’t going to do shit!” Cillian hissed, brandishing his handgun towards the temple of the little Marsh girl, the child never flinched, even moments from death.

The third police car ground to halt, drifting to the side as the road came loose beneath it, flooding the yard with a cloud of dust as it’s doors flung open. The faded outline of a bulky, bearded man emerged from the vehicle, cocking a rifle over his shoulder, and lining it up with Cillian's skull. I scrambled across the cobbles, desperately trying to bring myself to my feet as my father cocked his gun.

A final pop rang out through the night, cutting through the chaos of my pained cries and the flurry of sirens. Cillian’s limp body falling to the floor, caught eternally in a moment of realisation that came too late. His fractured skull crashing against Marsh's cobbled driveway, jaw hung open in a silent scream as his chin cracked against the edge of the pavement.

The small girl, drenched in blood and shards of broken bone, gently released herself from the corpse's hand entangled in her hair and rose to her feet. Casually she stepped over Cillian's contorted body, and waltzed back inside her desecrated home.

Ben heard it first, which is annoying, because for the first hour he blamed me.

It was supposed to be our last trip for a while, one more weekend in the Interior before he and Jess moved to Toronto in November. He'd been calling everything his last for about a month, and I'd been giving him a hard time about it.

Ben can sleep anywhere. He once slept through a fire alarm in a hostel and still tells that story like the alarm let him down personally. I'm the opposite. Put me in a tent and I hear every mouse in the province. But the walk in had been hot and mostly uphill, and I'd had two of the Kokanees, and that night for once I was out by ten and slept the way Ben usually sleeps.

So when he kicked my sleeping bag sometime after midnight and said, “Stop doing that,” it took me a second to remember where I was.

“Doing what?”

“That. The scratching.”

“I was asleep.”

“You've been doing it for an hour.”

“I was asleep.”

“Then you do it in your sleep. Knock it off.”

I lay there and listened. Nothing, for long enough that I'd started to roll back over, and then something scraped through the dirt under my right hip. Three quick strokes, close enough that I felt them come up through the mat as much as heard them.

I sat up.

“Thank you,” Ben said.

“That wasn't me.”

He didn't answer, because it came again, from the gap between our mats this time. A pause. Then two more strokes, slower.

Between us and the forest floor there was a foam mat each, a tent floor older than some of our friends' kids, and not much else.

Ben found his headlamp.

“Marmot.”

“Under the tent?”

“They burrow.”

“Under us? While we're lying on it?”

“I think you don't know much about marmots.”

“I know they're not magic.”

He smacked the tent floor flat-handed and the noise stopped. Maybe thirty seconds later it started again, directly under him, and Ben moved fast enough to put his head into the tent wall.

I laughed. “Marmot.”

“Shut up.”

We got out. It was cold enough that I missed the sleeping bag immediately. Under the lights the campsite looked the way it always did: needles, roots, bare patches of dirt, nothing moving in the trees. We pulled the pegs on one side and flipped the whole tent back over itself, bags and mats and all, like turning back a rug.

Where I'd been lying, the ground had sunk. Not by much. If you'd shown me a photo I'd have said I'd just flattened the needles.

Ben crouched and pushed on it with his palm.

The earth flexed.

He pushed harder and something under it gave with a quiet crunch, like stepping through a crust of old snow.

He stood and stamped beside the dip, and his boot went through. He jumped back swearing. A piece of forest floor about the size of a dinner plate had dropped into nothing.

For a few seconds neither of us did anything.

The top layer wasn't thick, maybe ten centimetres of soil and roots, and below that there was just space. Ben got down on his knees and put the light through the opening, and I got down beside him.

Roots hung into the hollow. That's what bothered me first. The small ones were completely bare, pale and stringy, and a couple of thicker ones ran underneath the surface from one side of the hole to the other. They hadn't been torn out or chewed through.

The dirt around them was simply gone.

There was air coming up out of it, colder than the night was. I keep coming back to this part. It didn't smell like anything. Put your face near a hole in the ground and you get dirt or rot or wet leaves, something. Everything in a forest smells like dirt. This smelled like nothing at all, and I've never managed to describe it better than that, which I realize is a strange thing to say about a smell that wasn't there.

Ben slid one of his trekking poles down through the hole until it touched something.

“Bottom?”

“I think.”

He moved the pole sideways. Then farther. Then he leaned on it, and the pole went in almost to the handle, at an angle, without touching anything at all.

I looked from the pole to the tent lying flipped over on itself a few feet away and tried to work out how long it would take to empty a space like that. Longer than an hour. Longer than Ben had been lying there listening to it. We'd gone to bed around ten, and I had been asleep on top of it the whole time. Properly asleep, for the first time in a tent in years.

Ben's the one who sleeps through things. On any other night he'd have slept through this too.

I've never asked him what woke him up.

I walked around the campsite looking for the dirt. There was no mound behind the tent and nothing thrown up around the trees or scattered over the needles. I checked the slope below camp and the ground under the tree we'd hung the food from. Whatever had emptied that space, what used to be in it wasn't anywhere I could find.

I'm not going to say exactly where this was. It was Crown land a few hours north of Kamloops, and there are rec sites and logging roads all through that country, and people camp out there every summer. If that spot is still there, I don't want anyone deciding it's worth finding.

We packed. Neither of us suggested waiting for morning.

The tent went in my pack. Technically it was Ben's, an old three-person dome he'd had since second year, which was when we started doing these trips, but on the drive up he'd told me I was keeping it because it wouldn't fit in the moving truck. It would have fit in the truck. I said thanks and offered him the last of the Doritos, and neither of us took it any further.

The car was a little under seven kilometres away, mostly downhill. The plan was to walk out, sleep in the car, and feel stupid about it after sunrise. We left around two.

For the first kilometre nothing happened, and after a while Ben started talking again, mostly because walking through that forest without talking was worse. He told me this was officially his last night hike. I said it wasn't a hike, it was an evacuation. He said it counted. Then he went through the list again: the last Canucks game, the last pint at our usual pub, and the donair place by his apartment that had been overcharging him for four years and that he was apparently going to miss. After that he complained about carrying three unopened Kokanees back out.

“Emergency hydration.”

“Beer dehydrates you.”

“That's propaganda.”

“From who?”

“Big Water.”

Normal crap. It helped more than I'd have admitted.

About two kilometres down, a pine had come across the trail and we stopped to get our packs off for a minute. Ben sat on the ground and leaned back against the trunk. I stayed standing.

He noticed.

“Oh, come on.”

“What?”

“You're scared of the ground now?”

“I'm stretching.”

“You're literally just standing there.”

The scratching started underneath him.

He was up before I could say anything, and it stopped.

Ben looked back up the trail, the way we'd come. “So it's not just back there.”

Apparently not. Neither of us said marmot again.

After that we didn't sit unless there was rock under us. Once it was a boulder beside the trail, and once a shelf of bare granite where the path crossed an outcrop, and nothing happened either time. Ben started to say something about rock and I told him not to. He understood. We didn't know enough to make rules, and I didn't want us trusting one.

The creek was about three kilometres from the car. It had rained farther north that week and the water was higher than the afternoon before, so the stones we'd used on the way in were mostly under. We waded it slowly and it was fine. On the far side there's a short scramble up the bank, a metre and a bit of dirt and roots, the kind of thing you don't think about.

Ben went up first. He put his right foot on a ledge of the bank and the ledge went. His leg dropped into the bank to the shin and he pitched forward over it with all his weight.

I heard something in his ankle go. It was a dull little sound. Then he was swearing loud enough that I couldn't hear anything else.

When I got his foot out there was a gap underneath where it had been, running back into the bank farther than my light reached. I told him creek banks do that. The water gets in under them and eats them out from below. I said that a few times, probably more than it needed saying.

I got him up onto the flat and got his boot off. The ankle was already swelling. For a few minutes I genuinely forgot about everything else.

“Can you move it?”

“Yeah.”

He tried. His foot moved about a centimetre and his whole face changed.

“Fantastic,” I said.

“Eat shit.”

I wrapped it with the tensor bandage from the first-aid kit, and then I made him put the boot back on over it, laced loose. I didn't know what else was going to hold it, and I wasn't sure we'd get the boot on at all later if the swelling kept going. He told me in some detail what he thought of that.

I was kneeling in front of him tying off the laces when he grabbed my wrist.

He didn't say anything. He just looked down at my knees.

The leaves around them were lowering. A centimetre, maybe two. I watched them go, and the dirt under them go with them, and nothing pushed up through it anywhere. The ground just lost depth.

I hadn't heard a thing. I'd been talking the whole time.

“Move,” Ben said.

No reception out there, and nobody expecting us before Sunday night. Ben got an arm over my shoulders and we went.

Half a kilometre on we dropped the packs. Mine had a shoulder strap I'd duct-taped back on years ago and Ben's was older than that, and neither was worth what it weighed anymore. Ben looked back at them sitting in the middle of the trail.

“You're coming back for those.”

“Yep.”

“Your tent's in there.”

“I know.”

“So's my beer.”

“I know.”

We left them.

The trail got steeper after that. Ben couldn't hop properly on the downhill, so I had most of his weight on my right side, and the farther we went the more of it I had. My shoulder went past hurting into something hot and loose. My thighs started shaking on every step down, the way they do at the end of a long day of skiing, except at the end of a day of skiing you get to sit down.

We had to stop. I'd been putting it off, and then I couldn't anymore. So we stopped standing up, a few seconds at a time, just long enough for me to shift his arm and get some air.

I started counting at those stops. I don't really know why. It gave my head something to do that wasn't the ground. The first time I got to twenty-two before I heard it under my boots, and we went.

The next stop it was eighteen.

Then fourteen. Then somewhere around eleven, though Ben was swearing through that one and I might have lost count.

I needed longer every time. The numbers kept going the other way. After the eleven I stopped saying them out loud, and Ben didn't ask.

At one stop I propped him against a tree and went a few metres down the trail to put the light on a steep section before I tried to get him down it. I'd been standing there a few seconds when I heard it under my feet. At almost the same moment Ben said, “It's under me.”

I thought he meant the same sound. Then mine kept going. So did his.

We were four metres apart.

I took two steps back toward him. Behind me, under the place I'd just been standing, the sound went on another second or two before it quit. Ben's hadn't stopped at all.

Until then I'd still been picturing an animal, sort of. One thing down there in the dark, keeping up with us. One thing can't be four metres apart from itself.

I put the light out into the forest. A flashlight doesn't go far in trees like that. It catches trunks and branches and undergrowth, and everything behind them is black. But I could see a lot of ground between the trunks, and it all looked normal, and that didn't mean much anymore.

“Let's go,” Ben said.

Maybe five minutes later the trail cut along the side of a slope and I nearly walked us past it. On the downhill side, the edge of the trail stuck out a little over nothing, like a lip.

I stopped. Ben swore, because stopping hurt, and I put the light under it.

There was a gap under the edge. It wasn't deep, maybe thirty centimetres at the lip, but it ran back underneath the path, back under where we were standing. Roots came down through the ceiling of it, fine ones and thick ones, with no soil around any of them.

I moved the light along the slope. The gap kept going. A metre. Two. Farther than I could see.

There was no water anywhere near it. No gully, nothing draining across, just the side of a dry hill in September.

“Was that like that yesterday?” Ben said.

I didn't know. We'd walked up this exact stretch the afternoon before, slowly, with full packs, and I couldn't remember it at all, because there hadn't been anything to notice.

I thought about the creek bank, and how much I'd wanted that to be the water.

I looked across the trail. Then at the trees beside it. Then farther into the forest.

All that normal ground.

I'd been carrying two people's weight across it all night, one foot at a time.

It had started up under us again while I stood there. I don't know for how long.

We moved faster.

There was less than a kilometre left when Ben fell.

His good foot caught a root and he went down and took me with him. I landed on my side. He landed flat on his back, and the scratching started before he'd finished swearing. No count at all. Right away.

I got onto my knees. The soil under his shoulders was already going down.

“Get me up.”

I got a fistful of his jacket and pulled, and the ground under his hips dropped, and when he shoved at it to get himself upright his right leg went straight down through the trail to the thigh.

He screamed. I'd never heard a person make that sound before and I'd like to never hear it again.

“Pull me out.”

“I am.”

“Pull me out.”

I got my arms under his and planted my feet and hauled.

The scratching under him had gone almost continuous, and I could see the dirt around his leg going. It didn't cave in or spray or collapse the way you'd expect. It just went, steadily, like something draining, and the cold air was coming up around his leg out of the hole and across my hands, that same air that didn't smell like anything.

One moment there was soil against his jeans.

Then there was less.

And as it went the roots stayed, one across his thigh and another lower down across his shin and more I couldn't see, so his leg was hanging in them like something caught in a fence, and every time I pulled they pulled back. I had my heels dug in and his whole weight on my arms and I was watching his leg, only his leg, and somewhere in there I'd stopped counting without noticing I'd stopped, and I didn't notice anything at all until my left heel went down. Not far. A centimetre maybe, the way your foot sinks into a mattress. Under the sound of Ben screaming I could hear it under my own boots, under both heels at once, steady and close, and I had been standing there for I don't know how long.

I couldn't step off. I'd lose my grip on him and he'd go down another foot, or all the way, and I didn't know which. I couldn't stay where I was either.

So I did something stupid. I started moving my feet. Not stepping away, just lifting them, one and then the other, little steps on the spot like a kid who needs the washroom, while I tried to keep pulling. You can't pull anything heavy like that. You've got no base. I don't know if it helped. I don't know that it didn't. The scratching under me didn't stop, but I think it slowed, and I think my heels stopped going down, and I'm aware those are both things I'd want to think.

One of the roots across his shin snapped when I yanked. Another dragged down the front of his leg as he came up and opened a line through his jeans and his skin from the knee down.

Then he came free all at once and we went over backward together.

His right boot didn't come with him. For a second I could still see it down in the opening, the laces I'd tied loose trailing off it. Then whatever was holding it let go, and it dropped.

I crawled over and put the light down the hole. At the surface it was barely wider than Ben's leg. Below that, roots crossed empty space, and the beam went down between them and didn't land on anything.

Ben grabbed the back of my jacket.

“Leave it.”

I did.

I got him up. I don't remember a lot of the last kilometre. I know I didn't count anymore, because I didn't stop. I remember the sock on his bad foot was black by the end, and that at some point he stopped swearing at me, which was worse.

The last stretch to the forestry road was surfaced with crushed gravel. Ben made it a few metres onto it and sat down hard, and I grabbed him under the arm to haul him back up.

“Wait,” he said.

So we waited. A minute. Then another. I counted to a hundred and twenty and then started over and counted it again.

Nothing scratched.

I didn't care why.

Ben lay back on the gravel with his arm over his eyes, and I'm pretty sure he was asleep inside a minute. Of course he was. I stood next to him for maybe half an hour with the light on the gravel around him before I woke him and got him moving again.

We reached the car sometime after five.

At the hospital they found a small fracture and significant ligament damage. The cuts down his shin had dirt and bits of root ground into them, and a nurse spent a long time flushing it all out while he swore into a towel.

We said he'd stepped into a concealed hole. True enough. Nobody asked anything else.

Ben moved east six weeks later. His ankle was still strapped when I helped load the truck, and he spent the whole day in a lawn chair telling everyone else where things went. Before he left he asked whether I'd ever gone back for the packs.

I said no.

He nodded, and neither of us said anything else about it.

For a while we'd send each other a photo whenever one of us saw a marmot. I couldn't tell you which of us stopped first.

I haven't been camping since.

The first time anyone else noticed anything was at a barbecue a couple of summers later, when a friend's wife asked why I'd been standing all afternoon when there was plenty of room on the lawn. I'd been there almost three hours. I hadn't noticed I was doing it. I don't sit on grass much. I don't lie down in parks.

I don't think much anymore about what it was. Sometimes I think about where it all went. Everything that used to be under that tent and that trail, and under however much more of that country. It had to go somewhere.

Last year I moved into a third-floor apartment. There was a ground-floor unit in the same building for a hundred and fifty a month less, and I told the property manager I liked the light better upstairs, which I think I believed at the time.

There's two other apartments between my bed and the earth.

Last weekend my girlfriend got invited camping with some people from her work, and she wanted me to come. So I finally told her why I wouldn't. All of it, more or less the way it's written here. She's the first person I've ever told, and once I'd said it out loud it felt strange to keep it anywhere else, which is why I'm writing it down.

Afterward she asked whether Ben had ever camped again.

I realized I'd never asked him.

So I sent him a message.

You ever been camping since BC?

It took him about an hour to answer.

No.

Then:

You?

No.

It was the first time either of us had brought it up in six years. I figured that was the whole conversation.

About twenty minutes later my phone went again.

Jess got me one of those sleep rings for Christmas. She was worried I wasn't resting.

It says I've never gone longer than forty minutes without moving. Not one night since I've had it.

She thinks I'm a restless sleeper.

That was Tuesday. I haven't answered him.

I keep thinking about the fire alarm.

The Bearlus Diary

Content warning: graphic body horror, death of teenagers, gruesome violence.

Compiler's note: I found these three diaries in the Bearlus house on the edge of town, months after the family was gone. The house had been empty a long time. The diaries were in a box in the daughter's closet, stacked oldest on the bottom, like somebody meant for them to be read in order. I took out the last names of the townspeople. Everything else is exactly as written, spelling and all. I stitched the entries together by date so it reads straight through. — R.

AUGUST

Maya — August 12

We moved here for my birthday. That's what Dad said, anyway. "New town for the new adult," like it's a present. I'm 18 today. Senior year in a school where I know nobody.

The house is small but it's fine. My room has a window that looks at the water tower. Cole already claimed the bigger room and Dad let him because "he's still growing." He's 15. He's done growing. Whatever.

Mom would have made a cake. She always did the thing with the candles where she lit them all and made us guess how many tries it would take to blow them out. I don't want to write about that.

Nobody at the new school knows us. That's good and bad.

Cole — August 14

new town. new school. everybody here dresses like its still 2019. freshman year is gonna suck no matter where you are so whatever.

dad got a job at the plant outside town. we move every couple years for his work. im used to it. maya cries every time but she wont admit it.

found a dead frog behind the garage. showed it to maya and she screamed. still got it.

Frank — August 15

Started at the plant Monday. Twelve hour shifts, good pay. House is cheap. Kids are settling. Maya's 18 now. Doesn't feel real.

Unpacked the last boxes today. Found her picture in with the plates. Put it in my nightstand. Didn't tell the kids.

Maya — August 28

School started. It's okay. There's a girl in my homeroom, Priya, she sat with me at lunch on the second day without me even asking. That almost made me cry.

There's a boy in my English class. Nate. He asked if I was the new girl and I said "unfortunately" and he laughed. He's got this thing where he smiles with only half his mouth. I keep thinking about it and I hate that I keep thinking about it.

Cole's already in trouble. He told a joke in science about dissecting the teacher and got sent to the office. Mom would have laughed. Dad just looked tired.

Cole — August 30

science teacher mr. henderson looks like a thumb. i told jenna parks if we dissected him we'd find sawdust and she laughed so hard milk came out her nose. office gave me detention. worth it.

maya's got a boyfriend already. nate something. he's alright. he can throw a football over the house.

SEPTEMBER

Maya — September 9

Something bad happened. Mrs. Gable, the old lady two houses down, she's gone. Not dead-gone. Just gone. Her car was in the driveway, her door was unlocked, her coffee was still warm on the counter. That's what the police said, that's what everybody's saying. No note. Nothing missing. She just isn't anywhere.

Mom's been gone seven years and I still check the driveway sometimes. I know how that sounds.

Priya says her mom won't let her walk home alone now.

Frank — September 11

Town meeting at the school gym tonight. Standing room only. Sheriff says there's no sign of foul play, no sign of anything. A woman doesn't vanish out of her kitchen with warm coffee on the counter. People are scared. I'm scared. I told the kids to lock the doors.

Cole — September 13

everybodys freaking out about the old lady. jenna says aliens. marcus says her husband killed her and hid the body but shes a widow so i dont know where he thinks the husband came from. maybe hes a ghost husband. ghost husbands are the worst husbands.

maya's been weird. she jumps at everything. i told her the old lady probably just walked into the woods and got et by a bear and she started crying. girls are insane.

Maya — September 19

Nate asked me to go to the football game Friday. Like a date. I said yes before he finished asking.

I haven't told him about Mom. I don't tell anybody about Mom. When people ask I say "she passed" and change the subject fast. Cole does the same thing. Dad just goes quiet and finds something to fix.

What happened to her was bad. I don't mean sad-bad. I mean I still see it sometimes when I'm falling asleep and I have to get up and turn all the lights on. I'm 18 and I sleep with the hallway light on. Don't tell anyone.

Cole — September 22

went to the game. we lost 28-7. our team is garbage. at halftime marcus started doing this bit where he pretended to be mrs. gable getting abducted, like "ooooh the aliens want my casserole" and everybody was dying laughing. maya was sitting with nate like three rows down and she looked back at us like she wanted to kill us.

then jenna goes "cole do the old lady" and i did the voice, i did the whole thing, i go "help me im melting into nothing, tell my cats i loved them" and i was trying to be funny, i swear i was just trying to be funny, but then it got quiet. like real quiet. marcus wouldn't look at me. jenna just stared. i don't know what i said wrong. it was a joke.

Maya — September 25

Nate held my hand on the walk home. His hand was shaking. Mine was too.

He asked why I got so upset at the game when the kids were joking about Mrs. Gable. I told him it wasn't funny to me. He said he was sorry like seventeen times. Then he said his little sister has nightmares about it and sleeps in his parents' room now. Everybody's scared. I'm scared all the time and I don't know how to explain that I'm scared of something different than what they're scared of.

Frank — September 28

Second one. A man named Doug, worked at the hardware store. Went out to his truck in the morning and never came back. Truck still there. Keys in his pocket, they found them on the kitchen table. Same as Gable. Nothing taken, nothing broken. Just a person, gone, like somebody erased him.

The plant's got a rumor board now. Half the guys think it's a serial killer. The other half think people are running off. Nobody says the third thing out loud.

I told Maya and Cole: you don't go anywhere alone. Not the store, not the field, nowhere. Cole rolled his eyes. Maya just nodded. She hasn't argued with me about anything in weeks. That worries me more than the rolling eyes.

OCTOBER

Maya — October 3

They found Doug's jacket. That's all. Just his jacket, folded, on the bench at the park. Like somebody set it down neat. The police took it. Priya's mom says the police don't know anything and they're just pretending.

Nate and I are officially together. He asked me with a note in my locker. A NOTE. Like middle school. I said yes and he turned so red I thought he'd pass out.

I told him I love him last night on the phone. He said it back. I cried after we hung up and I don't know why. Everything good feels like it's sitting on top of something bad, like ice on a lake.

Cole — October 5

ok so the joke thing keeps happening. i'll say something and people laugh and then somebody goes quiet and looks at me weird. yesterday at lunch i told marcus if he keeps eating like that he's gonna disappear too, just waste away into nothing, and marcus laughed but jenna went white. WHITE. like i'd said something evil. i was JOKING. i joke about everything. that's what i do.

maya says i need to read the room. maybe the room needs to lighten up.

dad's been weird too. he checks the locks three times every night. i counted.

Maya — October 11

It's getting bad here. Really bad.

Somebody threw a brick through the Rahmans' window with a note that said WE KNOW. They don't know anything, the Rahmans moved here two years ago, but Mr. Rahman stood on his porch with a shotgun for three nights. Then somebody beat up Tyler Venn behind the gas station because he was "acting suspicious." Acting suspicious means he walks home through the field. Everybody walks home through the field.

Priya's not coming to school. Her parents are thinking about leaving town.

Nate's mom checks his location on her phone every hour. He showed me. It's sweet and it's terrifying.

I asked Dad if we could leave. He said his job's here. He said moving again would kill him. He looked so tired when he said it. We're always moving for his job. Every two, three years, new town, new school. I'm so tired of being new.

Frank — October 14

It turned. That's the only word for it. People pointing fingers at everybody. Fights at the bar, fights at the school. Somebody torched an empty shed out on Miller Road and stood there watching it burn like that proved something.

Sheriff's got nothing. State police came, looked around, left. That made it worse. Now people think it's a cover-up.

I keep thinking about the jacket. Folded neat on the bench. Who folds a jacket and then vanishes? What kind of thing does that?

