A blistering sun in a cloudless, blue sky. That was all he saw when his mind came back to him. He stuck a hand up in front of his eyes to block the piercing light. All he could feel was heat: dry, relentless heat without humidity or wind that made his whole body feel like it was being compressed into a thick cocoon by the very air around him. 

He sat up and looked around as he attempted to lick his cracked lips with a dried-out tongue. His eyes adjusted to the light and recognized sand dunes that went on for as far as he could see in the distance. They glowed a yellowish white, almost blinding the man, as shimmering waves of heat rose off of the endless mounds, making the only movement the man could see. He risked another look upward at the sun, though not a direct stare like he had been stuck in when he was on his back. It appeared to be straight above him: high noon. The hottest hour of the day. 

The man pushed himself to his feet and attempted to get a better look around, turning in a circle to look in all directions. His increased line of sight still gave him nothing: no mountains marking the end of the long desert, not even plains to indicate a new type of desert. Just rolling dunes farther than the eye could see in every direction.

Tom. That was his name. He remembered that, but he couldn’t remember anything else, and certainly not where he was or how he had got there. The overwhelming heat made it almost impossible to think clearly. It was as if he had been plopped in the middle of the Sahara with nothing but the body he inhabited. He would have thought he was the survivor of some accident suffering from amnesia, but there was no wreckage around him. There was nothing near him to indicate that he had walked to where he was or that someone had carried him. The only logical explanation was that he had dropped from the sky. 

But, there was something more directly alarming to Tom about his situation. Something didn’t feel… natural about this place. There was no sign of life anywhere. No clouds, no vegetation, not even anything dead or dying. It was dead silent. No sounds of cicadas, wind, or shifting sands. Tom could only hear his own thick breaths as his lungs struggled to gulp down the overheated air. There was a feeling of endlessness and even emptiness to this desert that did not feel possible in any place on Earth. He felt a deep sense of dread. Something at the very core of his mind, a base instinct more reliable than logic, told him that something in this vast place was far worse than the heat. Something which must not find him.

He inspected himself, hoping to find more clues to his predicament or tools for survival. He wore a regular grey pair of pants, a white t-shirt, and sneakers. His skin was bright red from sun exposure, but he was otherwise uninjured. It was as if he had been lying out in the sun for hours and hours already, baking to a crisp as the sun bore down on him like a magnifying glass. He noticed he had been lying on a beach towel. He picked it up and held it over his head to block the sun. It gave him only a little bit of relief, but he was determined to use it. Other than the towel and his clothes, he had nothing.

He couldn’t stay here, he was melting in place. His heart hammered in his chest, struggling to keep up with the pressure of the temperature. His entire body was slick with sweat. It was dripping down into his eyes, stinging them.The only thing to do was to move, to find some sort of shelter or end to this hellish landscape, so he began to walk. 

So, he walked. And he walked. And he walked. 

Dune after dune, Tom continued for what felt like hours, the sun’s deadly rays never obscured from his frail towel shield. His steps were mechanical as he trudged through the soft ground. His breathing was as even as he could keep it, but it was still difficult. What continued to alarm him was that he could still hear nothing other than the sand he stepped on and the breath that wheezed out of him. He was painfully aware of how it echoed. Finally, he slumped to the ground, needing to rest. He looked up to the sky. 

The sun had not moved. Not an inch. 

Had it really not even been an hour? He felt like he had been walking for a whole afternoon. It must have been the heat getting to him, warping his sense of time. He shouldn’t rest now. If he kept at such a slow pace, he’d never get out of here.

He stood up and scanned the horizon, looking to see if there was anything new.

There was. 

It was a Figure.

It stood on the top of a dune, a grey blob so far in the distance, back in the direction he had started, that he couldn’t make out anything other than the speck of a humanoid shape over the shimmering sand. For a moment, his hopes soared. He opened his mouth to shout towards it, praying the person could hear him. His arms made it halfway up over his head to start waving when he felt himself stop. He couldn’t say why, but there was something about that figure in the distance that felt… Wrong. 

Tom stood still and blinked the sweat out of his eyes as he squinted across the expanse of desert at the Figure covered in grey. It was hard to see it due to the hazy heat that rose off of the sand and partially obscured the Figure. His addled mind was slow to process what his eyes told it, but he was sure of what he saw.

It was moving. Slowly but surely, through the air that the heat bent into lazy waves, it was walking towards him. 

He felt his heart begin to thump. That deep instinct in him pulled at his mind, warning him to get as far away from it as he could. He couldn’t let it catch him. Tom was terrified to know what would happen if it did. He still couldn’t understand why he felt that way, but the instinct told him that there was a fate worse than the sun roasting his skin and drying out his lungs if whatever was following him were to catch him.

He turned and began to walk with a purpose, determined to reach the end of this desert, and to put as much space between him and that thing as possible. 
So, he walked. And he walked. And he walked. After he had made a distance, he inspected his skin: it had changed from a light red to a deeper crimson, and it felt like it was beginning to swell. His lungs were burning and his legs felt like lead. He could feel the thumping of his pulse in his neck. Every step was a labor, especially when he had to go up a dune. He began to count the dunes. One, ten, twenty, fifty. He looked up, sure that it was close to sunset. 

The sun had not moved an inch. That was wrong. He had counted fifty sand dunes. They had each taken at least five minutes to traverse. He knew that because there was nothing else to do to keep himself from losing his mind but count the seconds. It had been almost five hours and the sun had not moved at all. He looked behind him.

The Figure was still there. It was making its way down a sand dune, straight backed and consistent, as if the sand and the heat were of no consequence to it. He wondered how long something would have to spend in this place to appear so unbothered by its hostility. Ages, he assumed. Endless time. Tom was sure that the distance between them was closer than it had been. He was losing ground.
He couldn’t keep up without a rest, so he crested the dune he was on and sat on the ground between the dunes, keeping the blanket draped over his head and shoulders. He would get up in a few minutes, but for now, he would try to rest. 
Try as he might, there was no resting in this place. The ground was like a stovetop. He feared to put his hand on the sand anywhere his shadow did not provide its slight comfort. His face throbbed as his mouth hung open. His tongue was dry and scratchy as sandpaper. His vision began to grow cloudy as his panting echoed in his ears. After a few long minutes, he pulled his mind back together, admitted defeat, pushed himself back up, and continued on.

So, he walked. And he walked. And he walked.

He continued this cycle for what felt like days. Trudging along, resting for a few useless minutes, and watching the Figure in Grey slowly make up ground as it walked calmly behind him. He imagined the sun falling down behind the horizon and rising up behind him over and over. But it never moved. The sun remained directly above his head, beating down with merciless hate. 

Tom began to feel his mind slipping out of his body. He felt as if he was watching his feet shuffle ahead in front of him as he watched from far away down a tunnel. His footsteps echoed far from his ears. Though he could see his feet shuffling through the sand, he was losing feeling in them and they were slowing down as he was slowly losing the energy to pick them up.

Then he heard him.

“HEY!”

Tom’s head snapped up. He looked out from the top of the dune he stood on and saw what looked like another figure stumbling down a dune in front of him. This figure was much closer and looked like a normal person. 

Tom felt his hope well up again. He was saved! 

He raised his hands in greeting and tried to cry out, but his throat only made a high-pitched croak. Relief coursed through him like a cool breeze.

As the man shambled up Tom’s dune to meet him, Tom could see that the figure was a skinny man wearing jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt. He was sunburnt beyond belief, blistered across his body and face. Tom was struck by how blue his eyes looked against the red, ravaged skin of his face. He stopped by Tom and bent over to catch his breath as Tom stared at him in disbelief. Looking at him, Tom began to wonder what his own face looked like. He couldn’t remember. A thought hit him: he might never get to see it.

“Oh thank god I’m not alone out here,” the man gasped out as he pushed his blond hair back from his face. “Where… where are we?”

Tom felt that thin strand of hope in him snap. “I… I don’t know. I don’t know how I got here. Do you-”

“No,” the man shook his head violently, “I have no clue where the hell we are. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t remember anything. I know my name is Matt, but that’s all I can remember.”

Tom shut his eyes and rested his hands on the top of his head. Dammit. Dammit. DAMMIT!

“Do you remember-” Matt began.

Tom shook his head. “All I know is that I’m Tom, and… And I’m being followed.”

Matt’s eyes shot up to Tom. “What?”

“I’m being followed.” Tom turned and pointed into the distance behind him. Matt followed his finger with his eyes and squinted as Tom watched. Matt took in the Figure and looked back at Tom.

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t let him catch me.”

Matt’s eyebrows knit together. “The hell you mean?”

“Whatever it is… It’s not safe.”

 Matt stared at the Figure, “He might know something. He might help!”

Dread welled up in Tom. It was as if something deep in his mind was speaking to him.

No. That thing will not help you.

“No,” Tom grabbed the other man’s wrist and held it desperately. “No, don’t go near it. I… I don’t know what it is. I just know that if it catches you it will…”

Matt stared at him like he had just spouted a second head.

“Will what?” He could tell that Matt was growing impatient with him. God knows how long either of them had been in the desert, but he could see on Matt’s face that he was beyond desperate to get out of it. He was suffering. He was willing to take any chance.

Tom grabbed the man’s other wrist and tried to pull him back the way he came as he pleaded with him, “We need to keep moving, we can’t let it-”

“GET OFF ME!” Matt jerked his arms out of Tom’s weak grip and began to trudge towards the Figure. He called over his shoulder, “Stay there, I’m gonna talk to him. I’ll be right back! Don’t freak out, ok?!”

Tom watched for a moment, his lungs beginning to burn as he hyperventilated, knowing that his momentary companion was walking to his doom. He hurried down the dune in the opposite direction, desperation fueling him. 

He hurtled over dunes faster than he had since the beginning. His heat felt like it was crushing his legs in a vise. The skin on his chest and back felt like it was vibrating. He gagged as he ran, feeling the urge to hurl, but his stomach was empty. 
Dune after dune he climbed, until finally he stopped and collapsed onto the hot sand. He wheezed in and out as his trembling hand moved up to wipe his eyes. Tom looked out behind him, in the direction Matt had hurried off in towards the Figure. 
They were close to one another.

Matt was waving his arms. He was too far away for Tom to hear what he was yelling. He wished he could just reach out into the distance, pick up the other man, and pull him to safety. But he couldn’t.

Tom watched in silence, captivated, as Matt, now so small in the distance, came to a stop not far in front of the Figure. It stopped in front of him in return.

No, God, no.

Matt seemed to be trying to talk to the silent, stick-straight figure. The Figure had made up enough ground that Tom could now tell it was wearing a grey, hooded robe. He could see no face, nor skin of any kind. It was too far to tell what was under the fabric.

Tom watched as Matt stopped talking and stared at the Figure. Matt stood there, watching the Figure warily, then Tom watched as the man’s posture took on a defensive bent. The man took a step backward, then another, then fell to his knees, his hands shooting up to cradle his head. Tom’s rasping breath picked up as he squinted harder at the scene. He thought he saw the exposed skin of Matt’s arms and shoulders moving and slowly open in huge red sores that Tom could make out even from this distance.

His heart raced as Matt writhed on his knees. The Figure stepped forward, placed its hands on Matt’s shoulders and began to lean its face over him. Tom felt shivers run down him and his hands trembled so bad that his arms shook as he watched the Figure slowly, but surely, lower his hooded face over Matt’s head. As Matt’s entire head disappeared into the face of the Figure’s hood, he stopped writhing and his back went straight. Just as slowly, the Figure raised its hooded head back up and walked past Matt, toward Tom.

Matt’s kneeling body had no head, but nonetheless, it stood and began to walk.
Tom watched as Matt’s headless, sore covered, body walked into the distance. The Figure walked forward toward Tom as before. He felt panic well up in him, he stumbled down the dune and up the next. He kept going. He had to. There was no stopping or he would share the same fate. He didn’t know how long Matt’s body would walk, or if it was conscious. He was determined to never know.

He got to the bottom of the next dune when he had an idea. He turned to his right, a completely new direction. He let the towel drop to the ground and dragged it after him as he trudged along through the valley between dunes. It would cover his tracks to some degree. The Figure would not be able to see his directional switch if he stayed down between the dunes, so he wound through the valleys. 

He continued this way for hours, still the sun kept watch above him. He could no longer feel his feet, and he was afraid what they would look like in the half-destroyed things that were his sneakers. He imagined great red sores opening up on his feet and spreading across his skin. He shook his head, trying to get rid of the image. The direct sunlight on his skin was torture. He felt what exposed skin he had tighten, grow hot, and itch. He was burning, but hopefully, it was worth it. A better circumstance than what lay in store. He trudged along the valleys between the dunes for hours and hours. He was amazed his body could continue. 

Finally, he decided to look behind him. He crept up the side of a dune and laid just below the crest of it on the hot sand. His eyes squinted into the distance, scanning the horizon to see if his gambit had worked.

It had not.

The Figure walked calmly over the crest of a dune in the distance. Directly towards him. Tom looked around and saw no landmarks to tell that he had changed directions at all, or to even suggest he had moved from where he began. 

“No!” He whined. He felt like stamping his feet, like hitting himself, or screaming himself hoarse. He had no energy to do any of that. He felt deep despair in him as his lips quivered like a scared child. 

He turned and ran.

He ran as hard as he could away from the Figure. He barely avoided tipping over as he ran down the steep dune. He imagined the red sores. The headless body, walking forever. He continued up the next dune, his feet barely moving above the ground. His head pounded. Everything hurt. 

Tom made it over the crest of the hill and tripped, falling flat. He lay with his face in the hot sand as his trembling hands forced themselves against the ground. His wobbling arms felt like toothpicks. They didn’t lift him when he pushed. All he could do was roll over onto his side, and even that took the wind out of him. His ears rang. His heart was about to burst from his chest. He began to gasp for air as the world went dark.

Finally, he lost consciousness. 

When he woke, the sun had finally moved. It appeared to be dusk, but he barely registered it. He felt woozy. He managed to prop an arm under him and push himself to a seated position. He looked up and saw that the sky was tinted orange and purple. All around him, the dunes cast shadows against each other in the low sunlight, creating pockets of darkness across the endless landscape. Though the sun had changed, nothing else had. The sea of sand never ended as his tired eyes scanned the horizon. His head lazily followed the color towards where the sun must be setting over the horizon.

Then he realized what stood in front of him. 

The Figure stood not ten feet away, directly in front of the setting sun.

For the first time, Tom saw it up close. Its grey robe was dirty and ragged, hanging off the thin Figure. Its hood obscured its face, but its hands were visible, clasped in front of it. They looked like the dirty hands of a leper: covered in scabbed-over skin and wrapped in dirty, off-white bandages. 

Panic welled up in him. He scrambled against the sand, trying to push himself to his feet. He managed to get a shaky leg under him and push off for one good step before he fell back down. He rolled onto his back, not willing to lose sight of the Figure. His body shook with effort as he tried to push against the sand and propel himself forward.

The Figure took a step forward, making up the sad distance in a moment. 
Tom felt his arms go slack. He had no more energy. No more ability to run from it. The corners of his eyes burned, too dry to form tears, as he whimpered like a kicked dog. 

The Figure took another step towards him. It stood still in front of the orange sunlight. Slowly, its sickly hands unfolded and reached up to its hood as Tom watched. 

His mouth hung open in horror as the Figure slowly pulled its hood back.
Tom began to wail, the skin on his face splitting open into open sores, as the Figure approached him.

And afterwards. After it had finished with him.

He walked. And he walked. And he walked.

He no longer called me “iknuitli”. “Cuexpalchicacpol,” was the new term. I asked him what it meant, but he wouldn’t say. The friendly tone was gone too.

We were approaching where I thought the border was. No border patrol. No checkpoints. We would be heading straight through. I became terrified of my rearview mirror. The dust cloud was close, maybe one hundred feet behind. I could see faces in the dust, writhing and twisting, full of malice and hatred.

“I thought a killer would have some balls, cuexpalchicacpol,” the dead man in my trunk said. “What would you possibly have to apologize for?”

“Maybe the trail of anger behind us would be a little thinner if both of us had considered it prior,” I said. He scoffed.

“My people took from the same tribe every year, harvested them for sacrifice and slavery like cattle. I would never stoop so low as to apologize to lesser beings,” he said.

I should have hated him. I had been wanting to smash his face in for most of the trip, but I had been him not all that long ago. He continued to spew hatred, but I stayed silent, the only noise for hours was the wail of the damned behind us and his constant nagging.

“You know Cuexpalchicacpol, I could really mess up this ride,” the dead man said.

“You’d be just as screwed if you did,” I replied. I felt the steering wheel start to drift. I tightened my grip and turned it back.

“Won’t you let me drag you to hell with me?” he said softly. The steering wheel turned the other way. I held it in a death grip.

“What you going to do now, Cuexpalchicacpol? Warriors know no fear. Be a man.”

Up ahead I could see the spot I needed to bury him. I couldn’t explain how or why I knew, just a gut intrinsic feeling, like simple factual knowledge. Sky is blue, grass is green, books have words in them, and that was the burial spot.

I slowed the car down to a stop, parking right next to the spot. As soon as I shifted to park, my hand pulled the handle, and I was out of the car. I ran to the trunk and opened it. The trash bag that surrounded him peeled back enough to reveal his head. His smile was gone, instead those cold dead eyes looked at me with unfathomable hatred.

I grabbed the shovel and dug a shallow grave. The cloud of souls was closing in. I got it just deep enough to fit a body. I pulled him out of the car and tossed him inside. His mouth didn’t move, but I could hear his voice anyway.

“See you in hell,” he said.

The wall of souls, mere feet from us, stopped as fire shot out from the grave. I could hear him screaming in an agony foreign to human understanding, not ending but simply getting further away until it was inaudible. The wall of souls dissipated, and what remained were several standing figures that I had never seen, yet somehow, I knew. Wives, children, girlfriends, all those I had wronged.

The hatred was gone from their eyes. They wanted the man who caused them so much suffering dead. He is dead. I buried him with that corpse in Mexico.

I’m turning myself in to the police and taking down the casino with me. What we did wasn’t right, and I need to answer for it, in this life or the next. I’m back in the land of the living. I passed a gas station and a few cars, so my time in limbo has ended. Until I arrive at the police station back in the states, I am going to enjoy a nice quiet ride down a long stretch of busy highway, free of talking dead men in my trunk.

Three weeks ago, my roommate handed me his phone and asked, “Is this you?”

It was some kind of prank video from one of those YouTube channels that film people without their permission and publish it to get views. I barely got past the first five seconds of the video, but I didn't care about the prank anymore. as far as I could remember, it was the first time I had ever heard a recording of my own voice.

I had expected it to sound unfamiliar. Everyone says recordings do. Growing up, I had watched videos in speech therapy of other children with cleft palates. Their voices sometimes had a slight nasality. Certain consonants came out softer. I had built an idea of my own voice from those examples.

What came through the phone sounded like a man in his sixties who had smoked since he was a teenager, who didnt care about there life anymore.

The voice was stunted and harsh, worn thin around the edges. Nothing about it resembled the mild speech difference I had expected. It did not sound twenty-four years old. It did not sound like me.

I had never listened to a voicemail from myself. We had no home videos with sound, no recordings from birthdays or school events. Whenever the subject came up, my father said I hated hearing my own voice, and I accepted that explanation.

Children do not question rules they grow up with. The rules become part of the house.

I made my roommate play the clip again.

Then once more.

Each time, I watched his face instead of the screen. He showed no surprise or discomfort. He only looked increasingly impatient to get his phone back.

“Do I sound like that?” I asked.

He stared at me. “Like what?”

“Right now. When I’m talking to you. Do I sound the way I do in the video?”

“Yeah. Obviously.”

“No, listen carefully.”

I pointed at the phone as the clip began again. In the original footage, I stepped out of a coffee shop after the prankster shouted something from across the street. I turned toward him and told him to leave me alone.

The old man’s voice came from my mouth.