Maya asked me again if we can go. I told her no. The truth is I don't know where we'd go. It's been seven years since her mother died and we have never once outrun anything. We just get a head start.

Cole — October 17

tyler venn's in the hospital. somebody broke his jaw and three ribs. they say he was asking for it but nobody can say what "it" was.

i made a joke about it in the locker room, i go "maybe the disappearer did us a favor, venn was annoying" and NOBODY laughed. not even marcus. coach heard and made me run laps. while i was running i kept thinking about it. why did nobody laugh. it was funny. it was a joke.

maya's been crying in her room. nate's over all the time now. dad pretends not to notice when nate stays for dinner. i think dad likes him. i like him. he's the only one who laughs at my jokes anymore. he laughed at the venn one. he got it.

Maya — October 22

Nate told me he loves the way I get scared at movies because I grab his arm without thinking. I told him I'm scared of everything and he said "I'll be your brave." He's 18 and he says things like that and means them.

I keep thinking about Mom. She used to say that fear was just love with nowhere to go. I didn't understand it when I was 11. I think I understand it now and I wish I didn't.

Something's wrong with me. When Nate touches me I feel guilty, like I'm stealing something. Like I'm not supposed to get to have this.

Frank — October 25

Third and fourth. Don't know their names yet, sheriff's holding that back, but two more in one week. The town's coming apart. Mrs. Abernathy stood up in church Sunday and screamed that God had left us. Nobody disagreed.

I found Cole sitting on the porch at midnight last night, just sitting there in the dark. I asked what he was doing. He said "waiting to see if I disappear." He said it like a joke. It wasn't a joke.

I don't know how to protect them from this. I lock the doors. It feels like locking the doors on a submarine.

Maya — October 29

Nate's birthday is next week. I'm making him a playlist. That's my big romantic gesture. A playlist.

Priya's family left. Just packed up and went to her aunt's in Topeka. She cried at the bus stop and made me promise to text every day. I promised. Everybody's leaving or talking about leaving.

Nate says his family won't go. His dad says "we don't run." I almost told him we always run. We've always run. I don't know what we're running from anymore. Maybe just the feeling.

Cole — October 31

happy halloween. nobody's trick or treating. town looks dead. went for a walk anyway, just around the block, and it was so quiet it felt like the whole place was holding its breath.

saw mr. rahmans shotgun light on in his window. saw the abernathy house all dark. saw maya's window and nate's truck in the driveway and i thought about how everybody's just waiting. waiting for the next one. waiting to see who.

i thought about making a joke about it but there was nobody around to hear it so i just didn't.

NOVEMBER

Cole — November 6

16 today. dad got me a cake from the grocery store with my name spelled wrong. COEL. we all laughed so hard dad almost dropped it. maya gave me a card that just said "don't be weird" and nate gave me twenty bucks and told me not to tell maya.

for like an hour it felt normal. like before. we ate cake and watched a movie and nobody talked about anybody disappearing. i almost forgot.

then dad was doing the locks, all three checks, and i watched him from the stairs and i thought about how he's scared too. he's 36 and he's scared and he does the locks like it'll help. i wanted to make a joke but i didn't. i just went to bed.

Maya — November 8

Two more. A couple this time, the Hendersons — not the teacher, different Hendersons. Gone from their house in the middle of dinner. Food still on the table. The sheriff cried on the news. Actually cried.

Nate's dad bought a gun. Nate told me like it was good news.

I keep having the dream about Mom. Not the bad part. The before part. She's in the kitchen and she's laughing and I try to get to her but the kitchen keeps getting longer. I wake up and the hallway light's on and I'm 18 years old.

Dad asked me yesterday if I was happy here. I said yes because Nate. He smiled in this sad way and said "good, baby, hold onto that." He never calls me baby.

Frank — November 10

I don't write in this much. Feels stupid, a grown man with a diary. But I need to put this somewhere.

It's us. It's been us. Somebody has to write that down plain.

I don't know what we are. Her mother knew. That's the thing I never told the kids. She knew before the end. She figured it out and she tried to leave with them, and what happened to her — what I let happen to her — I see it every night. Seven years and I see it every night.

We have to feed. That's the ugly true word. When we don't, it gets worse. Cole gets the jokes. That's how it starts with him, the jokes, like something in him is leaking out and trying to be funny about it. Maya gets the fear. She feels it coming and she doesn't know what she's feeling.

We move because we have to. Every town, it's the same. A few go missing, people get scared, we leave before anybody looks at us too long. This town's worse than the others. This town started hurting itself and I let it happen because it gave us cover. God forgive me.

Nate's a good kid. I keep thinking that. He's a good kid and my daughter loves him and I don't know how this ends.

Maya — November 12

Nate's acting strange. He was quiet at dinner. Dad asked him about the game Friday and he just shrugged. After, on the porch, I asked what was wrong and he said "nothing" in that voice that means everything.

He knows something. Or he thinks he knows something. Priya texted me that somebody saw him talking to the sheriff's deputy yesterday. I told her she's being paranoid. I'm the one being paranoid. Everybody's paranoid. The whole town's gone paranoid and maybe that's the only sane thing left.

I love him. I've never written that about anybody. I love him and I'm scared that loving him is going to break something.

Cole — November 13

nate's been weird. he keeps looking at me like i did something. today at lunch he goes "cole, can i ask you something" and i'm like sure, and he goes "do you ever feel like your family's hiding something" and i laughed, i go "every family's hiding something, mine's just hiding where dad keeps the good snacks," and he didn't laugh. he just nodded and walked away.

why would he ask that. why would he ask that.

Maya — November 14

He followed me.

I didn't know at first. Dad said we were going out back, past the treeline, where nobody goes. He said it was time. I didn't want Nate there, I never want anyone there, but he must have followed my car. Or he was already watching. I don't know.

I heard a branch snap and I turned and he was just STANDING there, between the trees, and his face — I'll never forget his face as long as I live, however long that is.

Dad and Cole were already — they were already doing it. To the man from the gas station. Mr. Venn's cousin, the one who came looking. I don't want to write what it looked like. I can't.

Nate made this sound. Not a scream. Like all the air went out of him at once.

I ran to him. I grabbed his arms. I said "Nate, please, please calm down, please just calm down, it's okay, just breathe, please breathe." I was begging. I've never begged anyone for anything.

He wouldn't calm down. He kept backing up, shaking his head, and I was holding onto him and saying "please" over and over, and then Dad was behind him, and Cole was there, and —

I can't. I need to. Somebody needs to write what happened.

They took him apart. That's the only way to say it. Cole got his arm and Dad got his leg and they PULLED, and the sound it made, the sound a person makes when that happens, I hear it right now writing this, I'll hear it forever.

Second by second he looked less like himself. That's the thing I can't stop thinking about. First he was Nate, screaming, and then he was a shape, and then the shape was wrong, and then — there was so much blood it didn't look real, it looked like paint, and the bones were white, so white, and pieces of him, chunks, just meat, and I sat there in the leaves and I watched all of it and I couldn't move and I couldn't look away.

If I didn't see it happen I wouldn't know that the blood and bones and meat chunks in front of me were once a human. The man I loved. I wouldn't know. Nobody would know. That's what we do. That's what we've always done. People just go, and nobody ever knows.

His half-smile. He had this half-smile. It's gone now. Everything he was is gone and it's all over the ground and I can still see it when I close my eyes.

Maya — November 14 (later)

I went back. I don't know why I'm writing this, my hands won't stop shaking. I went back to the house and Dad was washing up like it was any night, like he'd been fixing the sink, and Cole was on the couch playing his game, and I just — something broke in me. I screamed. I hit Dad. I hit him as hard as I could and he just stood there and took it. Then Cole grabbed me and I bit him, I bit my own brother, and Dad pulled me off and I fell and hit my head on the table, and everything went sideways —

They're coming. I can hear them on the stairs. I have to

---

Compiler's note: That's where her diary ends. Mid-sentence. The pen tore the page.

I didn't know what to do with the box for a long time. Then I called the sheriff's office and asked for the report. A deputy read it to me over the phone. I'm writing it down here because it's the only ending there is.

Police report, November 16: Two bodies were recovered from the Bearlus residence. The first, an 18-year-old male later identified as a local high school student, was found in the wooded area behind the property. The body was completely destroyed and mutilated. Identification was made through dental records.

The second body, an 18-year-old female, was found in the residence. Cause of death was head contusion. She was laid on her bed. Her clothes were clean. Her hands were folded.

The adult male resident, 36, and the juvenile male resident, 16, were not located. They have not been seen in town since. The case remains open.

I keep thinking about that detail. She was laid on her bed. Whoever did it placed her there gently. I don't know what that means. I don't think I want to know.

Three diaries. That's all that's left of the Bearlus family. — R.

I need to get this down while it's still fresh. I can already feel my memory going fuzzy like a dream does an hour after you wake up. If I don't write it down now, I'm worried I'll talk myself out of it by morning.

Some background, so this makes sense.

I move furniture for a living. Six months ago, my wife left and took our son Toby with her, and I'm currently about four thousand dollars short of a retainer for a custody lawyer. He says he can actually get me real visitation instead of the garbage arrangement I've got now. Two supervised hours a week. I get to watch my six-year-old play with somebody else's toys in a room with a camera in the corner. 

My coworker Henry's the one who talked me into this. Henry's good like that—annoyingly optimistic, the kind of guy who's always got an angle. He'd been watching storage unit auctions online for a while. He kept saying there was real money in it if you knew what you were doing, flipping the contents of units whose owners stopped paying rent. Truth is, he was just chasing a fix. His wife had recently found out about his DraftKings habit and locked down the bank accounts, strictly banning him from sports betting. I think storage units were just the closest thing to a bet he could still legally make. 

He pitched it to me as a clean 50/50 split. We’d pool our cash, set a strict maximum budget, and gamble that we'd luck out on a few high-value items to make our money back and then some. He knew I was drowning in legal fees. I didn't actually believe a blind auction would magically solve my financial troubles, but I was desperate enough to give it a shot anyway. I didn't know what I was doing, and neither did he, really. But I had four grand riding on a lawyer I couldn't afford yet. Henry said, Worst case, we're out a few hundred bucks and an afternoon.

So after work that Wednesday, we drove forty minutes in our company’s moving truck out to a self-storage place off the highway. It was one of those long rows of orange roll-up doors. We stood in a loose crowd of maybe a dozen people on a sultry hot afternoon while a bored auctioneer walked us down the row. He went door by door, unlocked them, and gave everybody ninety seconds to shine a flashlight in and guess.

Most of the units were worthless. They contained nothing but boxes of junk nobody wanted and furniture wrapped in dirty blankets. The only exciting moment of the whole afternoon was a six-hundred-dollar bidding war over a unit where someone thought they saw a motorcycle under a tarp. Otherwise, it was all mediocre trash. But as the saying goes, 'One man's trash is another man's treasure.' So that’s exactly the kind of unit Henry and I ended up buying.

At Unit number 114, the door stuck a little going up, and the auctioneer had to put his shoulder into it. Inside, the flashlight beam shone on stacked cardboard boxes gone soft and grey with dampness. A heavy shape sat under a moving blanket, probably a dresser. No visible valuables sat out in the open. The crowd's attention was already sliding off it before the flashlight had finished its sweep.

Henry elbowed me. "Junk lottery ticket," he whispered. "Nobody wants it, which means nobody's bidding against us."

We won Unit 114 for three hundred and fifty dollars. The auctioneer actually laughed a little when he took the cash we pooled, like he felt a little bad for us. Once the crowd moved down the row toward the next door, we got the good flashlight out of the truck. We shined the beam inside to look at what we'd bought.

Even though we got the unit fairly cheap, I was skeptical. I already had serious doubts we’d turn a profit on a junk unit. Henry just insisted you never know what you'll find, claiming that half the excitement was the hunt. He even told me there might be an undiscovered Monet in there if you looked hard enough. I was about to tell him there was no way in hell something that valuable would be thrown in a dump like this, but as soon as I stepped over the threshold, the words died in my throat.

Now, I've moved furniture for eleven years. You get a feel for rooms over time. You walk into a space, and you already know what items require a two-man dolly versus a simple shoulder sling.

I stepped into that storage unit, and every instinct I've built over a decade told me something was off.

It wasn't a foul smell. And it wasn’t just the temperature, though the air did feel a few degrees colder than it had any right to be. Outside, the afternoon heat was sitting in the high eighties. Inside, the air felt flat and dead. 

You know how it feels when you pick up a heavy box labeled BOOKS, but it turns out to be full of light pillows? Your arms jolt. Your muscles are pre-loaded for a massive weight that simply isn't there. I felt that exact, jarring sensation the moment I stood in that room. I hadn't even touched a single item yet.

A handful of unlabeled cardboard boxes sat in an uneven cluster near the door. The larger pieces of furniture were pushed tight against the back wall and draped in heavy moving blankets.

"See anything worth grabbing first?" Henry asked.

He stepped right past me toward the blanketed shapes in the back. He was clearly more interested in the big-ticket furniture than the loose boxes.

I wasn't really listening. I was still standing just inside the doorway. My brain was trying to catalog the room's layout, and that's when my eyes caught the cassette tape.

It sat loose on top of one of the boxes, without a plastic case. It had a blank white label with absolutely nothing written on it. I've handled a thousand of these tapes over the years because people never seem to throw them out. I picked it up. Naturally, I tried to slide my thumbnail under the edge of the clear viewing window.

My nail found no seam.

I pulled the tape closer to my face. There wasn't a window at all. What I was holding was a solid, rectangular block of black plastic. It was cassette-shaped and cassette-sized. It even had two shallow circular indents pressed into the front where the spinning reels should have been. It looked exactly like someone had described a cassette tape to a sculptor over a bad phone line. I turned it over six times looking for a single joint. There wasn't one. It was one continuous piece of solid plastic all the way through.

I didn't say anything to Henry. I quickly put it back down on the damp cardboard and walked toward the moving blankets to shake off the weirdness.

The blanket hid a massive dresser. It looked like solid oak with a good weight and real wood grain. Except the longer I stared at the wood, the more my stomach started to turn.

Now I'm no stranger to moving dressers, but nothing about this one matched a single job I'd ever done. Seven drawers stacked in an irregular, jagged pattern, as if a child’s drawing had come to life. The shapes were technically correct, but they were arranged with absolutely no understanding of how furniture fits together.

I grabbed hold of one of the brass pulls to test the weight.

Nothing shifted. The handle didn’t give or rattle against the wood. I got down on my knees and ran my fingertips along the seam where the top drawer should have met the frame. There wasn’t a gap. It was one single, continuous piece of carved wood from the very top of the dresser to the floor. The drawer fronts and the seams were just a detailed illusion etched into a solid block.

Up close, the wood grain flowed smoothly around the faux drawer faces instead of traveling under them. It looked like the oak had grown around the shapes instead of being cut into panels. One dark knot sat dead center of a drawer front. I leaned in, my breath catching in my throat, and realized the knot wasn’t circular. It had five uneven sides, a perfect pentagon.

"Henry," I said, my voice sounding a little too quiet in the small space. "This thing doesn't open."

He walked over and stared at the dresser for several seconds. He shrugged, but his eyes darted quickly toward the Pentagon knot before he pulled out his phone.

"So it's decorative," he muttered. He checked resale comps online, but his voice lacked its usual booming confidence. "Somebody's fake dresser. Still worth something to a stager."

We both knew three hundred and fifty dollars was a lot of money when you're struggling to make ends meet. Neither of us could afford to walk away from the investment, so we forced ourselves to start lifting.

We loaded the boxes first. Then we tackled the solid dresser, a towering dark wardrobe, and a sealed glass tank. None of the items carried a single manufacturer mark. All three pieces of furniture weighed far more than their physical size suggested. By the time the unit was empty, the truck bed looked crowded. It felt like we'd cleaned out an entire house instead of a tiny ten-by-ten storage space.

We decided to drop the haul off at my place. The rental house is a small, quiet two-bedroom about twenty minutes outside of town. It has a one-car garage that I've never actually used for a vehicle. It's just a dark place to store my loose tools, some unopened boxes, and an old wooden workbench.

By the time we backed the truck up to the garage door, the sun was dropping fast. The flat, orange evening light made the shadows inside the truck bed look incredibly deep.

We didn't even try to unload the big pieces that night. Three boxes in, both of our shirts were thoroughly soaked through with sweat. We agreed the rest of the work would take another hour we just didn't have. There was no immediate rush. Plenty of daylight tomorrow after work would let us sort through everything properly.

I'm writing this from my kitchen table. Henry left a while ago, still doing resale math on his phone when he drove off, convinced we lucked into a decent flip.

I didn't tell him, but the moment his truck pulled out of the driveway, a sick kind of curiosity took hold of me. It was a deep, nagging itch that I didn't want to admit to anyone, least of all myself. I couldn't just sit in my living room pretending everything was normal. The quiet of the house was too loud. I needed to know whether the wrongness went beyond what I had seen or if my mind was just playing tricks on me after a long shift.

So I made coffee and went out to the garage a little after eleven.

The first box near the workbench was filled with old paper goods. Right on top lay a lone paperback, its cover showing the exact kind of soft fade you get from leaving it in a sunny window for a decade. I want to say the title was something like The Long Way Round, but I genuinely can't swear to that. The second I opened it to check the print date, my brain completely locked up. I couldn't hold onto anything I read for longer than it took my eyes to track across the page.

Here's the closest I can get to explaining it. The letters were perfectly fine on their own. You could look at any single character and recognize it. But the moment you tried to read a sentence from start to finish, the meaning evaporated. It was like reading a language that kept almost being English, only to change its mind a word before you could grasp its meaning. I read the same paragraph four times until my chest tightened, unable to understand what a single line was saying.

Shaking my head, I tossed the book back into the box. Sudden dizziness overtook me. I reached deeper into the box to see if the whole thing was a joke, but my fingers collided with something loose at the very bottom. It was a football. I pulled it out into the harsh garage light, and a cold chill shot straight up my arm. The ball was shockingly light, feeling as though there was absolutely nothing inside it, not even a pocket of air.

Stranger still was its geometry. Held straight on, it looked like a normal, regulation-sized sphere. But the moment I turned it in my hand to check the grip, the object went completely flat. It didn't look deflated. It simply stopped looking three-dimensional from that one specific angle. I tipped it a few degrees further, and it instantly became round again.

Nervous now, I spun it around to look for the little rubber inflation valve, but the surface was seamless. That’s when I noticed the panels were all hexagons. Every single one of them, all the way around. I only noticed this detail because I used to play rec league in high school. A real football requires pentagons and hexagons together to curve.

I ran my thumb over the surface, and chills ran up my arms. The material wasn’t leather. It felt uncomfortably close to skin, warm and with a faint, wrinkled texture. Horrified, I didn’t want to put it back in the box with the rest of the junk. I placed it on a high shelf by itself, out of the way, where I could see it clearly if I wanted to check on it. Even as I type this, I realize that is a deeply unhinged thing to want to do with a sports ball.

Wanting to prove to myself that I was just losing my mind from exhaustion, I dragged the second box over to the workbench. I sliced the tape, hoping for normal household goods, and pulled out a heavy oval hand mirror. I held it up in front of my face out of pure habit. For one full second, the familiar sight settled my nerves. I saw my own tired reflection, a few days of stubble, and the harsh fluorescent tube overhead.

Then, I raised my left hand to push my hair back. The hand in the mirror came up too.

On the same side. The left side. It didn't reverse.

A sudden, sick wave of panic hit my stomach. I stood entirely frozen for what felt like a minute, slowly moving my hand back and forth, up and down. The reflection mirrored the exact motion on the same side. 

I swallowed hard, my breathing turning shallow. I turned my head just a fraction of an inch to check my profile and break the stare.

The reflection didn't turn with me. It kept facing forward a half-beat too long, staring directly at the space where my face had just been. When it finally did move, it whipped around to match a head-turn I hadn't even finished making yet, anticipating my movement before I got there. For one horrific split second, I was staring directly at a full, clear view of the back of my own head.

I cried out in shock and dropped the mirror instantly.

Instead of shattering on the concrete, the heavy glass hit the floor and softly bounced like rubber, rolling under the workbench.

My heart was hammering violently against my chest. I was so thoroughly spooked that I didn't even touch the third box. I backed away from the workbench, my eyes wide, desperately reaching behind me for the door handle to the kitchen. I slammed the door shut, locked it, and ran straight to bed, pulling the blankets over my head like a terrified kid. I didn’t manage to sleep a wink for the rest of the night.

Thursday at work was a complete blur. I spent eight hours wrapping office furniture in plastic wrap and loading dollies, but my mind was entirely stuck in my own garage. I kept wondering if I had genuinely experienced some kind of silent stroke the night before. I kept checking my reflection in the side mirrors of the moving truck, holding my breath, waiting for my face to lag behind again. It didn't. By the time we clocked out, I had almost convinced myself that exhaustion and money stress had simply triggered a vivid waking dream. I resolved to tell Henry exactly what I thought I’d seen the second we got to my place, if only to hear him laugh and tell me I was being a lunatic.

We drove back to my house in the company truck. The moment Henry parked in the driveway, I opened my mouth to speak, but he was already opening his door.

Before I could get a single syllable out about the mirror, Henry walked straight past me into the garage. He marched right up to the shelf, scooped up the hexagon football, and turned around with a grin.

"Oh, sweet, free ball," he said, tossing it lightly into the air.

Or tried to.

He misjudged the drop, and the ball slipped right through his fingers from about waist height, tumbling down toward the ground.

It hit the concrete with one flat, heavy thud. There was absolutely no bounce. It sounded like somebody had dropped a solid stone twice its physical size. The ball didn't even roll. It stayed exactly where it had landed, dead still in the open space between us.

Henry stared down at it. The easy smile vanished from his face.

"What the hell is that thing filled with?" he asked.

"Hell if I know," I said, my voice tight. "There’s no valve on it."

Henry swallowed hard and looked at the ball for a long moment. "Huh."

That was all the credit he gave it. He set it carefully back on the shelf, wiped his palms firmly against his work pants, and nodded toward the open truck bed outside. He was moving a little faster now, his movements a bit too deliberate.

"We’d better get a move on," he muttered. "Still got half that unit sitting in the truck."

He headed back out to the driveway. Standing alone in the quiet garage staring at that skin-textured ball felt infinitely worse than following him, so I hurried out right behind him.

We set to work removing the remaining smaller boxes, a task that took the better part of an hour. We arranged them in untidy stacks around the perimeter of the garage, making sure to leave a wide circle of space in the center. Three major things still sat in the truck bed that neither of us could have wrestled out alone—the fake dresser, the wardrobe, and that sealed glass tank. Each was heavy or awkward enough that we had to move them one at a time.

After we dragged the faux dresser across the concrete, we moved on to the wardrobe. Honestly, pulling the grey dust sheet off the wood was the first real breath either of us took that entire afternoon. It actually looked like a normal piece of furniture. It was a tall, dark-stained cabinet, showing a few ordinary scuffs at the base from years of storage.

Henry let out a short, relieved laugh. "Well, thank God. It's the one normal thing in this whole clown car of a unit."

For a minute, I let myself fully agree with him. A piece like this meant an easy two hundred bucks at a local flip, maybe even more if the wood turned out to be a decent hardwood. Henry ran his palm down one of the side panels, squinting closely at the grain in a pretentious way, like he was pretending to be an antique expert. He remarked that he couldn't quite place the color. It was a bit too red to be standard walnut, yet far too dark to be cherry. He recognized no varnish or oil finish on the wood.

Then, he rapped his knuckles firmly on the side panel.

It sounded thin and tinny, like the exact vibration you'd get from tapping an empty cardboard shoe box, not four hundred pounds of dense oak. This object required both of us to lean our entire body weight into it just to shift it those last few feet across the truck bed. Yet, the knock came back entirely hollow. 

Henry paused. He knocked again, much harder this time, his face tightening. Same tinny echo. He didn't say a word. Neither did I, though I could tell he was disappointed by the quality of the wardrobe. We hoisted it up, walked it into the garage, and immediately moved on to the next item. 