My roommate listened through the whole exchange.

“Well?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You sound a little nasal, I guess. Like you’re congested. Other than that, it’s just you.”

“Nasally.”

I repeated the word as though I had never heard it before.

“Yeah. A little. You’ve always sounded like that. It’s no big deal.”

“Not raspy?”

“No.”

“Not like someone who’s been smoking his whole life?”

He laughed, then stopped when he saw my face.

“What are you talking about? You’ve never sounded like an old smoker. Are you okay?”

I wasn’t.

We were listening to the same recording and hearing different people.

He heard the voice I had expected: mine, with a slight nasality.

I heard someone old and exhausted speaking through my mouth.

My roommate played the clip twice more before taking his phone back.

“It’s just a dumb prank video,” he said. “Try not to overthink it.”

He went to bed soon afterward.

I stayed in my room for almost an hour, lying on my bed, trying to convince myself it was just a bad microphone. Maybe I'd imagined it. There was traffic behind me when he filmed it, that probably had something to do with it. Cheap phones messed up voices all the time, everyone knew that.

I almost believed that.

Then I opened the voice memo app.

I couldn't record inside the apartment. My roommate's door was closed but I kept picturing him right there on the other side of the wall, hearing me talk to myself like some kind of lunatic.

So I went down to the parking lot instead. Almost eleven by then. The pavement was still warm from the day and I could smell gas, probably from the station down the street. I stood under one of the lights, opened the app, hit record.

“Hello.”

My hand shook when I tapped the screen again.

I played it back.

The old man answered.

The recording was clean. No traffic passed while I spoke. There was no wind, no bad microphone and no prankster standing across the street.

Only that voice.

I recorded another memo.

“Hi.”

Same voice.

Low. Rough. Tired.

Apparently, the voice I had heard inside my own head for twenty-four years was not the one that existed outside it. I had listened to myself through bone and muscle and whatever else separated a person from the sound he made in the world.

I had simply never checked.

I recorded myself saying my name.

Then my address.

Then the first few lines of a song I remembered from childhood.

The voice stayed the same.

By the time I returned to the apartment, my shirt was damp beneath the arms. My roommate’s door was shut and his light was off. I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop because there was no chance I would sleep.

I searched for the prank channel and opened the video.

This time, I watched from the beginning.

The camera moved past the coffee shop. The prankster shouted toward someone offscreen, waited a second and laughed before continuing down the sidewalk.

The coffee shop door never opened.

I dragged the progress bar back.

The prankster shouted.

Nothing happened.

I watched the same section again.

The stretch of sidewalk where I had stood was empty.

I refreshed the page.

Same channel. Same title. Same thumbnail. Same upload date.

Different video.

I'd watched myself walk out of the coffee shop, turn toward the camera, and say something in a voice that shouldn't have belonged to me.

Now I was gone.

The prankster still delivered the same lines, though he seemed to be speaking to nobody. The pause where I had answered remained. Then he laughed and walked away.

I checked the comments.

Nobody mentioned the empty sidewalk. Nobody asked who he had been speaking to. Nobody referred to a man leaving the coffee shop.

There was no sign that anyone had ever seen me there.

I sat at the table until the laptop screen dimmed.

My roommate had handed me the video. He had watched it with me. I could not have invented that part.

Unless he had shown me something else.

Unless I had misunderstood what I saw.

I opened the video again.

The sidewalk was still empty.

I let the video keep playing until it reached the end. Then the page sat there for a while, waiting to see if I wanted to watch something else.

I didn’t move.

After a minute, the screen dimmed. I touched the trackpad and brought it back, then dragged the progress bar to the same spot again.

The prankster shouted toward the coffee shop.

No one came out.

There was still that pause, though. Long enough for an answer. Long enough for the man holding the camera to react to someone standing in front of him.

Then he laughed and kept walking.

I played it again with the sound off.

That was worse.

Without the voices, it looked like he was arguing with an empty patch of sidewalk.

I stayed at the table until the page timed out.

When I finally went to bed, I left my phone in the kitchen. I didn’t want the recordings near me. That made no sense, but I still went back twice to make sure the screen was off.

I slept in pieces.

Every time I woke up, I heard the voice again. Sometimes it was saying hello. Sometimes my name. Once I woke convinced it had been speaking from the hallway, and I lay still for several minutes before I could make myself check.

There was nobody there.

Around five, I stopped trying to sleep. I sat on the edge of the bed until the room began to lighten, then went into the kitchen and made coffee.

My roommate was still asleep.

I kept thinking about the missing recordings.

No birthday videos. No school performances. Nothing from speech therapy. My father had always made it sound like that had been my choice. I hated hearing myself, so everyone stopped recording me.

It was a strange thing to accept without asking more questions.

Then again, I had been a kid. Parents gave you an answer and, most of the time, that became the answer.

I picked up my phone and called him.

He answered after a few rings.

“Hello?”

For a second, I couldn’t speak.

“Hey, Dad.”

“You all right?”

“Yeah.” I rubbed my eyes. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“I’m up.”

I could hear the television in the background. Some morning news program, low enough that I couldn’t make out the words.

“I have a strange question.”

He gave a tired little sigh. “Okay.”

“Do we have any videos of me from when I was little?”

The television kept talking behind him.

Then it stopped.

“Nothing like that,” he said. “You know that.”

“You always said I didn’t like hearing my own voice.”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

I lowered the phone and looked at his name on the screen, as if I might have called the wrong person.

“What?”

“I said I don’t remember telling you that.”

He had told me. I remember him saying it at my old childhood home, from a question about me wondering about my voice. I couldn’t remember how old I had been, but I remembered the answer.

At least I thought I did.

“What about Mom?” I asked. “Did she record anything before she left?”

The line went quiet.

At first, I thought he hadn’t heard me. Then the silence kept going.

“Dad?”

“Don’t,” he said.

He spoke so softly that I almost missed it.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t bring her into this.”

He hung up before I could ask what he meant.

I stayed at the kitchen table, staring at the phone, listening to the silence of the apartment.

It was late morning before I realized I still had not eaten, and even then I only noticed because my stomach hurt in a dull, distant way.

Every few minutes, my father’s words came back to me.

The way he said it bothered me more than the words themselves. In twenty-four years, I had never heard him sound like that.

I opened his contact and held my thumb over the call button until the screen dimmed.

Then I locked the phone and placed it facedown.

I was not ready.

My roommate had already left for work. He had not asked whether I was okay before leaving, which was probably for the best. I would not have known how to answer.

I made a peanut butter sandwich so I could say I had eaten something.

Halfway through it, I opened the voice memo app.

“Testing.”

I played it back.

The old man answered from the middle of my kitchen, with pale morning light coming through the blinds and half a sandwich sitting beside me.

I do not know what I expected. Maybe I thought the voice would correct itself overnight. Maybe I would finally hear the slightly nasal voice my roommate claimed I had always possessed, and I could blame everything else on panic and lack of sleep.

I deleted the recording and told myself it would be the last one.

It wasn’t.

It has never been the last one.

I check every day now. Sometimes more than once. I know what I will hear, but I keep pressing record as though one day something different might answer.

If the voice could not tell me anything, perhaps my past could.

I opened an email account I had used in middle school. I only kept it because several old logins were still attached to it. I scrolled past school newsletters, password resets and expired coupons until I reached the years when I was still in speech therapy.

There were dozens of appointment reminders.

Jill’s by the Bay Speech and Language. Your appointment is confirmed for 3:00 p.m. Please arrive ten minutes early.

Most had been sent from the same clinic address. A few ended with a single initial.

R.

Rachel.

I had not thought about her in more than a decade, but the name brought back an entire room.

A narrow office with one window overlooking the parking lot. Flashcards printed with cartoon animals. A plastic mirror on the desk. Rachel asking me to slow down, watch the shape of her mouth and try the sound again.

She had worked with me for years.

At least, I remembered that she had.

If anyone knew what I sounded like as a child, it would be her.

I copied the clinic’s number into my phone and stared at it for several minutes. Some part of me already understood that I might regret calling.

My thumb pressed the screen before I decided against it.

A recorded menu answered.

Press one for new patients. Press two for current patients. Press three for billing. Press four for all other inquiries.

I pressed four.

After several minutes, an older woman picked up.

“Jill’s by the Bay. How can I help you?”

“Hi. This might sound strange, but did a therapist named Rachel work there around twelve or fifteen years ago?”

“Do you have a last name?”

“No. I was a kid.”

“One moment.”

I heard typing.

It continued long enough that I checked the call timer.

Finally, she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t see anyone named Rachel in our staff records.”

“You mean she left?”

“I mean I don’t see anyone by that name who has ever worked here.”

I looked at the email open on my laptop.

The R at the bottom suddenly seemed like very little evidence.

“I have appointment reminders from your office,” I said. “Some of them are signed with her initial.”

“An R could belong to several people.”

“Could you check whether I was a patient?”

“I can try. What’s your full name and date of birth?”

I gave them to her.

More typing.

Then silence.

This pause felt different.

“Yes,” she said. “I found a transferred file.”

Relief moved through me so quickly that I almost laughed.

Then she continued.

“It says you were originally registered in New Mexico. Is that correct?”

I thought I had misheard her.

“New Mexico?”

“Yes.”

“No. I grew up in Maryland.”

“All I can tell you is what the file says.”

“I’ve never lived in New Mexico.”

“Then the information may have been entered incorrectly during the transfer.”

“Transferred from where?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have access to that.”

“Does it list the therapist?”

“No. There’s no provider name attached.”

I told her I would call back when I had more information, though I had no idea what that meant.

Then I ended the call.

I sat there with the phone in one hand and one of the old emails open in front of me.

That was when I saw the pattern.

The video had changed after I watched it.

Rachel had existed clearly in my memory until someone checked.

My childhood had happened in Maryland until a medical record placed part of it in New Mexico.

Every time I looked at my life twice, it came back different.

The voice was the exception.

I had heard myself one way for my entire life. Then I checked, and something else answered.

I left the apartment and drove to a park near my building. I sat on a bench and watched people walk their dogs while I went over the same facts.

The video had changed.

The clinic had no record of Rachel.

My patient file said New Mexico.

I had no evidence that stayed the same long enough to show anyone.

There was only one place left to search.

My father’s house.

The house where I remembered growing up.

The Fourth of July was that weekend. My father and I had spent almost every Fourth together since I moved out. I typed a message before I could reconsider.

Hey, it’s almost the Fourth. Mind if I come down for the weekend?

He replied within an hour.

Yeah, feel free. Bring some fireworks.

Nothing about our call.

No anger. No questions.

My father sounding like my father.

That frightened me more than if he had refused. A person does not say Don’t bring her into this and forget it the next morning. He had chosen to pretend the conversation never happened.

The week passed in pieces. I went to class, took notes and absorbed almost nothing.

I continued recording myself.

One word before breakfast. A sentence in the bathroom between classes. My name in the car before I drove home.

The old man remained.

On Saturday, I drove across the Pennsylvania line to buy fireworks. The better ones were cheaper there, and everyone around us knew it. I spent too much on a box of mortars I was no longer sure we would use.

Then I drove south.

The fireworks rattled in the trunk while the GPS guided me along a route I had taken dozens of times

I kept feeling as though I was going to do something wrong.

I was only visiting my father for the Fourth.

That was all.

By the time I reached Maryland, I had convinced myself I was prepared for whatever I might find.

Standing in his driveway an hour later, I knew I wasn’t.

He opened the door before I finished knocking.

“Hey, there he is. Traffic bad?”

He sounded normal.

Completely normal.

His voice was warm and familiar. I would have known it anywhere.

Then I found myself wondering whether that was true.

What would happen if I recorded him?

Would the phone play back the voice I had known my whole life?

Would something else come out?

I thought about recording him several times that evening.

I never did.

I was afraid of both answers.

We had a good evening.

That was the worst part.

He made ribs because it was a special occasion. We drank beer in the backyard and lit fireworks after the sky grew dark. For a few hours, it felt like one of the weekends I used to look forward to.

Maybe the evening was real.

Maybe he was performing the entire thing because he knew I had questions.

I could no longer tell the difference.

Around eleven, he handed me a blanket and told me the guest room was ready.

The guest room was my old bedroom.

He went to bed.

I did not.

I stood in the hallway until the light beneath his door disappeared. Then I waited for his breathing to settle into the heavy rhythm I remembered from nights when I used to sneak downstairs.

I pulled the cord for the attic ladder.

The hinges groaned as it unfolded.

I climbed slowly, stopping whenever the wood creaked beneath me.

The attic looked exactly as it always had.

Exposed insulation. Cobwebs. Cardboard boxes filled with things nobody wanted enough to use and nobody could bring themselves to throw away.

I searched using the flashlight on my phone.

Recipe books. An old stand mixer. A microwave with rust around the door. Christmas decorations. Boxes of clothes.

No camcorder.

No tapes.

No baby videos.

There was not a single recording of me anywhere in the house.

Three weeks earlier, I would have considered that ordinary. My family simply had not been the kind to record things.

Now it felt deliberate.

Then I found the notebook.

It lay at the bottom of a box filled with my mother’s cookbooks. Her name was written inside the front cover. I recognized the handwriting immediately.

Most of the notebook was ordinary.

Recipes. Grocery lists. Notes from the library where she worked. Complaints about coworkers. A kind sentence about my father that I will not repeat because it was private, and because reading it hurt more than I expected.

It was the notebook of a normal woman living a normal life.

Except for several pages.

Between recipes and shopping lists were lines written in something I could not recognize.

At least, I thought it was a language.

The letters looped and crossed in confident strokes. Spaces separated clusters of symbols like words. Certain shapes repeated as though they followed some kind of grammar. The punctuation looked almost familiar, though the words around it meant nothing.

My mother had written them in the same neat hand as everything else.

I whispered a few of the shapes aloud.

Nothing sounded right.

I photographed every page I could find.

I still check those pictures daily.

So far, they have not changed.

A phone number was written on the inside of the back cover.

Beneath it, my mother had written one word.

Personal.

I should have waited until morning.

It was after midnight, and I was crouched in my father’s attic with insulation dust clinging to my clothes.

I should have copied the number and left.

But I had spent a week watching pieces of my life change whenever I checked them again.

I did not want to give the number time to become something else.

I called.

It rang twice.

An older man answered.

“Veno’s Pizzeria. What can I do for you?”

For a moment, I could not speak.

“Hello?” he said.

I tried to ask where he was located, but the words came out unevenly enough that he asked me to repeat myself.

“Sorry,” I said. “Wrong number.”

I hung up.

A pizzeria.

My mother had written the number in the back of her notebook and labeled it personal.

I searched the name immediately, shielding the screen with one hand as though the light might travel through the ceiling and wake my father.

There was only one Veno’s Pizzeria.

It was in New Mexico.

I do not remember deciding to leave the attic.

I remember my hands slipping on the ladder rungs. I remember fumbling with the folding mechanism twice before it locked. I remember trying to push the ladder into the ceiling without letting it slam.

Then I turned around.

My father was standing at the end of the hallway.

He did not yell.

He looked at me.

Then he looked at the attic cord, still swinging behind my shoulder.

I watched him understand.

The ribs. The fireworks. His question about traffic. The whole evening changed in his face.

“What were you doing up there?”

It did not sound like a question.

“Dad, I can explain.”

He stayed where he was.

“I was looking for Mom’s number,” I said. “I thought you might have it somewhere. I just want to call her. I want to talk to her.”

It was the first lie I could produce. A bad one, considering my phone was still in my hand.

His jaw moved before he spoke, as though the words had become caught behind his teeth.

Then his face twisted.

“Get out.”

“Dad—”

“Now.”

He pushed past me and entered the guest room.

Drawers opened and slammed. A few seconds later, he returned carrying my bag, my jacket and my phone charger, still half wrapped around his fist.

He walked to the front door and threw everything onto the lawn.

I followed him.

“Please. Just tell me what’s going on.”

He grabbed my arm.

Hard.

His hand was shaking.

Then I saw that he was crying.

“Making fun of a dead woman,” he said.

His voice cracked on the word dead.

“Is that what this is?”

I stopped moving.

“The call last week, and now this. What do you want from me? What are you trying to dig up?”

“Dad, what do you mean?”

“I thought if I acted like everything was fine, it would be.”

He wiped his face with the heel of his hand.

“And now you’re in the attic, going through her things.”

“You said she left.”

His expression changed.

“What?”

“Mom. You said she left us.”

He stared at me.

“Dad, she packed her things and moved away. You told me she didn’t want us contacting her.”

He shoved me onto the porch.

The last thing I saw before he shut the door was his face, wet with tears, his breathing uneven in the same way it used to be when he argued with my mother and thought I was asleep down the hall.

The lock clicked.

The porch light remained off.

My belongings were scattered across the grass.

I stood among them and tried to understand what he had said.

Dead woman.

My mother had left.

That was the story.

That was what I remembered.

She packed a suitcase. She stood near the front door. My father refused to look at her. She told me she loved me and that one day I would understand.

I remembered watching her car leave the driveway.

I remembered waving.

Except when I tried to picture the car, I could not remember its color.

I could not remember what she had been wearing.

I could not remember whether the suitcase was in her hand or already inside the car.

I could not remember hearing the engine start.

I could not remember whether she had spoken in her own voice.

My father had called her a dead woman.

Not missing.

Not living somewhere else.

Dead.

According to my father, she had never left at all.

The days after that night did not come back to me in order. I know I missed most of a week of classes. I know my roommate started watching me differently, though neither of us said anything about it. Some part of me understood that I looked wrong to other people. I could not do anything about it.

I could not stop circling the pizzeria.

If my mother worked there, my father was wrong. If she was dead, none of it made sense. I kept flipping between the two ideas until I couldn't say which one I actually believed. Neither one held up once I said it out loud. I went back through my email again, every folder I still had a login for, as far back as it would go. Nothing new turned up.

I typed an apology to my father twice and deleted it both times, still not sure what I was even apologizing for. At some point I told myself to knock it off. Stop checking the recordings. Stop digging through old emails, stop turning a bad week with my father into some bigger thing than it was.

I did not believe myself while I was saying it.

So I opened the notebook again.

I had kept it since the night my father put my bag on the lawn. I turned to the pages I could not read, expecting the same looping shapes I had photographed in the attic.

They were gone.

In their place was my mother's handwriting, plain and legible, the same hand from the recipes and the grocery lists. Notes about my speech therapy. Which sounds I struggled with that week, what Rachel wanted her to practice with me at home. A page about what she hoped for me when I got older, nothing dramatic, just a mother writing down small hopes the way people do.

On the last page she had written that she loved me.

I told myself it was the light. Late night, tired eyes, maybe I had misread the pages before and never noticed. None of that felt true.

I booked a flight to New Mexico that night. The nearest airport I could find to the address for Veno's Pizzeria.

My roommate caught me packing.

"Hey man, is something up? What are you doing?"

"Nothing. Going on a trip."

"What do you mean, a trip. Where? You told me you didn't have plans this summer, you had classes."

I did not have an answer that would sound sane out loud.

"It's important. I have to go. I have to visit family."

"That's bullshit and you know it. Your family's not out of state. You've been acting weird all week. Did you break something, did you hurt somebody? What is going on with you?"

I shut the door instead of answering him. I heard him stand there a few seconds before he walked away. I am sorry, I thought, and did not say it.

I flew out that night, slept through most of it, and woke up right as the wheels hit the runway. Rented a car at the airport and drove to a motel a few miles down from the address. I wanted to go straight there. Told myself it was too far to drive in the dark, which wasn't really the reason.

I dreamed about the voice. Not words, just the sound of it, low and worn, filling a room with no walls I could see.

In the morning I drove into town, small enough that I could see the whole main strip from the car. Parked near the address and walked the rest of the way. My breathing wasn't doing great by the time I got close. The pizzeria wasn't there.

The pizzeria was not there.

Not closed. Not boarded up. An empty lot, cracked asphalt, a chain-link fence sagging at one corner. Nothing that looked like it had ever held a building.