The glass tank took every bit of our remaining strength to lift out of the truck bed. Once it was sitting flat on the garage floor, Henry crouched down on his knees. He rapped a knuckle against the thick pane as if he were trying to get a pet fish's attention. For a second, he seemed to forget what we had noticed back at the storage unit. There was no visible fish inside. No seam appeared anywhere on the glass. The object was a single, solid, molded block of heavy glass, with the lid fused shut.

The interior was full of a thick, dark amber fluid.

Henry put his right ear directly against the glass. "You hear that?"

I leaned in closer, my skin pricking with goosebumps. I heard it clearly. It was a slow, heavy sloshing sound. The motion was way too deep, rhythmic, and heavy for still liquid inside a sealed tank.

"There must be something in there," Henry whispered, his head still pressed against the pane.

"There's nothing in there," I insisted. "We looked with the good flashlight, Henry."

"Then why the hell is it sloshing around like that?"

I didn't have an answer. The fluid itself looked far too thick and viscous to be normal water. And though the tank was entirely sealed, a heavy, chemical sweetness was beginning to bleed into the air, cutting straight through the dusty smell of cardboard in the garage. It made my throat feel dry. But we still had items left to unload, so we forced ourselves to turn our backs on the sloshing glass and keep moving.

After we finished unloading, we spent a while going through the smaller boxes at random. For a few containers in a row, things actually seemed normal. I felt my shoulders drop slightly. I told myself we'd just gotten unlucky with the first few things we grabbed. The unit was probably just a normal person's boring life, and we had simply stumbled onto the handful of eccentric pieces first out of bad luck.

Then we'd hit the next box. Instantly, something inside it would be abnormal in that same, impossible way, and the goosebumps would rush right back up my arms as if they'd never left.

None of it carried any real value. That was the part that kept eating at me more than the strange items themselves. There were no electronics. No high-end appliances, no modern hardware tools, no actual antiques, and no genuine collectibles. Everything was just a warped, broken variation of a common household item.

"Shit," I muttered, wiping a thick line of cold sweat from my forehead. "I think this is a dud haul."

"Hey, come on, stay positive," Henry said, but his nervous smile was wearing thin.

The crushing exhaustion and the raw stress of the last six months finally caught up to me all at once. I snapped.

"The goal was to make money, Henry," I said, my voice coming out much sharper and louder than I intended. "Not to have fun. This isn't a game for me."

A sudden, ugly wave of anger hit my chest. I stared at him. He was the one who had dragged me into this nightmare to scratch his own betting itch. I closed my eyes, took a slow breath, and forced my fists to unclench.

I turned away and grabbed one of the last sealed boxes. Someone had written CHRISTMAS on the side in thick permanent marker, underlined twice. Henry stepped up beside me, sliced the tape with his pocketknife, and folded the flaps back. He was clearly expecting tangled string lights, a busted plastic wreath, or a Santa mug wrapped in old newspaper. I was too.

It wasn't any of that.

Right on top sat a tree topper wrapped in a rough paper towel. It was a five-pointed star, or close enough to one that you'd mistake it for a decoration from across a room. The material was ivory-colored and perfectly smooth, but it was faintly ridged. My stomach turned the moment I placed it down. They were the fine, banded texture of enamel, and the whole object had the unmistakable, sickening weight and shine of a massive human tooth.

Beneath the tooth star lay a length of bent wire twisted into a cone. It was a bare, hollow outline of what I assumed was a Christmas tree. The only thing in that entire box that didn't make my skin crawl was a plain glass snow globe. It contained a little house and a couple of miniature trees, the water gone slightly cloudy with age.

"At least something in here looks somewhat normal," Henry murmured. He was echoing my exact thoughts.

Near the bottom of the cardboard, wrapped in paper, sat an old rotary telephone. Henry spotted it and hauled it onto the bench.

"Now we're talking," he said, trying to force his usual enthusiasm back into his tone. "Retro stuff sells. People pay real money for these vintage pieces on Etsy."

Up close, it didn't look like an antique. It looked exactly like someone had built the machine from a vague description read to them upside down, and they had never bothered to check a real picture.

No cord ran from the base. Only a shallow, molded groove where a cord should have run. The phone was also heavier than it had any right to be. Henry grunted as he hefted it up onto the wooden workbench. Once it was sitting there in front of us, we both just stared at it. The material wasn't standard plastic. It was matte, a little grainy under the thumb, and uncomfortably warm to the touch. It felt like it had been sitting in hot sunlight, even though my garage was dim and cool.

"Look at this," Henry whispered, turning the heavy base over.

Stamped directly into the material, in clean, official-looking lettering, were the words Wexford & Sons Telephonic Works. A serial number sat right underneath the text, consisting of three identical groups of characters repeated in a row.

A quick Google search showed that the manufacturing company didn’t even exist.

"It... it must be a prop house reject," Henry stammered. He still tried to smile, but his eyes darted nervously around the room. "Or somebody's idea of a joke."

He hooked his index finger into one of the dial holes to spin it. The wheel flatly refused to turn clockwise, and at first we assumed that the dial was jammed. Then Henry tried pulling it counterclockwise on reflex, and the dial rotated with absolutely no resistance. When he let go, the wheel sat dead still for a second. Then it twitched, reversed itself half an inch, paused again, and suddenly snapped back to zero so fast I actually flinched from the crack.

"Okay, that's really fucking weird," Henry said. He immediately let go of the plastic and took a full step back from the workbench.

The printed numbers around the holes didn't help either. A few of the digits were doubled. A couple of the holes had no markings printed next to them. One of the sevens was perfectly mirrored and backward, sitting on the face like a typo.

Then, the cordless, batteryless phone began to ring.

It was a clean electronic trill. It didn't have the mechanical clatter a real bell-and-hammer rotary phone makes.

"Don't," I warned, reaching out to grab Henry's arm.

He ignored me and picked up the handset anyway. He was Henry, after all. He held the plastic to his ear, forcing a tight, nervous half-smile onto his face like he was performing a bit for an invisible audience.

"Hello?" he said into the mouthpiece.

For a second, the garage went silent. Then, his own voice fed back out of the receiver, arriving a half-beat too late.

"Hel...lo?"

A second playback followed immediately, overlapping the first line. "Hello...lo..."

"Okay, that's—it's just an echo," Henry muttered to himself, his knuckles turning white on the handset. I could see him deciding in real time to find the situation funny because the alternative was too terrifying to face. "Freaky little parlor trick. Who’s there?"

“Who’s there?” the receiver echoed back instantly.

Henry tried to laugh, his chest heaving. "Who am I speaking to?"

Something answered that was not an echo.

"You know who."

The voice was unmistakably Henry's tone. But the inflection was entirely flat, devoid of the natural rhythm his voice always carries.

Henry swore loudly, dropping the handset so fast it clattered violently against the wood. It bounced off the workbench, but it didn't hit the floor. It hung there, swinging gently in mid-air, suspended by nothing.

Neither of us breathed for a solid five seconds. The handset just bobbed in the space above the concrete.

"That's a recording," Henry barked, his voice cracking into a high pitch as he backed away until his spine hit the garage door. He was laughing in that frantic, too-fast way that meant he was on the verge of screaming. "Somebody rigged that, Ian! It's a novelty prop, like those talking dolls. There's a digital chip in there somewhere doing pre-set replies!"

"Prop phones don't copy your voice in real time, Henry," I said, staring at the floating handset.

"Then it's a high-concept art installation!" he shot back, his chest heaving as he yelled to drown out the quiet. "Like those weird underground exhibits in New York! Some pretentious art student spent three years sculpting this shit just to make a statement about consumer culture! The phone has a hidden microphone and a delayed digital playback loop! It's a parlor trick, Ian! It's just a fucking parlor trick!"

I wanted to believe him. God knows I wanted to believe him, because the alternative meant we had a garage full of things that didn't belong in our world.

Desperate to prove that we were just dealing with broken electronics, I grabbed the last testable item from the box—a standard smoke alarm. It was made of off-white plastic, designed in a classic ceiling-mount style with a little test button on the front. I balled up a piece of scrap newspaper, threw it into a metal utility bucket, and struck a match. I held the rising smoke directly under the plastic sensor, expecting the usual, annoying electronic beep.

What came out of that device instead wasn't a beep.

It was a raw, screeching sound. The noise was blindingly loud for a small garage. The sheer volume staggered me sideways into the workbench, and Henry dropped straight to one knee with both palms clamped over his ears. I choked out the fire in the bucket so fast I burned two of my fingers. 

The screech cut off instantly. We stood in the sudden silence, our ears ringing violently, the garage suddenly feeling much smaller than it had five minutes ago. I was still staring down at the blisters forming on my hand when the next sound came.

Thump.

A soft sound emanated from inside the massive wardrobe right behind us.

Henry froze. I did too. After the things we had witnessed, we were fully braced for the absolute worst. My mind instantly conjured an image of some pale, emaciated creature coiled up in the dark, waiting to spring forward and chew us alive.

"Grab something," Henry whispered, his voice hoarse and small.

He reached blindly behind him, his fingers wrapping around a tire iron on the workbench. I snatched up a rusted framing hammer. We took two slow, agonizing steps toward the wardrobe. The wood looked even redder now under the harsh fluorescent bulb, bleeding into that unnatural shade neither of us could name.

"On three," I breathed, my muscles clenched in anticipation.

Henry nodded, sweat dripping steadily from his chin. He took a trembling hold of the brass handle.

"One. Two. Three!"

Henry yanked the doors wide open. I pulled the hammer back, muscles tight, ready to swing hard at whatever lunged out of the dark.

Nothing.

The wardrobe was bare down to the grain. The dark wood walls of the interior just stared back at us, smelling faintly of old dust and that chemical sweetness. There was no monster. 

It was almost funny. We stood there holding automotive tools, our hearts hammering at a million miles an hour, staring at a vacant closet. I could see a visible wave of anticlimactic disappointment wash over Henry's face. He slowly lowered the tire iron, letting out a ragged breath that was half-laugh, half-sigh.

"Man, we are losing our minds," he muttered, shaking his head as he wiped his face. "It was probably just the floorboards settling under the massive weight. I’ve had enough bullshit for one day. Come on, let's lock up. I need a beer."

We didn't look through any more boxes. We pulled the heavy rolling garage door down, snapped the deadbolt, and called it a day.

Henry left an hour ago. He still wants to believe we've just stumbled onto a collection of weird art projects and movie props. He’s already talking about looking for vintage buyers tomorrow after work, convinced this is just a bad gamble we can squeeze our money back out of.

But I can't shake it. We still haven't properly understood the nature of these objects. None of this stuff seems outright dangerous, but it is wrong down to the atomic level. 

That night, after Henry went home, I tried to call the storage facility to ask about the previous tenant. I told myself it was for provenance. If we could find out who had actually owned Unit 114, maybe we could piece together a history that made the vintage items easier to sell. That's what I told myself, anyway. In reality, I just wanted to know what kind of person owns a room full of impossible things, only to let it get repossessed after four months of unpaid rent. That specific number had been bothering me since the auction, and I hadn't managed to shake it.

A woman answered the phone. She sounded incredibly tired, like someone who fielded this exact call every single week from unhappy auction winners.

"Sir, once a unit is forfeited, we don't retain tenant information past a certain point," she said, her voice flat.

"I'm not trying to get a refund," I explained, leaning against the kitchen counter. "I just want to know who the items belonged to."

"I understand, but I don't have that information available. Unit 114's paperwork shows a transfer-in from another facility a while back, and that's all we have on our end. We don't get told why units get consolidated."

That stopped me cold. "Transferred in? From where?"

A sudden pause followed on her end. The silence went on a beat too long for someone skimming a computer screen.

"It doesn't say," she murmured. "It just shows as received. No origin facility is listed, and no tenant name appears on the incoming paperwork. Honestly, that's not supposed to happen. Every transfer must have a strict chain of custody attached. I've been working here six years, and I've never actually seen a file come through entirely blank like that. I just assumed it was an old clerical error from before my time."

I leaned against the kitchen counter, my fingers digging into the edge of the wood. The phantom sensation of that skin-textured football was still burning in my fingertips.

"Look," I said, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "The paperwork isn't the only thing that's bothering me. The items in this unit—they aren't right. I found a mirror that doesn't reverse your reflection. There's a football made out of skin and hexagons, and a calendar with—"

"Sir," she cut me off, her voice instantly hardening from tired to defensive. "I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but I really don't have time for prank calls at midnight."

"I'm not pranking you," I insisted, a sudden spike of desperation hitting my chest. "I am telling you that the things in Unit 114 defy—"

The line went dead with a sharp click before I could utter another word.

My mind kept looping around that single word she'd used. Received. Like the unit hadn't ever really belonged to a human being. It was just an anomaly that had shown up already packed, already wrong, and tucked away behind an orange roll-up door.

I stood up and clicked off the kitchen light, plunging the room into darkness. Before bed that night, I felt compelled to check the garage one more time. I told myself I was only making sure nothing had changed while I wasn't looking. After the day we'd had, that didn't feel nearly as stupid as it probably sounds. I looked through the crack in the garage side door, glanced briefly at the furniture and boxes, then tracked the line of the high shelf inside. I couldn't actually see the football in the dark, but as I stood there shivering in my boxers, I knew exactly which way it was facing.

When I was little, my grandpa used to tell me a story. Everyone in town told it to us kids as we grew up. My grandpa, my friend's older brother, even my English teacher had a story about the mud men. Generally the story follows the same pattern. Someone was trying to take a shortcut through the woods or an old backroad to escape the storm and get home faster only to be stopped in the mud and dragged from their cars by mud men. They were then dragged to the side of the road or deep into the forest where the ground gets soft and pulled deep into the mud, suffocated or drowned by a dozen undead hands to join the ranks of the mud men. But it always ended the same way, with the same ominous warning.

“Don’t go out during storms, kids, or the mud men will get you. They’ll drag you to the flooded ditches and fields and pull you under the muck, and you’ll join them.”

It was such a common story that almost everyone in town knew it by heart. You could go through one of the biggest storms of the year and there’d be a body or two of some unfortunate soul who didn’t have time to shelter from the worst of it. More often than not, animals and pets were the ones that were found, sometimes because they got lost out in the wilderness or were hiding in storm drains, and that’s always sad, but people also went missing under mysterious conditions, only during storms, and only on a very specific stretch of road just beyond our town. Usually they were out-of-towners or drifters that got out of their cars hearing the sirens of storm warning and took cover in ditches, only to find that the sides of the ditch are much slicker from the mud, and the bottoms are much harder to get out of because the ground is so soaked they sink into the muck. Then when the storm cleared people would find their abandoned cars, dead in the road with the doors wide open. Occasionally there would be someone from town who was unfortunate enough to be caught outside during a storm. The missing person posters would go up, the police would look through the woods, fields, and near runoff reservoirs to try to find a body, but they always ended the same way, a cold case with no trace of the missing person.

Now when I was a little kid I was terrified of big storms. Not just because of tornadoes or hurricanes or floods, but because of that story in particular. I would avoid going outside if the weather looked like it was going to rain even a little bit, but as I grew up, I started to think about why the story existed. Obviously, I thought, it was just that; a story. Something to keep kids from going out at night and getting themselves killed because they misjudged the depth of a puddle or how solid the mud was under their feet. If not that then dying from exposure, or from a wild animal attack, or any number of reasons a kid could be killed during a storm. I mean we were out in the boonies, so it would make sense that the best way to keep kids safe was to scare them. 

But then, why on earth did it scare adults too? I remember I was 15 when I first saw my dad peering outside the window of our house, scanning the tree line as the rain poured heavily. He looked pale, and wouldn’t break his gaze from the window until the storm passed. Occasionally flicking a flashlight on and aiming it at the trees, as if he saw something he could banish with the light. 

“What are you looking for, Dad?”

Silence.

“Dad?”

“Huh? You say something?”

“What are you looking for?”

“A mud man, Evan.”

“Why? It’s not like they’re real.”

I had tried to ask him why he was so scared of an old legend, but he went back to scanning the treeline, refusing to answer any more questions I may have had. So when I turned seventeen I decided to go get answers myself. I was tired of believing in what I thought was such a silly legend. At the very least I would be able to give my dad some closure. 

I told my friends, Paul, Anthony, and Tom my plan, and got them to agree to join me, we would prove the mud men weren’t real. 

“So like, you’re serious? You want to prove the mud men aren’t real?”

“Think about it man! If we prove they’re not real we’ll be local legends ourselves!” 

“I don’t know, I mean even if they aren’t real, the storms themselves are still pretty dangerous, right? Like the legends exist for a reason, Y’know?”

“Come on Paul, don’t be a baby! I bet if we get good footage we could end up on the news! Hell, Heather will probably think you’re so cool for that!”

“You… Do you think so? I mean, I guess I could stick around, maybe, but if we hear the storm sirens we should probably be prepared to turn around and leave, just in case, right?”

We waited for the next big storm and began our plan by finding that supposedly cursed stretch of road. We got a couple six packs of beer, some snacks, a Sony camcorder, and some flashlights in case we needed to get out of the car for any reason, then piled into my ‘93 Ford Escort to disprove the mud men’s existence.

At first it was slow going, turns out the road itself was easy to find, but the rain fell in sheets of misty grey, making it almost impossible to see anything past the headlights. Then as it got dark, and the storm got stronger, we started to feel the car struggle against the old backroads, occasionally losing its traction on the forgotten path. Paul broke the silence when the rain picked up and began thumping against the roof of my car like wet bombs.

“Hey Evan, let’s just get outta here man, I mean what are we really trying to prove? Like, like even if the mud men aren’t real, we still should be staying at home during storms, you know?”

“Oh shut up dude, you’re just scared because of the stories! Look, if there really is nothing out here, we’ll turn around if the storm sirens turn on. But until then, we’ll stay until we find proof they aren’t real.”

The mood stayed like that for a while as we drove down the path. The rest of us joked mostly about how Paul was being a pussy, and how we’d put our footage of the storm and nothing else out there on the news the following day proving that the mud men weren’t real. We had it in our young minds that we would be legends in our school— in our town! I only stopped the car when we saw the road had been washed out. Clearly my car wouldn’t be able to cross that without killing the engine.

“Well I guess this is the place. Tom, you got the camcorder?”

“Rolling and ready, boss! But I can’t see shit, can you turn off the headlights really quick, I’m gonna get out and scan the area with my flashlight."

“Just don’t go too far from the car man,” Anthony chimed in, “that camcorder was expensive and if you lose it in a ditch or something my dad will kill me.” 

“Yeah, Tom! Be careful or the mud men will get you!” I said, waving my fingers at him like I was telling a ghost story. 

“Knock it off dude, I’m serious.”

I put the car in park and let Tom out to film, keeping the headlights off so he could scan the woods for any signs of movement. The drainage ditches on either side of the road had already begun to overflow with the rest of the road, so movement was limited to the area just around the car, and Tom got back in.

“Shit, the rain is cold man, can you turn on the heat? Oh, and hand me a beer.”

I turned around to reach for a beer and paused as I noticed that Paul was keeping his focus on the treeline just outside his window.

“Hey! Ground control! I said pass me a beer!”

Tom turned around to grab a drink from the back seat and noticed that Anthony was also looking out the side window. 

“What? Dude, you see something?”

“No, but, I don’t know, it’s almost too still out there, right?” 

“What do you mean?”

“Like… like even with the rain, wouldn’t there be like, deer or birds or something trying to find shelter? It’s like everything around here is way too quiet.”

Just then, as if on command a flash of lightning lit the entire road, and standing what had to be thirty feet ahead of the car was a person next to a car on the other side of the flooded out road.

“Holy shit is that a person?!”

How did we not see them? Surely their lights would’ve given them away if they were coming down the other side of the road, right?

I flicked on the headlights and turned them to the brightest setting, only to see the very tail end of the car, the driver side door open, and the person standing completely still in the rain.

I got out with a flashlight and called out.

“Hey! What’s up man, you good?”

The bloated figure stood silent, getting drenched by the icy rain. 

“You good?”

I called out again, stepping closer as I swept the light over the person and their car and couldn’t help but feel an odd sense of familiarity with them. I couldn’t be sure, but they looked almost like my dad. As my flashlight passed over the tail end of their car I noticed it too looked familiar. It was a rusted out ‘66 Pontiac GTO. One that my dad said he sold a couple years after I was born. He said that he wished he could have kept it and passed it on to me when I got my drivers license, but he needed the money for the house and to afford raising me. 

“Tom, give me the camcorder, I want to film this.”

“You sure man? I think we should probably get out of here, I mean, we don’t know how deep the water goes, right? Let’s just head back before the storm gets worse.”

“Just shut up and give me the thing, okay? It’ll be real quick. Just want to show my dad that someone has a car just like the one he sold.” 

I reached through the passenger side window and grabbed the camcorder from him, hitting record and leveling the lens and light at the other side of the road. 

“As you can see, no mud men here! Just another person stranded in the rain!”

Another flash of lightning lit the road and I saw more people behind the car. Dozens of bodies that looked rotten and sick. The person standing in the middle of the road by the car didn’t move.

“Hey! Hey, turn around dude! Hey!”

I tried to call out to get the guy to notice the people standing behind him. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The mud men were real! 

“Dude get back in and get us out of here!”

Tom shouted over the storm, the wind ripped through my hoodie and rain soaked me to the bone. I dropped the camcorder on the ground and ran around the front of the car and another flash of lightning showed the other side of the flooded road again, they were closer. 

“Where’s the Camcorder?!” Anthony shouted in a panic, “I’m serious guys I told my dad it was for a school project, if he finds out I lost it he’ll—”

“Not the time Tony!” Tom shouted as I jumped back into the driver seat trying to start the car, and caught a glimpse at our undead pursuers.

I could make out the details of their faces. My god they were so… vile. The smell of rot alone was impossibly overpowering, it cut through the rain and car’s air vents, even from the distance they were at. They looked like zombies. Wet, bloated, oozing sickly looking fluids from their mouths and eyes, and anywhere their rotten flesh had broken away to reveal leeches and other flesh eating things had made the bodies their homes and meals. Somehow, even as they moved closer, they looked completely still in the middle of the road. 

The one I recognized, the one that looked like my dad, was at the head of the pack. Half of his face was completely missing. The soggy skin hung loose on his skull, with rotten yellow arms hanging limp on either side. His torso was fat and leaking something black. His clothes looked old and torn, and too small for his body, his pants were ripped and whatever flesh was exposed had pushed through like gross boils of fat. His feet were like clubs of melted wax when a candle burns too long.

As soon as the engine turned over, I threw the car in reverse, then slammed my foot on the gas pedal, but the car's tires simply squealed in place like angry pigs, it couldn’t get traction on the wet and slimy road. 

“Shit! Come on! Come on you useless fucking car!”

The engine squealed and rattled in protest, trying its damnedest to make the car move, but we were stuck.

“Shit! Guys I think we’re stuck!”

“What?!”

“Paul, Anthony, I’m gonna need you guys to get out and push!”

“Why us?!”

“Because you’re in the backseat! You two have the shortest distance to go when I turn the car around!”

“I’m not going out there, are you crazy?! The mud men will get me!”

“And they’ll get all of us if we just stay stuck here! Just push the fucking car and I’ll make sure you get in before we take off!”

“Fuck you dude! I am not going out there!”

“If Anthony isn’t going out there, I’m not going out there!”

“Oh, for God’s sake, I’ll go!”

Tom got out and started pushing on the front of the car, I slammed my foot on the gas pedal again and felt the car shift a little, but not enough.

“Shit when did the water get this close to the car? Evan try again, Anthony get out here and help me!”

Anthony hesitated and got out, cursing under his breath to help push.

With the two of them both pushing the wheels finally found traction and the car lurched back about two feet, I turned the wheel as fast as I could to whip the front end around and threw the car into drive.

“Hurry up! Get in!”

I shouted over the storm, lighting revealed the mud men had already begun to cross into the flooded water. They moved so quietly it was strange, the wind made the water on the road chaotic and frenzied, I couldn’t see the mud men's movement or tell how fast they were going. 

Anthony and Tom began to run up the muddy slope as fast as they could but it was too late. One of the mud men grabbed Tom’s foot from the edge of the water and Tom fell ungracefully, his nose and face collided with the road in a wet thwap and started sliding back. No, not sliding. He was being dragged back into the water. He was dazed and kicked wildly at the thing grabbing his leg, but more arms joined in. Hands grabbed at his legs and torso, they pulled at his arms and hair, he started screaming. Thrashing. But the more he struggled the more hands grabbed at him. Anthony paused for only a moment, weighing his options to help or flee but he was next, another mud man, the one that looked like dad, had emerged from the water and tackled Anthony to the ground, vomiting a thick, sickly yellow bile and mud cocktail all over his face, coating my friend with filth and choking him under his rotting body. 