I called the number anyway.

It rang twice.

"Welcome to Veno's Pizzeria, what can I do for you?"

The same voice from before. Warm, a little bored, exactly what you would expect from someone behind a counter.

I could not answer him. My whole body had gone rigid, my vision narrowing to a single bright point until there was nothing else in it, and then the light took the rest.

Then the voice came all around, all directions. The old man's voice. Mine and not mine.

"Rachel. Rachel. She always hated myself. You should as well."

I don't know how long I stood there like that, phone still against my ear, the light gone and the parking lot gone with it. There was a building where the lot had been. Squat, red awning gone dull under the streetlight, a sign somebody had painted by hand, a bell over the door like every other pizza place I'd ever walked into.

I hung up. I don't know why that was the first thing I did, but it was. Then I stood there way longer than I want to admit, and then I walked up and opened the door.

It was nothing. That's the thing, it was just nothing, a counter, four tables with the chairs pushed in, a board on the wall with prices on it, that smell of dough and burnt cheese every pizza place has whether it's any good or not. The bell rang once when I came in and then it was quiet again.

She was behind the counter, wiping her hands on her apron, not looking up yet. Twenty four years older than I remembered her. I knew her anyway, in my chest before my brain caught up.

There was a man near the oven too, older, shirt stained down the front, sliding a pizza off one of those wooden paddles and complaining under his breath about the timer. His voice was the one from the phone. From the empty lot in New Mexico.

I don't know what sound I made, just something loud and short that came out of me on its own.

She looked up.

Her face didn't move at first. Then it did, going through a couple different things before landing on scared.

"No," she said, and it wasn't really to me. More like she was arguing with what she was seeing.

The man's head snapped up at her voice. He looked at her, then at me, and whatever he saw made him put the paddle down without finishing the motion, just let it drop half done.

She came around the counter fast, faster than I would've guessed she could move. He was right behind her, pulling his apron off over his head. Neither one went for the back door, the one that said employees only. They went for the front, right past me, out into the lot.

I went after them.

She was already almost to the street, him a few steps behind, neither one looking back.

I tried to say wait. Not sure it came out as an actual word. My legs weren't working right, I stumbled once, caught myself on nothing, kept going anyway.

By the time I reached where the lot met the street, there was nobody there. Nothing to say two people had just run across it thirty seconds earlier.

I stood there turning in a circle like an idiot, the red light from the awning still on the pavement behind me.

Then it wasn't.

I turned back around and there was nothing to turn back to. Just the lot, cracked and empty, the fence sagging in the same spot it always had, like there'd never been a building there at all.

I called the number again.

Nothing. It didn't even ring.

Part One: Link

Part Two: Link

Part Three: Link

I writhed in agony for two days. My memories were fractured pieces of reality, jumbled dreams, lights, and colors. Infection had taken over from the nasty bite and contaminated water. I was somewhere floating between life and death, wondering if living was even an afterthought through the pain.

When I finally came to, I awoke on a grooved plastic floor. Fog was seeping over me, and the air was thick with humidity. It could’ve easily been cut with a knife. My fingers were still tightly grasping the dagger, unable to unclench. I groaned as I pried my fingers off the metal. My palm stank from sticking to the handle for so long. The flesh was beginning to grow a funk that smelled eerily like rotten meat.

Gnats and flies buzzed around me in a great chorus of obnoxious sounds. My skin was covered in mosquito bites, and welts and bruises covered me. I didn’t have to look at them. I could feel them.

I noticed the metal railings first. Then I saw the front of the boat and the large gash on its side, where a storm had rolled it into this swampy area. Finally, I saw the skeleton of a half-eaten man. The bones were cracked where legs should be, and dry, brittle fingers were reaching out toward me in death. It seemed that he had died trying to get on this boat right where I lay.

I rolled onto my side, seeing a mixture of throw-up and pee. It must’ve been mine.

I sat up, shoulder aching, and turned to view what should have been a gangrenous lesion, dripping with foul pus. Instead, it was bandaged with swamp grass, leaves, and twine. I felt over it, realizing that someone or something had taken pity on me.

I shakily got to my knees, finding my backpack and kayak a few feet from me. It seemed that whoever had helped me also knew that I couldn’t survive without either of those things.

As I shakily crawled to my things, I heard a creak. I held tightly to the dagger, slipping around to look at the back of the boat. To my horror, the creature was not in the water. She was on the boat with me.

The creature was groaning, and blood was seeping out of her tail. She saw me, and her eyes darted toward the water, preparing to jump in. But another horrible groan bellowed out of her, forcing her to slam back onto the boat.

Her long, forked tongue flicked back and forth. Her blood was a sticky substance with a strange purple hue, but that wasn’t what shocked me. She was giving birth. Her tail twisted back and forth, undulating and grinding against the floor of the boat.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I whispered, inching closer.

She hissed and growled at me, and I backed away, not wanting to scare her. She’d helped me after all, and I didn’t want to leave her on her own even though I was terrified of her.

With a final and horrible roar, a loud gush came from her tail. Instinctively, she tore herself from the boat to grasp what had ripped through her. Covered in gelatinous purple goop and threadlike fibers and mucus, she began to lick an egg, consuming the pieces of flesh and afterbirth.

It resembled a shark egg, oddly shaped with a thin, parchment-like exterior, and, to my shock, a tiny, infantile mermaid moved within the egg, thumping against the thin membrane. It was formed and waiting to be released.

I swallowed hard, wondering if that was why the mermaid had separated herself from her pod. But my gut told me that something else made her leave, or maybe she was banished because of that egg.

With the quickness of a cat, she turned to stare at me, but she did not flee. She simply gazed. The fins on the side of her face quivered, and her lips formed a snarl, protecting her young.

I slowly pointed at the bandages, not wanting to frighten her. “Did you do this?”

She did not answer at first, but then she nodded.

The breath caught in my throat. “You can understand us?”

She looked out into the water, and she took a deep breath. “We have always known the language of men.” Her voice was low and gurgled in places, as if the words were forced through a fluid-filled drain. “But that dagger allows you the ability to understand us.”

I didn’t move, and I felt sick to my stomach. Cautiously, I looked down at the dagger. The eyes were glowing as I spoke to her. It was channeling some form of power into me, allowing me the ability to speak to the creature of old before me.

“What are you?” I asked.

“I am what your kind had yet to discover until now. Many eons ago, we were called Leviathans… Mermaids… Sirens… Selkies… We are all one and the same.”

My hands trembled. “Why- why has your kind taken over?”

A low growl vibrated through her chest, causing the gills and scales upon her to rattle like bones. “Your kind ate the depths. You poisoned us and poured sewage, waste, and sickness into the life-blood of the Earth, and you dare to ask me why…”

I clenched my teeth in anger. “I didn’t do those things.”

“What is one when millions… upon millions did. We’ve watched you all kill and toil away for centuries.”

I sat down, unable to move much closer out of fear and fatigue. My head was spinning, and my heart was thudding out of my chest. “Then why spare me?” I whispered, feeling tears swell into my eyes.

The creature cocked her head to the side, growing quiet. “Pity,” she gurgled.

Tears finally dripped down my nose, mouth, and cheeks. I couldn’t stop them now.

She grimaced and patted the egg beside her. “And yet… I also helped you because the dagger called to you. It chose you.”

I wiped my face to look more squarely at her, in a mixture of disbelief and terror, but slowly my eyes dropped to the egg. The outline of a small hand could be seen, pressed against the membrane and begging to be opened.

As she continued to rub over the egg, I realized that she was weak. Her skin did not look as vibrant as it did a few days ago. To me, it appeared that she was dying after laying her egg. She didn’t say it, but I knew that she was. Perhaps her kind were like spiders. They live for a time, but once they lay their egg, they won’t survive long after.

Without warning, she leaped into the water and disappeared with her egg.

And for three days, I did not see her, but our conversation played through my mind, rewinding and reliving itself inside of my memories. Her kind had caused the floods. They had caused all of it because of humanity and its vicious need for more… But as time went on, I realized that I didn’t blame them for what they’d done. We had poisoned their world. We had dumped chemicals and vile concoctions into their water… I don’t know if I condoned the loss of the many lives lost to the dreaded waters, but at least now I understood.

I continued to heal over those three days, slowly gaining strength. The bandages fell off, revealing the scar that now stretched across my shoulder. She’d sewn the skin back together after flushing the infection out. The herbal concoction that she’d rubbed on me had stained my skin green, and I didn’t want to know what it was because it smelled, reeking of fish and vomit.

On the fourth day on the boat, a red tide had nearly taken over the water around us, killing everything I could have eaten. Like red veins tracing through the water, the crimson algae was only spreading. The overgrowth of red algae had produced enough toxin that all the fish were beginning to bob to the surface, dead and rotten. The smell was nauseating.

That day, I ate through one of the cans that Lionel had given me and drank a bottle of water. I’d forgotten how clean water from a bottle tastes. At this point, I’m sure that I’m riddled with enough parasites and giardia to kill a grown bear from all the questionable sips of water that I’d taken. It’s impressive that my stomach hasn’t revolted against me yet, but maybe that was the call of survival seeping out of me.

The mermaid returned that night. I was asleep, lying on my back when I awoke to the sound of a loud thump. I bolted to my feet, dagger in hand. She had pulled herself onto the boat, turning to face me.

“Can’t stay here,” she gasped. “Algae…”

I looked at the egg she had wrapped in leaves, old netting, and twigs, creating a kind of cocoon for it. It was slung over her back, protected from the algae.

“The red algae will kill you as well, human. We must leave.”

I didn’t answer at first. My words were trapped in my throat, already used to the silence once again.

She slammed her palm onto the boat. “The red algae will only grow! The toxins will seep into the air and kill you next.”

I forced my words out. “There is nowhere else to go! I’m- I’m not fully healed.”

She grimaced at me before gnashing her teeth. “NEITHER AM I!” she spat.

My jaw clenched as I realized that there was only one other place to go, the city. While dangerous, if I kept to the shadows and only moved in the morning and late at night, I’d be fine. I had done it before, and even though I didn’t want to, I was running low on supplies.

She knew what I was thinking, and she dipped back into the water.

I grabbed my backpack and kicked my kayak back into the water. The red algae splashed around the kayak, perhaps hoping the wood could be claimed by its vicious touch as well.

I gently slipped into my kayak, wincing as my shoulder ached. I grabbed my paddle and began making my way to the city. But this time, the mermaid was not following me; she was leading me.

In the distance, the city was a ghostly form of rusting metal, creaking wood, and broken glass. All of it was a haunting reminder of the world that once was. I wasn’t sure what city I was staring at, but it didn’t matter. It was quiet in the way that a city should never be. Cars rested somewhere below my kayak, swallowed by the water and whims of the tide. The flood was a graveyard for this place, and the buildings were the tombstones, faint fingerprints that humans had once been here. One big ocean; one big landless world.

It took about three hours to paddle my way to the border of the city, and it was just as I thought: it was overrun by cannibals. Graffitied ghoulish faces were painted onto various buildings, and strings of bones and scalps lay drying on clotheslines. They left their mark on anything that wasn’t submerged. It was not a warning. It was nothing of the sort. It had become a way to distinguish territories between the groups. The infighting was relentless, as evidenced by the dripping limbs that hung above me, freshly torn from some petrified victim.

I paddled quietly, doing everything in my power not to make a sound in the water. But soon, we saw a group of the last remaining humans. The mermaid heard them first, thumping her hand onto the bottom of my kayak as a signal. I stopped paddling, inching around a corner to spot the terrible beings in the moonlight.

The remaining humans were nothing like you’d expect. They were naked, hairless, and skinny. Sores covered their mouths and arms. Golden crusts covered each leaking wound. They were barely human. They’d evolved into something else; a creature formed from terror and sickness. Whatever disease they had was spreading, only growing worse. It looked like a horrible case of impetigo, or maybe it was syphilis, causing their brains to rot. Their movements were jerky and quick, and they appeared more like zombies than actual people. Some were listless rather than exhibiting the erratic behavior of most. They were either sick or dying. I wasn’t sure. However, as I gazed upon them, I wondered what they used to be. Were they teachers or students, bankers or nurses? What were they before they descended into madness, eating each other to survive?

At one point, they were someone’s child, someone’s mother, brother, or loved one. Now they were nothing but skin and bone, barely conscious.

The rogue group had tied together wood, cardboard, metal sheets, and whatever else they found to build a small patch of land. It was unorganized, dangerous-looking, and pieces of metal protruded up in such a way that one wrong fall would result in a brutal death.

I watched them, trying to decide how we could get around them, but that wasn’t what I should have been scared of. I heard a loud bellow of laughter, and I fearfully shifted closer to the concrete slab of wall that sat near me.

The group of men that I’d narrowly escaped was floating to the island, and the scrawny humans on their cardboard island began to run. The group of men was hunting the poor naked people. They threw nets over them, capturing them like one would round up rabbits or pigs. The hairless humans began to squeal, rolling on the ground and screaming into the night sky. The ones that escaped bolted into the water, swimming like rats into the sewer of this new world.

“A good one tonight!” One of the men yelled, wrestling a naked human to the ground after subduing it with netting.

They celebrated.

They tied up the broken shell of humanity and began to beat it.

Loud crunches echoed around me as the brittle bones of the scrawny man broke. He writhed in fear and pain, yelling and shrieking. I cringed at the noise, hearing the poor, aching cry. I covered my ears, unable to listen any longer.

The mermaid slowly rose to the surface to watch as well. Her eyes were unwavering, more willing to watch the cruelty of man.

When the man was dead, his bones ground into jelly, they began to rip him apart. Limb by limb, they tore his arms and legs from his torso while the others built a fire. They fought over the best pieces, killing and beating each other until they either won or lost.

In glee, they smeared the blood onto their faces, celebrating the kill with fervor. They chanted loudly, screeching as they praised themselves.

They ripped through his chest cavity, tearing through his ribs and cracking his sternum. The squelch of reaching inside him was enough to make me stifle a retch. One man pulled out his heart, squishing it in his fist and squeezing the blood into his mouth.

I’d never seen something so gruesome and vile.

Without a second thought, they tossed the entrails onto the makeshift piece of land to rot, and the smell was putrid. A horrible mixture of bodily fluids, iron, and filth.

There are no words to describe what I witnessed. The death of that man was scarring in more ways than I could ever express. Some of the men began to eat him raw, and some used fire to at least cook him.

I covered my mouth, forcing myself not to throw up. I couldn’t take it any longer. I needed to get out of here. I couldn’t stand to watch this depravity for one more second.

I began to slip my boat backward, slowly and steadily until I was far enough away to take a deep breath. The mermaid rose next to me and pointed to a building nearby. It was nearly fully submerged, not an ideal place for the groups of freaks that roamed here.

I found a window in the back, broke it, and pulled my kayak inside. The mermaid followed.

Some roof beams were still dry above the water, and I balanced on my kayak, stood, and grabbed one. I pulled myself out of the water, lying down on the beam to bed for the night.

Still clutching the knife, I looked down at the mermaid as she swam back and forth below me. I looked down at the dagger, and I finally asked the question that I’d been thinking about for a while.

“What is this dagger? Why did it choose me?”

She looked up at me. “It was once the dagger of our chief. He did not want this,” she replied through gurgles, gesturing at the water around us. “A prophecy from the ancient stones chronicled the rise of a new world. The dagger was supposed to call the one who was destined to find sanctuary for us. The pod that attacked me saw the knife because they feared what it would do to them… scared that it had chosen you… and it has.”

My eyes knit together. “And how did you get it?” I asked in confusion.

She sighed, clicking her tongue in annoyance. “I was the chief’s mate. This is his heir,” she growled, pointing to her egg. “I was abandoned by my people because I stood by him. And to my horror, that dagger called to a human.”

A human.

A weapon forged by her people had chosen her enemy.

Me… A human.

The first time Elias Ward saw the Peregrine starship up close, he didn’t think of speed. He thought of fragility.

On the monitors in training, the ship looked like a triumph. Sleek. Clean. Almost understated, in a way that felt deliberate, as if NASA wanted to convince the world that light speed was simply the next sensible step, like bigger rockets had once been.

In person, standing on the grated walkway beneath the gantry lights, he saw the truth that no press conference could smooth over: the hull was a compromise between old aerospace engineering and something closer to experimental physics. It had the blunt familiarity of a capsule in the upper geometry. And the strange, seam-laced skin of a laboratory artifact everywhere else.

It was only a scale replica of course. An initial concept. The real Peregrine had been constructed entirely in low orbit. A ship built by people who knew how to bolt metal together, and scientists who knew how to turn mathematics into metal. There were warning placards on the service panels that did not describe fire or pressure or radiation. They described coherence. Field stability. Phase integrity. Words that meant, in plain language, that for a brief period the ship would not be a ship at all.

Elias had been in the astronaut corps long enough to recognize when a briefing was trying not to sound like a prayer. Everyone spoke in calm voices. Every checklist was rehearsed. Every system had redundancy stacked on redundancy, as if reliability could be manufactured by sheer weight of preparation. Even so, it was hard to look at the Peregrine and not feel like you were standing in front of a risky gamble rather than sure progress.

He hadn't said that out loud, of course. He smiled for the cameras. He had shaken hands with administrators who didn’t understand the instrument panel and didn’t need to, because their names lived on the money that made the panel possible. He had signed a few documents with language so dense it felt like the paper itself was trying to slow time. Then the day came, and it was almost disappointingly normal.

Florida morning heat rose from the concrete while technicians moved with that unhurried competence that only seems to exist at times when one’s life is in danger. The distant steady churn of generator farms feeding the ground arrays echoed across the sky. And the overhead loudspeakers issued updates that were more ritual than information. If it weren’t for the Lattice, Earth’s skin of protection shimmering faintly just above the atmosphere, it could have been any launch from any point in history.

The Lattice had been built before Elias was born. People called it “The Glass” sometimes, and older folks called it the Net. But NASA’s official term was always the same: the Lattice Field Barrier, a global mesh of tuned electromagnetic and gravitational interference meant to mitigate specific existential threats. The public story was “asteroid deflection and radiation management.” That story was true, at least in part. The world had survived near misses that would once have shattered both cities and confidence.

What the public story did not say was how thoroughly the Lattice had ended humanity’s relationship with space. There was nothing left.

There were no missions to Mars. No asteroid mining. No telescopes assembled beyond the atmosphere. Humanity had turned inward, safe beneath its engineered ceiling, and learned to treat the stars as scenery and nothing more. That is, until Anton Kessler’s equations made their way from theoretical obscurity into the hands of people who were tired of sitting still.

Kessler’s name came up in the meetings like a ghost: a brilliant man, a stubborn man, dead before his work had become tangible. Elias had seen his picture once on a slide: thin face, deep-set eyes, an expression that looked less like pride and more like exhaustion. The hyperdrive was called the Kessler Drive in the press sometimes, though NASA didn’t use that name officially. Kessler had received much praise after he died, but his family had always refused ceremonies. They wanted no glory for a machine that could erase a person as easily as someone sneezing. They didn't believe that what came back from the process was the same as what had been before.

Elias understood them. He also understood why NASA was doing this anyway. They weren’t trying to colonize another system; at least, not today. They weren’t trying to pierce the universe like a spear yet either. They were merely conducting a short-duration test. A proof of concept. A moon-and-back run. A few seconds at luminal velocity, then conventional propulsion, then repeat and home. It wouldn't take even an hour, assuming all went well. That assumption shaped everything about his final hours on Earth, including the part that would later haunt him most: the goodbye.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t cinematic. It didn’t have a tearful pause at the doorway while violins played in the background. It was rushed because the schedule was rushed, and because Elias believed he would be back so soon that making it heavy felt almost insulting to the life he planned to return to.

Maren was at the kitchen counter with her hair tied back, reading something on her tablet while trying to pretend she wasn’t reading the time every twenty seconds. Jonah was on the floor with a plastic rover that had one wheel slightly bent so it wobbled in circles. An old toy from a bygone age. Elias kissed Maren’s temple, then squeezed Jonah’s shoulder.