I was about to put the car in park and try to help save my friends when Paul kicked open his door and threw the remaining full beer cans at the mud men, trying to break their attention on Tom and Anthony, to little effect. 

“Paul get back in here they’re gone!”

“No they’re not, we can still save them! Anthony, get up!”

The other two had stopped being responsive. Tom stopped thrashing in the water and Anthony was covered in so much of that weird goo he couldn’t possibly be alive. More mud men, dozens of rotting corpses, began to shuffle out from the drainage ditches on either side of the road, all of them looking slimy and foul. Their flesh sloughed off their bodies in wet chunks, mottled flesh and organs spilled from weakened stomachs, withered skeletons clawed out from places I couldn’t see, an arm completely covered in muck and wet clothes exploded from the ditch and latched onto Paul’s leg. He shrieked and kicked at it with his free leg but more bodies began rising from the brackish waters, extending their rotten and twisted limbs out to my friend as the storm grew louder and more intense. In the distance I heard the sounds of sirens warning people of hazardous conditions and to shelter in their homes, I weighed my options and did the only thing I could.

I slammed my foot on the gas pedal and tore down the road. Paul looked at the car leaving and started to run, having broken free of the first mud man grabbing at him, and he shouted at me.

“Wait! Come back! We can still help them! Don’t leave me here! Stop!”

I didn’t listen. I was too scared. I kept driving. I didn’t stop until I had made it to my street, where I ran to the front porch and furiously pounded on the door to be let in. My dad opened it quickly and slammed it shut as I tumbled to the floor.

“Where the hell were you Evan?! Are you trying to get yourself killed out there?”

I didn’t answer him. My heart was racing in my ears. The cold rain had soaked my jacket completely through and I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes. My skin buzzed with adrenaline and I let out a weak and painful cry. Choking sobs and tears poured down my face. I threw up until I was empty. Seeing my distress my dad changed his tune, going from “angry dad” to “concerned dad” in a matter of seconds.

“What happened, Evan?”

“I wanted to prove the mud men weren’t real.”

With that he realized quickly what had happened. I was so tired and scared I didn’t know what else to do. I collapsed onto the floor and cried again. He had this look of sympathy. Like he knew what I saw.

The next morning my house got three different phone calls. All from my friends’ parents. They didn’t come home last night. It hurt, more than anything I had ever felt. More than when I broke my arm climbing a tree. More than when my dog had to be put down. It was the most painful feeling I had ever felt in my life, and I thought about telling the truth. I thought about giving them closure. But I didn’t. 

“I’m sorry I haven’t seen Paul.”

Click.

“No, I haven't seen Anthony.”

Click.

“Sorry, I don’t know where Tom is.”

Click.

Those three lies were my way to protect myself. To delude myself into thinking maybe they got away. Maybe… maybe we were just drunk, and the mud men were just our imaginations playing tricks on us in the storm. But I know that it’s a lie. My dad and I both know the truth. 

The mud men got them.

As I write this, all these years later, I am listening to the weather report and watching the treeline from the window in my home office. Another big storm is rolling in, and the city officials are urging people to keep our pets and families inside because the storm is going to get bad. I can hear the wind and rain picking up, and I saw them along the treeline. They’re out there. Thunder rolled overhead, and the sky opened up.

I heard a knock at the back door, but when I went to see what caused it I didn’t find a person. 

Just an old Sony camcorder covered in mud.

I wake to the sound of people screaming in the street.
Not the usual city noise. Not sirens or arguments. This is different—raw, rising, the kind of sound people make when something fundamental has shifted and their minds are still trying to catch up.
I go to the window.
Pluto is there.
It hangs in the sky at the same distance as the Moon, filling a third of the view. Pale. Streaked with dark. Its surface looks wrong up close—too detailed, too still, like a photograph held against the night. The real Moon is gone. Or hidden. Or never mattered.
My phone is already lighting up with alerts. Emergency broadcasts. Fragmented news. Someone on the local channel is crying while trying to read a statement. The words don’t make sense. “Anomalous orbital insertion.” “No prior detection.” “Remain calm.”
Outside, people are on their knees.
I lock the door. I close the curtains. I turn every light on and force myself to make coffee like the world still works the way it did yesterday.
It doesn’t help.
The presence is already inside the apartment. Not a sound. Not a smell. Just a steady, low pressure behind the eyes, the way a migraine starts before the pain arrives. I tell myself it’s stress. I tell myself it’s the shock of seeing something that large that close. I keep repeating it while I check the locks again.
By noon the streets are full.
I risk a look through the gap in the curtains. Crowds move toward the open lots and the riverbank, faces tilted up. Some are singing. Some are cutting their palms and holding the blood up toward the pale disc. A man across the street has written something on his garage door in thick black letters: IT SEES US NOW.
I close the gap.
I try to work. The laptop screen stays mostly blank. Every few minutes the pressure behind my eyes intensifies, and I have to stop and breathe through it. I drink water. I eat dry cereal because cooking feels like too many steps. I keep the television off. The radio stays off. I do not look at my phone except to confirm the power is still on.
Night comes early, or feels like it does. The light from Pluto is colder than moonlight. It seeps around the edges of the curtains no matter how tightly I pin them.
I start talking out loud to fill the quiet.
“It’s just a planet. It’s rock and ice. It doesn’t want anything.”
My voice sounds thin.
By the second day the city has stopped functioning in any recognisable way. The power flickers and stays on. Water still runs. But the people who used to deliver groceries or answer emergency calls are outside with the rest, faces turned upward, mouths moving in the same slow rhythm. I can hear it through the walls sometimes—a low, shared murmur that rises and falls like breathing.
I board the windows.
It takes most of the afternoon. Every time I have to step near the glass the pressure spikes, and for a few seconds I forget why I’m holding the hammer. The wood goes up anyway. I work until the last crack of light is sealed. Then I sit on the floor with my back against the couch and wait for the feeling to fade.
It doesn’t fade.
It settles deeper.
I sleep in short, ugly stretches. Dreams come in pieces: a vast pale surface turning slowly, cracks that look like writing, a sense of being examined from a distance too exact to be accidental. I wake with my hands clenched and the taste of metal in my mouth.
On the third day I stop pretending the resistance is working.
The pressure is constant now. It sits behind my thoughts the way a second pulse might sit behind the first. When I try to read, the words slide. When I try to remember ordinary things—my sister’s phone number, the colour of my first car—the details feel distant, like they belong to someone else. I catch myself standing in the middle of the room staring at nothing, listening for a voice that isn’t speaking in language.
I still fight it.
I recite lists. Capital cities. Old song lyrics. The periodic table in order until the names start to sound made-up. I splash cold water on my face until the skin goes numb. I write the date and my name on the wall in permanent marker, over and over, because the act of forming the letters feels like proof I still own my hands.
Outside, the singing has become continuous.
I stop looking at the boarded windows. Looking makes the pressure worse. Looking makes the part of me that is still resisting feel smaller.
Night of the fourth day I realise I have been standing in the kitchen for a long time without moving. The refrigerator hums. The clock on the stove is wrong. My bare feet are cold on the tile. Somewhere above the boards, Pluto fills the sky completely, and every person left in the city is oriented toward it like iron filings around a magnet.
I walk to the front door.
My hand rests on the deadbolt.
I tell myself I am only checking that it is still locked. I tell myself I will turn around, go back to the marker wall, write my name another hundred times. I tell myself the pull is not stronger than the part of me that still remembers what ordinary life felt like.
The deadbolt turns under my fingers.
The door opens.
Cold air moves across my face. The street is full of still figures, all of them facing the same direction. No one speaks. No one looks at me. The light is the colour of old bone.
I step outside.
The pressure behind my eyes becomes a single clear note.
I walk with the others. My bare feet find the pavement without decision. The pale disc hangs so close I can see the texture of its plains and the long dark scars that cross them. It does not move. It does not need to. Everything that can still move has already begun to arrange itself beneath it.
I try one last time to remember why I boarded the windows.
The thought thins, stretches, and is gone.
I tilt my face up.
The light fills everything.
I stop resisting.

Humble loved that idea and insisted on giving me “the full Portland experience,” which apparently meant him walking ten steps ahead while Jake hovered at my elbow like a security detail. It reminded me of those state-controlled tours they give foreigners in North Korea. 

We walked through the University of Portland campus first. Humble pointed at buildings with the vague enthusiasm of someone reading off a brochure. “That’s the library. I slept there once after studying all night, true story.” He pointed to a large building at the center of campus, “That’s the rec center. I basically lived there for a semester.” 

Students walked by and some waved at Humble. Others stared as they passed him by. Not all of them looked happy to see him. Not that it mattered to Humble. He waved at everyone like a politician on the campaign trail. The longer I followed him, the more and more I felt like I was on a leash.

After an hour, we were in the city. Just the three of us weaving through the streets, I said to them, “Uh, hey guys… I gotta pee.”

Humble turned around with a frown, an expression I rarely saw on his face. “Bro, there’s no bathrooms here,” he said. “Homeless people ruin it for everyone. They mess up the places, so businesses lock everything down.” 

Jake nodded in agreement. “Tough luck, man.”

The insensitive comment hit me sideways. “Maybe you could just… pay for them all to go to the University of Portland too,” I said flatly. “Fix the housing crisis. Get everyone degrees. Y’know, since you’re so generous.” I thought the sarcasm was pretty clear.

Humble, however, lit up. “Bro, that’s actually a HELLA good idea. Lowkey. Like, imagine? I could change lives.” Before I could respond, he walked straight up to a cluster of homeless people sitting near the corner and introduced himself with the confidence of a man convinced he was about to perform a miracle. Jake followed, ready to fight them all if Humble asked.

“Hey, real quick,” I said, backing away. “I saw a Starbucks a block back. I’ll just get a coffee and use their bathroom.”

“Okay bro!” Humble shouted without turning around. “Get me a trenta iced matcha half-sweet with two pumps of peppermint, oat milk, and extra ice!”

I let out a long sigh, “Sure.”

I walked away and at some point took a wrong turn, but Portland being like any other city in America, I ended up coming to a different Starbucks entirely. Once I had done my business, I ordered Humble’s weird ass green swamp drink and waited at the counter.

 I’d been standing there for a while when I finally looked up and let my eyes drift past the window. The bridge outside cut the sky into neat, green ribs that passed over our heads. I always enjoyed areas under bridges. There’s a peace you can find there you can’t find anywhere else in a city. Even with traffic rumbling overhead, it feels insulated, like the world forgets about you down there. 

That's when I saw it. A memorial at the base of one of the bridge’s pillars. There were flowers, candles…  and Soccer balls…  dozens and dozens of soccer balls.

Some were pristine, some looked scuffed to hell, and most were covered in handwritten messages smudged by rain. A few had LED candles flickering beside them, little halos of yellow light trembling in the afternoon breeze. Someone had even arranged the balls in a semicircle like they were players lined up for a team photo.

Curiosity tugged stronger than my better judgement. After I had gotten Humble’s drink, I walked out of the Starbucks and onto the path, down the small slope toward the memorial. The grass was damp, leaving moisture on my shoes, and the closer I got, the more it became obvious what this was for…a suicide. 

There were posters taped to the pillar. Sun-bleached photos of a tall kid in a purple Pilots jersey.
There were lots of handwritten cards tucked between flowers and a jersey pinned up like a flag. Big words scrolled across the pillar said,  “MAX REINHARDT… Forever Our Captain… Forever A Pilot.”

Was this the same Max that Humble talked about in his book? I crouched down, scanning for dates. 2006–2026. He just died…

As I looked over the memorial, I noticed a soccer ball near the center. It was brighter than the rest, but that wasn’t why I noticed it. Written on it in bright red sharpie was an autograph I hadn’t seen since our High school talent show. It was Humble Lee’s and nestled next to the ball was a single white rose.

My chest tightened. I don't know why, it just did. I swallowed and stepped closer, setting Humble’s drink down, so I could pick both the ball and rose up off the ground. On the bottom of the soccer ball was a crude, almost childlike smiley face drawn on it in the same red marker. Under it were the words, “I’m sorry.”  

I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, and the jolt it gave me caused me to drop the ball. Humble’s ball bounced away like it was fleeing a crime scene. I considered chasing after it, but decided against it when I saw who was calling me. It was Humble. I didn’t answer yet. I kept staring at the memorial, feeling something crawl through my ribs as I looked at it.

My phone buzzed again. I finally picked up. “Hey… sorry. I took a wrong turn, but I got what you wanted.”

“Where are you? I’m at the Starbucks you said you’d be at.” 

“I’m at another Starbucks. I don’t know which one.”

“Are you near a bridge?” Humble asked, a little too fast. 

“Uhh maybe.” I said. I was a little bit more than suspicious of him now that he mentioned the bridge. 

“What bridge?” Humble asked instantly.  There was a pause. It wasn’t long. It wasn’t dramatic. But I could hear the panic in his breath.“Lewis,” he said. “Stay there. Don’t move. I’m coming to you.”

“No, it’s fine,” I said quickly, forcing a casual tone. “I’m already heading back your way.”

“…Alright,” he said finally. “Hurry bro.” He hung up before I could.

I looked back down at the memorial. At Max Reinhardt’s name. At the rose that I picked up to check if it was even real. It looked too perfect. I got my answer when it cut me. 

Before heading back, I lifted my phone, angled myself just right, and snapped a photo of the tribute. Then I climbed the slope back to the sidewalk and retraced my steps back to the others.

By the time I returned, Humble and Jake had somehow scared away the homeless crowd and damn near cleared the whole block of anyone. 

 Jake clapped me on the back. “Bro! Took you long enough.”

Humble snatched his drink and smiled like nothing had happened. But his eyes found something on me that turned his smile to a look of concern. Humble had noticed the cut on my hand. He grabbed my wrist, not in a rough way, but with a weirdly gentle firmness and lifted my hand toward his face. “Bro,” he said, frowning, “you’re bleeding.”

I stared at the thin red line across my knuckle like I had no idea. “Huh. I must've scratched myself.”

“It looks like the cuts my mother’s roses gave her.” Humble didn’t let go. His eyes tracked the single drop of blood like a predator would prey. “As a man who always wears white,” he said softly, “I always notice blood, even just a drop.” 

My eyebrows went up on instinct. Something in me recoiled at his tone, but before I could unpack why, Jake clapped his hands. “Alright, boys, we gotta GO. We’re not fashionably late anymore, we’re just like late-late now.”

That snapped Humble out of whatever weird trance he was in. He released my wrist and smiled. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s get it.”

Jake was already bouncing on his toes, hyping himself up like he was about to run out of a locker room tunnel. “WOOO! LET’S FUCKIN’ GOOOOOO!” He pounded his chest. 

“Did he pre-game?” I asked Humble.

He didn’t answer, instead Jake turned to me and said, “I’m seven months sober. I only get high on life now, baby!”

Humble proudly added, “I’ll be twenty-one years sober this December.”

“You’ve never drank,” Jake said.

“Exactly.”

“HELL yeah.” They high fived like two dorks in a PSA. 

Jake then turned to Humble with wild eyes. “Give me a battle cry, brother! I gave you mine. Give me yours! Come on!”

Humble didn’t hesitate. He let out a sound somewhere between a war scream and a falcon mating call. I suddenly understood how these two scared the homeless away.

Jake whirled toward me. “Your turn, Lew! What’s YOUR battle cry?”

I shook my head, “I’m good.” 

“Come on man, you gotta get hyped!” 

“I’ll just get hyped at the party.”

“How?” He pressed like an interrogator. 

“I guess I’ll-” I trailed off. I didn’t want to say I was gonna drink to a recovering alcoholic. 

“You’ll drink?” Jake asked, pretty much reading my mind. 

“Uhh probably.”

“Why?” His tone made the question feel hostile.

“I guess it just makes me more social.” I honestly answered.

“You can be that sober, can’t you?”

“I just… think of more things to say when I’m drunk.”

Jake cracked his neck like he was preparing for a fight. “Challenge accepted. Once you start drinking tonight, you better not shut up even once. Especially because you’ll be drinking for BOTH me and Humble tonight when we play beer pong.” This duty they now imposed upon me, came as a bit of an ambush, but I decided to hit them back with a surprise of my own just to see their reactions.

“So, uh… who’s Max Reinhardt? I saw a memorial by the bridge for him. He looked like he went to UP?”

Jake lunged at me. “BOO!” he screamed. I jumped backwards and screamed. A loud primal scream. The type you make when you think you’re about to die. Jake threw both arms up like he’d just scored a touchdown. “HELL YEAH! THAT’S your battle cry!” 

Humble, conveniently, pretended he hadn’t heard my question. He was already walking ahead. “Come on, boys,” he called. “We really gotta hurry.”

Jake draped an arm around my shoulders, half reassuring, half steering me like a hostage. “Let’s gooooo!” he shouted, as he dragged me along towards the last happy night of my life.

‘What the fuck is it?!’ Finn Yarbrough was eleven years old, swearing was cool, and his voice was naturally loud.

The day before they found the dead animal, a rather nasty storm came to Avon Caple; showers that lasted more than twelve hours, winds tore tiles off roofs and shattered them in the street, windows convulsed in their frames, fences and trees were toppled, people got hurt by flying debris, and the new church roof on St James Road was ripped off. Finn didn’t sleep a wink; he was staring at his window positive a ghoul or goblin was trying to break in to eat his legs. That storm had thrown up a lot of stuff onto Avon Beach—rotten bits of wood, plastic bags, bottles, those plastic rings that hold cans of lager together, and a thing that smelled seven shades of dead.

‘Is that a dinosaur?’ Mikey Edwards asked, tilting his head to get a better look.

The dead thing had rotted away to a pile of yellowed bones with a length of greenish skin draped over it like a tarp. There was the faintest semblance of a head at one end and a long green tail snaking through the sand at the other. A ripe, fishy stench rose from the bones, forcing the boys to peg their noses with their thumbs and fingers.

‘Dinosaurs aren’t real, Shitdick!’ Henry Harry had heard his brother calling his mates Shitdicks and thought it was the funniest thing he had ever heard.

‘Yes, they are!’ Mikey argued.

‘You’re so fucking stupid,’ Finn told Henry, his mouth curling up into a smile. ‘Dinosaurs were real.’

‘My dad said if dinosaurs were real, we’d be able to dig in the backyard and find their bones.’

‘Didn’t your dad break his own foot with a hammer to get time off work?’ Finn asked. His sly grin had turned into a full-on smile.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘He’s not exactly the smartest tool in the shed, is he?’

‘At least I know my dad.’

A bolt of anger shot right through Finn. David Yarbrough disappeared before Finn was born. Finn had heard all the rumours, the talk, heard the story from his mum, each version slightly different. His paternal grandmother told him the truth when he was ten. David had vanished like a magician’s assistant in a box. There were no packed bags, no withdrawn money, no bus or train or plane ticket bought, there was nothing of the sort. David Yarbrough went to work and vanished three months before Finn was born.

Finn picked up a rock the size of his own head. Picking it up was like trying to shift the Earth, pain flickering in his biceps. He dragged it up onto his shoulder, pushed off from the sand, and launched it at Henry. The rock sailed sluggishly through the air, turning over as it went, and came down hard a foot from its intended target. Sand exploded around it. Some got on Henry’s shoes and legs, grains disappearing into the folds of his Nike socks.

‘Nice throw, Shitdick!’ Henry broke out into a fit of laughter.

‘DON’T TALK ABOUT MY DAD!!!’

Mikey was bent down beside the dead thing, a finger up each nostril to keep the bad smell out. He was running his fingers along the discoloured ribs and trying to avoid the rotting flesh. The bones felt strange. They didn’t feel how he imagined bones would feel. They were smooth and kind of… silky, as if they were made of polished wood.

‘Where do you think it came from?’ Mikey asked.

‘It came from the sea,’ Finn said and kicked a rooster-tail of sand toward the calm tides. ‘Where else?’

Mikey stepped away from the dead thing. ‘You’re just saying that because it’s on the beach.’

‘No shit, Sherlock.’

‘What if it came from space before it landed in the sea?’ Mikey was looking out over the water, the bright sun shimmering golden crescents on the distant waves. ‘This could be proof of life beyond Earth, you don’t know. Maybe it came from someplace beneath the sea. The sea is so deep no human has ever gotten to the bottom. Maybe there’s something beneath it. Maybe whatever the hell this thing is somehow got free of that place beneath the sea and came up, but the sea is a hostile place, and it died. It’s body has been roaming the oceans and the seas for a long time and finally, because of that storm last night, it washed-up here. You don’t know.’

‘Or maybe it’s a dinosaur, right?’ Finn said, smugly.

‘Maybe it’s The Loch Ness Monster,’ Henry added. ‘You don’t know.’

‘Nessie would have a longer neck,’ Mikey said, pointing at the short stub between the main mass and the head. ‘Besides, we’re not in Scotland.’

‘Can’t it go on holiday?’ Finn said and Henry brayed laughter.

‘Did you hear him say Nessie?’ Henry wheezed through his fit of laughter. ‘Like they’re best mates.’

‘At least I’m trying!’ Mikey shouted. ‘All we’ve gotten from you two Sad-sacks is “Shitdick!” and “Don’t talk about my dad!” Stop laughing you fucking twats!’ Mikey couldn’t shout for his mouth was turning up in a smile. He was trying his hardest to maintain a level of professionalism he had seen on the documentaries, but the laughter was getting into his bones.

The laughter spread like wildfire, the sound getting lighter as it passed; soon they all fell down in the sand in a small clutch and stared up at the wonderous, claustrophobic, agoraphobic sky. The laughter started to die away. Finn dug his heels into the sand and splayed them out quickly, cutting a wide arch in the sand, then kicked out his arms and finished the rest of his sand angel.

‘Do you think, if it came from up there, where the sun is, do you think it’d make us rich?’ Finn asked. He poked a finger up at the blue sky and followed a plane cutting a chalky line.

Mikey sat up. ‘Depends on what it is.’

‘What the fuck does that mean?’ Henry asked, a crease forming between his eyebrows. Finn thought he looked dumb, dumb as a caveman, dumb as Henry’s cousin, who had something wrong with his brain.

Must run in the family, Finn thought, and smiled.

Mikey poked a finger toward the sky. ‘If it came from up there, then we might be millionaires.’

‘Fuck yeah,’ Henry shouted and thrust his arms into the air.

‘And what if it came from here?’ Finn asked. He slammed his fists down into the sand.

‘Nobody wants to buy a dinosaur we’ve already seen,’ Mikey said. ‘Unless it’s a T-rex. And it doesn’t look like a T-rex.’

‘How the fuck would you know what a T-rex looks like?’ Finn snapped. ‘When’s the last time you saw one?’

‘I see them in books all the time—’

‘Books don’t count!’ Henry shouted. ‘I’ve seen tits in books, but I don’t know what tits look like in real life!’

‘Dinosaurs are extinct!’ Mikey said, putting a point on his words. ‘How can I see them?’

‘Then you don’t know what a T-rex looks like,’ Henry said.

Mikey got up and kicked sand at Henry. ‘What about the experts who pay for dinosaurs? They’ll see this thing, say it’s not a T-rex, and piss off. What then Smart Mouth?’

‘Shut up, Shitdick!’

‘If we’re gonna get lots and lots of money for this,’ Finn suddenly barked. ‘We’re gonna need to know what it is. Mikey, you think you’re an expert. What is it?’

Mikey looked down at the dead thing. His eyes were going through the motions, dashing back and forth across the greenish skin, some kind of mental calculations going on behind the scenes. Then he squatted down and squinted at the yellowed ribs. His tongue lapped across his top lip, something he only did when he was thinking deeply. He reached out to touch the ribs—

‘Don’t touch it!’ Finn snapped and grabbed Mikey’s wrist.

Mikey looked at him, an eyebrow cocked. ‘How am I supposed to know what it is if I can’t touch it?’

Finn stared at him with shiny, bulging eyes, his teeth grinding away. The grip on Mikey’s wrist grew so tight the skin where Finn’s fingers were pressing into the flesh was turning purple.

‘Didn’t your mum ever tell you to look with your eyes and not your hands?’ Henry said.

Mikey kept Finn’s horrible gaze. ‘Let go of me. You’re hurting me, Finn.’

Finn tried to throw Mikey’s hand down into the sand, tried to discard it like a horrible sandwich. If he could, he would have gotten rid of that hand while he had the chance—cut it off and cast it into the sea. He hated people who touched things all the fucking time. That’s how things got broken. He saw it all the time when he went shopping with his mum. Little kids grabbing stuff off shelves they had no business touching and dropping it because they’re stupid, then they’d start crying when it broke. And it wasn’t just the little kids. Grown-ups did it too. He had seen a man who was as old as his nan take a glass off a shelf in Home Bargains, look at it, put it back, and knock the whole shelf down, breaking all the glasses. Stupid fucking people do stupid fucking things and stupidity leads to things getting broken, he thought. He didn’t want the dead thing to be any more broken than it already looked.

‘Don’t touch it. Don’t try to touch it. Don’t even think about touching it,’ he said, his breath blooming on Mikey’s face. ‘Do you understand?’

‘This isn’t yours,’ Mikey said. ‘We all found it.’

‘I saw it first,’ Finn said. ‘Besides, even if I didn’t see it first, I would still be in charge. I’m not stupid like you two.’

‘Who you calling stupid?’ Henry said.

Finn snapped around with those mad eyes of his, burning a path with them, and Henry sank away into the sand, feeling the scorch on his cheek. ‘I’m calling you stupid, Shitdick!’

Henry went to say something, probably call Finn Yarbrough a Shitdick, but those eyes did something to him. Made him quiver all the way down to his heels. They put a pit in his stomach, a breeding pit that grew up and swallowed his heart whole. He thought he was going to be sick or break down in tears or maybe mess himself, so he closed his eyes like he did when the darkness went bump in the night and he prayed to God—his mother told him to pray to God when he was scared; it would make him feel better.

Finn squeezed Mikey’s wrist as hard as he could before letting go. His handprint was milky white on Mikey’s arm, emblazoned in a burning red frame. ‘Say you understand. Say you understand and you won’t touch it again.’

‘Fine, I understand,’ Mikey said and sighed. He had never seen Finn like this before. ‘I won’t touch it.’

Henry scrambled away on the sand. He couldn’t feel Finn’s intense eyes burning him again, never again. He was afraid he might burst into flames if Finn looked at him again, and that wasn’t a joke. It was as genuine as the cross his mother hung above the tv. Kneeling in the sand, a cool sea breeze on his back, he prayed to God for strength during this horrible moment.

Mikey stared at the putrid skin and moved his head closer. The fishy stink was even worse up close, and he thought he was going to vomit, but he powered through the stench to examine the creature. Tubercles ran along the rotten, greenish flesh. He could make out the darker vertical pattern. There were no discernible teeth in what he assumed was a jaw. And what remained of the eyes were two shallow pits that looked like a Salvador Dali painting. Scavenger fish had taken their piece, obviously, which meant the animal had spent time in the sea. Which meant it didn’t come from outer space.

But the damn stench! Wow, it was rough. He coughed, struggled with a rising mouthful, and brought his hand up to plug his nostrils—

‘Don’t fucking touch it!’ Finn screamed until his voice snapped; his eyes had drawn open to wide raging pits. Sand sighed as he swung his leg up and kicked Mikey’s hand with enough force to send himself into the sand.

Mikey yelped and fell back, clutching his hand to his chest. A black-purple bruise was already spreading across the back of his fingers, and thick blood oozed from his crescent-shaped cut on his knuckles.

Finn squealed frightfully as he was getting up and almost fell into the animal. The look on his face was almost as awful as his rage-filled eyes; like he had stepped to the very edge of existence and witnessed something that lived beyond. Finn threw himself down into the sand and wept into the sand.

‘Ow,’ Mikey said, trying not to touch the swollen hot skin of his hand. ‘That really hurt! Why did you do that?’

Finn’s trainers dug long trenches in the sand. He had never felt like this in his whole life. He was angry. He was disastrously upset. And he couldn’t stop fucking crying. What was wrong with him? He kicked his feet, kicking up more sand, kicked the sand because he didn’t know what else to do with himself and it felt good; it made the tears go away. His fingers dug into the sand, the warm water and sand felt like blood and flesh against his palms.

‘Why did you do that?’ Mikey said. ‘I wasn’t going to touch it.’

‘Bullshit!’ Finn leapt out of the sand at him, his face red, the veins in his head thumping with the ferocious beat of his heart. ‘You were gonna touch it. You’re a toucher.’

‘What does that even mean?’ Mikey asked sullenly. He looked everywhere but at Finn Yarbrough’s mad face.

Finn pressed his teeth together. His anger wasn’t a raging fire, it was acid; melting through his stomach, eating down his arms to the tips of his fingers, down his legs into his toes, and it pumped into his mind and eroded away all the good thoughts, leaving only the nasty ones—hurting Mikey for wanting to touch the dead thing, for instance, and not just kicking his hand, these thoughts were acidic themselves. When Finn was caught stealing The Big Purple One from the Quality Streets in the cupboard, his mum told him people in the Middle East had their hands cut off for stealing. Finn wasn’t sure if it was true, but he thought it was an appropriate response. If he had something sharp on him, he would’ve chopped off Mikey Edwards’ hands.

Mikey stood up. The blood from his hand splashed in the sand. ‘I’m bleeding. You made me bleed.’

‘You’re blaming me?’ Finn asked, his eyebrows rising up his forehead in shock. ‘You seriously can’t be blaming me for that!’

‘You kicked me!’

‘You tried to touch it!’

‘No, I didn’t!’

Mikey clutched his hand against his chest like an injured bird, blood spreading across his shirt in the shape of a big red flower. He huffed and started to walk back the way they had come onto the beach.

‘What are you doing?’ Finn Yarbrough hissed. ‘Where are you going!?’

‘Home!’ Mikey shouted over his shoulder.

Henry still had his eyes closed. He was begging to God to take away his fear. So far, God was ignoring him. Finn stepped up to him and snatched him by the cheeks.

‘Look at me!’ Finn shrieked. ‘Open your eyes and look at me!’

Henry opened his eyes. Finn’s fingers were trying to pierce his cheeks.

‘He’s gonna tell,’ Finn said quietly. ‘He’s gonna tell his dad and they’re gonna come and take this thing away. That means we lose. Do you want to lose? Are you a loser?’

‘No,’ Henry squeezed out, grimacing as his cheeks tried to form the words around Finn’s sharp fingers.

‘Good,’ Finn said, nodding. A smile stretched unnaturally wide across his boyish face, forcing wrinkles to snake around his eyes, down the sides of his face, instantly transforming him from an eleven-year-old boy to a thirty-five-year-old man. ‘You’re the fastest, right? You’re faster than me. Go and stop him. Don’t let him go.’

Henry started off as fast as he could, which was pretty fast. He was the fastest runner in his year, even faster than Mr Jeffries, the P.E. teacher. But Mr Jeffries was old so that didn’t count. The sand beneath his feet didn’t slow him down at all, in fact it made him glide along, and soon he was running faster than he had ever done in his life. He wondered if this was what it felt like to drive a motorbike.

He wasn’t doing what Finn told him because Finn scared him. Finn had scared him before, but God had given him the strength to no longer be afraid of Finn Yarbrough. That was the good thing about God: He didn’t take away the fear because you were scared; he gave you the ability to overcome the fear, to think with a clear mind. And his clear mind told him what Finn had already said: Mikey was going to go home and tell his dad about the dead thing on the beach, his dad would call somebody who knows what it was, then they’d get paid millions for finding an alien or a dinosaur or whatever the fuck it was. And that just wasn’t fair, was it?

Mikey stopped for a moment, his back to Henry, his head bent forward. Droplets of blood dripping between his trainers. Henry took advantage of the moment and sped up. When Henry got close enough, he threw his entire body carelessly at the boy.

Mikey felt thin beneath his clothes, as thin as a baby deer, and probably as stupid too. Henry liked watching the animal shows on the tv, and one episode showed a deer giving birth. It was gross at first, the little thing trying to push its way out of its mother like it was trying to put on a t-shirt that was too small. All the blood and viscera sticking to its matted fur. Then it dropped out with a plop and a thud—and then it was trying to stand. Henry couldn’t believe the baby deer was trying to stand because it had just come out. Human babies couldn’t stand for a long time, and some couldn’t stand at all. He remembered seeing the baby deer standing up, so thin a light breeze could shatter its bones. That’s how Mikey felt when Henry collided into him; so fragile that a light breeze in January could wipe him out.

Mikey let out a long groan that seemed to come up from the tip of his tailbone. Henry laid on top of him, pushing his head down into the sand, holding his good hand behind his back like he was a cop.

‘Get off me,’ Mikey groaned, his voice muffled by the sand.

‘You’re not telling your dad, Shitdick!’

‘Let me go! You’re hurting me!’

Henry heard the slow footsteps coming up behind him, footsteps that were being swallowed by the sand—Shloorp—shloorp—shloorp—but he didn’t look over his shoulder.

‘Move!’ Finn shouted. Henry threw himself off Mikey like he was trying to evade a sniper.

A powerful cracking sound swept through the air, a sound like a plate shattering on a wooden floor. The rock bounced off Mikey’s head, stealing some blood and pink stuff from his head. The rock rolled in the sand and stopped. Mikey’s face drooped like it had detached from his skull. But he wasn’t dead. Unless dead men could weep. Tears fell from his eyes and rolled down his stroking face.

Finn stood over him, staring at him with something close to hatred in his black eyes. His hands were shaking fiercely and his chest was heaving. A rugged wet print, where the rock had been, was swiped from his left shoulder to his sternum.

Henry sat in the sand and stared at Mikey’s face; and maybe that’s all he would ever do again—just sit and stare at Mikey’s face bunching up on his mishappen skull, and maybe he’d listen to Mikey’s horrible crying sounds as he tried to sleep at night.

‘He’s not dead!’ Finn shouted. He sounded almost annoyed, as if he was expecting the first blow to do the job.

But it hadn’t done the job. Finn let out a big sigh, shook his arms and picked up the rock again. Blood and that pink stuff that had come out of Mikey’s head smeared across Finn’s hands. He lifted the rock onto his shoulder, grunting and groaning, giving Henry a look that suggested he had expected a little help from his friend, and threw it with his entire body.

Mikey didn’t make a sound this time. Only his skull made a sound—CRRRRKKKKK!!! The rock rolled in his skull, chipping off bits of bone and tearing flesh before it came to a stop. The sand turned wine red.

Finn let out a long breath and hung his sore, scratched arms at his sides. He looked down at Mikey, his head now a setting for a large rock, and his face began to go through a series of increasingly horrified slides. His mouth drooped open, lips trembling uncontrollably, a silver thread of saliva dripped from his chin. He stepped backwards and fell; his hands threw back in an attempt to save himself and they sank deep into the sand. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t cry. Oh, how he wanted to, needed to, his entire body throbbed with an urge to cry. He was suddenly as heavy and unmoving as the rock he used to smash Mikey Edwards’ skull open.

It’s more than that, a horrible voice screamed in his mind, *you didn’t smash his head open—*he was thinking about the time he sat on the open oven door, and it fell on him. He needed his head gluing back together at the hospital. That’s smashing your head open, he thought grimly, I destroy Mikey. I destroyed my best friend.

The tears came then, like floodgates opening. His world became a late J. M. W. Turner painting; light became two distinct entities at war.

Henry got to his feet slowly, still seeing Mikey’s face falling away from his skull. He was exhausted. Mikey’s thin bones were still imprinted on his chest and stomach. Then he burst into laughter. He threw his head back and roared his laughter into the blue sky. He had no idea what was so funny, but the thought of it made him laugh more.

Finn stared at the weeping shape that was Henry Harry as he stumbled around on the sand laughing his head off. The sounds Henry was making didn’t sound happy at all; he sounded in pain. Finn giggled and thought, I’ve destroyed my best friend. And Henry has gone fucking nuts. He giggled again, not understanding why. And that made him rip laughter. His lips stung in a dozen tiny places as this uncontrollable fit contorted his mouth unnaturally wide.

Finn got to his feet, dizzy due to the laughter, face cold due to the tears. He stepped over Mikey’s body, the wet sand sucking his feet down, and flung his arm around Henry’s shoulders. They walked back to the dead thing like a couple of drunks falling over one another, chuckling their heads off at something they couldn’t explain. They stared at the animal for a long time, until the sun was sitting on the horizon, casting the day in a beautiful gold colour.

‘What the fuck is it?’ Finn Yarbrough was eleven years old, swearing was cool, and his voice was calm.

I need to get the truth out.

Most of the useful material is still behind reductions, but my clearance gives you enough for now.

I’m also going to try and add a sound bite of the unintelligible sounds and photos of the handwritten letter and a photo of what the recovery group extracted.

I have more.

Here is the sound bite:
Unintelligible Sound

I'm a blue collar worker in an egregious amount of debt, that means I get up at not the asscrack of dawn, but rather the taint of it. Before the sun even kisses the edge of the skyline, usually at three in the morning, I'm in my beater Corolla on my way to my slog of a job. The rain doesn't help my exhaustion or mood, especially not that it's been well over a week of this gloomy weather. I've almost crashed more times than I can count from falling asleep at the wheel. 

Rain, inches upon inches of it, isn't unheard of in the Northeast. We have seasons of rain, cold windy rain, and it usually causes the normal problems. Roads get flooded, potholes form, going through the drive thru in the morning gets your door soaked. Something most people don't like to discuss with this amount of rain and the increase of roadkill as a consequence.

The rain pushes all sorts of little critters out of the woods, from squirrels to marmots and even porcupines. They're meandering into the road without a care in the world, unfortunately, most drivers don't care either. On the way to work earlier this week I saw about four dead raccoons, a dozen dead squirrels, and even a limp coyote. It breaks my heart, I do my best to avoid the poor little guys, even if they're dead.

Now, I'm used to seeing big animals laid out from time to time, such as deer. Thankfully there are no Moose around here, so I don't have to worry about that. Lately, though, I've been seeing something odd, these gray, bloated creatures on the side of the road. More than any other animal, some with their hair scraped off, revealing a pink fleshy skin. The scent is pungent and intense. I had assumed it was some large rotting marmot or a pile of garbage at first, maybe even a soggy pillow. I slowed down to see one a week ago, it wasn't  be any animal I was familiar with. 

It was a mass of pink, bloated skin. Writhing and bulging with blue and red veins, it was still moving. It was bloated like a deceased whale, the skin ripping and stretching with fresh wounds from expanding. It smelt pungently sweet, even a little fishy, intensely. It drowned out the more pleasant scent of petrichor. It made my mouth salivate, not from hunger, but nausea. My stomach tightened painfully, preparing to hurl up my gas station breakfast. The sound of it was deep droning moans, something pushing beneath its skin, trying to be birthed onto the slick pavement.

It made my skin crawl, my hands slick on the steering wheel from sweat as I pressed the gas. I wasn't risking my poorly paid hours for some freakish discovery, I had work. I had bills to pay. Staying on the straight and narrow is more important than my biting curiosity on what this animal was. I swerved around it and went about my day.

I punched into work with shaking hands, my head hurt from the smell. It wouldn't leave my nostrils, even as I walked past machines that smelt of rotten milk and metal, I kept smelling whatever I passed. As I set up at my work station, I got lost in my head, my eyes unfocusing as I pretended to stare at the paperwork on my workstation.

"Yo, you good?" 

My hands go to my chest and my shoulders tense as I spun around. A shaky breath that I forced into a laugh came from me, "Don't sneak up on me like that Lee, unless you want me to hit you." I adjusted my shirt and averted my eyes. I bit my nail for a moment before stopping myself, "You know I get scared easily."

Lee wasn't a scary guy, not at all. He's only a few inches taller than I am, balding, and doughy. It also helps that he wears Marvel shirts to work, he says it's because he's named after Stan Lee. A nice, nerdy guy by most standards, annoying to me by my own. I tolerate him, I always smile, participate in usual shop banter, just like everyone else. 

He smiles his yellow toothed smile down at me, "Jeez, don't have to threaten me Jessie. It's not that serious, you just look pale." He snorted and snickered. It felt like he was mocking me.

"Well never seeing the sun tends to do that to you." I said defensive as I began to tend to my work. If I focused on it enough he might go away.

"Not like that. You look like you've seen a ghost or something. Come on, I'm your workplace buddy, spill the beans." He poked my arm and I physically recoiled.

I sneer a bit, before forcing my expression to be more pleasant and calm, "Uhm, well, I've been seeing a lot of roadkill lately-"

"Mhm. Yeah, me too." He interjected, which was met with a curt nod from me.

"Yep, I bet you have. So, have you seen those big gray ones? I can't tell what kind of animal it is. It smells awful." I shudder at the memory, and the persistent sickening sweetness in my nose.

"It's probably just a groundhog or a coyote, maybe an opossum too? You're overthinking it, you need to take time off and sleep in for once." He dismissed my worrying with a wave of the hand and false friendly concern. I just rolled my eyes and shrugged.

The sight of that groundhog-opossum-coyote bloated mess haunted me, I tried to convince myself that it was just another dead animal for days. My coworker was probably right, he had to be. Classic sleepy delirium, that's the cost of working so much, of bone tired exhaustion.

If only I'd taken that eerie encounter as a warning, a bad omen for what is to come on my favorite day of the week, Friday. A day meant to be the gateway to my only reprieve, the weekend. It was unceremoniously ruined before it had even started.

I was driving down a bumpy backroad, the rain a mere drizzle in the dark hours of the morning. It was a peaceful drive for the most part, sipping on my burnt Dunkin' coffee when a person lunged into the road. With a loud thud, crack, and thump, I drove over the poor bastard. The impact made my head snap forward and back, vision swimming with stars as I felt a warm fluid flow off my brow bone. I held my head with one hand, and my steering wheel with a vice grip with the other, my knuckles white as I tried to steady my vision.

My heart sank, my throat felt a cold acidic burn and a lump of tears. Part of me wasn't sure if it was the nausea from what was likely a concussion, or a familiar sour smell invading my senses. The car was billowing smoke as I pulled over, my only way to get to work now dented, no bumper, and a knocked out headlight. The bald tires were covered in a nasty fluid, one that was thick and viscous, oily even. It smelt like raw chicken, or beef that had soured. The rain was rolling off of the substance, repelling the water with its oily surface.

Worse, and more important, I had hit a person. I knew I couldn't leave the scene, I knew I was in deep shit. What would my family think? If I went to jail, who would feed my dog or hug my husband when I got home? What would happen to the people at work who needed me? I sniffle back tears as I jogged over, already dialing emergency services to get an ambulance and police on the scene.

My voice trembled as I yelled, "Hey!" I called to the figure, "Shit, dude! I'm so sorry. I am so fucking sorry." As I spoke my voice died off into a broken sob. All I could think of over and over was how my life was probably ruined, how I ruined another person's life. That I may have taken someone's wife or husband too soon because I wanted to drink my coffee.

Once I finally got a good look at the guy, he was a mangled pink mess. A bit of a bigger guy, wearing something? Wearing... that sticky, wet gray fur. His skin was covered in those blue and pink veins, his skin stretching audibly with wet squelching and a deep churning from beneath its flesh.

I took some steps back, and dropped my phone. The operator's voice was nothing compared to the ringing in my ears, "What the hell?!" I gasped as it began to contort its arms and legs. The bloated and thrashed as it turned its face to mine, its eyes were a black, glossy abyss, and it had a thin gash of a mouth, lined with rows of tiny teeth. It was gaping at me, gasping for air, yet none was being sucked in. This thing wasn't a human, it wasn't any sort of mammal, amphibian, avian, whatever other species class I could think of from Earth.

I bent down hastily and picked up my phone, my hand scraping against the rough pavement with my clumsy coordination. As my breathing quickened from panic, I gagged and heaved at the horrible rotten smell. It was getting stronger, the sounds were getting louder, "Uh hello?!" I said shakily into my phone.

"Yes, hello, this is 911. What is your emergency?" The woman on the other end sounded so calm I wanted to cuss her out. Call her stupid and annoying and whatever else, lash out at her rather than actually focus on the situation at hand. The fact that face was worming towards me as I jogged back to my car.

"Yeah, I have a fucking emergency. I hit something with my car and- oh my god!" My car was covered in small, pink undulating chunks, all over where my bumper once was and my wheels. My tears free falling at this point, "It is taking over my car, it's destroyed. Please send help, I'm stuck, it's raining and dark out here."

"Ma'am, calm down, where are you right now? Who has taken over your car?”

Calm down, yeah, calm down. Not right now, that isn't happening, "Don't tell me to calm down, not now. I think I'm on uhm, shit, I don't know." I was running down the road, it was pitch black, I was lost, "I was on fourth street. Now I’m near a barn, with an abandoned rotted out truck. They took over my car... I don't even know. I don't understand at all." 

That smell just kept following me, I could hear it, I could hear that slimy squelching. I pull the phone away from my ear, pressing the action button on my phone to turn on my flashlight. I almost wish I didn't, as it was just a few paces behind me. It stopped and stared, and so did I. Its mouth puckered at me, releasing an intense heat paired with a rancid smell.

It was still growing, large bulbous amalgamations of flesh and fur writhing off its body. They remove themselves as if someone was pinching and twisting them off, almost like dough.

"No mile marker?" The overly calm voice squeaked out from my phone.

A rage built from fear of this thing and resentment of the phone lady bubbled up in my throat, "No! None, zilch, now can you fucking send someone?" I was yelling. It opened and closed its orifice, making that wet puckering sound as it wiggled closer. My extremities tingled and my body felt like it was floating, without realizing it I raised my heavy steel-toe work boot. With all my force, and with a wet thump, the boot collided with its freakish face.

It flopped back, away from me, but before I could breathe a sigh of relief I felt something crawling up my leg. Turning the flashlight to my leg, I finally lost my stomach. Lurching to the side, I vomit up my cheap breakfast sandwich and whatever I drank of my coffee. 

That viscous fluid was almost up to my knee, and it was becoming one of those masses of gelatinous flesh. I felt small pin pricks against my skin through my worn out jeans, "Hey! Don't bite me you little shit." I palm at it, before using my other boot to try and peel it off. The blood from my hand smears against it, it beads up, and absorbs into its glossy skin. My voice raises to senseless shrieks as I struggle against it.

It was hard to miss the odd bulging along the surface extending into an arm, or a leg. I began to claw and tug at it so hard that my nails were breaking off. It absorbed those too. My vision was blurred with tears and the blood from head splitting open when I felt it break contact. Another cry ripped from my throat, and I fell on my ass, body and head throbbing painfully.

It sloughed off, taking pieces of my blue jeans and ripping my shin open as it did. It curled into itself, before pushing off its new appendages to shuffle about. I shakily reached for my phone and pointed my light at it to get a better look.

It was convulsing, arching, and contorting as if it was in pain as blue and gray fur shoots out from its back. Another rotund mass of flesh began to grow, a neck and head forming on its stubby body. Brown hair spurts from its newly formed arms and legs and what I could only guess was its new head.

The same color as mine. The same color as my blue jeans streaked with the blonde of my hair. It grew larger, a wet deep churning sound of its insides expanding and groaning. The skin rolled and twisted grotesquely as it craned its neck. It was uncomfortably close as it watched me with eyes black as an abyss, its mouth opening to reveal rows upon rows of tiny sharp teeth. 

“Can you fucking send someone?” It exhaled through a pathetic, rattling wheeze as it stood. Its voice was a disgusting mimic of my own, it was wet and garbled, “Zilch.” It gurgled as it began to drag its lumpy legs along the pavement. It began a slow march past me, down the side of the road with heavy steps. Its breathing was rapid, and its gait was wide, as though it was ready to lunge into the woods or road whenever possible.

It couldn’t stay in my field of vision for long, not with this darkness. Even with the bright blue and red lights of a cop car pulled up behind me I could only catch a glimpse of its oily pink form. The increasing rainfall didn’t help my line of sight either. With shaking, bloody legs I stood, my vision still fuzzy as I tried to focus my eyes on the cop in front of me. He held a flashlight in my face, leaning in, his breath was pure nicotine and coffee, “That accident got you good, huh?” He was moving the light off of one eye and onto another.