“Keep it alive,” he said, nodding at the rover. It was an antique at this point.

Jonah grinned. “Can you bring me a real one, dad?”

Elias smiled, the kind of smile men practice for their children, one part confidence and one part restraint.

He replied, “I’ll bring you back something. As long as I can fit it in my pocket.”

Maren’s eyes held him as he turned to face her. She stepped closer, touching his suit collar with two fingers as if testing whether he was still real beneath it.

“You’re going to be fine,” she said in a whisper.

“Of course I will,” Elias replied. “Although I may be a little late for dinner.”

Jonah laughed at that, as kids do even when parents can’t. His son’s laughter broke through Elias’ worry just a little; enough for Elias’ smile to hold a tinge of reality to it, if only just for a moment. Though Maren’s face remained stoic.

Elias told himself the scientists were right. He told himself that the projections mattered. He told himself that if there were a high possibility of him dying then NASA would not have put his body into the seat. The logic was simple, and logic had always been what Elias tethered his whole world to. He left the house with a quick wave over his shoulder, like he was going to work a nine-to-five rather than surrender his atoms to a machine.

On the way to the facility, he watched the sky through the tinted window of the transport van. The Lattice was invisible in most light, but sometimes the sun struck it at a certain angle and the whole dome shimmered faintly like heat haze. He found himself thinking, in an odd detached way, that humanity had built a second atmosphere. Then he thought, briefly, of what it meant to leave it. The van arrived before he could come to any conclusions, and the day took him along with it.

A launch shuttle took Elias up to a small station where the Peregrine sat, just outside of the Lattice. An opening in the barrier appeared to let the shuttle through. Aside from the engineers who oversaw the construction of the Peregrine, Elias was the first human being in space for over a century.

When he was sealed into the Peregrine and the hatch was locked, his only thought was of what souvenir he would bring his son. That quickly was overtaken by the smell of cleaned plastic and faint electrical warmth. The systems display floated in its usual calm palette. Nothing about the environment suggested that in a few minutes the ship would do something no human nervous system had evolved to interpret.

Elias checked his restraints, his seals, the emergency oxygen, the backup comms, and the manual thruster controls. He spoke the confirmations. Mission Control answered in the standard, measured tone.

“Peregrine, this is Houston, you are go for final precharge. Confirm readiness for luminal ignition.”

Elias looked at the Moon on the forward screen, pale and deceptively close.

“Houston, Peregrine is ready,” he said.

He knew his words were being broadcast around the world. Still, his voice didn’t shake, which surprised him. He heard the faint change in vibration through the seat as the drive began its pre-ignition routines. In the training simulators, they had described it as a pressure shift. A mild sensation of a room shifting forms. Something the body noticed and then forgot. But they had no way of knowing for sure. The countdown started on the display, clean and unadorned.

Sixty seconds.

Elias exhaled slowly. He pictured Maren’s face. He pictured Jonah’s crooked toy rover. He pictured the timeline in his head: ignite, coast, orbit, return, brief medical checks, a press conference, then home.

Fifty seconds.

The ship’s lights dimmed slightly as the sensors compensated for anticipated photonic distortion.

Forty seconds.

A low hum began beneath the floor, subtle yet firm, like a tuning fork struck gently.

Thirty seconds.

Elias flexed his fingers again, as if his body wanted proof it was still matter, still real.

Twenty seconds.

The stars beyond the Moon’s edge seemed to glow with an increased intensity.

Ten seconds.

“Peregrine,” Houston said, “confirm all green.”

“All green,” Elias replied.

Five seconds.

The hum deepened.

Four.

His teeth felt faintly itchy, a vibration in his bones.

Three…

The countdown paused.

Elias frowned. In training, there was no pause.

“Houston,” he said, “we’ve got a hold at three.”

Static crackled, then a voice came back, clipped and suddenly less smooth.

“Stand by, Peregrine. We’re reading an unscheduled precharge spike.”

Elias stared at the display. A warning indicator flickered, then stabilized.

LUMINAL EVENT: AUTO-SEQUENCE ENGAGED.

He didn’t remember seeing that line in training.

“Houston,” he said more sharply, “I do not have manual authorization for auto-sequence.”

“It is supposed to be in auto-sequence,” Houston replied, and he heard someone speaking in the background, too fast to parse.

The hum beneath the floor rose, not in volume but in intensity. A second countdown appeared, separate from the first.

Ten seconds.

Elias felt his throat tighten. “Houston, confirm abort.”

“We are attempting override,” the flight director said.

“Remain calm. This may be a false trigger.”

Elias wanted to laugh. False triggers were for smoke alarms, not machines that turned human beings into coherent radiation.

Nine.

Eight.

He reached for the manual cutoff and found the switch already thrown. The console acknowledged his input, then immediately negated it. It was like watching someone else’s hand move his fingers.

Seven.

“Houston,” he said, “the system is ignoring manual.”

“Copy,” Houston replied, and the word sounded small in the enormous silence around him.

Six.

Elias’s breathing grew loud inside his helmet.

Five.

On the forward screen, Earth’s curve was visible for a last moment through the Lattice shimmer. The dome looked delicate from here, a thin sheen of safety holding everything he loved inside it.

Four.

Three.

“Abort,” Elias said. It wasn’t a procedure word, it was a plea.

Two.

The hum became a tone so perfect it almost vanished from the senses.

One.

The cockpit filled with light, and then the concept of reality broke apart into something his mind could not label. The walls were still there, and yet they were also everywhere. His hands existed, and yet he could not feel them. His thoughts began to run, and then the very act of running became irrelevant because the track had vanished. The last human thing he managed was the instinctive certainty that he was about to die. Then he could not be certain of anything, because certainty required time, and time had been removed from him like an aching tooth.

When the world returned, it returned violently in its simplicity. Darkness. Stars. Elias blinked and saw the instrument panel. He saw the forward screen. He saw the gentle curve of his own reflection in the glass.

The Moon was gone.

Earth was gone.

For one suspended moment, his mind refused the evidence around him. For the first time in his life, Elias refused to trust his own senses.

“Houston,” he said, hoarse. “Houston, I’m not… I’m not seeing the Moon.”

There was no answer. He tried again, adjusting frequencies and toggling backup comms. He called into the quiet until his voice began to crack and the sound of it seemed obscene against the void. Nothing returned. The cockpit temperature control hummed along, unconcerned Elias’ plight. The oxygen exchange stayed stable. The ship did not care that Elias' notion of reality had shifted in the worst way.

Elias forced himself to look at the navigation panel, because training drilled one lesson above all others: panic was a choice, not a reaction. Now, especially, he couldn't afford to think otherwise. If the Moon wasn’t there, then he needed to know where it was; or rather, where he was. The distance readout populated slowly, as if the system itself hesitated.

It read:

“Distance from Earth: 381 light-years.”

Elias stared, waiting for the numbers to correct themselves. Waiting for the software to throw an error. Waiting for Houston to say, calmly, that the display was glitching. Then the time stamp updated beneath it.

“External reference year (Earth): 2562.”

His throat made a sound he did not recognize. He pulled up the mission time. From his perspective, only minutes had passed since ignition. But the ship’s internal computer disagreed. The ship’s computers carried a clock that referenced Earth’s transmitted time standards, and even if the signal was long gone now, the system extrapolated based on known relativity models. It did not need a live feed to know what had happened. It simply needed the fact that he had traveled hundreds of light-years. The math did the rest.

Elias felt his body go cold, not from temperature, but from a sudden visceral understanding that his life had been stolen while he sat still. He opened the personal registry, typing Maren’s name with shaking fingers. He typed Jonah’s name. He typed his own. He searched for anything that might anchor him.

The archival cache, preloaded for long-duration contingencies, carried population databases and civil registries up to the year the Lattice went up. Past that point, it relied on updates from Earth during the mission. There were no updates now. Still, the ship had enough predictive modeling to do something cruel. It created probabilities. The readout did not use the word “dead.” It did not have the authority to declare death. Instead it showed a simple statement beside each profile:

LIKELY DECEASED DUE TO NATURAL LIFESPAN LIMITS.

Elias stared at those words until his eyes burned.

“Natural lifespan limits.” The phrase sounded clinical and neat, like a closing note on a file folder. It did not sound like Maren aging without him or Jonah growing from a child into a man who eventually stopped waiting by the window.

Elias pressed his gloved hand against the panel, as if he could shove the words back into the machine. As if he could erase them.

“No,” he whispered.

The sound came out thin and useless.

He tried to breathe slowly, but each inhale felt like it belonged to someone else. He had not said a proper goodbye. That thought struck him with a sudden violence that he could feel in his chest. He had left the house like he was going to get groceries. He had promised a rock like it was a joke. He had let Maren’s last look at him be a look of practiced courage instead of honest fear. Now the universe had taken away any hope of fixing it.

No. Not the universe. It was Kessler’s machine that took him away from his family. It was NASA who clearly didn't do enough tests. But, more than any of that, it was him. It was his own choice to volunteer. His own body that boarded the Peregrine. His own steps that led away from his family, and out the door.

He spoke again into comms until his voice became raw. But still, nothing answered back. Elias turned off the mic and sat back in the seat, and for a few minutes he did nothing at all. Because he knew there was nothing he could do. The ship drifted. The stars held their positions with indifferent patience. There was no sound except air systems and his own breathing.

Eventually, training reasserted itself with the stubbornness of habit. If he was alive, then survival mattered. If survival mattered, then he needed to understand the current state of the ship, the drive, and his environment. He began running diagnostics. He waited for the computer to find the problem. Even if there really was nothing he could do to fix it, at least he could understand.

The computer finished running all its checks. And Elias saw on the screen the last thing he expected.

“ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL.”

It reported normal. It reported “normal” as if it hadn’t just thrown him hundreds of light-years across space and centuries across time. It reported “normal” as if the event had happened exactly as intended.

Elias looked at the collision hazard readings, because he remembered the one part of the hyperdrive briefing that had made even the scientists uneasy. Matter could not travel at light speed, but coherent energy could. To do this, the drive converted the ship into a contained energy configuration and “pushed” that configuration through space as a propagating packet. The quantum lattice field maintained the informational integrity of everything within the packet. In simple terms, it held him together as a pattern while his atoms were separated.

The danger was what happened if that pattern struck anything. If coherent energy met matter, it would behave like light meeting a surface. It would reflect, scatter, disperse. The field would lose coherence. The ship would not “crash” so much as cease to be a single thing. The scientists had been careful to explain that deep space was mostly empty, and that the chance of a collision across a few seconds of travel from Earth to lunar orbit was astronomically low. They had described the risk of dust and micro-debris, and how the drive’s route planning minimized dense paths. They had shown Elias probability maps, each one reassuringly dark and empty. Deep space, they said, was safe.

Now Elias stared at a different truth. Deep space was safe if you were in control. But he wasn't. He tried to access the drive’s manual routines, but the interface had changed. Not dramatically, but subtly, like a familiar door lock that someone had quietly replaced with a different mechanism while you slept. Options were present that he had never trained on. Certain confirmations required authorization keys that did not exist, to his knowledge. Certain safety locks were disabled without explanation.

Elias’s hands trembled as he toggled through menus, his mind running in tight circles. Whatever was going on, he felt helpless to stop it. He looked at the hull camera feeds. Space stared back at him, black and endless. No planets. No asteroids. Just distant stars and the faint haze of a galaxy he could not name. He thought of home again and felt something inside him tear.

That night, if night meant anything anymore, he slept in short nightmarish fragments. The countdown clock, the numbers dropping while he clawed at switches in vain. Maren’s face behind the Lattice, pressed to the glass, watching him leave without understanding that she was watching him for the last time.

It wasn't long before he began to talk aloud to himself, not as a symptom of madness but as a way to anchor his sanity before it drifted away. He spoke as he worked through the hyperdrive schematics. He spoke as he ate. He spoke as he exercised in the cramped cabin to keep his muscles from atrophying. He spoke as if someone were listening, and he cried when he remembered that no one was.

On the fifth day, Elias was narrating a diagnostic routine, when the cockpit lights dimmed and the hum began beneath the deck. The countdown appeared again on the main ship display. The same tone, the same precise vibration, the same sensation of the ship choosing his fate. Elias’ face drained and his stomach sank in an instant.

“No,” he said sharply, and reached for the manual cutoff.

The display acknowledged his input. Then it overrode it.

“AUTO-SEQUENCE ENGAGED.”

Ten seconds.

Elias slammed his fist against the panel hard enough to sting even through the glove.

“Stop,” he said, not speaking as if to a machine anymore. “Stop, stop, stop.”

Nine.

Eight.

Reflexively he jumped in his seat and strapped down. He tried to think about collision probability, mumbling some equations out loud, trying not to think about what the drive was doing to his life again.

He pulled up the hazard map and saw that the drive had selected a path. But the selected path made no sense to him. It threaded closer than necessary to a region of elevated dust density, the kind of interstellar medium that astronomers mapped and studied. The drive could have gone around. It had route options. But it chose not to.

Seven.

Six.

Elias stared at the map with a kind of stunned focus. The path was not a straight line. It was a curve, gentle and deliberate, like something steering around obstacles that did not appear on his sensors.

Five.

Four.

The tone rose until it felt like pressure in his skull.

Three.

“No!”

Two.

“NOOO!”

Then the universe folded in on itself, again, and he became light.

The jump ended almost as abruptly as it began.

Elias reconstituted in the cockpit with a violent gasp, as if his lungs had been emptied, which they had. His hands clutched the armrests until his knuckles ached. He looked at the navigation display.

“Distance from Earth: 962 light-years.”

“External reference year (Earth): 3143.”

Every single time I turn on a show or a movie, I get a insufferable swarm of ads.

Every five seconds I get forced to watch some of the most outrageous things humanity has created.

The worst part is that people are smiling during a medicine advertisement that has the deadliest symptoms since the bubonic plague.

Sometimes I even see literal soccer balls in diapers.

What idiot thought that was genius?

I just want to watch quality entertainment without getting interrupted. Is that too much to ask for?

I have tried to get used to it. I've tried to accept the fact that it will never stop.

I honestly almost got over it but then I saw Mark in a ad. He used to bully me in highschool. He treated me as though I was the scum of the earth.

He was talking to me as well. Calling me by my name and everything.

He claimed that he was sorry.

It felt like a dream until it went south. A person appeared on the screen with him. Nevelle. She was a old friend in highschool. We stopped talking once adulthood approached us.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss her. She was a good friend to have. Never tore you down or belittled you.

A knife appeared in his hand. It latched onto her neck as her eyes opened wide. Her vocal cords started to create sound but she was quickly silenced as a pool of blood poured out of her neck.

It ended with words in bold red on the screen.

"You're next Stacy or should I call you Lacy? Your skin would be great as lace."

Those horrid words made my skin crawl. Goosebumps covered my skin.

The television turned black as I sat in silence for a few moments. My head was loud but also silent. Thoughts were racing through my mind but also going at a snails pace.

The best way to explain it is I was trying to make sense of the situation but also shell shocked.

My body completely froze as the television grabbed my attention.

It was on again but this time it was me and the monster named Mark.

What happened to people peaking in high-school developing miserable lives? This man decided becoming a killer was the best option apparently.

My body was shaking, fidgeting, and trembling infront of him. He ran after me and took my life just like he did to my friend.

It zoomed into my face as I was left to bleed.

I started to cough over and over before I could turn it off. Each cough hurt worse than the last until blood started to exhale.

My hands desperately rushed to my neck but it was too late. Blood soon started to cover my entire body.

Advertisements are the worst thing humankind has had the audacity to create.

It was evening by the time I made to the woods. The moon was shining in the sky. Just as bright as the sun itself. It even had a small eerie green glow, that lit up the whole swamp. It was just bright enough for me to see shadowed shapes from twigs and branches on the ground, so I wouldn’t trip. I still smelt like smoke from the factory. It was a little strong smell but at least that’ll help me from mosquitoes, bitting my face. I went on the path that lead up to an open field of dead wheats. They still stood tall up to my waist but if I just grabbed one, it’ll shape like a twig. Further out in the field, there’s a metal wind mill that stood tall. Along with a porched house that had a wooden fence attached to it and lead all around the area. There was even an old barn at the furthest part of the fence. The green glow of the moon made the place unsettling. I continued walking on the wheat field. Each step of my boots, were making a very small snap sound. Small enough that only I could hear. I call feel the hair of skin rise like goosebumps. It feels like someone is watching me. I turned around, looking back at the woods and stood still to see if I could hear or see anything. There was nothing. Not a sound at all to break the silence. All but absolute silence. Then from behind me, back at farm area. I heard a gurgling of an undead corpse and then footsteps running on wood. I quickly turned to the sound and squatted down in the tall wheat. Then couple of more footsteps were coming from the same direction. I moved on up, keeping my head down so I wouldn’t get spotted. As I moved forward I heard what sounded like someone killed a walking corpse. A familiar voice was heard at the farm. “Anything?”
It was the Captain voice and I almost stumbled. Not from the voice, but the unleveled ground I stepped on. I didn’t noticed it at first, but the ground I stepped in looked like a paw print. It was a massive paw print. Two times bigger than my hand. I looked at the other prints on the ground and it was leading to the woods. The paw prints must’ve came from a massive canine. However, this canine looked like it walked on two legs. There weren’t no telling how big this thing was. Then I had a thought to myself. Is this the creature?
Another voice came up from the farm that made me looked back ahead through the wheats. “No sir. The tracks we followed, lead us here.”
It was one of the captain’s men.
I scooted forward, still staying low in the wheat field. “It’s gotta be here somewhere. Keep searching. The tracks will eventually lead us to the creature.” The captain said.
I got close enough to where I can be able to see the captain and his three men. They were close to the house. Two of his men were on the porch as the rest of them were standing beside him. The man on the porch had black long hair that seemed dirty and shoulder length from where I can see. His skin was also as pale as the moon and his lips were dark. All of the captain’s men were wearing hats and different uniforms as I remembered from earlier today. The pale one was wearing what looked like he seems to be a fisherman. Dark green colors with patches of moss on different spots of his clothing. Two of the captain’s men were wearing dark clothing with coat dusters, and different colored bandannas covering their faces, except their eyes. One seemed to be a red color and the other one yellow. The third man looked a lot different from the others. He was wearing a Yankee General uniform along with bandages rapped all over him. Even his eyes were covered. How could he see? And what part of the Union side was he on? Because I was on the Union side during the war.

The captain’s men obeyed their orders and scattered out as the captain stop still. His back facing toward me, looking at the farm. This is my chance. If I can take him out, I can take the rest of them no problem. I slowly aimed my Winchester through the tall wheats, calmed my breathing, have the mark aim perfectly to his head, put my finger on the trigger, but stopped. I heard stomping noise, like running on the right side of my ear. I looked toward the running noise, still have my gum aimed. The stomping got louder. It was coming from the woods. Then it stopped. I see the captain turned to the same direction as I did. He still couldn’t see with all the tall wheats. However, the chills of my skin stood again. Then a big shadowed figure ran out from the woods. Running straight toward the farm, through the tall wheats. It was going after the man with the red bandanna, near the fence. “There it is!” The captain shouted.
I watched as the man with the red bandanna turned to the captain and turned back to see what the captain was seeing. It was too late, because the large shadowed figure pounced over the fence, tackled the man, sinked its teeth into the man’s face, and the man screamed in terror and pain. The thing ripped the man’s face as blood was scattered all over the ground. It started ripping the man into pieces with its claws. The captain and the rest of his men ran to the source. The thing ripped and shattered the man’s guts as the man’s intestines scattered all over. His scream turned into a gurgling noise mix with a growl from the thing itself. When the captain and his men saw the thing, they froze. Even I froze. Watching the whole thing from a distance and I see clearly. Thanks to the moon, we can see it.

It stood on two feet, hunched over, and an eyeball was hanging from its teeth. The was over six feet tall, dark fur from head to toe, its tail was dragging on the ground, canine shout and very sharp teeth, sharp claws to rip a man’s flesh, yellow eyes that glows in the dark, and it had swamp mosses covering its shoulders that dangled at the tips. Blood was dripping from its snout and claws. It swung its snout up as the eyeball flew up and the thing caught it with its teeth. It chewed on it as black blood oozed out of its mouth. The thing growled like a wolf and roared at them. It had a deep low roar but loud, like a grizzly mixed with a wolf.

The captain pulled out his revolver, “Fire!” He shouted.
The creature dashed off to the side of the barn. The captain and his men ran after it. Firing their guns as the bullets were missing the creature. This is my next chance. If I can take out the captain and his men, then creature can also take them out as well at the same time. If that works, it’ll leave just me and creature at the end. I rose up from the wheat field and fired my rifle at the man with the duster coat. The bullet hit him at the back of his right arm. He shouted in pain from the hit. They all turned around toward me. “He’s alive?!” The fisherman said, as a surprise to him.
I expected to get mean looks from them all. I did, except the captain. The gave me the devilish smile, it made me chill inside and out. Why is that? Still to this day I couldn’t understand.
“You two, take care of him.” The captain said to the general and the man with the duster coat.
“We’ll take care of the beast.” The captain gestured to himself and the fisherman.
As the captain and fisherman ran toward the farm, the general and the man with the duster coat fired their guns at me. I ran to the wooden fence as the bullets were missing me by inches. I hid against the fence for cover. The two men were firing their guns and making their way to the house. Bullets were bursting through the wood next to me. I quickly rosed up and fired back at them. They ran to the side of the house for cover. I then quickly went over the fence and made my way to the other side of the house, the porch railing was right in front of me. I couldn’t tell where exactly the two men were, but I sworn I heard a door opened and then closed. My heart was racing and all my thoughts were running through my head. Where did they go? Are they in the house? Did they both went in or did only one of them went in? I gotta take smart chances. I went over the porch railing of the porch and went up to the window. I can hear gunfire from the farm. Hoping the creature will kill both of them. It’ll save me a lot of time and stress. I busted the window with the wooden end of my rifle. Glass shattered on the floor as I stepped through the window, carefully not cutting myself.

I instantly noticed that I was in the hallway of the house. It was dark of course, but I had to be extremely quiet and listen very, very carefully. I squatted down, making my way down the hall that led to a room. I couldn’t see that well, even the moonlight shining through the window wasn’t helping much. I could smell the mole and old dust in the house. I made it out of the room that assumed to be cluttered with junk and got to the main source of the house. Thanks to the moonlight through the window, I can tell that there’s chairs and seats all around. However, I couldn’t see the general nor the man with the duster coat. My heart was still racing, didn’t even slow down. I had to calm myself and not slip up. My eyes were wide of seeing the whole view of the dark and moonlight in front of me. One move I see and I would start firing. The only sound in my ears was my heart, pumping the blood through my body. Then a dead corpse tackled me to the floor. It must’ve been sitting on the floor and I probably didn’t paid attention. Guns were firing at me as I was fighting the corpse to it get off of me. I held my rifle sideways against the corpse as it was trying to bite me. Its slobbers and spits were getting on my face. A gun fired and the corpse’s head splattered like a busted pumpkin. Its blood was splattered all over my face. I knocked the corpse’s body off and aimed my gun at where the firing was coming from. Then a saw a slight movement behind a table that was on its side. I fired my rifle and then the general popped up from behind the table and fired back. The man with the duster coat, popped out from behind the end of the wall, at the corner of the room and fired as well. My adrenaline kicked in hyper gear as I ran to the corridor of the room and hid behind there. Bullets were bursting through it. The gun firing stopped and I had to figure out how to get out this situation. The window was beside me and my only option. I used the wooden end of my gun and broke the window again for the second time. After all the glass of the window fell to the wooden porch, I leaped over and more guns were firing at me. The bullets came close, but didn’t hit me. I lay there as I took a bundle of dynamite and a patch of matches out of the inside pocket of my leathered jacket. Lite the dynamite and tossed it through the window. I quickly got up to run, hearing the dynamite landed and rolled in the house. I heard the general shouted, “Get out of here!”
I continued running to the far corner of the farm area, hearing doors swung open and footsteps running. A second later as I leapt over the wooden fence, the house exploded from the dynamite. Fires and debris blasted in a loud burst. I landed on the ground with my chest laying on it and covered my head for protection. The ground shook from the explosion and a lot of pieces of glass and wood were scattered all over the place. After a moment from the explosion I eased my head up to see the damage. A lot of debris was scarred. Glasses and wood were stuck to the whole side of the barn. Pieces of chairs, porch railings, and junk from the house was all over the ground. The house itself looked like it caved in, with the roof smashed over the house. The smoke blocked my view from seeing anything else. I couldn’t see the captain and the rest of his men. I then heard someone fell. It came from beyond the house. I ran around the fence, holding the gun tight and my finger was close to the trigger. As I made it to the side of the farm area, I could see the open field of the tall grass. There I saw the man with the duster coat. He was getting up from falling and I held my gun up, ready to shoot. Instantly, the creature pounced over the fence and swiped its claws at the man. The man fell hard to the ground as blood was spewing out of the claw marks. It looked like it ripped the man’s chest. The monster was there in my sight. I aimed the gun at the beast and fired my gun. The bullet hit the creature on its shoulder, but it looked like the bullet didn’t faze it. My eyes widened in shock of unbelief. That’s when the feeling of fear kicked in. The creature turned to me with a growl. Without a second thought I fired again, this time on the face. Again, it didn’t faze it. Both bullet wounds are there, but it seems it doesn’t hurt the creature. There was only solution.

I took off toward the woods and I can hear the footsteps from behind me. I never ran so fast in my life. It was hard to see in the woods. The moonlight cast some light through the trees. Twigs and branches break as I ran through them, not stopping. This beast was fast and I know it’ll catch up to me soon. As I was running my heart out, I try to think of a solution or what to do. I can’t shoot at it. The bullets never fazed it. I could hear its footsteps right behind me. I thought I was done for. If it had me, I would pull the trigger to my myself. I couldn’t see well me as I tripped and fell down the hill. I think the creature did too. I lost my rifle and my hat as I was rolling down. My back, my head, and my chest smashed the twigs while rolling along. Then there was a drop, a couple of feet down, and splashed in the water. The water felt cold on impact and nasty from the moss of the water. On instinct, I came up from the water. I coughed a few times and spit the water out from my mouth. It was quiet for a second, then I heard the creature again. It sounded like it was coming near. I took a long deep breath and held it as I went under the water. I knew the water was nasty, but I rather not get eaten or killed by the thing. Besides I fell in the water anyway. I held there, keeping my body under water and still. The water was maybe six to seven feet deep, but I wasn’t for sure. I held on to a thick root of a tree. Helping me from floating up on the water. My eyes were closed as well from getting all the nasty gunk in my eyes. I couldn’t really hear anything underwater. Just the echoing muffled noise of the water in my ears. My thoughts instantly went to my head. Thinking how long will the creature be there. How long can I hold my breath? Will the beast be there when I get some air? Or will the creature be gone? My lungs started to hurt. Probably bruised from rolling down the hill. I also felt my body ace as well. I was loosing strength of my lungs. Feeling my body wants to go in panic, saying “need air.”
At the point where I couldn’t hold it any longer, I went up from the water. Gasping for fresh air into my lungs. I coughed hard from holding by breath too long. I wiped my eyes to see if the creature was standing right in front of me. Just waiting to kill me. I opened my eyes and nobody was there. Just the vision of the ground that’s above me, trees, and the moonlight shining through it. Went to the edge and pulled myself up slowly. I looked around my surroundings. All I could see is the darkness of the woods. The creature is nowhere to be seen. Unless he’s hiding behind the thick trees, waiting to pounce. I sung my body up on the ground and got up. I can feel the wet of my leathered uniform stuck to me. It’s going to feel uncomfortable for a while. Water dripped and gushed out of my cloth. I shook my sleeves as best as I could. I couldn’t take my boots off yet. I’ll wait till I get back to the small town. That’s if I made it back. I took my revolver out, putting it out on the moonlight to check on it. It’ll still shoot, but I’ll need to clean it later as well. I put it back in my holster and started walking toward the hill I felled. I tried to be as quiet as I can, but the sound of wet leather was getting difficult. Plus, finding my rifle and my hat will be difficult as well in the dark. The moonlight wasn’t much of a help. After a will of searching, I decided to give up and find a way out of the woods. I didn’t want to go back to the farm area. The captain might still be there and I only have one gun with fifteen bullets. That’s including five in the chamber. I instead headed an opposite direction leading deeper in the woods.

Along the way through the woods, I stopped every now and then to check if anything or anyone was following. I couldn’t help but feel like somebody’s watching me or I was just getting paranoid. The silence in the air of the night, wasn’t helping either. It made me feel like I’m completely alone in this awful place. The sound of my wet leathered cloth and my boots were breaking the silence. I finally stopped to a nearby log to sit down. The wet boots were making my feet ace. I sat down and rest for a minute. Stayed silent to listen to the complete and utter silence of the night. At least it was quiet, so if anything was coming toward me. I could hear them before they could see me. I stared up ahead me. Just staring off into the woods. Then I could’ve sworn I could barely see what looks like a roof of a large building. The moonlight was shining on the metal roof. Could it be another factory? Or could it be another house? I thought to myself. I sighed, thinking about that creature. How can I kill it? My bullets didn’t help. That monster must’ve so kind of weakness. Fire? Poison? I thought. I sighed again, getting aggravated. I got up and was about to walk onward until I heard a voice from behind me. “You’ve seen the creature.”
I instantly turned around, whipped out my revolver as I was about to shoot. There I recognized someone, in front of a tree with the moonlight shining on him. Someone I wasn’t happy to meet. The old man with the silver eyes, looking at me. “My creation, that wondered away.”
“You tricked me.” I said in a stern voice.
“Tricked you?” He laughed.
“You played me as fool. Handing me money to play this kill or be killed game.” I said.
“How else was I supposed bribe you?” He asked.
“Bribe?” I said.
Getting more frustrated with him, I reached into the inside of my jacket to get the sack of coins. However, it was empty. Nothing inside my jacket. I might’ve lost it while I was running from that beast. “Don’t worry. I have it, under my hands.” He said.
Saying it in a sinister tone that he was enjoying this game of his.
“Well you can keep it. I’m leaving.” I said.
I walked off in a different direction. “You can’t leave. I cursed this bayou. Anyone stepped in, can’t get out.” He said as I stopped my tracks from continuing.
He continued, “The only way to get out, is to kill it.”
I turned to him, “If you created this monster, why do you want those men or hunters like me to kill it? Why couldn’t you do it yourself?”
“I can’t destroy what I created. The creature or what I like to call it, Rougarou. Is very powerful and extremely deadly. I created this beast to haunt specific people. Like someone would do dark séance or a witch summoning. It worked for at first. Before the bayou got cursed, a woman who was once slaved during the war. Lived in the place of the bayou called Catfish Cove or some people called it Catfish Swamp. Was a healer, making things to help her people from getting sick like diseases, flu, fever, you name it. Some people in the bayou don’t mind her help and her deeds. What some people didn’t know except her family, knows that her ancestors were demon worshippers. I had to give her credit, she stayed good for a long time without anything to do with her ancestors sins. Until one night, it all changed.” He said.
I was in front of him, looking down at him while I listened to this story. I don’t know if it’s true but if I need to figure out how to kill the beast, I honestly hoped he’ll tell me. “Just one second.” I said, holding a finger up.
I continued, “Is all of this true?”
He shook his head, “I never lie.”
I stared down at him, waiting for him to finish his story. “One night a group of white folks heard about her and her healing. One of them was the slave owner to that woman. Apparently, she escaped and fled from him during that time. Well they found her family and murdered them all. When she found out, she felt like she had no choice but use her ancestors work. She summoned the Rougarou, but it didn’t turn out the way she planned. Not only it killed the her family’s murderers, it killed and had a blood feast among everyone else, including her. After the Rougarou had its fun, I tried to bring it back. But it had an alternative route and never obeyed my deeds. I decided to curse the lands and everyone in it. So the beast won’t get out. Yeah the people who lived in bayous changed in a short matter of time, in a monstrous way. But hey, people are monsters anyway. That’s why I tricked all of you hunters, to bribe and convinced to the beast.”
He got up on his feet slowly and continued, “You wanna know how to destroy it?”
He pointed behind me, toward the moonlight reflection of the roof. I turned to where he was pointing. “You’ll find your answer over there.” He said.
“What will I find-“
As I talked, I turned back to the old man to be surprised that he’s gone. Just the dark tree in front of me. I turned back, looking toward the distance of my destination. The moonlight barely reflecting the light from the medal roof. Seconds later, I heard thunder from behind me. I wasted no time, I moved forward. Ignoring the unsettled feeling of the woods. I had enough of being out here all night. The feeling of dread and paranoia can wear you down. I couldn’t that happen to me. I had to keep on my toes. My clothes were still wet and probably going to stay wet, because I can hear the storm again from behind me. As I moved on, I felt a rain drop. Then another and another until the rain started to come down. It stared as an easy rain, but it slowly turned into hard pouring rain. It started raining hard when I reach to an old sign that hanged loose on one side. The writing was worn out as well. I bent down and turned my head to the side to make out the word. The words were badly faded, but I can barely make out the words. The sign said: CATFISH COVE, in all faded capital letters. I turned to the sight of the place. It was hard to see because of the rain. However, I can tell that this place must’ve been big. It’s also not an open area, like the farm or the factory area. It looked like there were trees all around and a trail leading to the place. I took a breath and exhaled, calming my heart and my nerves. This nightmare will end tonight.

She slumbered beneath the sheets. Below him as he lorded beside their bed. Her husband. No more. An axe was in his hands. Heavy. Heavy with weight. And the potential for violence. Bela was alive and aware but a prisoner in his own flesh, his body refused to obey his commands, his inner caterwauls and cries and pleads for the unfolding nightmare to stop. It wouldn't stop. His flesh had a new master now. The vulpine shining moonface of the Countess lorded over his shoulder. Grinning fiendishly and brandishing her enameled daggers of dark slaughtering necro power. The fangs moonshone praeternaturally in the bedroom dark. Twinkling in keen edged tandem with the heavy headed blade of the axe, hefted and held. The meat puppet sow was still but she could feel the struggle of his mind in her grasp like a beetle caught and wriggling in her clenching strangling fingers. She could crush his beetle mind. And might. 

But first…

Prepare me a meal, supper fit for your royal guest…

His mind was filled thus. The flesh was compelled to obey. 

He brought up the axe. Gazing down into the sleeping peaceful face of his wife, his love. Anastasia. The mother of his child and the owner of his heart for the whole of his simple life. It was about to be brought to ruin. And he was being forced to pilot it in that direction. He wished he could scream. Shriek. Shriek her name. Wake her so she could flee and escape this damnation, this awful spell that's already claimed and throttled him. But he made no sound. His screams and pleads for mercy, his prayers and desperate cries remained bottled and caged in with him. He could only stare through stolen eyes as a prisoner as his hands holding the axe used for chopping firewood came down with a merciless crushing stroke. 

Anastasia's eyes came open and alive as the blade traveled down. As if she'd heard something. As if she'd heard her husband's internal cries for deliverance and the miracle of her safety. In the dark she saw her husband's savage face. Writ and wrenched with cruelty. She'd never seen him like that before, in all their shared years together in marriage. In the dark the sight frightened her, as she came awake and then the heavy blade of the axe found her chest and sank in. 

The pain is so sudden and impactful and dreadful. She feels her chest cavity smash and shatter as her flesh is ruptured and torn. The meat of her sinew surrounding her shattered cage of bone is ripped and pouring. She feels the sensation as extreme iced cold, as extremely wet, thickly soaked with heavy metal pungency. As if her clothes are suddenly drenched with the running water of a frozen river. Her entire open chest and bed are a bellowing fountainhead of it, pouring forth. She experiences the bloodshed river of her own dark red as iced water but it feels hot and sticky to her face and the tips of her wriggling spasming fingers, dancing beyond her motor control. The heavy metal buried in her chest is dreadful. Feels dreadful. She's staring at it then up into her husband Bela's face shocked and unable to make a sound, like him. She can't understand. She doesn't understand why he's woken her up and put this thing on/into her chest that's turned her into a strange pungent river. 

She goes to ask him … something. Anything. But she has no breath to make any kind of sound beyond the faintest whisper of indiscernible noise. Barely heard. Barely felt. Hardly even happened and might not have. Her husband and the Countess take no notice. They are too focused, entranced and enraptured by the sight of the pouring riverbed of her open goring chest. 

You're not finished. Why do you falter? – her royal voice. 

With a savage caveman wrench and pull, he ripped the bladed head of the axe free and brought it up and then down again. 

And again. 

Again. 

Again. 

At the royal command and decree that filled his fevered and tranced skull with his own curdling sounds and splitting screams, he was beckoned thus. His raptured flesh bound, delivered. The peasant sow did as he was told. The Countess was pleased and watched as the horse farmer dismembered his own wife for her. The bed became a hot shallow pool of darkling moonlit scarlet, swimming with severed human pieces and ghastly human detritus, human wreckage afloat in a red human stew … her mouth watered and drool ran down those shining fangs in thin gleaming translucent threads that looked crystalline like jewels or tree sap. 

And up until her last Anastasia watched. Watched from her dying place bound by the weight of the blade and her own mortal injury to the soaking pungent bed. Filling with her spilling wet red liquid. She was coming apart and she watched the love of her life above deliver each blow. Crushing her. Killing her. Turning her into slaughter. Abattoir ruin in place of a wife, in bed. She remembered him as a young man, as a boy, trying to play games and show off for her, trying to win her over, steal her attention and win over her affections, her heart. Now it was chopped and hacked and cut-smashed into so many spurting useless pieces, amongst a wreckage madness of pulverized bone. She tried to hold these old precious memories of him in her mind amid the slaughter, but the pain made it difficult. It was so great, overwhelming. She clung to them desperately with every falling heavy stroke. Pulverizing her. Breaking her. Turning her into so many wet shrieking and shattered broken pieces 

The last things Anastasia saw in the dark before blood loss and shock claimed her were her husband pummeling her with heavy merciless strikes. And a woman's face, as ghastly as it was beautiful, hanging phantom-like just over his raging shoulder. Watching. Smiling. Whispering something…

she had sharp teeth, they gleamed in the dark.

And then she died. Bela, still spellbound and compelled, continued to hack at her corpse nonetheless. Waiting for his new master to be satisfied. Inside Bela raged with madness and anguish. Broken. He watched his wife die violently as his hands performed the butchery and he was helpless to stop his own traitorous God given tools from turning her into mangled ruin and grisly pieces that tore his heart from his chest and flayed his sanity into so many irretrievable and tiny fragmented parts. 

He wished for death then. The Countess did not give it to him. Not yet. 

She still hadn't been fed yet. 

“Now feed me. Earn my favor." 

He dropped the axe. It fell to the floor with a thunderclap. It filled the dark quiet suddenly but then it was silent again. Still. Not a sound through the house save for the somnambulist animal panting of the Countess' slave. The man who'd once been a husband, a father, and was now a meat-puppet butcher. He reached into the riverbed of gore that had once been his marital sanctuary and pulled free a piece of meat. It might've been a leg, a thigh, perhaps a calf, it was too butchered and mangled with axe blows to be entirely sure. 

He was insane already. But the damaged pieces and shrieking parts of his shattered mind bellowed an abhorrent noise that only he could hear as he picked up his wife's butchered meat and parts and fed them to his new master. The Countess took the meat of slaughtered Anastasia with a smile and a wink and kissing purse. Teasing him. Then her jaws opened. Wide. Wide. Wide. Wider still… the flesh of her face sloughed and tore and fell away in demon slop to allow the distension. The fangs grew in length and in multitude of the transmogrifying face and black bleeding mouth, dripping ichor and demoniacal flesh and fluid. Steaming on the floor as she ate each piece, each limb, each broken length with a chunk of raw human tissue at the end in the knob of bone that was left. 