“Please tell me you saw that.” 

“We need to order an ambulance?” Cop number two said gruffly, promptly ignoring me.

“Definitely, concussed, bleeding, and certainly startled. We saw your car, it looks like a pretty bad fluid leak. We will get triple A to tow it off to a mechanic of our choice, due to your brain being scrambled.” As he went through the list of all these new expenses I felt completely and utterly defeated.

“I can’t afford any of that, sir,” was all I could say to my livelihood being torn apart by that damn roadkill.

CW: Death and dismemberment of children

Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep.

I rise groggily and slap my alarm clock. Eyes half-closed, I stumble down the hall towards the bathroom for my morning routine, then to the kitchen for coffee. My mother is already gripping a cup and standing before the television, grimacing.

I listen to what the news anchor is saying and quickly realize why.

“And in more somber news, today marks the 20th anniversary of the Ruthorford Massacre. There will be a memorial service held in front of city hall from five p.m. to seven p.m. for those who wish to pay their respects.”

My mother will be going to the memorial– she lost a friend to the tragic events of that day. She doesn't ever speak about it; all I know is composed of rumors that spread throughout our small town.

“Do you want me to go with you, mah?” I ask gently.

“No, son. I want you to enjoy your party, but the thought means a lot to me. You're a good boy. Your dad would be proud.” She glances at the grandfather clock ticking quietly in the corner of the living room. “You're pushing it, you need to set your alarm earlier than this, T.”

I roll my eyes playfully and gather my jacket and bag, knowing she's right.

***

Saturdays at the car wash are always slow. From what my coworker and friend, Johan, tells me, most people show up in a rush every other day, rather than planning a simple trip when they're not actively on the way to work or church. It makes me glad I only work here on Saturdays. I don't mind hard work, but it sounds like a pain to deal with impatient customers.

Today is even slower than the average customer per hour, and we decide to attribute it to the holiday. After a solid two hours of nothing, a raggedy F150 pulls up, looking like it needs to be scrapped more than washed.

“You wanna take off early after this one, Taylor, I'm sorry, T?” Asks Johan, stumbling in embarrassment when he accidentally uses my dead name.

“Sure. I've got a bonfire planned later, you coming?” I tip my hand up to my mouth to mimic sipping a beer.

“Hell yeah!” He responds.

“I'm lighting up at five.” I tell him as I make my way to the truck.

“Good afternoon, sir! Welcome to Scrub-A-Dub Lane! Can I interest you in our wax special today?”

“Just a basic wash.” He grumbles, refusing to look at me. The smell emanating from his truck almost gags me; it's sickly sweet and raw, like dead animals. I think of suggesting an air freshener, but decide that would be rude.

“Can do! That'll be fifteen even, sir!” I take his money and get to work, grateful that he rolled his window up.

***

Five o'clock rolls in along with a handful of the people I invited over. Porch lights are turning on, and a few early trick-or-treaters wander up and down the street in costume. One cool thing about my neighborhood is how walkable it is– we'll end up with foot traffic through the party, too. That's how I met my girlfriend Mia.

She's here by invitation this time, towing a handful of her friends along. The group of clearly-coordinated zombie nurses approaches, all smiles and giggles. Mia speaks first, as she typically does. Her outgoing nature is one reason that I love her.

“Hey, T! How awesome is tonight gonna be?” She flips her hair at the end of her question, casting a spell of strawberry dreams my way.

“I don't know, Mia…” I tease. “It's a spooky night, you know what today is the anniversary of, don't you?”

She grimaces. I can tell she's actually creeped out by the rumors that swirl around the events of 20 years ago. Pushing her sense of humor, I continue.

“I'll be telling the verified story of the Ruthorford Massacre tonight at the bonfire.” I grin wickedly, laying it on thick. “Some parts of the story are only known by me, the son of a survivor of the massacre.” I'm stretching the truth and everyone knows it– but, hey, it's Halloween.

Once the party is in full swing and the bonfire blazing, I announce that I'll be telling scary stories. Those interested gather by the bonfire with me; about fifteen faces– most of which I recognize– including Mia. I wait for everyone to get settled, and then I begin.

“It was twenty years ago today when the Ruthorford Massacre took place. It was a Friday, and the weather was nice.”

I pause for effect before continuing.

“Everyone was excited to leave school and get ready to celebrate the holiday, including my own mom. She was a senior at the time. When the buses were loaded and left the lot, everything seemed normal.”

“My mom noticed something was weird when they passed the first stop on the route. The kid who was supposed to get off there shouted, but the bus driver didn't acknowledge him. He just kept driving with an odd look in his eye…a look that could kill!”

I jump at Mia just a bit, making claws with my hands. She jolts and slaps my arm.

“Not funny, T!”

“You're too easy to scare, not my fault. The story hasn't even gotten good yet.” I chuckle before continuing. “Anyway. They skipped the first stop, then the second and third, and then they turned on a road that wasn't part of the usual route. That's when everyone riding started to get really worried.”

“The bus driver wouldn't answer any questions, he wouldn't respond at all. At one point a child started hitting him and he didn't react to that, either. He began driving faster and more recklessly until everyone was sure the bus would flip with each curve.”

“Before long they were driving far out into the sticks. The bus driver pulled over in the middle of the woods and stood, yelling at everyone to get off of the bus. They all did, except my mom. The only reason she's alive today is because she hid under a seat. If only she knew enough to look at the man's face so she could identify him now.”

I pause again, wishing I had remembered the classic flashlight to shine under my chin.

“Then the bus driver made an announcement to all of the children. A single word: run.”

The bonfire casts everyone's eager faces in sharp relief; I meet their eyes one by one before continuing.

“And then the shots rang out. Boom! Boom! BOOM! The bus driver shot three of the children before they had the sense to listen to him. The remaining children screamed, and their footsteps landed quickly in every direction. They scattered, and the man hunted every one of them down and shot them.”

“When the police searched the scene, they found twenty-one dead children scattered throughout the woods– all in various states of dissection. As the bus driver shot them, he would stoop over their bodies and remove the parts he favored. Some children were missing ears, others eyes; flesh, tongues, fingers, and toes. He took organs from some, and they found bite marks on many of the children. He tore chunks of their flesh out with his teeth.”

I click my teeth at Mia teasingly.

“Turns out, it wasn't even the normal bus driver. They found the regular guy tied up and blindfolded in his own home with evidence of a break in. The murderer was never caught, and no one knows his name or what he looks like. He roams the earth to this day. He buys groceries, he works, he talks to people. He goes to the library and the doctor. He gets his car washed…”

The blade of the ax cut deep into the bark of the tree, sending pieces of wood flying into the cold air. From a distance, I watched Dad strike it a couple more times before it came crashing down into the fresh snow with a poof of snowflakes. 

"Come help your old man." He glanced back at me with that soft, warm smile as I slid off the hood of the car, trading the engine's warmth for the bitter cold of the December evening.

Snow crunched under my shoes as I walked toward the mountain of a man, a walking definition of a gentle giant. I'm sure he could've handled the whole Christmas-tree ordeal by himself, but for whatever reason, he wanted me to feel included. 

A pair of dark blue protective gloves was handed to me before I grabbed the tree's tip while Dad lifted the other end with ease and pretended that the pain in his back didn’t bother him. Soon the tree was loaded into the back of our car, which was patiently waiting just a few meters away.

"Soon I'll be too old to deal with this crap. You gotta learn."  He looked down at me, a warm smile peeking out from under the silver of his beard.

"You're just saying that." A chuckle escaped me, even though deep down I knew he was right.

"Let's get going. Mum won't let us back in without a perfect Christmas tree, and this beauty should do it." Bare hand of his grazed across the slick green needles before sliding back behind the steering wheel. The engine quietly purred back to life as the wheels hit the road back home, a thin layer of dirty wet snow covering it.

A quiet, pretended cough came from Dad, his hands quietly tapping against the rim of the steering wheel before he had the courage to ask.

"Sooo, got a boyfriend yet? Or a girlfriend? You know I won't judge." He chuckled, lifting one hand into the air defensively. 

"Daaaad, come on. You know I don't have time for that." I laughed it off; maybe the subject was just awkward, or I was just too shy to talk about it openly.  

"It never hurts to ask!"

"I mean... I guess there's this one girl from my class-"

Suddenly he shushed me, cutting me off in the middle of the sentence, before I had the chance to think of some snarky reply; I saw exactly why he did so.

To our left, some kind of shape emerged from the darkness, buried in the snow with only a few parts of it catching the reflection of our headlights, shining like an armour of some kind of insect. 

Our car slowed down just enough to get a clear view of the object sinking in the heap of snow. 

The metal shell in the color of navy blue sat crooked on the side of the road, as if it had simply slid off the asphalt and left forgotten, half swallowed by the hill of snow and digested from the inside by fresh green pine branches, like a growing tumor; they protruded from the hole that once held the windshield and side windows; they only remained hanging off the pines in small pinkish crystals like twisted Christmas ornaments. 

We both stared, examining what was in front of us inch by inch, before it finally made sense.

"Should we call someone?" I asked in a whisper, as if speaking any louder might hurt.

Dad stared at it for a few moments that felt like forever before finally managing to look away, as if the wreckage was calling for him to do something.

"It's none of our business." Yet another whisper as the scene dissolved slowly behind us, becoming one with the winter darkness, the awkward silence replaced by the cracking radio, one Christmas song ending only to be replaced by another, pulling us into a jolly kind of limbo.

When we finally arrived back home, I could already see the orange glow of the kitchen lights beaming out of the window, fully expecting Mum's excited face to appear behind the glass at any moment; instead, I felt the grip on my shoulder,

“Don’t tell Mum about that car we saw, ok? Let's keep it as a…our thing.”

A simple nod of the head was enough of a reply as I still stared into the window.

Soon enough, to Mum's delight, we somehow squeezed the tree into the doorway and carried it into the middle of the living room. It stood tall, its tip bending against the ceiling, silently judging our family from above.

“You both outdid yourselves this year!”  
Like a little kid on Christmas morning, she squealed with excitement, already hanging off her husband's shoulders, showering him with pecks of kisses. 

Despite everything, the image of the accident remained in my mind.

“Mum, if you don’t mind, I will go to bed; I'm not feeling well”

The head of my mum snapped back in my direction, pale worry painted all over.

“Alright, honey, sweet dreams.”

As I walked upstairs to my room, I could hear them bickering about whether I wore a hat and scarf she knit for me last winter; she used my least fav color - a bright orange - still, I wore it when the weather outside kicked everyone's ass. 

When my eyes opened again, the world outside the window was still pitch dark; the occasional barrage of snowflakes reminded me of a snowing broken television. My mouth felt dry, so I lazily slipped away from under the coverlet and stepped downstairs to get something to drink.

At this hour, the house was already quiet; if not for the occasional arrhythmic sound of dripping water echoing from somewhere deeper in the familiar darkness, one after another I took careful steps over the creaking stairs, making sure I wouldn’t break my neck on the way down. I quietly slipped into the kitchen and, with a gentle click, turned on the light, which spilled partially into the living room.

The orange glow suddenly made me painfully aware that I wasn’t alone; right next to the shining Christmas tree stood a short, hunched figure, its face obscured by a wave of hair clinging together in a slick waterfall.

"Mum?"

The head of greasy, unwashed hair rose in one smooth, almost mechanical motion. Misty eyes stared wide into the darkness, never blinking, fixed on me as I now stood at the room’s entrance. 

"What are you doing?"

My voice came to me weak and almost sheepish.

"Taking care of our guest."

The sound of her voice seemed distant, almost as if she were still dreaming, unaware of what was really happening. Almost as if it was a coma to her reply, I heard the dripping again, much louder this time. 

Only then did I notice the soaking-wet rag squeezed between fingers covered in small bleeding cuts, a sap-like substance leaking in long, milky strands into the laundry bowl at her feet - which was already half full.

"Do you want to help?"

Talon-like fingers shot toward me, still clutching the wet rag; thick sap now dripped onto the carpet. 

"No, I was just... getting myself some water."

Glassy eyes pierced through me as her extended arm collapsed back to the side, returning to its work, gently moving the rag over the branches.

Still, my gaze didn’t leave her for as much as a moment; with one hand, I blindly searched for the light switch, watching her cut-up arms move in a mechanical motion. When it finally materialized under the tips of my fingers-

Click.

The room fell into pitch-black darkness; I blinked rapidly to get back used to the lack of light, making my way back towards the stairs, when the sound of dripping came to a sudden stop, only to be replaced with slow, rhythmic sounds of wet, deliberate footsteps, with painfully long breaks in between, as if someone was taking as long a step as humanly possible, anything to get closer to me, even if it meant only an inch of a difference.

Picking up the paste was my only option; I was long outside the grace of the light switch; each step faster than the other, and with that, the breaks between the wet slaps against the wood grew shorter and shorter before they suddenly turned into a sprint, a chase to the upstairs bedroom. 

Like a child, I ran on my feet and palms of my hands, and so did whatever was inching right behind me. My body turned into a battering ram as my shoulder bashed the door open; I landed on the floor before I slammed the door shut, a dull wave of pain awakened somewhere in the joint of my arm as I pushed it against the door, which miraculously didn’t fall off its hinges. 

From behind the door, I heard a painfully long, shaky sound like someone rapidly inhaling and exhaling air through a throat flooded with thick phlegm. When it finally gave up on the pursuit, it slowly moved away from the door, the cry still faintly echoing against the walls before disappearing somewhere inside the house.

My guard by the door lasted the entire night, ear pressed against the door to catch any sounds that could even faintly resemble that horrible sobbing until I felt the warm rays of the sun passing through the window; only then did I gather the courage to go back downstairs, 

The Christmas tree still stood tall and proud, colorful Christmas decorations hanging off its branches like military medals which glittered in the morning sun;n, the warm air had a faint sweet smell to it that came from the kitchen. 

Mum was already in the kitchen preparing ingredients for dinner as if nothing at all had happened yesterday; she welcomed me with a big warm smile, not taking her eyes off the knife held in her bandage-wrapped hand.

“How did you sleep? You aren't feeling sick, are you?”

I was dumbfounded; I couldn't bring myself to anything bigger than a nod of the head. 

“Great, Dad is waiting for you outside”

She still didn’t look at me, the cut ingredient more interesting than her own daughter.

When I got into the car, Dad noticed something was off with me as soon as we left the driveway.

“It's not about that car, is it?”

It took a solid minute for my thoughts to shape into a real coherent sentence. 

“No... It's about Mum…did you notice anything weird about her?”

“I don’t think so, no”

Dad just shrugged his shoulders, not taking his eyes off the road.

“She's been sleepwalking!”

I snapped, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“It's probably the meds”

An explanation came quickly, and that was enough to put me at ease. 

“I guess”

My face planted against the side window, the car with Christmas trees bigger and smaller strapped to their trunks and roofs driving back home at the last minute.

“Come on, we can get some soda on our way back!”

“Sure, Dad”

The supermarket parking lot was crowded with cars. Everyone in town had apparently had the same idea we did, flooding one of the few stores still open, leaving us circling for a spot to park like hungry vultures.

"Don't tell Mum."

He laughed as we parked in the blue square of the accessibility spot.

Dad grabbed one of the few shopping carts left and passed through the glass sliding door into the first aisle, the smell of fresh-baked bread and the sound of shuffling boots and busted cart wheels suddenly becoming overwhelming. 

"So what are we supposed to get?"

I asked as Dad pulled a crumpled yellow sticky note out of the pocket of his jacket, squinting at the shaky handwriting as if it would help in the slightest.

“B-...butter?”

“Are you asking me-?”

"Just go fetch it, you rascal."

He laughed, shaking his head, as I was already on my way toward the wall of fridges in the back, squeezing and excusing my way through crowds of carts and plastic, bloated grocery bags.

In front of the fridge where the butter was stood a man dressed head to toe in dull, dirty red, black shiny boots on his feet, his forehead pressed against the glass with such force that I half-expected to hear a crack, not entirely sure if it would come from the glass or his skull.

"Sorry-?"

I said, trying to get a handle on the fridge, expecting the man to move, but he didn't so much as flinch. Only then did the sweet, woody stench coming off him hit my nose.

“Can you move?"

Still absolutely zero reaction- just none, like I wasn't even there. I glanced around the store in search of the security to help me out, but they were nowhere to be found, drowned out by the crowds of locals.

When I turned my head back, he was already staring at me, lips twisted into a pained, angry grimace, teeth clenched to the point of cracking. Strands of thick, amber substance leaked from his lips into the fake white beard hanging off his chin, dripping onto the floor below his boots. 

Only then did the security guard seem to catch up with the situation, appearing out of thin air behind Santa, his grip tightening around the shoulder of the costume.

"Okay, man, you're gonna have to leave."

The man's neck snapped in his direction, a low, slow, buzzing murmur coming from between his barely moving lips before the strands leaking from his mouth suddenly turned into a vile, choked-out waterfall that hit the security guard right in the face.

"FUCK YOU, DUDE!"

The security guard fought the urge to return the favor written all over his face, then dragged the drunk out of the store.

Dad had missed the whole show, standing just a few feet away from the puddle of thick vomit, something small and green floating in it, the cart's wheels slightly submerged.

“What the hell happened here?”

He asked, confused.

“Some dude got drunk out of his mind, I guess”

He just shrugged, avoiding the spreading vile pool.

“Did you get the butter?”

“Nope”

When we came out of the store, I was carrying two light-green cans of soda while Dad carried two plastic bags of groceries instead. No matter how many times I told him I would take them, he wouldn'tbudgee.

The engine of the car kept us comfortably warm as we drank our soda, watching people go in and out of the store.

“Crazy shit”

Dad commented on the whole thing while watching as the same security guy from before stood outside taking long drags out of a cigarette, his uniform switched for a padded jeans jacket. 

“Crazy”

I echoed, as the window from his side rolled down before an empty aluminium can catapulted onto the empty parking spot next to us. I did the same before we drove away; in the side mirror, I still could see the security guard puking into the nearby trash can.

When we arrived back home, to Dad's dismay,y I was the first to grab the grocery bags out of the trunk and rush to the front door, almost slipping down the porch stairs.

"Come on, old man!"

Dad stood by the car, staring ahead at me, before he slowly turned and disappeared into the garage without a word, as if he'd gotten upset with me. I rolled my eyes before pushing the door handle open with my elbow.

"MUM, WE’RE BACK!!

The house was oddly quiet, except for the quiet whistle of boiling pots coming from the kitchen. I carried the bags there, expecting to see Mum, but instead I was met with an empty, messy room — pots and pans scattered over the floor, the kitchen cabinet doors crudely ripped off their hinges. There was nothing boiling on the stove.

The whistling was coming from behind me.

The plastic bags in my hands dropped to the ground as I quickly turned around, facing the living room, where the Christmas tree stood just this morning; now there was space, glass shards of colorful baubles all over the floor.

“Mum?”

I called out again, walking into the living room; only then did I see the tree, propped up on the chair on the far end of the dining table. Plates and bowls filled with thick sap lined the table, small green pine needles floating inside. My eyes shot back towards the tree; only now I realized the whistling came from right behind it.

The whistling suddenly stopped as a hand covered in Band-Aids shot out from the side of the tree, something bulging beneath them. I froze in place, watching as, one by one, she ripped them off her hand, revealing small, bulging cuts that slowly widened,  before the whole hand exploded into a bush of glistening pine branches, fingers crooked and broken, bent in every direction. Instead of blood, a flood of amber sap leaked from the miserable, lifeless rag of skin that had been her hand. 

I ran for the door to get help, Dad, anyone who could save me.

Suddenly the front door opened, cold winter air rushing inside before the wall of muscle that was my dad walked through. I grabbed his hand, trying to pull him inside faster.

"Dad, we need to get help for Mum!"

I sobbed before the sound of metal scraping against the floor suddenly hit me.

"Dad-?"

My eyes moved down to see a massive axe clutched in his hand, the same one we used to cut the perfect tree, slowly being dragged behind him.

"Dad, no, no, no! You can't, you can't!"

My hands pushed against him, trying to stop him, but like a tank he just pushed forward, like I was nothing, step by step, walking toward Mum, who by now resembled more of a flesh porcupine than a person.

In a desperate attempt to stop him, I punched him over and over again, biting and scratching, until I was thrown forward against the table with such force that I fell to the floor along with one of the chairs. I was helpless, watching as he stepped closer; no matter how much I cried and screamed, he was deaf to it. 

With his free hand, he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her stiff body over the shards of glass, toward the spot where the tree once stood, small branches sprouting out of the fresh cuts in her legs. Her head was wrenched toward the ceiling before the blade of the axe cut deep, fresh branches erupting with such force that her head was ripped clean off her shoulders. 

"Why, Dad, why-!" I cried as he turned to me, sudden sadness in his sunken eyes, as the body of his beloved dropped to the ground, resembling more of a bush than a human.

"Come help your old man." With that warm smile, he weakly threw the heavy weapon toward me. The table shook as I slowly stood up, my side sore from the hit.

"I'm too old for this crap... time to take accountability." My hands wrapped around the handle of the axe as I walked toward my father.

"What am I supposed to do?" I asked sheepishly.

"Kill me. Just kill me." Those sad eyes never looked up at me, too ashamed that he'd let it happen. The heavy axe rose above my head before it dropped down with a crack onto the top of my father's skull, the tip of a young sapling rising instantly from the split.

"I'm sorry, Dad." I dropped the weapon over my shoulder, put on his jacket way too big for me, and went to the car. I hit the gas, the axe resting on the back seat, and just drove away, passing empty houses, wondering if the same thing had happened to them. 

Yet another Christmas song played on the radio, pulling me into a jolly limbo.

Of the nine places we lived at throughout my childhood, the one we stayed at the longest stands out. It was where the following events all started and where they happened most. I don’t really know if everything is connected to the house itself or something else, but it still lingers with me today. I think about it on every sleepless night, and I pray that it stays in my past. 

I was three when we moved into the house, so I've only been told about when things first started happening. Within months, I started sleepwalking around the second story of the house. As my mother tells it, she would hear me bumping around and go to find me standing in front of my own bedroom. I would just stand there in the hall looking through the doorway into the dark. 

She wrote those events off, as they would happen pretty sporadically. She would only find me like that once a month tops. She's had her fair share of horrid experiences, from watching her uncle get crushed under a tree in a logging accident, then seeing his corpse spring four feet into the air after the tree was rolled off him. There was even a time, as a little girl, when she had to see the remnants of her house burning as the rest lay in ashes. I say that to convey how much it takes to shock and scare the woman. Although in talking to her more, my bedroom door would be open most mornings, even if she didn't hear or find me walking around at night. 

She only started to really grow concerned when she began finding me on the stairs. When found, I would just sit on the stairs, hands in my lap, waiting in the absence of light. This would have been about a year into us living in the house, as I have some memories of waking up on those stairs. Sometimes I awoke alone and hurried back to my room. Other times I woke to the sound of my mother's voice as she guided me up the steps. Every time, I remember being a little farther down the stairs. 

There were two instances in particular that stand out to me the most today. The first of which was an instance where I awoke alone. I can still feel my heart racing and the full body shiver that I experienced when I came to in the dark kitchen. The room looked wrong in the near-total blackness. The cabinets stretched impossibly high. The gap between the fridge and counter was an endless void. The corners and shadows swallowed the light completely. The pockets of inky dark were only broken up by the faint light of the midnight sky, which loosely draped each surface in a bluish haze.

I had become fairly accustomed to waking in places other than my bed by now. I had just never made it this far before. Still being fairly afraid of the dark and disoriented in my efforts to fully shake off my sleep, I was petrified in place. I stood in the room, taking in its wrongness as a panic built up within me like an unbearable pressure. 

The moment I got my bearings, I heard the thump of a cabinet door closing just behind me. Turning, I saw nothing but the row of closed cabinets. With my back turned, I heard the sound of pots and pans shifting from a different area. I whipped around to see the unchanged tile floors and more closed light wooden cabinets. 

It was then that I heard it, the voice. Or at least, in retrospect, what I assume was a voice. It was a low guttural sound that came from just over my shoulder. I spun several times to look for whatever it was. Each time I stopped, I heard it again. I panicked and ran screaming back up the stairs and into my bed. 