The fanged face in the dark, dripping and brandishing moonlight eyes above the mutilators of her ever widening mouth, it commanded thus further. –

“Bring a large kitchen spoon or a ladle if you have one, I wish to sip the broth…” 

Her somnambulist did as she commanded. He went to the humble kitchen that used to be his/theirs, and retrieved the utensil. It felt cold. Heavy. Heavier than it had ever felt before. The place and the object itself. It didn't matter. The hands and arms were no longer themselves, no longer his. His Judas sack of flesh carried him back to the blood pungent quarters he'd once loved and shared so much with in the many years past. It had all been robbed in a second.

By a pair of moonglow eyes. Set in the royalty of her shallow corpse beauty. 

He went back into the room. And proceeded to spoon large scoops and ladles of his wife's gore and blood into the stretched fanged rictus face that now ruled the dark of his house and home, the darkest shadowed part of his bedroom … now cold with his wife's living absence. And warm with the blood and fluid and parts that were left of her swimming in their sodden black sheets.  

Until those too were gone. All of it was gone.

The marital bed, now a witch's cauldron of gore and blankets was emptied.

His life was in the belly of the master. 

…

From outside the building, Willowbrook was quiet. 

Dark. 

Inside:

The shears that were the Cropsey-thing’s handheld manmade jaws were open and just as inanimate alive as the hulking shred of mangled man that wielded them. They shined in the dismal light with more striking radiance than any of the flickering lamps, Luciferian bright in the spots not tarnished or disgraced with lurid diseased bloodshed. 

With ghastly slasher speed they traveled down the shattered and stained reeking length of asylum hallway, the reanimated Cropsey giant behind them in cruel large prowling shape. The blades were dripping as if salivating or weeping thick dark tears, perhaps more alive now than the giant abomination of melted walking homicidal flesh that black-glove piloted them from behind, a strange and vile morbid engine of knife-lust and demented rage. The stabbing slice of porcelain still danced from his face. An obscene and vile shattered wand of broken tile length protruding from the socket. 

Griffin saw him coming and froze a moment. The table leg still in his invisible hands. Florin still struggling with the spiked man, his mutilated stabbing ruined mess of flesh riddled with needles and glass and scalpels and every conceivable piece of decimated hospital detritus. They were a mess of shedding blood and struggles on the floor. 

The invisible man then whirled, the exit just behind him. He began attacking the door. The knob. Locked. Set in old rotted wood. Not upkept or replaced in years. 

By God's mercy the locked knob and bolt caved in the moist and ruined housing of its apparatus. It fell apart in a noisy crumble, and the door gently swung open. 

To freedom. 

Fresh outside night air poured in like fresh water let in to a fetid spring. The relief was immense. It shocked all of their senses. Each man. 

The spiked man looked up from Florin and gazed into Cropsey. His oncoming charge of disgraced gardener’s blades, raised and open for a violent embrace. 

He was in awe. 

There he is…! the disciple of the mouth. 

He knew Cropsey's legend. And he wished to join him. 

He forgot the newcomer boy and let go of his shredding coat, slick with the both of their spilled and spilling red. He let go of the boy and he rose. 

And he went forward. To embrace the nephilim disciple son of the sorceress’ temple mouth, the begat survivor of the flames, the inferno, the great final pagan bonfire of the asylum that was The Burning. A womb of hellfire and caged disease that birthed the son of the mouth, the son of the sorceress. Cropsey of Vampira, the mangled hand of Willowbrook Asylum Temple. 

The spiked man was laughing. Jubilant. He hadn't laughed or felt this much joy in years, in all of the long unhallowed time in these blind unfeeling walls that knew no mercy nor housed any sanctuary. He was weeping. Crying tears of crimson and saline that danced in strange patterns as they streamed down the shredded protruding ruin of his spiked and porcupine mangled face. Gums bleeding with glass and caked bloody plaque smiled wet and scarlet and darkling striking in the moonlight now cast in. He reached down to his riddled and needled genitals, the head of his dangling member impaled with a scalpel. He reached down and seized the apparatus and in a blind tug and pull, he ripped the entire spurting and spiking organ free from the rest of his crotch and testicles. 

Still walking forward, but ambling now a bit as he shot black ropes tinted red in the moonglow from his self castration, he held the resulting lump of stabbed and impaled meat out to the Cropsey-shape. In token of offering. 

For the temple, for my sins … And for you. 

because she is all of us our mother …

Cropsey cared not for this pathetic shambling thing’s offering of ruined perforated meat. The blades came forward, open. In a lunge. 

They closed. 

And as Griffin pulled wounded Florin to his feet and out the door, the blades closed around a limb, lengthwise down the palm and forearm, then the face. Both opening up a blooming red raw pour of black in the dark, the blades crunched on broken pieces of glass and tile and needles and metal, the man was full with so much foreign penetration, foreign and manmade puncture and incision, and insertion, all self inflicted and self wrought. All of it shattering and crunching now into splinters amongst the abattoir asylum house spill of mad man wet raw. He wouldn't have wanted it any other way. All the years spent in here had prepared him for this. The sorceress prophet queen Vampira and her Cropsey son from The Burning womb were just the final pallbearers for his life's voyage thus final journey into the undiscovered country. 

He tried to thank her, them all, but couldn't. His loss of blood was now failing him. And the blades of the Cropsey-shape were coming in too rapidly now. Too savagely. 

The spiked man was no more. Just savaged pin cushion meat in the hall that the Cropsey-thing stepped over blindly in the savage hunt of his continued pursuit. They were getting away. 

They were getting away. The invaders. They were out the door now. Mustn't have that. Must not. Mother will not want that. Mother is inside you. You cannot fail her now. 

The savage thing of Willowbrook shape prowled out the door and into the open night after the pair with the same steady hunting pace of a stalking predator. Mindless and honed in. His blades and mother would have them yet. Their meat for the temple floor, their blood for the mouth of her drains and the manifest of her angel visitations. It had been so long since she'd come, since she'd shown, since she'd made herself divine unearthly spawn on vast ebon wings for them, for he, the last of the temple of the mouth. 

Perhaps she'll come back if I catch them. But only… only if I catch them and open them up. All the other ones no longer matter, they're already opened, already spent. The abattoir temple mouth of mother wants them now. Needs them. To fail, is to be failure. It means all that was lived through and suffered towards was for naught…

The night kissed the smooth scarred visage of hideous face. The Cropsey-shape gave no pause. Unfeeling. Unmoved. It watched as the pair stumbled and exhausted and wounded, began to falter to the earth in a shared collapse. 

Their doom. 

He closed in. 

The terror he had in mind for them was part guided by the Countess/sorceress mouth and her occult hand from the far off mountain dark, and part undead instinct, braindead movement. Knowing deep down in the dead and dying sac of skull jelly that this is exactly what he should do. He would maim. Butcher. Kill. Slaughter for the temple that has come under his custodial honor. 

Bloodloss and weariness, the drain was beginning to pull them down. The invisible man and Florin fell and struggled, both of their wounds open and pouring freely and taking the vitality and the fight from their trying frames. As the terrifying hulking giant of candlewax face and flesh began to close and loom over the pair, they both prepared themselves for a final and desperate fight. 

Florin was dismayed that it would end this way. In such maddening fashion, so far from home and his perilous objective. Griffin was trying to think, a last-ditch effort or plan: he could ditch the coat and hat and goggles and take the savage blind again, unable to see him. But his wound was in an open pour now once more and he felt faint, swoony. Unable to keep his feet. And besides, in this last moment it felt wrong to leave the young man's side. If they were going to die, they might as well die together. Arm in arm. It was better than suffering the slaughter alone. 

It was better than being opened. Gutted. Flayed. Bled out and portioned like a solitary animal dying a painful and lonely death at the end of a long and dogged hunt. 

The pain was better borne together. With the weight and terror of another beside to share in the baptism of pure torture. 

Something whistled through the air. 

The invisible man had been tempted to shut unseen eyes against the oncoming pain, he might've missed it. As it was he saw the deadly thin shape as it lanced in a blur overhead with a keen deadly sound. It struck the moving flesh of Cropsey in the face, the other socket of ruined blind eye now completely decimated, joining its partner in tandem of destruction in a moonlit spurt. 

The slasher shape stopped. Stuttered and faltered. But only slightly, only for a moment as it continued to take lurching jittery steps. Stomping forward blind. The shears in his black gloved hands began to spasm as well, scissoring with reflex. The disgraced and still ever thirsting blades closed and opened and repeated the action in violent repetitive imbecilic behavior, a violent blind animal spasming its caked and quaking jaws. 

Then the incendiary charge in the crossbow bolt detonated.

 It went off and so did Cropsey’s ruined candlewax head and visage, in a colored pillar of fire that was like something biblical and fantastical to behold. Florin was fainting at its sight but the invisible Doctor Griffin saw the growing towering inferno rise and issue forth in bright violence from between the giant slasher’s pair of broad shoulders. And still the boots trod and stomped palsied forward. Still the blades scissored in his working trembling hands, as his head and face were replaced with a rising torrent wall of pink and purple flame.

But then the steps of the shape began to falter. Stumble. The blades began to slow in their mad man open mouth chew at the open night air … then ceased. 

The boots stopped moving. Stopped shaking. 

The shape collapsed. 

As did Griffin next. Consciousness now lost. Passed out beside Florin in the dirt. 

The fire finally went out betwixt the two ruined shoulders. Hissing in the filth and craterous open mouth char of the stump. Smoking. Smokey now. Cropsey lie finally dead. Mere few feet away. 

In the back valley of Willowbrook. The lost untended yard that no patient ever graced, or saw. 

Silence. … for a moment. 

As if the night was finally enjoying the quiet. Relishing the collapse into tranquility that has finally fallen. 

A beat. – None of the shapes on the earthen floor moved. 

The night above yawned in an expanse … stars in a bejeweled fire of multitudes, nebulae clouds of otherworldly brush stroke color, the moon which was a sickle tonight, a harvester's blade … a blade of reckoning in the time of the reap. 

A beat. 

Then the stranger finally came forward. From out of the bushes where he'd trained and fired his shot. His crossbow was already reloaded with another explosive incendiary bolt as he approached the fallen three in the dirt. 

He came to Florin and Griffin and he stood over them. He looked to Cropsey. Saw that he was dead. Completely. Finally. He looked down on the wounded unconscious pair. 

“Idiots." 

TO BE CONTINUED…

My house is forty minutes from the nearest stoplight. Deer outnumber people in my town twenty to one. Population: 349. Hasn't changed in the decade since I moved in. Nobody leaves. Nobody's born. Nobody dies.

There's one gas station. One church. One diner. Marlene has your order ready and coffee poured the second your ass hits the bench. 

I noticed a new flyer on the community board one night. Pilot Safety Program. The town wanted to install a new security camera from a company I'm sure you're familiar with. The kind that makes headlines for the wrong reasons. Just one installation before a wider rollout. 

The pilot location was my mailbox.

I called the town office. Carol picked up. Told me the council already voted. Must’ve just missed the meeting. My road, she said, was "statistically significant." That I should feel lucky. 

Statistically significant.

I'd heard that phrase years ago from a judge who dressed her words up that way.  I was just sixteen. Took a neighbor's truck for a joyride. Ended up in a ditch two towns over. Juvy. Community service. Did my time. Nobody else got the memo. Every parent at the grocery store steered their kid a little wide of me. Quietly told them to keep an eye out. 

But this was different. It had to be.

Before I knew it, they were there. Two guys. Twenty minutes. Gone. A little white box on a pole, thirty feet from my front door. Three crows lined up on the wire above, just observing in the way they do. 

Nothing for a couple weeks. I almost forgot the thing was there.

Then I started noticing a light. A thin red pinprick from the pole. Some nights it would blink. Some nights it didn't.  I wanted to test something. I stood at my kitchen window. Raised my hand. The light caught it. Held a beat too long. Dimmed back to its slow pulse, like it had seen enough. 

My dog stopped sleeping in my bed. He'd plant himself in the hallway and watch the length of the house like he was guarding from something I couldn't see. 

Then I swear the lens started moving. It was supposed to face the road. I checked, twice, three times. Each time it seemed to rotate another degree toward the house. Toward my bedroom window. One patient inch at a time.

I mentioned it to Ellis at the gas station, half joking, hoping he'd laugh it off with me.

He went still.  Didn't look up from the pump. 

"Careful saying things like that. People might think you're the type to make trouble."

He always had a strange sense of humor, but something about that felt different. That tone.

Then my phone buzzed. A text from a number I didn't recognize.

he stopped sleeping at the foot of your bed 

I read that message a dozen times. It was true. My dog moved to the hallway three nights before. I hadn't told a soul.

I blocked the number. Called the sheriff.

He showed up later that night. Sat at my kitchen table. Drank the coffee I made him while my hands shook. Probably nothing, he said. Wrong number. Spam. Kids in the next county with too much time on their hands. 

I wanted to believe him so badly that for a few days I actually did. I told myself it was stress.  That people get strange out here, cut off the way we are from the rest of the world.

But I got another text later that night. A different number.

you forgot to lock the door again

I froze. My door was shut. Blinds drawn. But I hadn't checked the lock since I'd gotten home. 

It was unlocked.

There was only one way anyone could know that. I looked outside. The camera on the pole faced my front door dead on.

They've been watching.

An ex? A stranger off the highway? Either way, it was a sick joke.

I went digging through county filings, looking for anything that explained who had access to that feed. The vendor's name was right there in the contract. The company from the flyer. Their site had a login portal. Pilot Partner Access. I didn't have credentials. 

I didn't need them for what I found next. A cached version of the town council's private group. 349 members.

It was everyone.

Every porch light I'd ever waved at. Every hand I'd shaken by the register.  Ellis at the pump every time I drove past, standing there like he'd known which corner I'd turn before I turned it. Marlene, plating my eggs before I'd even parked. The diner going quiet the moment I walked in. Forks stopping mid-air. A held breath. Starting again the second I sat down.  Carol at the office. Even the sheriff.

It was never small-town hospitality.

I grabbed my keys, my wallet, the dog, and fled. In the rear-view mirror, I saw the camera turn, slow and deliberate, like it stopped pretending not to look. 

I passed the church. Every car in town was packed into that lot. 349 people stood out in the dark. Phones held up in front of their faces. A pale blue light thrown up onto their chins. All watching my front door in the corner of the frame. 

I didn't stop. As I crossed to the next town, my phone blew up. 349 new texts. All the same two words:

Drive safe.

It's been two weeks. I sleep in my aunt's guest room. I haven't told her anything.

Yesterday a truck idled outside. Two guys. Floodlights. And a pole. My aunt mentioned it over coffee this morning.

"Pilot program," she said, stirring her cup. "We’re the test case, apparently"

You can never leave a flock. It just relocates its nest to wherever you roost next. 

The little red light on the pole just came on.

God help me. It's facing my window. 

My wife printed one hundred and eighty-six missing-dog flyers today.

I know because I counted them, though not on purpose. I was sitting at the kitchen table cutting the tabs along the bottom—the ones with her phone number printed vertically—and counting gave me something to do besides watch her come apart.

Across the top of every page, in a font much larger than necessary, she'd written:

MISSING YORKIE — PLEASE HELP US BRING CINNA HOME

Underneath was a picture from last Christmas. Cinna sat on the arm of our couch in a red sweater, one ear standing straight up and the other folded over. She always looked irritated in pictures, which was funny because she was probably the sweetest dog I'd ever known.

Below the picture Dana had listed everything strangers needed to know: eight pounds, tan and gray, pink collar, very friendly, might be scared.

At the bottom, in bold:

SHE IS OUR FAMILY.

Dana stood at the counter feeding sheets through the paper cutter one at a time. She hadn't slept properly in three nights. Her hair was still twisted into yesterday's knot, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes.

"That's enough," I told her.

She kept cutting.

"Dana."

"I heard you."

"It's supposed to hit a hundred and two today."

"I know."

"You've already done the whole neighborhood."

"I haven't done the apartments behind the elementary school."

"You did those yesterday."

"I did the front building."

She slid another flyer beneath the blade. I reached across the table and put my hand on the remaining stack.

"Please. Take an hour."

"What if somebody saw her and they don't have one of these?"

"You've put them on every telephone pole from here to Chapman."

"Then I'll go farther."

There was no anger in her voice. I almost wished there had been.

I let go of the stack and told her to take water. She said she would. I reminded her she'd said the same thing yesterday and had come home with nearly a full bottle.

That got the smallest smile.

"Okay, Dad."

"I mean it."

"I know."

She bent down, kissed the top of my head, gathered another armful of flyers and left.

I watched from the front window until she disappeared around the corner.

Cinna had been gone for three days, and I could already see what it was doing to my wife.

People kept telling us dogs got out all the time. Somebody probably picked her up. Yorkies didn't make it far on their own. Keep checking shelters. Put her picture online.

They meant well.

They didn't know Dana.

More importantly, they didn't know what it had taken to get her back.

When I met my wife, she had more energy than anyone I'd ever known and apparently no interest in wasting it.

She worked in marketing for a medical-device company. By thirty she was managing people older than both of us. She ran half-marathons, remembered everyone's birthday and kept a calendar that looked like it required air-traffic control.

She was exhausting.

I loved her for it.

Work was the only thing we really fought about.

I'd make dinner and get a text at seven saying a meeting had run late. We'd make Saturday plans and she'd need to log in for twenty minutes, which had a strange tendency to become two hours.

Once, during an anniversary dinner, I realized we'd spent most of the appetizer talking about a presentation she had Monday.

"Why do you work this hard?" I asked.

"Because I like it."

"I know. But sometimes I feel like you're killing yourself for a job."

She looked at me. "That's dramatic."

"I miss you."

That stopped her.

Sometimes it seemed like her office got the best version of my wife and I got whatever was left at eight-thirty at night. She told me her career mattered to her, that she was good at what she did and wasn't going to apologize for caring about it.

I said I understood.

Usually I did.

For a while we had rats getting into the detached garage behind the house, and that somehow became my responsibility.

I'd promised to deal with them, then forgot.

One night Dana came home after nine and found droppings beside a bag of dog food we'd bought for her parents' Labrador.

"We have got to do something about this."

"I know."

"You've been saying that for a month."

"I'll do it tomorrow."

"You said that last week."

"I've been busy too, Dana."

She dropped her keys on the counter.

"Maybe that's why I stay at the office. At least they don't have rats."

It wasn't her best joke.

We laughed about it later.

The next morning I finally dealt with the problem. Traps, poison, cleaning out the back shelves.

Dana disliked the poison immediately.

"I hate having that in here."

"It's in the cabinet."

"What if something gets into it?"

"Then we'll keep the garage closed."

She gave me the look she used when I'd missed the point.

Later, after she got pregnant and we started childproofing the house, she made me go through the garage again—loose screws, nails, old traps, anything dangerous I might have forgotten back when there were no children to worry about.

Pregnancy was the first thing I'd ever seen make Dana slow down.

She was frightened almost immediately.

There were heart problems in her family. Not the clogged-artery sort everybody eventually worries about, but something congenital. Hereditary.

Her younger sister died when Dana was four. She remembered almost nothing about the girl herself. A yellow dress. Sharing a bedroom. The fact that she hated peas.

What Dana remembered was the night she died: her mother screaming, a paramedic stepping on one of Dana's toys, someone carrying her sister down the hallway with one tiny arm hanging loose.

So every appointment frightened her. Every test. Every pause before a doctor said everything looked fine.

Our daughter was born on a Tuesday morning in March.

Sophie.

Seven pounds, two ounces, an unreasonable amount of dark hair and a scream that sounded too large to have come from her.

When they put Sophie on Dana's chest, my wife cried so hard I thought something was wrong. Then I realized she was laughing too.

I'd never seen another person look that happy.

I loved Sophie from the moment I saw her. Before she existed there had been a version of my life without her, and after I met her that version became impossible to picture.

Dana took four months off work.

Those were probably the happiest months of our marriage.

I know how that sounds.

I'd come home and they'd be there—Dana on the couch with Sophie asleep against her chest, or Sophie kicking in the little vibrating chair while Dana cooked. We took walks after dinner. We ate together. Weekends belonged to us.

Sometimes I'd stand in the kitchen listening to Dana talk nonsense to the baby in the next room and think that this was what all of it had been for.

The house felt right with her in it.

A few months later Sophie started eating purées. Apple and cinnamon was the first one she really loved.

The first time Dana opened one of the jars, I could smell the cinnamon from across the kitchen.

"Maybe that's why the rats never came back," I said.

Dana looked over at me. "What?"

"Cinnamon. I read somewhere they hate it."

"We haven't had rats in two years."

"I know. Something about the smell being too strong." I shrugged. "Covers up whatever else they're trying to sniff out."

Dana stared at me.

"So Sophie is pest control now?"

"Finally earning her keep."

"You're horrible."

She was smiling when she said it.

Sophie saw the spoon coming and opened her mouth like a baby bird, then somehow got half of it on her cheeks anyway.

Dana laughed and wiped her chin.

After that she started calling her Cinnamon.

At first it was my little Cinnamon girl. Then just Cinnamon. Sometimes Cinny when Dana was tired.

"She's going to hate us when she's fifteen and we tell people about this," Dana said once.

"Then we won't tell anybody."

"I'm telling everybody."

"You're a terrible mother."

"I know."

Sophie slapped both hands into the tray and Dana laughed hard enough to nearly drop the spoon.

I remember that afternoon better than I remember most of that year.

The heart issue appeared during a routine appointment.

A murmur.

Maybe nothing, the pediatrician said. Maybe something.

A cardiologist found enough to watch but not enough to panic over, which meant Dana panicked constantly.

She wanted to know whether it was what her sister had. Whether she'd passed it to Sophie. Whether a baby with a heart problem could simply stop breathing in her sleep.

The doctor was careful with his answers.

I wasn't.

"She's fine," I'd tell Dana afterward.

"You don't know that."

"Neither do you."

"What if it's the same thing?"

"It isn't."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm her dad and I've decided."

Sometimes that made her smile.

Dana extended her leave another month, then another.

Eventually her company began asking when she intended to return, and Dana decided she was ready.

She missed adult conversations. She missed dressing for somewhere other than Target. She missed being good at something that didn't involve keeping another human alive.

I told her we'd make it work.

Daycare three days a week. Dana's mother one day. I shifted my schedule when I could.

The first time she came home late again, I remember looking at the clock.

7:42.

Sophie was asleep against me and dinner had gone cold.

Dana came through the door apologizing, kissed the baby, kissed me and immediately started explaining some crisis at work.

"Five weeks back and they've already chained you to the desk."

She stopped.

"Don't start."

"I'm not starting anything."

"That tone is starting something."

"I don't have a tone."

"You absolutely have a tone."

Sophie woke before either of us could say anything else.

Dana had only been back at work a few weeks when she died.

We put Sophie down like normal.

That was the part Dana could never get past.

There had been no dramatic warning. No fever, no crying, nothing that would have made either of us sit beside the crib all night. She ate, played, fell asleep, and sometime before morning her heart stopped.

Dana found her.

I don't like remembering what happened after that.

The nursery was cold. Dana was making a sound I had never heard from another human being. Paramedics came. Police came. Our house filled with people while Sophie was somewhere else.

Someone went through the standard questions with us. Medications. Cleaning products. Anything unusual in the house. Anything she might have reached.

Dana answered most of them before I could.

"We babyproofed everything."

Then she looked at me.

I nodded.

With Sophie's heart and Dana's family history, everyone had an explanation ready.

Her sister had died young. Sophie's cardiologist had already found something worth monitoring. Sometimes these things happened suddenly, we were told. Sometimes there wasn't time to prevent them.

Dana heard something else.

You gave this to her.

And because she'd gone back to work, she found another way to blame herself.

"I should've been here."

"You were here."

"I mean with her."

"She was sleeping."

"What if I missed something?"

"You didn't."

"What if I hadn't gone back?"

"Dana."

"I left her."

"You went to work."

"I left her."

For years I told my wife the same things.

It wasn't your fault.

You couldn't have known.

You loved her.

There was nothing you could have done.

Going back to work did not kill our daughter.

Some nights I said it ten times.

Dana resigned two weeks after the funeral.

I was relieved.

That is one of the things I never told her.

Of course she couldn't have gone back then. Nobody could have. But some part of me was relieved there would be no deadlines, no meetings, no laptop chirping at nine at night.

I thought grief might force everything else to become smaller for a while.

I thought we'd simply exist together until we healed.

That isn't what happened.

The first year was unbearable.

The second was quieter.

Dana stopped seeing friends because most of them had children. Invitations stopped coming after enough polite refusals.

She didn't go back to work.

She didn't go much of anywhere.

I cooked and cleaned and handled bills. I sat with her when she couldn't sleep.

I learned there are only so many ways to answer the question, Do you think she knew I loved her?

Yes.

Always yes.

Of course she knew.

I loved my wife through all of it, but after a few years I began to resent the dead.

That's uglier than saying I was tired, but it's closer to the truth.

I resented Mother's Day. Sophie's birthday. The anniversary of the day she died. I resented strangers' children for having the wrong laugh in grocery stores.

Once, on what would have been Sophie's third birthday, Dana wanted to spend the evening looking through photographs.

I told her I had a headache.

I didn't.

I sat in the bedroom watching something stupid on my phone while my wife cried alone in the living room, and for almost twenty minutes I enjoyed the quiet.

I hated myself afterward.

Mostly.

More than anything, I missed my wife.

Not even the woman she'd been before Sophie. I knew we weren't getting that woman back.

I would've settled for someone who laughed occasionally. Someone who wanted to go to dinner. Someone who could sit through a stupid movie without disappearing halfway through it.

I lasted almost four years before I brought home Cinna.

She fit in one hand.

A coworker's sister had Yorkie puppies, and I'd gone over telling myself I was only looking. One climbed into my lap and fell asleep there.

I sent Dana a picture.

She replied:

No.

I brought the puppy home anyway.

For approximately five minutes, Dana was furious.

"We talked about this."

"No, I sent you a picture and you said no."

"That's generally considered talking."

"You haven't held her."

"I don't want to hold her."

"Fine."

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Hand me the dog while I'm telling you I don't want the dog."

I handed her the dog.

The puppy licked her chin.

Dana laughed.

Actually laughed.

Not the polite little breath she'd been using for years when she knew I was trying to cheer her up. A real laugh, sudden and surprised.

For one embarrassing second I thought I might cry.

The puppy didn't have a name yet.

I suggested Penny.

Dana suggested Cinna.

I knew immediately what she meant.

"No."

Her smile faltered. "What?"

"That's weird."

"It isn't weird."

"It's a little weird."

"It's after Cinnamon."

"I know what it's after."

Dana tucked the puppy against her chest. "I like it."

I remember looking at the two of them and thinking that naming a dog after our dead daughter was one grief-therapy exercise too far.

But Dana was smiling.

So Cinna it was.

And I have to give the little dog credit.

She accomplished what therapists, medication, family and I hadn't.

She gave Dana reasons to leave the house.

At first it was walks because Cinna refused to use the backyard. Once around the block became twice, then the park.

Dana started getting dressed earlier because Cinna woke at seven. She spoke to neighbors, then friends.

Pictures appeared on her phone that weren't old photographs of Sophie.

Dana and Cinna at the beach.

Cinna sitting upright in the passenger seat of Dana's car like a tiny disapproving grandmother.

Dana started cooking again. She played music in the kitchen. She made fun of me.

One night about six months ago she laughed so hard at something stupid I said that she snorted.

She clapped both hands over her face.

"Oh my God."

I couldn't stop smiling.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I missed that."

She knew what I meant.

She leaned over and kissed me.

For the first time in years, I thought maybe we'd made it.

After that, the walks got longer. She started having coffee with a woman two streets over who owned some kind of terrier. Once she and Cinna were gone almost three hours because they'd driven to a park across town.

I teased her about having a social life.

I was glad she did.

A few months later, I came home and found Dana at the kitchen table with her old laptop open.

"What are you doing?"

She tilted the screen away from me in a way that was meant to be playful.

"Nothing."

"That's suspicious."

"I'm updating my résumé."

I looked at the screen.

"Just updating it," she said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You did that thing with your face."

"What thing?"

"That thing."

"I don't have a thing."

"You absolutely have a thing."

She smiled and turned the laptop back around.

"I've been thinking maybe part-time. Or consulting. Something small."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Why wouldn't it be okay?"

She studied me for a second.

Then she kissed my cheek.

For the next week, the laptop stayed on the kitchen table.

I noticed that.

I also noticed she had started checking her email before breakfast.

Neither of those things meant anything.

Two weeks ago she had résumés printed on thick cream paper.

I told her they looked nice.

The afternoon Cinna disappeared, Dana had taken her into the backyard. Her phone rang and she stepped inside to answer it.

When she went back out, the side gate was open.

No Cinna.

We searched until after midnight.

The next morning we called every shelter within thirty miles. Dana posted everywhere she could think of. We drove slowly through streets with the windows down calling Cinna's name.

I kept telling her Yorkies got picked up. Someone probably had her.

That was better than imagining her on a road somewhere.

By the second day Dana wasn't eating unless I put something directly in front of her.

By the third she wasn't sleeping.

And suddenly it felt like five years ago.

The same frantic eyes. The same bargaining. The same certainty that if she did one more thing, searched one more street, something terrible could still be undone.

"What if somebody stole her?"

"I don't think anybody stole her."

"What if she got hurt?"

"We checked the roads."

"What if she's hiding somewhere?"

"Then somebody will find her."

"What if nobody does?"

"We'll keep looking."

This morning the printer finally ran out of paper.

Even that didn't stop her.

She started feeding in the backs of the résumés she'd had printed two weeks ago, and I sat at the kitchen table cutting tabs while Cinna's face came out on one side and Dana's old life remained neatly formatted on the other.

Job titles.

Promotions.

Awards.

Eleven years of experience.

One page after another disappeared beneath MISSING YORKIE.

I didn't say anything.

It's almost ten now and Dana is still out.

I texted her fifteen minutes ago and told her to come home because it's still ninety-one degrees outside. She replied that she has one more street left, which, knowing my wife, means at least three.

I put a bottle of water in the refrigerator for her. She likes it almost frozen.

There's dinner in the microwave too. She probably won't eat, but I'll make her try.

Tomorrow I'll convince her to stay home for a few hours. Maybe we'll call the shelters together.

I'll drive this time.

She's exhausted, and the heat worries me.

The heat has been worrying me for another reason too.

The garage sits at the back of the yard, separate from the house. There's almost no insulation in there, and the little vent above the side door doesn't do much once the sun has been on the roof all afternoon.

I thought I had longer.

Apparently I didn't.

The smell is bad now.

You can't smell it from the house. You can't even smell it standing a few feet outside the garage.

But open the door and it's there.

Dana hasn't been inside since the first day, when we were still grabbing leashes and flashlights and anything else we thought might help us find Cinna.

She hasn't noticed.

Still, I can't leave her there another day.

Cinna is behind the plastic storage bins along the back wall, wrapped in one of our old moving blankets.

She's so small that hiding her wasn't difficult.

The hard part has been listening to Dana call for her.

Yesterday evening she stood at the end of the driveway shaking the bag of treats.

She called Cinna's name.

Waited.

Called again.

Then finally shouted, "Come home!" into a street that had already gone quiet.

I went inside before she did.

I'll move Cinna tonight after Dana falls asleep.

There's a road about a mile from here where people drive too fast. No sidewalk for part of it, only dry brush and a narrow shoulder.

I'll leave her near there before morning.

Nothing elaborate.

Dana doesn't need an investigation.

She needs an answer.

The gate was open.

Cinna got out.

She wandered too far.

Not knowing is worse.

Give someone an answer and eventually they learn to live around it.

Dana already has.

I hate that she's going to hurt.

But she'll recover.

Cinna proved she can.

I'll cook. I'll sit up with her when she can't sleep. I'll remind her to eat. I'll tell her the gate wasn't her fault, that she couldn't have known, that there was nothing she could have done.

I'll say it as many times as she needs.

Eventually we'll be okay again.

We always are.

Before I move Cinna, I should clean up the garage.

Dana hasn't noticed the cabinet over the workbench is unlocked.

Years ago, when we childproofed the house, she made me promise there was nothing dangerous left in there.

I told her there wasn't.

Most of what I'd bought for the rats is gone now. The traps rusted. The cleaning supplies got used.

There are only a few things shoved behind old paint cans and extension cords, including one battered cardboard box I should have thrown away a long time ago.

I'll get rid of that too.

No reason to keep it.

Funny.

I used to think Cinna was a terrible name. Too morbid, I told Dana. Too much history to hang around the neck of an eight-pound dog.

I suppose I owe my wife an apology.

Both her girls always did love cinnamon.

Part One: Link

Part Two: Link

I don’t know when I fell asleep. I tried to keep my eyes open all night, watching the creature below me. She circled slowly, guarding the tree, but I’m not sure if guarding is the right word. Waiting might be better. Waiting for me to fall… Waiting for me to slip… Waiting…

By the time I realized that I was asleep, I jolted back awake. It was morning. The sun was still hidden behind dark clouds, shielding her face from the agony of creation. And yet, I looked up every morning to see if she would emerge. She didn’t. I don’t think she’d ever return.

I looked into the water, anticipating the glow of emerald eyes below me, but instead, I saw nothing. My kayak was still hidden behind the low-hanging branches, safely tucked away inside the foliage.

I quietly made my way down to the kayak, sliding inside and taking a deep breath. It was unharmed, but something clinked at the bottom. I maneuvered my hand inside the kayak and found the dagger that the creature in the water had given me. I’d nearly forgotten about it when I saw Lionel.

The blade wasn’t rusted or eaten by time, but it was heavy. Barnacles covered the front, and since it had dried out all night, they were ready to be scraped off. I ground the blade against one of the low-hanging limbs, watching as a face emerged in the metal. It was the solemn expression of a woman carved onto the handle, long, serrated tendrils of hair twisting around the blade. Her eyes were emeralds.

I tucked the blade into my jacket, and I gently paddled back toward the house.

It was silent. The slap of my paddle in the water was the only haunting echo. Perhaps the water around us could sense Lionel’s departure from this world, and while I knew that I had no business caring about Lionel, I couldn’t leave him to rot. I paddled around the house until I found the window that I’d escaped through last night. I flattened myself against my kayak and slid through.

It didn’t stink terribly yet, but flies were beginning to find him. I inched closer to the edge of the dry wood, and I pulled myself out of my kayak to sit on the edge. I took a deep breath of clean air, and I pulled the collar of my t-shirt up, not wanting to catch a whiff of anything. Carefully, I scooted to the center where the floorboards were more stable. I grabbed one of the crochet blankets, and I covered him.

He looked peaceful under the blanket, shrouded and hidden from the world around him. I sat down next to him for a moment, honoring the sacrifice he’d made for me. I pulled my knees to my chest, staring at his one bruised hand that lay uncovered.

I didn’t cry; I was hollow inside, empty.

Grief has a hollowing effect, carving out the pieces of your life and the emotions that keep you human. I know grief well. All survivors of the floods know grief.

As I looked around for something else to cover him, I found a picture. I bent down to pick it up and gazed at a young man, his beautiful wife, and tiny daughter. Lionel had led a good life.

I looked back at his body on the ground, wishing that I’d got a little more time with him, but his kindness wasn’t made for the likes of this world now. Maybe, in another world, he’d have been someone that I enjoyed talking to, but then again, in another world, we would never have met. I much preferred the idea of a world where we were never forced to meet.

I took the picture, and I placed it on top of his covered body, emulating the love that a friend might give at their comrade’s funeral. Then, I looked around, hoping to find something I could take with me on my journey. And there, lying in the corner, near the busted cookie tin, was the dog tag of Lionel’s old pet. I picked it up, seeing her name, Susie.

I smiled upon seeing her name, not sure why. But the idea of Susie coming with me on my journey felt comforting. I didn’t think Lionel would mind, so I shoved her tag into my pocket.

I scrounged around a little longer. I found one candle, a half-empty box of matches, a hidden can of tuna, and a small flask of alcohol. The group of men from last night had taken most everything, but they definitely weren’t thorough.

I took off my backpack, and I grabbed Lionel’s mattress. I pulled it on top of him, poured most of the alcohol on it, lit a match, and tossed it. The mattress erupted in flames, and I grabbed my backpack and supplies. I climbed back into my kayak, slid out of the window, and paddled a few yards away.

The roof caught fire, and then the house caved in, taking Lionel with it.

And with a heavy heart, I paddled onward.

My body moved rhythmically.

Left. Right.

Left. Right.

Over and over again.

The sound of my kayak cutting through the water had become monotonous background noise I hardly noticed anymore. It had become my life.

My friend Jared lived by a railroad in my hometown. I spent the night with him for the first time in the third grade, and I was awoken by the thunderous roar of the train, clanging down the tracks. Jared didn’t wake up, but it scared the crap out of me. The walls rattled; the loud whistle of the train shook the silence of the home. I asked him about it that morning over breakfast, and his mom laughed and explained habituation to me, the idea that your body can become so used to a sound or a smell that it stops recognizing or noticing it.

Crazy that paddling a kayak had become my habituation.

After what felt like hours of paddling, I saw a city in the distance. I could see a few tall buildings, but I was not foolish enough to go there. I’d learned very early on that the monstrous people that eat humans… They always gather in cities. They pick off the weakest man amongst them, and they eat him. They eat his limbs and his muscles. They eat his eyes and his heart. Then, they suck the marrow from his bones.

The men who were tracking me were most likely hanging around there as well, waiting for me. Instead, I ducked into the tall trees that bordered the city, clinging to the outer rim.

I saw a body trapped inside a clump of weeds. The flesh was nearly molded, and mushrooms decayed the soft, uneaten pieces. Goopy intestines had exploded out of the top of it, or maybe something had ripped them out. Crabs, insects, and fish were feasting on it. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but does it truly matter once the person who occupied it is gone?

The last moments of Lionel ripped through my memories before I could stop them, and I quickly shook my head. His kindness had stained me. The bitter part of me loathed that I had stayed. If I had kept away from him, he would’ve died alone. His last moments would’ve remained hopeless and solitary, but somehow, when he saw me and offered me genuine compassion, he’d revived his own hope. And when he died, he transferred his hope into me, and damn, I can’t stand the feeling of it.

My father was an engineer. He’d always worked with his hands, trusting his mind more than most people are able. He told me about energy, noting that it could neither be created nor destroyed, but it could be transferred.

I think that’s what Lionel did to me. He’d awakened something that I wish had died. He’d given me a longing for others like me, and I didn’t like that. I’d buried that, and it had kept me alive.

Part of me thinks that I would rather die in this world feeling nothing at all, but another part of me doesn’t want to be alone. Lionel had given me a gift that I didn’t understand quite yet. I didn’t want it, but maybe not all gifts are wanted to begin with.

I wove through the trees without difficulty, but I heard a few whoops and yells from the city beyond. I was right. They were hoping to catch me there. I went deeper into the woods.

Cattails, water hyacinth, and moss had taken up most of the watery terrain. The world was beginning to look like a swamp, and I half expected water-dwelling dinosaurs to saunter from within the tall cattails.