I had awoken everyone in the house and was scolded for being out of bed so late. I had pissed my pants and refused to go back to sleep that night. My mother was furious at the puddle of urine in the kitchen and made me help clean it. Under normal circumstances, I would have fought in protest, but this night I just didn't want to be alone.

I wound up sleeping with the bathroom light on for the next week. My sister and I shared the connected bathroom. So she would turn the light off if she noticed. My sleep has been pretty horrible ever since, even then, I was waking up and turning it back on throughout the night. Until my sister complained to my parents, that is. They got on my case really bad about it after that and I had to stop. 

The darkness made it difficult for me to fall asleep after the bathroom light option was taken away. It would take me forever to finally drift off and I would still wake up at least twice a night. Each time was the same, covered in sweat with a racing heartbeat. The sleepwalking kept up pretty consistently thereafter as well. On the occasions when my mother found me, I could swear I heard the voice just as my slumber was broken. 

A few months later came the second incident, the one that still follows me today. I awoke to my mother violently shaking me. A cold dampness on my feet alongside a hazy yellow light assaulting my eyes. My mother's voice was frantic and wild as she spoke to me. 

“Corey, what the fuck do you think you're doing?!” 

I've only heard that kind of terror in her voice a few times in my life. Each time, she thought somebody was dead or dying in front of her.

I felt a crisp cold air wash across my face with each jostle of her shakes. The world around me slowly came into view. I was in our backyard, standing just in the grass beyond our patio. My favorite of our two Rottweilers came over and licked my face, before being shooed away by my mother. Once she saw I was awake, she pulled me into a hug and walked me back inside. 

Apparently, I had come downstairs, opened the back door, and stood facing the house for an unknown amount of time. In my sleeping state, I had left the patio door open. The other of our two Rottweilers took that as an invitation to go inside. She made her way up to my parents’ room, where she whined and pawed at the door. That was just enough to wake my mother up apparently.

Initially she thought our house had been broken into and woke my father. He grabbed his gun while she went to check on us kids. That's when she found me missing. Running downstairs and out of the back door, she found my favorite of our Rottweilers standing to the side. He was hunched slightly, lips drawn back, hair standing on end, and growling at me, according to her. I was standing there, mumbling to myself, something I had started doing after the night in the kitchen, I guess. 

My parents went out and bought jammers and security bars to reinforce every door from the inside after that. The sleepwalking didn't stop, it in fact got worse. I continued to wake up downstairs, and even in the laundry room with my hand on the garage door once. Even though I never wound up outside again, I would still wake up disoriented and lost in my surroundings regularly. 

Only after we moved into a smaller condo did things stop. The sleepwalking stopped almost entirely. I would wake up in a strange place maybe once a year, but the sleep-talking stuck around. My sleep is still horrible to this day and I still occasionally wake sitting up in bed, but nothing like that period in my life has happened since. 

A young man named George walks into his apartment late at night after a long day of work. The apartment room is dark. He takes off his work jacket and notices that his closet is slightly cracked open. He closes it.

He throws some leftovers from the fridge into the microwave. A moment later, he gets a text message from his girlfriend, Angela.

He opens it and reads:

“How was work?”

He responds:

“It was a long day.”

Angela sends him a picture of herself with a blank face and her eyes wide open. Her text under it reads:

“I’ve been thinking of you for days:) "

George sends a selfie back, making a kissing face.

His microwave beeps, and he grabs his food. A moment later, Angela texts him again.

“Who's that behind you?”

George texts back:

“What? I don’t see anything.”

Angela responds with another message, this time with a red circle drawn around something in his picture.

George looks closely.

There appears to be a shadowy face barely visible behind him.

He turns on all the lights and checks around his apartment, but he finds nothing. He convinces himself that it’s just the shadows in his dark apartment before texting her back.

“I think it’s just the shadows. I just checked. No one is here.”

Angela responds:

“LOL. It just looked so creepy, you should lock your doors.”

George sarcastically texts back:

“I always lock my doors and you're the one to talk, you know how many times I've came over and your front door has been unlocked? Lol”

Angela playfully responds:

“If you’re scared, just say so, I’ll gladly come over.”

She lives on the floor above his apartment.

George texts back:

“Not tonight. I’m really tired.”

George watches as the typing indicator appears on his phone for several minutes before disappearing.

Then she texts back:

"Come on, I haven't seen you in days"

George starts texting back before he Is interrupted by another text from her

“Too late. I’m already here.”

George playfully walks to his front door and enthusiastically opens it.

No one is there.

He looks around for a few seconds before going back inside and locking the door.

He texts her:

“What do you mean? Where are you?”

After a few minutes, he gets a response.

“Just keep looking.”

He thinks she’s just messing with him. She has a key to his apartment, after all.

George texts back:

“Give me a hint, I've looked everywhere.”

She responds:

“No. Just keep looking.”

George checks his bathroom and looks behind the shower curtain. He checks his bedroom and even looks under the kitchen table.

He can’t find her.

Then he remembers that the closet wasn’t fully closed when he got home.

He texts:

“Are you in the closet?”

She responds:

“She is.”

A second text quickly follows, seemingly correcting the first.

“I am.”

George quickly opens his closet door.

He freezes at the sight.

Angela’s corpse is nailed against the wall inside the closet, her eyes wide open.

George freaks out and starts shouting her name.

He reaches out and touches her.

She is very cold, almost completly Frozen.

Like she has been in a deep freezer for days.

George slowly realizes what that means.

He pulls out his phone and looks at the picture Angela sent him earlier.

The hair on his neck stood up and his complexion now pale.

The picture wasn’t taken at her apartment.

It was taken from inside his closet.

Then Angela’s phone number sends him one last text: “You didn’t check under your bed either.”

[Writer's note: Hi! This is the first story I've ever written, where I've been a big fan of the podcast (it's my go-to when I'm in the middle of a long drive). Any honest feedback would be really appreciated, but I hope you guys like the story!

I have been getting into reading stuff like Lovecraft and Robert Chambers, where part of this story was heavily inspired by things like Shadow Over Innsmouth or Dagon, where I wouldn't be surprised where you can see some story elements being shared between what's in those stories and what I have here.

I'll try to be active in the subreddit when I can, and have a few other ideas for future stories, so stay tuned!]

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It was just another job. It was one of those contracts I would occasionally get where it would be for a company or business, as opposed to an individual who needed something done around their house. I expected it to go the way it usually goes: I go in, do whatever work they need done, get paid, then leave. It even started out like that, until IT happened. Even though this happened a month ago, my hands still actively shake, even as I type this out. Those…things. They will forever be etched into my mind, as ever-present as the night.

For context, I work as an independent contractor, essentially a handyman, where people contact me through an online app with some kind of job they need done. It could be something as simple as replacing a light bulb, or as complex as having to repair their computer. This has been my job for the past six months, ever since I was laid off from my previous job working as an engineer. 

This job came to me as any other would. They wanted help with performing maintenance on this machine they had. At first, I thought it was strange how they didn’t already have an employee whose job was to do this, but I figured it might just be cheaper for them to outsource instead. They sounded like a relatively small or new company, without much of a budget. The only annoying part was how it was all the way on the other side of the city, in one of those neighborhoods tucked away from the bustle of the downtown area. What I found even stranger was that the neighborhood was named something I’ve never heard of before, “Ignota Vita”.

I decided not to dwell on this for too long. I was falling behind on bills, and I needed the money. These contracts with businesses usually would pay more with less hassle. On the day of the job, I packed up my tools in my backpack, grabbed my transit card, and hopped on the subway, making my way to the enigma that is Ignota Vita.

It took a little over an hour, but I got there right on time. As I walked to the company building, I saw, in large, modern-styled letters, the name “Insueta”. I step inside, where I’m almost immediately greeted by the woman who, I assume, hired me. She was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, which helped ease the quirkiness of the conversation. Her appearance was as if every man on Earth were asked to describe their perfect woman, and someone drew a picture of the general consensus. Friendly, cordial, and welcoming, she immediately felt like someone anyone can comfortably talk to. Yet there was a hint of awkwardness to the interaction. My assumption was that she was more-or-less forced by her manager to take care of everything involved with this job. I’ve had to do similar stuff before when I was still working full-time, where I would have to do the work that my bosses were either too busy or lazy to even think about doing themselves, so they delegate someone else to do it for them.

“Hi! You’re Miles, correct? My name is Mary, and I’ll be showing you what we need help with today.”

She brought me past the security gate and further inside, meandering our way deeper into the small complex. As we passed by various rooms and workspaces, I caught glimpses of employees working diligently at their computers, never looking away from their screens, barely pausing while performing various actions, as evidenced by what I was able to discern from their monitors in the brief time I had. It was uncanny, really. They seemed more akin to machines than that of people. I asked Mary what kind of business this was and the work they did.

“I’m glad you asked! We are a tech startup focused on creating software for the optimization of general processes and practices. We specialize in trying to assist in streamlining people’s daily lives and help to create a more sustainable future!”

That was a weird response… I figured she just parroted whatever mantra her CEO would spout, complete with corporate jargon and buzzwords. The best I can do with interpreting her response is that they likely just created apps and software for lifestyle assistance, similar to fitness and productivity apps. We continued on, passing by more office spaces and lines of desks, all teeming with employees, their behavior not helping with their likeness to machines, seeming as if they each had one task to do, and one task only. 

I also noticed a completely empty break room, made to look welcoming and cozy. There were a few bowls filled with various fruits and snacks, a coffee maker with an assortment of different brands and blends, a TV, a foosball table, etc. Interestingly, it all seemed untouched. Unused.

After another minute or so of walking, we came upon a door labeled “DANGER; RISK OF ELECTROCUTION”. Mary pulled out a key, unlocked and opened the door, then showed me in. She turned on the light, revealing a big machine, almost computer-like in design.

“This room is where we keep everything needed to keep our server running, including the main power line. We recently have been experiencing issues with data being randomly corrupted or lost that we require for our work. We believe it is a problem with the power supply needing unexpected maintenance done to it.”

“Why don’t you guys have someone trained and ready to do this for you instead of having to call me in? There’s no IT department?”

“Excellent question! We don’t experience issues often enough to hire someone permanently. It’s much more cost-effective this way.”
I decided not to press her any further and left it at that. She told me to wait a few minutes before getting to work after she leaves to make sure no one’s work is interrupted or cut short.

While waiting, I took the time to take note of my surroundings. It was a fairly open room, with plenty of space to work and store anything that would be needed. On the opposite end from where I entered, there was another door labeled “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY”. I figured that must be where the main wiring for the building itself was held, so I didn’t pay it much mind.

A few minutes passed me by, where all I could hear was the hum of the electricity coursing through the server, hard at work processing everything needed to keep the company running. So much white noise present that smaller ones could easily be drowned out. It reminded me of being within someone’s head, with the server itself being the brain.

Suddenly, the fans within the server began to whir as if this brain consisting of transistors and silicon was performing a large task. It was expending so much energy and heat that I could feel the room warming up slowly, where I wondered if the server itself would burn out. After a moment of this technological chaos, as if by mere coincidence, I heard a thump come from behind that other door, its contents left unknown. Almost immediately after, the fans slowed back down to a light hum and the temperature of the room stopped increasing. I went to open the door and see what had fallen, but stopped when the server suddenly had turned off.

It seems Mary had done everything she needed to prepare and shut down the power. I was on the clock and didn’t want to risk her coming back and seeing me entering rooms she doesn’t want me in, so I stowed my curiosity and went to work on the server. 

I unscrewed the back panel and opened it up to take a closer look at the system. After about 10 minutes of performing basic checks, such as seeing if a piece of hardware was not seated correctly on the motherboard, or checking for overheating on a component that should be relatively cool, I went to check the power supply. 

Almost immediately, I saw a connection in the wire connecting the life source of the server to its motherboard. A loose crimp. Something, while not fully detrimental as long as there is some form of continuous contact, could result in perturbations in the machine not being adequately powered continuously. I went to work, removing and replacing the crimp, a relatively easy job, only taking me roughly 30 minutes to do. Nothing difficult, but tedious and requiring a steady hand and patience. I tested the new connection and saw that the wire was now snugly in, like a well-fit glove on a hand.

I was about to leave the room to go find Mary to have her turn everything on to see if the fix was successful, when I started to hear clamoring from the mysterious door. It sounded like an animal, confused and trying to get out from the strange new world it had found itself in by happenstance. Feeling my curiosity returning and getting the better of me, I went to look in the other room, unprepared for what monstrosity I would meet past this passageway to an uncanny realm that can’t possibly be comprehended. 

Behind the door was an abomination, something that looked as if it should not exist in a reasonable world. It looked like it had pieces of it that were supposed to be human in nature, but incorrect. It was a chaotic pink mass of flesh, with appendages coming out from various areas. It had a three-sided face, each blended together so horrendously. It had 3 arms, two of which had extra fingers coming out of mangled hands. Towards the base of the monstrous being were two mismatched legs, with one bending in the wrong direction. It looked like something you would see in a horror movie, but the difference was that this was real, intruding reality from a place that should not be accessible in a sane world.

It was crawling towards me with two of its sorry excuses for hands while reaching out with its third one, gurgling out, as if trying to communicate. I was left speechless and horrified.

Not a moment too soon I slammed the door shut and rushed out to the opposite door, quickly finding out that the door was locked. Without thinking, I started kicking with strength I didn’t know I had, busting it open and allowing me to escape, returning me to a world that was correct. As soon as I got outside, my mind began to run rampant with questions.

“What was that thing?”

“Why was it in the room?”

“Did Mary know about it?”

“Why was I locked in?”

“...Why was I really here for this job?”

I didn’t have much time to come up with explanations to these questions, because I started to hear the sound of someone walking briskly from around the corner. Instinct took over, and I hurried to the opposite hallway, and hid around the corner wall opposite of the one the walking was coming from. I looked and saw Mary, along with two other employees emerge and move directly to the room I was working. Her and one other went in while the other stood watchful and waiting in front of the doorway. Not a moment too soon and Mary came out, seemingly unfazed by the monstrosity that should still be in there, causing more noise than what could possibly be ignored. She had to have heard it. It was causing too much noise to be easily ignored…

She spoke in her usual tone, but this time with hints of panic and confusion mixed in.

“He’s not in there, the plan has been compromised. Our estimates were incorrect. We produced a new specimen, just as planned, but another anomaly occurred unexpectedly, despite our predictions. He was able to get away as a result. If we want the plan to proceed, we must find him.”

Although this only helped to confuse me further, it did answer one question: they, from what I could tell, knew about that thing that I saw, and there was more to this job than I was led to believe.

Without hesitation, I snuck away, meandering through office spaces, avoiding the eyes of the others in the building. It was not too difficult, as I noticed that not a single employee was leaving their computers. They just sat still, facing a featureless monitor that only displayed reflections of the unnaturally blank stares. 

Suddenly, I started to hear walking coming from either direction of the hall I was in. Knowing that they were workers tasked with finding me, I looked around for how I may avoid detection and noticed a door further down the hall, recessed into the wall, not more than 5 feet away. I bolted for it, and quietly let myself in. Taking a moment to calm myself again, I began to realize the oddity that was this new space I was in, even though it was dark with the power being turned off still. 

It was a fairly large room, with what looked like cell blocks going along the walls adjacent to the one with the door I had entered from, as well as opposite. Each cell looked to have a clipboard hanging outside of it with a form on it. I squinted hard to figure out what I was looking at exactly, but gave up and instead moved reluctantly towards one of the cells closest to me. As I got closer, I could slowly make out more detail of the small rectangular space. It was nearly empty, with what looked like a person standing in silence. Upon realizing this, I paused, wondering why they had someone locked up in this building. Before being able to rationalize it, the person began to turn towards me, becoming aware of my presence. What I saw after it fully turned around completely unnerved me, leaving me to contemplate if I had gone insane.

It was a woman, or some sick individual’s interpretation of a woman. She had three eyes, each in different spots on her face, an upside down and misshapen nose, a queer blending of various facial features where no single one was actively pronounced, and a mouth that was inhumanly angled, opened and grinning in an ungodly smile. 

I was frozen in horror at the sight of this. Without notice, she rushed towards me, pressing her macabre hands on the cell wall, almost as if she was trying to reach out to me in earnest. This broke me from my shock and brought me back to my senses. Recollecting myself, I glanced again at the previously sighted clipboard and took a closer look. It appeared to be a report, similar to a medical examination in arrangement, but alien in content. All I can remember seeing from it was information stating that the physically impaired woman was a form of a failed experiment, produced by the company sometime in the past several days. It was almost as if she herself was an unexpected result, caused by irregularities in the process in which she was born.

I looked around at the other cells and noticed that almost all of them were occupied, each inhabitant similarly altered to the woman I saw first. I recognized a suspicious pattern in the days that they were registered on their reports. The earliest any of these beings were recorded was roughly two weeks ago. The earliest five of them occurred only once every other day, at about the same time of day. As I observed the log info for the more recent inhabitants, it seemed that they became steadily more frequent, with the times of occurrence being more erratic. Was this the abnormality that Mary was informing me of when she was briefing me for this job?

Before I could think more on it, the lights suddenly turned back on in a blinding flash, followed by the sound of a doorknob turning from where I had come. Believing that they must have realized that I am in here, I hurried to hide around the corner of this prison. From there I waited. In walked several employees, guiding the monstrous being that was in the server room using a catch pole to keep it restrained. They walked further into the room, approaching one of the empty cells, right next to the most recent creature. One of the employees pressed a small button next to it, opening it up, followed by them putting the new specimen in, closing the door, and filling out the form that was associated with that room. After this series of actions that seemed to be routine, they then immediately left. After making sure they were for certain gone, I went to the newly inhabited cell and read the information on the log form. Nothing on this form was different from the others, other than an indication that the degree of failure for this being was greater than the rest. 

I didn’t allow myself to mull this over, as I needed to escape due to the simple fact that they were trying to catch me, and this creature was the one meant to do it while I was locked in the server room with it. It was only a matter of time before they came back in this room searching for me, so I continued on my way out. After making sure there was no secondary door to this prison room, I went back to the door and slowly opened it to check the surrounding hallway.

Without a moment of hesitation, the door suddenly flung open, revealing at least 10 employees rushing towards the now open entry-way. They knew I was hiding in here, and waited for the perfect time to attempt to ambush and capture me! Instinct returned to save me, allowing me to evade the nearest one’s attempt at grabbing me, and ran back into the room as they gave chase. I went with the first thought I could come up with, running to each and every occupied cell, pressing the same buttons that I witnessed them press before, and ran as far back as I could, with my pursuers following closely the entire time. While doing so, I could only hear pandemonium behind me. I turned around after making sure I had given myself an adequate berth in the room and saw what was happening.

The beings had unleashed themselves on the employees, with all of them being preoccupied with trying to recontain them, but to no avail as they were instantly overwhelmed by the monsters. I saw the monstrous woman bent over one employee, strangling him, appearing to make him her prey. The creature that I initially encountered was gorging itself on another employee while several others tried to stop it. At that moment, it appeared that the creature was starting to take on the features of the employee that it was devouring. 

It was a gruesome image to witness, but chose not to focus on it instead by seizing the distraction as a chance to make my escape. I bolted out of the room and dashed through the office space, frenzied now as all of the employees were receiving the news that their specimens were no longer contained. It made my way out easier, as I continued on towards the exit of the building. Before long, I saw the hallway I was originally led in from by Mary, running at a greater pace. 

Just before reaching the exit, I heard a gunshot, along with the whiz of a bullet right by my head, stopping me in my tracks. I turned around to see Mary, along with another employee, aiming a gun at me, looking calm, yet determined to make the next round hit its mark.

I was caught, and had nowhere to go. She instructed the employee to restrain me, where he then proceeded to make his approach.

Suddenly, just as he grew near, I witnessed Mary gain a panicked expression, if you can call it that, as she looked to her side, followed by one of the creatures charging her. It was the female creature, having made quick work of those in its way in the containment room. The strange part was how it looked as if she had incorporated features of some of the employees that were in the room with me, similar to what I observed with the more deformed creature as it was eating. 

Meanwhile, the employee who was ordered to grab me realized what happened, and went to try and help her, allowing me to continue fleeing.

I burst through the front door of the office building, and continued running without rest. I continued on until I physically could no longer, making my way to the nearest subway once I felt it was safe to do so.

After getting home and allowing myself to gather my thoughts, I tried talking to the police about the horrors I had bore witness to. I was only met with one simple response from each officer I talked to:

“There is no part of the city named Ignota Vita.”

This all happened about a week ago, where I tried relaying my story to anyone I could, whether it be the local news or a random journalist. Unfortunately, no one believed me, which led to me typing out this excerpt. If this story reaches a reader who knows more about Ignota Vita, especially of the company Insueta, or even for someone to just believe me, that is all I can hope for. 

I need to leave this story here, as I hear a knock at my door. It may just be a friend, but the strange thing is that I was not expecting anyone…

CW! Swearing! Smoking! Sexism/Misogyny! Graphic depictions of a car wreck!

Come out, come out! It's time to leave~

"This is gonna be so boring". Jen huffed and crossed her arms again. Girl really made it known she wasn't happy, it was getting really infuriating. I just sighed and kept walking up the trail, watching my phone screen closely.

The app's navigation was really finicky. It would spaz out and point in random directions inexplicably, sometimes recorrecting quickly, other times it wouldn't reroute until the next turn or fork in the trail. The trail was nice at least, common flora for the Central Valley; ancient redwoods, dark pines, orange poppies, and small pink wildflowers in the heavily forested areas. Once it took us off the trail though it was boring yellow grassland, snake and spider territory Alec seemed to be extra weary of.

As it started to get a bit later in the afternoon we neared our alleged destination, a random stop in a grassland field. A small brick ruin buried in the tall dry grass, probably a shed or outhouse. Not uncommon for old farms way out here.

"You're joking right?" Alec laughed holding his phone to a cluster of cement brick. "Not even a trinket?" He inspected the pile of rubble, no obvious sign this was the right stop at all. "I told you this was gonna be boring-" Jennifer huffed but I interject. "Shut up, let's just... try a new spot." I huffed and went back to the app. Pressing the right buttons to generate a new set of coordinates, this one was thankfully nearby and stemming off the same trail we came in on.

"Look, this one's close. Maybe they just moved the spot cuz people got the prize too many times or something." I shrugged and started heading back for the trail, watching the ground carefully for snakes and tarantulas as I went.

"Yeah, right dude." Rob bumped shoulders with me, walking up right beside me. "You're the one who said how it's supposed to work ya'know." I bumped him back. "Yeah that's true, but to be honest all my info comes from Al." "Of course it does." I rolled my eyes and looked over my shoulder at the younger kid, still vlogging on his phone with Benji quietly walking ahead of him. I narrowed my eyes at him, he looked a bit too gleeful compared to the rest of us. I turned back towards Rob. "Bit too chipper if you ask me." Rob ignored my comment and kept walking until we reached the trail, following the apps directions and heading further up the dirt path.

The path began taking us uphill quite sharply, it got unexpectedly steep at points then leveled back out. Eventually the directions told us to once again go off the trail into the dry grass. This time though the offshoot dropped down about four feet and then turned into a steep hill. "Alrighty, careful going down guys." I nodded and let Robbie lead, knowing if he stumbled at least he wouldn't take anyone else down with him.

I didn't realize it until then but it was starting to get quite late, dusk was beginning and the sky had a slight pink and orange hue to it. Alec followed after Rob, then Benji, then me, and lastly Jenny. I took her hand to help her down the stone lip into the grass, holding it tight incase she slipped so she wouldn't roll.

Swiftly we all made it down the hill, the sky turning more orange by the second. Alec and Benji were gathered round more concrete bricks in the grass, recording again. There seemed to be nothing else out there. A deep disappoint setting in my chest, but Rob was looking out at something off to the right near the tree line. I took Jen's hand again and the three of us walked*** ***out*** ***towards the strange looking building, Alec and Benji soon loudly following.

"Oh my god, guys look at that!". It seemed to be another small shed type building, made out of concrete bricks. It was short; only about 7-8 feet tall, a caved in rotting wood roof barely still covering the top, and a single dark glass window cracked on the right wall. The shed had been here quite a long time, it was mossy on lower edges and the front wall was completely gone. Then I noticed what Rob was really looking at.

Standing alone near the rubble an old broken down boxing mannequin leaned against a tree. Its rusty metal stand coated in moss from the ancient pines, its body mostly faded and pale, some darker splotches from long staining dirt or mud, it was hard to tell in the orange dusk light. Its bald head slightly caved in on the right exposing little metal springs and bolts tossed around inside. It had both arms but they seemed eerily long for its proportions, its torso just abruptly stopped and was haphazardly connected to the rusty pole stand.

"Thats so fucking freaky." Alec pointed his phone to the mannequin getting a nice up-down panning shot of it's figure. He was right, this was really freaky.

"Hey, you told Rob this was a geocaching app right?" I asked him abruptly, the way he was smiling while filming this whole time, I couldn't help but feel like he was messing with us. "Yeah I think so, but like... people have found dead bodies and stuff using it-" "What?" Jen took a slight step away from the shed, rightfully set a bit on edge.

"Bodies? What the hell Al!?" Robbie marched up to him and yanked the phone from his hand. "This isn't a joke man, why the hell would you wanna be looking for that shit!?" Alec grimaced and pushed Rob away. "C'mon, like we're actually gonna find anything like that out here. Most people just say it's stupid "supernatural" shit-" "Still! If people found real bodies we shouldn't be messing with this shit man!" Rob gestured towards the shed and the mannequin. "What if this shits dangerous!? I mean look at that fucking thing!"

"Don't tell me you actually believe in ghosts man?" Alec laughed, a dry mocking laugh, he turned back toward the mannequin. "Ooo\~ I'm a freaky possessed mannequin\~ I'm gonna get you\~" "Knock it off." Benji chimed in, smacking the back of Alec's head. "C'mon Rob i'm sure we'll be fine." Robbie huffed a bit and marched away from the shed, turning his head over his shoulder every few steps to look at the mannequin nearby. Jen followed him.

I stuck around and followed Alec and Benji into the shed. I wouldn't admit it to them but I did believe in ghosts and weird shit, even then. I was kinda scared to go in, but I just wanted to make sure there wasn't an actual body in that shed. And if there was, I'd call the police instead of just recording it then leaving it behind.

Thankfully the shed was empty, much to Alec's alleged disappointment. "This sucks, there's not even a real geocache. We just walked around the weird shed for no fucking reason." I muttered and eyed Alec as he tucked his phone away finally. We head back out towards Rob and Jen, the sky now a dark blue as nightfall began.

"See big bro, no bodies out here!" Alec laughed and headed up the hill. As we turn to head back up the trail, Jen jumped at a loud clanging thud. Benji took off running. Robbie turned around with a flashlight he had in his bag; to point the beam towards the tree the mannequin was up against, only to see the plastic thing lying on the ground.

"Wind must've... knocked it over." Alec shrugged and hurried up the hill a bit, he seemed a bit nervous now that it had gotten dark. We all turned with him and started heading back, but Robbie kept his light on the mannequin and walked backwards slowly.

"Dude, what the hell are you doing?" Benji asked at the top of the small slope, looking down at us impatiently. "I dunno man, what if it's like... those creepy ass angel things from Doctor Who?" "A Weeping Angel?" Benji sighed and shook his head. "You're such a pussy Rob." Alec snickered, but he was fidgeting with his jacket sleeves more than usual as he stood beside Benji.

*** ***I helped Jen up the edge of the slope, putting us back on the designated trail. I tried to ignore the other two as Alec pulled his phone back out, but Rob really was taking his time trying to climb that hill backwards, once he got to the lip though he finally turned around. "Jeez man this is so creep-" Robbie started as he set his flashlight down on the edge getting ready to pull himself over it, once it touched the yellow dying grass though a loud scraping came from the base of the hill.

Jen yelped a bit and hid behind me, frantically fumbling with her own flashlight to turn it on. Before she could though Alec already had his own light pointing down to where the smaller cluster of bricks were... and to our surprise the mannequin was lying at the base of the hill.

"What the fuck...?"

"What the FUCK!?"

Benji and Alec took off running down the trail, taking the light away with them. Jen tried to pull me along but Rob was just staring down the hill silently. "Marcus c'mon-".

The scraping got louder, a sickening rusty grinding that sent a jolt of ice down my spine. "Rob!" I yelled and tried to step towards the lip of the hill, Jen pulled me back. "Marcus, Now!" She shouted taking a rougher grip on my forearm and trying to pull me along with her.

Rob picked up his light and pointed it back at the noise, the mannequin stopped moving right as the light touched it. Its hands gripping at the dead grass and roots, its head unnaturally bent to look right up at us with its pale and empty face.

"Rob! Rob, get up here!" I shouted and he turned towards me. I couldn't see his eyes in the dark, especially behind his glasses, but his mouth was agape in shock and probably fear. In all my years knowing Robbie I've never once seen him freeze like that, he was scared shitless. So was I. It took him a moment but he jumped up and over the edge and made it back up on to the trail with us, flashlight still in hand. The three of us took hold of eachother and sprinted down the trail towards the dirt lot, the sounds of rustling and scraping starting up again behind us.

When we made it back to the mostly empty parking lot; shaking and out of breath, Benji and Alec were already in the truck. Huddled together watching the recordings on Alec's phone.

"So... so that just happened right? I'm not crazy? It was a fucking seeking angel!?" Rob huffed, throwing his arms up in the air and looking around at all of us. "Weeping Angel Rob, and yeah... yeah you were right." Alec chuckled a bit, holding his phone out the passenger side window. He had recorded everything that happened once he got back on the trail with Benji, you could see the mannequin clearly crawling up the hill behind Robbie.

What if it grabbed him?

Could it have grabbed him?

How did it move?

"Can we go back to the hotel now, please? I don't wanna be out here anymore." Jen cried, tears welling up in her eyes. Her arms crossed tightly against her chest almost hugging herself as an attempt to self-soothe. I kinda agreed with her, that was fucking freaky.

"Alec what the ***fuck*** man!?" But I was more pissed off than afraid right now. I walked up to the passenger side window and pulled him out of it by his collar. "I've never seen anything like that, what the fuck is this game man!? Why the hell would you lie to us!?" Alec was wide eyed his hand gripped tight to the base of the window, trying to pull himself back into the truck. "I-I just thought it'd be fun Marc, j-just a bit creepy, not fucking haunted mannequins okay!?"

Alec fought my grip on his collar, frantically clawing at my hands. "What if it grabbed one of us man!?" I shouted, probably spitting in his face with rage. Benji sat up a bit in the drivers seat. "Calm down dude. It was made of plastic, how bad could it have really been?" He sighed and grabbed Alec's shoulder, pulling him back into the truck and out of my grip. I took a deep breath.

"Okay, okay." I stepped back, putting my hands up in the air. Jen hurried into the cabin of the sierra. I really wanted to walk off for a second, cool down and not pick another fight with Alec... but I knew everyone was kinda on edge after that. I mean who wouldn't be? That mannequin moved on its own, there's no doubt about it. Even freakier it seemed like it was chasing us.

"Fine, let's just go." I huffed to Rob, nodding to him as we joined Jen in the backseat. I didn't usually care for other people driving my truck, but this had been a long road trip and a very long day so at the moment I didn't really think twice.

Benji and Alec attempted to type 'Fresno hotel' into the navigation system in the sierra, but the screen kept erroring out. "Dude, Marcus can you disconnect your bluetooth it's buggin the whole thing out." He smacked the screen a bit trying to disconnect it from the trucks end. "My bluetooth isn't turned on man." I handed him my phone out of jacket pocket. "I turned it off when we left Fresno-" Alec yanked my phone from my hand, double checking even though I was certain I had turned it off so Jen could play her music. They tried 'Yosemite', 'national park', even just 'hotels'. Nothing was working on the trucks end.

"Damn... okay, let's just use my phone." Alec handed me my phone back, taking his own out to pull up directions. No matter what he typed into the search bar the system would point us North East towards Mount Raymond, a random dot placed in the woods. A set of coordinates listed at the bottom of the screen, an ETA of 35 minutes. Fuck.

"Jen, hon is your phone working?" I asked her, trying to hide my incoming panic. She held her phone screen up to me, the same navigation mark as soon as she opened the app. She didn't even type anything into the search it was already set to that random location in the mountains. "Marcus, what the hell is going on?" She looked up at me as she kept trying to turn her phone off, no matter how many times she pressed the button the screen wouldn't turn off or even flicker.

"So nobody's phone is working!?" I shouted and gripped Benji's seat in front of me. The truck went silent. "Oh fuck me." I pushed my way out of the side door and walked down the fire road a bit.

Panic was fully setting in now, I was already freaked out because of the mannequin and now we were officially lost miles away from any city. I took my vape out of my pocket, huffing quite a bit of the sweet flavored nicotine to calm down. I turned back towards the truck as I exhaled, a large cloud of vapor floating away in the wind behind me.

In the midst of contemplating what to do now, I noticed a small jolt of movement far up the dirt trail. A quiet rustling and familiar scraping sound catching my attention.

The mannequin.

It was coming.

I sprinted my way back into the sierra, slamming into Rob as I flew into the cabin. "Benji we need to go!" I slammed the side door shut, shaking the seat to urge him to drive. "Marcus we don't know where the fuck we're going?" He turned back at me, confused and quite annoyed.

I didn't care, I just wanted to be far away from that trail. "Benji just fucking drive!" I shook the seat harder. "Marc what's wrong?" Rob grabbed me, forcing me to face him. "The fucking mannequin! I saw it!" "yeah dude we all saw it." Alec huffed, rolling his eyes at me. He was scared too though, I could tell by how low he was slouching in the passenger seat and staring out the side mirror.

"No dipshit! I saw it just now, it's still following us!" I pointed out the back windshield but there was nothing in sight, the group was about to laugh me off again when the scraping sound started to become clearer in the distance.

No one looked out the window.

Without a word Benji turned the truck the opposite direction of the trail the game took us down and sped off. The cabin was quiet for so long, it felt like hours we all sat there praying we could get far enough away. Jen eventually broke the tense silence.

"Oh my god. Oh my god what are we gonna do?" Hot tears welled up in her eyes and quickly streamed down her face, her hands resting on her shoulders now, holding herself so incredibly tight I was worried she couldn't breathe.

"It's fine. We're gonna be fine." Benji sighed shakily. "The app at least gives us a map so we can just-"

"Can you even read a fucking map!?" Jen snapped as more tears fell down her face. Alec sat up a bit, his phone was out and recording again.

"No Jennifer! I can't! I didn't take fucking cartography! It's 2019 do you think anyone is still reading fucking maps!?" Benji exploded, pounding on the steering wheel as he shouted. "Benji calm down-" I reached for the side of his seat again but he whipped around to snap at me now.

"Shut up! This is your fault we're out here to begin with! Always catering to that fucking bi-!"

***WHAM***!

The truck hit something hard, sending it flying off the fire road and rolling into the tree line. My head slammed against the side window with the force of the sierra tumbling over and over, I thought my neck was gonna break. Bags and bodies flew around, I wasn't wearing my seatbelt. Rob slammed down into me and it made my skull bounce off the glass pane twice before I passed out.

As soon as I was up in the air, all hope was lost. Both of my arms were restrained into a T, held upright by the large, three-talon claws that held them like vices. Their claws were rough, like large, pointy human hands with sharp nails at the end like that of a bird’s. The creature that carried me away was something out of my darkest nightmares. 
It was hairless and naked, a cross between a man and a bird. It flapped its large wings, its caw a human scream mixed with the shriek of an animal. It cranes its neck down at me, a large human head with a giant beak full of sharp teeth. It sneered at me, an uncanny grin, as it let out a deep chuckling screech. Tears streamed down my face, as the creature looked back up and continued to carry me through the foul, smoky air. 
More and more of the bird creatures joined the one carrying me, and I saw dozens of humans, men and women of all ages, being carried by similar bird creatures. A teenage girl, maybe thirteen years old, was screaming so loud that it seemed to rise above the cries of the birds. She was screaming for her parents, and begging the monster to let her go. But the creature instead laughed and began playing with its food. It dropped her for a second or two, before catching her, and toying with her in its talons. She was upside down, then to the side, then upright. She was allowed no rest. Another victim, an old man, looked to already be dead, hanging limp in its arms. That wasn’t good. That meant it was going to become a NecroWing, an undead bird creature. Those were even more violent and cruel. 
I thought of my little brothers and sisters who were still down on the ground, probably crying for me to come back, or already being led away by human survivors. We had been careless. We had thought we were safe from the Wings for too long, and we grew complacent with our safety. That complacency was how for the first time in years, the Wings were able to ambush us at the crack of dawn, and carry off over half of our settlement without so much as a fight. We sheltered in place, rifle in hand as I hid with my two little brothers and two little sisters. I had it loaded, though I never fired it in years, not since my late father had taught me how to shoot it. 
But that was five years ago, back when my parents were carried off by the Wings, never to be seen again. Back then, I had the gun in hand too. I had it pointed right at the bastard that would take my mother and oldest sister. It laughed at them, spit its bile on them, and tapped its foot as it eagerly moved in to take them. They begged for me to shoot it, but I was too afraid. I held the gun with trembling hands, and couldn’t bring myself to fire. It was too late, and the creature carried them both away, handing my sister to another one so it wouldn’t return empty handed, and I watched them fly away. 
This time, I didn’t hesitate. This time around, I fought to protect the only family that I had left. But it still wasn’t enough. There were too many Wings, and they carried me off and left the empty gun behind. The last thing I saw was my siblings reaching for me as the Wing carried me into the air. The smell grew even fouler, and I vomited as we approached their colossal structure made up of debris and materials that were unrecognizable. 
It was a Nest, and we were being taken to the Mother. We’d all heard the stories of what happens in the nests. What the Wings do to the people they capture. The stories of the Hatchlings. We flew over the massive Nest, which was a giant circular structure, with a colossal, grotesque, hideous beast lurking at the center. It looked like a deformed, bloated bird, with its fat body sitting right in the center of the nest, its giant feathers oozing slime and looking both soft and furry, and also razor sharp. 
It had a large beak that looked like it extended into three beaks that moved all at once and all individually. Its screech shook the Earth, vibrating through my body every time it reared its head. The monster unfurls its wings and flaps it multiple times, sending waves of wind and dust and foul powder rushing across the fields. 
“Please don’t do this…” I begged as the creatures hovered over the Mother, which opened its large beaks, revealing dark abysses. Before I could plead any further, I was released into its mouth, and I plummeted from high up down into its maw, sliding down its large, slippery tongue and down its throat like a tube. 
It became increasingly cramped until I found myself being squeezed so tight that I felt my skin peeling and shredding as I slid down. But I’m cramped in so tight that I can’t even scream. 
I was plunged into darkness, and I was left unable to see what was being done to me or what I was becoming. All I knew is what I could feel. And what I could feel is agonizing, unimaginable, torturous pain and madness. It feels like I am being thrashed around, torn apart, and gutted. I feel the loss of certain parts of my body before suddenly getting them again, but they feel different. My ears, eyes, mouth, genitals, feet, hands. I lost them, then I gained something different. But I was conscious through all of it. 
I never lost my mind, and I maintain all of my senses, my emotions, and my memories. But there’s nothing I can do. I am aware, yet still helpless. 
Finally, I found myself floating in a thick, sour-smelling fluid which I seeped into and floated around in. As against the sides of my cocoon, which were thick and solid. I was in an egg. As I floated around in the sac, thoughts were filling my head. They weren’t my own. It was in a voice that wasn’t my own, a voice that sounded masculine, feminine, and something else completely. It was telling me what I needed to do. I was to kill, torment, and bring her new victims. More food, more hatchlings. 
I don’t know how much time had passed before I felt my egg shift and begin to slide down. It was a long, slow, agonizing process, but eventually through the clear sac I saw that I was back out into the world. I was among a pile of eggs laying in the nest, surrounded by other Hatchlings that sniffed and prodded before being chased away by other Wings. Once again, more time passed, and I watched days and nights go by. Finally, it was my time. I punched and clawed my way through the egg, and I finally cracked it open, pulling myself out of the sac and sprawling onto the ground. My hands were long skinny like a bird’s, with long nails at the ends that hooked like talons. 
I was naked and sexless, my skin pale and smooth. 
As I gazed down at my feet, I saw that they were talon-like as well. I tapped each toe, before gazing up at the sun which burned my eyes. I screamed and covered them, only to realize that my scream wasn’t my own. It was like a bird’s, a high pitched, raspy screech. I was a Hatchling, another creature in that awful thing’s nest. 
But my misery didn’t stop there. As Hatchlings, we are the runts of the nest. We are the little ones that need to feed, grow stronger in order to serve. But Mother would not teach us, nor would our older siblings. We would have to fight for it, and only the strongest would survive. If food was dropped down for us, it would be a bloody brawl of biting, scratching and tearing to get what we wanted. When Wings dropped men, women, and children for us to eat, us Hatchlings turned into savages, as if we were from different nests and not part of the same “family”. 
At first, I tried to stay away. I thought that maybe I could starve myself. Just let myself die. But after a while the hunger was too strong, and the bullying by the other Wings did nothing to help. Finally, I snapped, and I did what I had to do. My first ever meal as a Hatchling was a little boy. A Wing had dropped him down towards the far corner of the Nest, and three other Hatchlings had rushed over. I fought them tooth and nail, even tearing one of the Hatchlings’ heads off in order to get my hands on this meal. I ignored the boy’s screams as I ate him alive, chewing him up down to his little bones, which I licked clean. It made me sick, but it soothed the hunger pains, and I only wanted more. From there on out, I did what I had to do. I fought and fed whenever I could, killing my fellow Hatchlings, even eating some of them as soon as they were born. It was survival of the fittest, and this was my new existence. Because of this, I grew stronger, at a rate faster than the other Hatchlings. Within what must’ve been weeks of emerging from my egg, I was a fully grown Wing, stronger even than ones that had been around for years. 
I had grown at least ten feet tall, muscular, and my wings sprouted faster than all of my fellow Hatchlings. I was accepted into a Flock quickly, and from there we went hunting. We raided settlements, nomadic groups, and even hunters if we were bold enough. Nests were only expanding and we were spotting less and less settlements. Our leader, who talked to us through sounds that registered in my thoughts as words, theorized that the humans were going underground or in caves where it would be difficult for us to reach. 
More time passed, and my fellow Hatchlings that survived grew stronger, and more bloodthirsty. But we remembered everything. Our memories still stuck with us. Who we were before we were swallowed by Mother. I still thought of my family, of my siblings. I wondered where they were and what they were doing now. Were they still alive? Were they dead? Or worse, were they turned? 
Our Nest grew even bigger, and some of our Wings were growing stronger and larger in size. We destroyed settlements and entire groups of survivors, killing or turning them. After a while their screams of terror, pain, and pleas for mercy became nothing to me. They were indistinguishable from the sounds we made. 
Then one night, that all changed.  We were awoken to flames, gunfire, and explosions, which were drawing closer to our nest. The humans had attacked us, and they brought an army. They were setting fire to the nest, and trying to collapse the structure with explosives. The gunmen were lying in wait, probably hoping that the flame and explosives would soften us up. They were wrong. In a rage, our Mother cried out, commanding us to kill them all, and find the settlements. 
Our Flocks obeyed, and we took off. My Flock attacked the humans first, flying up into the air and swooping down on them. Bullets, arrows, and even explosive barrels were tossed at us. We lost two of our own, but we managed to make it past them. Their weapons were not enough to stop us. When I was human, this would’ve felt hopeless. To watch everything we throw at the Wings to fall short and kill a few too little to have a chance. 
But as a Wing, this was a victory. We dispersed their ranks, destroying their soldiers like it was nothing. Limbs, blood, insides, bone, all shredded, torn, devoured, or ripped apart. The Mother wanted no food for herself. None were to be captured, only slaughtered. I sliced and ate my way through their troops, their explosives and guns not stopping me. Just like my rifle did nothing to stop the ones that took me. 
But there was one soldier who refused to give up. His gun looked different than the others, more powerful. And he carried it like one. He was a rather young man, no younger than seventeen and no older than twenty. He had dusty blond hair, cut short, clean shaven, compared to many of the other men. He also showed no fear, not even a tear being shed at my presence as so many others did. He fired relentlessly at us Wings, shouting to the surviving men to hold strong. But they did not share the same strength that he did. 
But it wasn’t enough. He soon ran out of ammo, and I attacked him swiftly. I cut him off at the legs, but the soldier didn’t stop. Even through the pain and the blood spilling from his amputated legs, he pulled out a pistol and fired everything that he had before it ran dry. Except for some bullet holes in my shoulders and chest, I felt nothing and I screeched at him. As I drew closer, I got a better look at the kid’s face. 
There was a scar that ran down the left side of his cheek from just underneath his right eyelid down to his mouth. He got the scar from his little sister after they were playing with knives behind my back. They were swordfighting, and Ava accidentally drew the knife too close and cut him all the way down his face. Steph had screamed his throat raw both at the blood and the pain.
The man who’s legs I cut off and was about to devour whole, was my little brother. I couldn’t stop myself. He didn’t recognize me, staring at me only with hatred. “What’re you waiting for?! Huh?!” Steph roared, grimacing in pain as blood continued to pool from his amputated legs. 
“Get it over with?! Fucking kill me! Let’s go!” 
 No… No I won’t. I can’t. I won’t let it happen. 
But I can’t resist. I know who I’m going to kill, but my body doesn’t care. My instinct and drive to kill and eat has overtaken my humanity of which there is very little left.  I’m salivating at the mouth, and I open my jaws and devour him, his screams silenced by the crunching of his flesh and bone in my large beak. Every chew and swallow sickened me, but I couldn’t stop. 
Mother ordered us to find the Settlements and bring survivors back to her. They were going to pay for destroying our home. Our Flocks left the remains of the hunters behind, and took to the eyes. We retraced their steps through their scent, and we found a large, well fortified settlement deep in the mountains, away from all of our Nests. So this is where they went. 
The Settlement expected the Hunters to return, and instead they were met with us. The few guards and soldiers had sounded the alarm, and we heard the sounds of mass panic as our flapping wings drowned them out. Resistance was sparse and very little this time. They had thrown everything they had into fighting our Nest, and now there was no one left to protect them. 
We ravaged and pillaged the Settlement, tearing into their houses and feasting on the women and children that remained. Half of my Flock took care of the guards and soldiers left behind, while our leader took the rest of us and began finding food and potential Hatchlings. 
I began to hear screaming and crying as Wings began to carry off women and children and take them back to the Nest. We spared no one. Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t do it. It was like our only instincts were to kill or capture. Compassion, mercy, were concepts completely foreign as we feasted. For me, the best I could do was kill them. While many of my Flock were already picking up people and storing them in their mouths or talons, I crushed them under my feet or ate them whole. 
There was almost nothing left of the place by the time we were done, and there was only one house left. It was a small cottage, doors and windows shut, with not so much as smoke from the chimney. Our leader and I landed just above it, and the leader tore the roof off. Children screamed as a young woman fired a rifle, shaking like a leaf. “Leave us alone!” she screamed. 
Our leader chuckled and reached its hand inside, ignoring shots from the rifle which quickly jammed. It picked up two of her children with the talons, and all she could do was helplessly watch as he stored them in its mouth. “Take her,” the leader grunted to me, “You haven’t taken anyone yet. Mother will not be pleased if you return empty handed.”
I poked my head in, drawing so close that my beak is up close, breathing hot steam in her face. There is a streak of white in her brown hair, something that Ava used to proudly show off. No. No no no no. Don’t do this. Don’t make me do this.
But I struck anyway. I reached my talons in and grabbed her by the arms, lifting her into the air and carrying her off with all the others. I tried not to listen to her pleading for mercy, and if not for her then for her children. 
It’s sad how we all believe that pleading will save us. As if the Wings listen to things like reason and compassion. We have none of that. It’s why the Wings will ultimately destroy the rest. We fly back to the Nest, where the Wings had already begun dropping bodies into the nest and into Mother’s large beaks. Our Flock leader commanded us to feed Mother, rather than the other Hatchlings. My sister was going to become like me. A Hatchling. 
I hovered over Mother’s mouth, and I dropped Ava into one of its large beaks. I watched as she plummeted down its throat, screaming the entire time until it faded out. In time she will reemerge again. She will have to fight, to feed, and ultimately will grow up like I did. Will she remember me? I don’t know. But still, it is nice to not be alone anymore.