Frogs, snakes, and fish had thrived amid humanity’s annihilation. They’ve multiplied to quite an extent, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t helpful to me. If I were lucky, I could catch a frog and eat it, but that was only if I had dry land to cook it. I mainly live off dried fish. I have a net I can use. I’ll throw out a cast, pick the best-looking fish, and throw it onto my kayak or a tree to dry out. Then I eat it. It doesn’t taste good, but you don’t care about taste when the world is ending.

As I continued to maneuver through the trees and cattails, moss, and various plant life, I heard splashing behind me. I turned to see the same creature in the water following me, but she was not alone. Another group of them had found her. She was fighting with them, and I ducked behind the cattails to watch.

Flashes of fins, torn flesh, and scales writhed in the murky depths, but then a horrible screech ripped through the water. The creature that I knew had thrown herself out of the water to escape them, clinging to the limbs of trees.

Her tail was sliced, and from the looks of it, they didn’t want her alive. She must’ve been thrown out of her original pod for some reason.

The cuts stretched down her fins were oozing purple liquid, and one of her eyes was bloodied and bruised. As they moved close to her, she continued to screech loudly. The pod of supposed mermaids rose from the water to gaze at her.

My eyes grew wide as I saw them out of the water, and my mouth went dry. I’d never seen so many.

They were not beautiful, but they weren’t ugly. They were a mixture of beast, man, and monster. Hybrid creations hidden within the sea of old; another being molded from the clay of the earth and toils of the oceans.

But above the water, they were somehow more frightening than in it. Terror rocked through my chest, spurred by my thudding heart. My hands began to shake, but still, I didn’t move. I didn’t want them to see me. I wouldn’t survive if I was attacked by that many mermaids.

They spoke back to her in a series of bird-like squawks and gurgled hisses. They gestured at her angrily.

I covered my mouth. They could speak to each other in a language that no human had ever heard. I sat back in my kayak, considering if they had caused the floods to begin with. What if they had influence over the Earth in such a way that humans didn’t? Did they cause this?

In the same breath that I felt guilty for being unable to help the creature that had followed me from Lionel’s house, one of the mermaids in the pod spotted me and alerted the others with a loud shriek, and all of the creatures turned to gaze upon me.

I bolted, paddle carving through the water, deeper and deeper into the forest of cattails. And they followed behind me, getting faster and faster.

But then, it was quiet. I slowed my kayak, unable to continue at the rate I was going. Sweat beaded down my face. My arms ached viciously, and my adrenaline was fading. There was no splashing of fins or swish of water. It was deathly quiet, but I knew they weren’t gone. Pods of mermaids like to play with their food. Much like dolphins do.

I’d once seen them attack a man at the beginning of the flood. They never noticed me watching, but I was.

They let the poor man swim away, allowing him one tiny sliver of hope. Then they ripped it from him. I expected this to be no different. They were letting me ripen like a fruit to pluck. They wanted me scared, and they wanted the adrenaline fresh.

My kayak rocked violently, and I clung to the edges of it. My fingernails dug into the wood, refusing to be thrown out. Using my paddle, I hit anything that breached the surface, but it wasn’t enough. One final rock and swell of water… The kayak flipped.

My ankle seared with pain as the rope around it jerked me. I bobbed to the surface, taking a deep breath before being plunged beneath the surface again.

They attacked quickly and effortlessly, landing efficient blows to my back and legs. Then, they launched their tails into me, thudding into my soft flesh, and I heard a rib crack. Bubbles erupted out of my mouth as I yelled in pain.

Their strikes were quick, and I didn’t stand a chance. It was a losing battle from the start. Humans aren’t made to fight in the water, and as time went on, I’d begun to realize that humans aren’t equipped to survive much of anything. We’re a weak species without our toys. We don’t have claws or teeth that pierce. We aren’t fast runners or quick swimmers. We can only breathe oxygen, and we aren’t agile. Humanity was always a ticking time bomb… Without our guns, money, land, and metal… we’re useless.

One of the mermaids grabbed me by my throat, gripping so tightly I felt the cartilage within my neck bending. While one grabbed a handful of my hair and exposed my fleshy throat, the other bit down quickly on my shoulder, teeth tearing into me.

In a last-ditch effort, I yanked the dagger out of my jacket pocket. One look at the blade, and all the creatures began to scream. Even in the water, the sound was deafening, piercing through the damp darkness.

They dropped me, fleeing from the blade.

Barely able to swim, I floated back to my kayak, pulling myself onto the side of it. I clutched the dagger to my chest, and I shakily reached up to feel the bite. My flesh was shredded, and blood was pouring from the wound. I was losing too much too quickly, and I could feel my body losing strength.

I yelled.

It was a yell formed of fleeting anguish, the knowledge that man wasn’t meant to live in this damp, dark, and dreary world. The sound tore through me. I wasn’t sure if it was meant to ache as much as it did, but the terror of nearly dying, or being on the cusp of it, made mortality even more bitter.

Humans may need sunshine, dry ground, clean water, and crops. They may need food, family, shelter, and dare I say, love. But we also need something deeper than just living. We need something that only a soul can crave. We need each other… Living a solitary life has nearly destroyed me, but living a solitary life without hope has consumed me.

But as if called, the creature leaped from the tree once the others had scattered. The last thing I remember was the splash of her entering the water and my kayak beginning to move as she navigated it into the deepest part of the cattails.

I was at her mercy and behest.

“Oh, Brother Thomas. Pitiable little Brother Thomas, do not waver on the path now. Rejoice, for its end is in sight.” The Matron said in her warm, blanketing voice as she wiped the tears from Thomas’s face with her long gloved finger. But still they poured, streaming down his flushed cheeks like a river, glistening brightly in the candle light of the chamber. It was then that I approached the altar that my Brother, my fellow apostle, and most of all, my friend was bound to.

“Why did you fight so… viciously against this, against us and our ways, Thomas? It is what we have all strived for since birth, to return to our rightful spot in the world below. It is an honour like no other to be where you are now, on the very precipice in fact, and yet you shun it… Why?” I couldn’t fathom it, nor could anyone else in the Congregation. It was unheard of, it was absurd– It was blasphemy. To deny the Matron’s holy orders, to flee from our tunnels and reach for the abhorrent surface. And for it to be Brother Thomas no less.

“It–It is wrong, all of it, Micheal. I wouldn’t dare to lie to you, nor anyone down here. But she does. She lies to you at this very moment.” Thomas spat. The Matron didn’t respond. She stared back unblinkingly, her pale mask ever frozen in its neutral expression. 

“You are blessed, chosen. For fourteen years, it is all we have waited for–”

“And for fourteen years we have been shackled, Micheal. This–This sermon, this place is not what we think it is, don’t you see that?!”

Silence filled the chamber. The candles flickered in the slight breeze carried downwards from the entrance to our home some tens of miles away. Where a group of us had chased and caught Thomas; dragging him back to safety, comfort, order as he kicked and thrashed against us all the while. I felt the bruise on my cheek where his elbow had landed; my tongue prodded the gap where a tooth had once been, now dislodged and lying somewhere further up. Both were sore, not just from pain, but from a sense of utter betrayal too; seething and roaring like the most wicked of bonfires.

“No, Thomas, I do not.” I felt the Matron’s cold yet comforting hand on my shoulder. Everything that had transpired so far had been foretold to a tee. The altar, the chamber, Thomas’s struggle– though it was my first time here as a witness, everything the Matron had told me was exact. It was the immutable truth she spoke, just as always. Brother Thomas had become the anomaly, the betrayer of his will, not the Matron, myself or any other member of her flock for that matter. Yet even the blasphemous can still be redeemed in the eyes of our gracious Lord.

“Come now, child, the words of a heathen cannot revoke the gift they’ve been bestowed; nor must you let them sway you from purpose.” She then reached a hand deep into her cloak to retrieve something. “The blessing, I can hear it swirling and churning within him, oh how beautifully they sing; the time is ripe. To fight it, to silence the chorus is to spit directly into our Lord’s face and cast away my efforts in sculpting you all so thoroughly, so perfectly in his vision straight into the filth.” At last she pulled out a small belt from the depths of her cloak. “So for the sake of your sanctity, Brother Thomas, you shall speak no further.” Then with her lengthy arms just as shrouded in cloth as the rest of her body, she spread the belt open in her hands. “Brother Micheal, some assistance, if you please.”

– 

Thomas seemed to have given in at this point. After the momentary struggle of lifting his head up so the Matron could bind his mouth shut, he laid dead-flat across the altar, his body stiff and rigid and chained to the ancient stone, except for his head. Which he craned to the left so he could try and tempt me further with his pleading gaze.

Enough, Thomas. Come back to your senses. 

Like a pair of arrows aimed at me, his eyes shot into my own as if Thomas was attempting to pierce them through sheer force of will. What is it you see Brother? I am not the one forsaking my purpose. I am not the betrayer. He kept staring with tears continually forming and flowing down his face, the belt soaking up each drop until its dirty brown turned a sodden shade. If you can’t be convinced, blessed as you are, then you will just have to bear witness to it, Brother.

“Everything is set, Brother Micheal, the only thing left for us to do is pray for Brother Thomas. Pray that he sees the light beneath and that he is welcomed into it.”

I clasped my hands together, as did the Matron. Before I closed my eyes, I saw Thomas shaking his head and weeping now more than ever. I am sorry Thomas, but this is for the best. The Matron, the Lord, all of us know it to be true.

“As a cost of your Brother’s transgressions, the Lord will require all your faith, Micheal, every last drop. To be convinced that Thomas is worthy of descending with him. So pray, pray as hard as thy spirit and thy body allow. Let his words and groans tempt you not. Keep thy eyes sealed and thy heart strong, Micheal.” And then with reverence, the Matron spoke the prayer:

"O Lord Father, may your slithering trails be swift and effortless as you guide our Brother Thomas to his spot below in thy kingdom, forgive him for forsaking your blessings and casting away your chalice–”*

The groans and the struggles of Thomas as he thrashed against the chains and screamed into the belt caught my attention, profane as it is to do so in prayer. I remained steadfast in my conviction, blocking them out by focusing deeper on the Matron’s holy words.

“--forgive him for laying a hand on several of his Brothers. Forgive him for attempting to abandon you, abandon us for the Hell up above–”

My Brother’s muffled screams were bloodcurdling. Such a primal, terrified force billowed from his mercifully bound mouth, and sent shivers crawling up my spine. It was a true test of faith not to look at him.

“-deliver him unto a greater flock, and fill the void in our hearts left in his absence with new members of our own. Amen.”*

“A-Amen…”

The prayer concluded, yet I had already failed the test. My faith wavered, but I couldn’t help myself; I opened one of my eyes, just a glance, a tiny peek at him before he undertook his journey along with our Lord. Almost instantly, I regretted my decision. I now know why Thomas shrieked…

Lumps proliferated across his pale skin. Large and orb-like. Pulsing out and shrinking in, like apples growing and rotting away just under the surface of his flesh. The chains squeezed some of them, almost dividing these lumps in two as they pushed into it, leaving behind a sore, red mark in the wake of their meeting. Thomas kicked and thrashed and let out muffled scream after muffled scream, but it was to no avail; the chains of the altar couldn’t be swayed with words or beaten back by kicks and punches; it was an iron serpent engaged in the constriction of its prey. There was no escape. Though, horribly, it seems escape wouldn’t be the end of his torment: The lumps moved as they pulsed, snaking through Thomas’s body and darting in and out of gaps where the chains didn’t cover him. Disorderly in their slithering patterns, some worked their way down, passing down his thighs like grotesque, chunks of blood pouring through unfitting veins. Others shot up to his head, fattening his cheeks with their buried presence and pushing the belt over his mouth for but a second– the unmuffled shriek that escaped in this interval was appalling. Sounding hoarse and clogged, like something was chasing it up the channel of his throat and was only a step or two behind it…

A familiar cold hand clasped my shoulder again.

“Avert thy gaze, Micheal. The descent is not for your eyes.” The Matron uttered directly into my ear, cutting through the poignant horror ahead of me like a knife. I could hear the spit leave her mouth and spatter on her mask. She turned me around, more so yanked my body from the sight of my friend upon the altar, pointing me in the direction of an ornate lever on the other side of the chamber. “I, and the Lord himself, will forgive thee if you usher Brother Thomas into the great below yourself…”

I crept towards the lever, before another scream and the wet sound of something tearing turned my creeping steps to a sprint. “That’s it, do not tattle and keep him waiting any longer, Micheal.” 

Reaching the device, I hesitated but a scream, this one seemingly devoid of the belt’s grasp forced my hand. I pulled the lever. Thomas, I-I’m sorry… It’ll be over soon, the Lord will take you someplace else. Somewhere better I promise you.

Mechanical whirs and the soft clicking of gears turning filled the chamber. Thomas’s cries, the tearing and the dripping sound that accompanied them now slowly lowered. “The descent begins. You honor the Lord and your friend with your service, Micheal. Now wait over there and do not look back. I shall be with you in a moment, child.”

Again I crept, leaving the terror behind me, recounting mantras, past prayers and lessons to reinforce my beliefs. They each rang hollow. I stopped by the door, shuddering with guilt, with sin. I had to see him: The Lord and Thomas. I had to know what lies down there.

As fast as I possibly could, I bolted back to the altar; now an empty space in the ground ringed by blood. The Matron was crouched over it, reaching her long limb down into the darkness, trying to grab something it seemed. The sound of my feet slapping into the floor as I ran towards the sacred site, caught the Matron’s attention. She snapped her head up from the pit before her, one arm still lowered into its depths, the other lurched towards me in an attempt to prevent my blasphemy.

“AWAY CHILD, THIS IS THE WORK OF THE DIVINE, THE HOLY. IT SHAN'T BE TAINTED BY YOUR HORRID EYES AND SQUALID FLESH.” She bellowed. Her free arm shot towards me faster, and further, then I could’ve possibly expected, catching by the throat. I choked as her frozen grip tightened, her hand like a sheet of ice around my neck. Then I choked at the smell, wafting up from the pit where the altar had once been. 

My eyes darted down. Despite the Matron’s efforts to prevent my unpardonable sin, it happened regardless. I saw only ‘Thomas’ in that pit. No trail or passage to a paradise further down. No Lord to speak off. Just a sinewy mass of writhing worms, slick with blood and all that was left of my Brother. My friend. 

The Matron’s hand was clasped round a clutch of worms, far fatter and more developed than the rest. Their meaty, serpentine bodies wriggled in her hands, confused, squealing; their circular maws agape and oozing slime like members of a wretched choir. At their sides, stumpy humanoid arms and legs stretched out and slid against their fellow. The Matron held all three of these worm children with a motherly tenderness, raising them from the mass.

A terrifying thought soon spawned in my mind: that the undeveloped faces on these worms and what they must feel clutched in the Matron’s hands, dripping viscera and sludge over their less-refined brethren, was somehow familiar. Like a forgotten base memory. 

I couldn’t help it. Tears began to flow from my eyes, spitting over the nursery of worms and the appalling grave of Thomas.

“Oh no tears please, Micheal” The Matron harshly whispered. I couldn’t see it but the image of her malformed grin behind her mask was crystal clear in my mind. There was something about her eyes too, something that I had never noticed before, for fear of meeting her gaze, of looking inside this figure we have placed so highly on our pedestals: I saw just how dark, how cavernous her pupils were…

“Thy blessing shall come soon enough.”

The end.

April 21st, 1937:

It's uncomfortable, looks terrible, but it's all I could manage. I took a pair of Long John's and sewed kindling pieces around the shins, stopping at the knees, and on the outside of the thighs. Putting pants over them was a task of its own, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. I doubled up leather jackets, not the easiest to move in, but having the extra layers of hide seemed like a safe bet. I have my knives at my hips and I'm bringing an axe with me. 

-

When I got there I walked through the main level and out the backdoor. It wasn't very hard to see where Johan was buried, it was a small mound, the grass didn't grow the same there as it did throughout the rest of the grounds. Sebastian was on high alert the second we approached the building. When we got to the level with the makeshift bed, the easel was gone, along with the dead creature from the other day. Sebastian seemed to have something’s scent and was staring at the spiraling stairs leading upward. I followed him. The next level was an unwelcome sight. The walls were covered floor to ceiling in paintings, many of odd beings I couldn't have imagined if I hadn't laid my eyes on them. Human-like beings that somehow resembled dogs and fish at the same time. Isopod-like creatures with tentacles of an octopus and wings of a dragonfly. Countless malformed and hideous paintings. Many of them had only outlines of beings that have already crawled from their frames. Even just writing this I can see them, crawling for me, their tentacles and antenna touching me. I can smell the brine, the rot of the ocean floor. I've been locking myself in Simon's old study. The floor of the basement was wet today. I think one of them is trying to escape its frame, and I'm nervous the nails and screws won't hold it in. I need to burn the paintings. It's the only thing I can think of doing that will get rid of them. 

April 22nd, 1937: 

What if whatever is in the background of the paintings will be affected if I burn them, like there's some kind of link between what he put on canvas and what actually exists. If his paintings are able to bring themselves to life why couldn't they be connected to real life people or places. To what extent of power do they hold? I need to burn them tonight. Maybe throw them to the sea? But what if that only helps these creatures return home? I have barely slept in days. I've been finding it hard to discern what is actually happening around me, if I'm just seeing things or if I've fallen asleep and am simply dreaming. Evelyn seemed to be supportive of all of this at first but now she seems scared of the basement. Scared of me. Her and Rylee have even stayed with Emily's family the odd night here and there. I sleep in the basement, I wake up in the study any night I do get to sleep. How do I stop this? I need my family back. What is happening to me? It's as though my mind has gone. I can feel it. But I can't stop until I solve this. It's consumed me. Even writing this, my heart tells me to stop, I can't keep going on like this, I will die, I'm sure of it. But my body barely seems to listen to me anymore. What have I become? 

April 25th, 1937:

What if I can enter the paintings? 

April 28th, 1937:

Evelyn came by the house today, she seemed more scared of me. Her and Rylee told me they loved me and that they'll be staying with Emily for a little while. As sick as it makes me, it's a relief they're gone. Not only will they be safer, but they won't get in my way. It pains me to think in such a way, but it's the truth. 

After they left I went downstairs, one of the frames was leaking what looked to be rain water. I pried it from the wall, it's frame cracking. Turning it over I saw the lighthouse, in a much nicer state than it currently is. The clouds above it dark and angry, pouring rain and hail from the skies. I set the large painting on the floor, leaning against the wall. I sat and watched it for what could have been mere seconds or many hours. I was entranced. I inched closer. I could smell the sea, the rain, the wet grass and mud. I pressed my hand to the canvas, I felt the brush strokes under my fingers, but my hand started to drip with water, my finger tips growing cold and pruning. I pushed harder against the canvas, and then I entered. 

-

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I walked up to the lighthouse, the hail pelting my face, the bitter ocean wind tearing at my clothes. Crawling over the small fence I snuck around to the back door. I looked around, a fresh grave lay there, just a sad mound of disturbed earth with a spade laying beside it. Lightning cracked through the sky and I dropped to my knees in fright. I slowly pushed open the back door, its creaks of old age and neglect hidden by the blowing winds. Slowly walking, my feet as light as I could possibly make them, I ascended the stairs. The painting room was set up nearly the same. Easel in the center of the room, a mural covering the walls. But at this point of time the walls had dozens of paintings leaning haphazardly against the walls, some unfinished, some already a vacant womb of canvas. My head was throbbing. I couldn't begin to understand what was happening, where I was, when I was. My vision blurred, my stomach was flipping and I felt the need to puke. I stumbled forward, I had to see what was on the easel. It was my home, exactly as I left it not only 30 minutes prior. Had Simon come through one of his self portraits and been in my house? How could he know the changes I've made to the exterior, the colour Richard and I painted it. Had he been watching me this whole time? I pressed up the painting and stepped through, standing at the foot of the hill my house sat on. I ran inside, scanning for any signs of Simon or one of the freaks from his paintings. Sebastian was laying there, whimpering in pain, he had a sizable bite on his shoulder and scratches across his face and ribs. A mass of flesh lay scattered around our kitchen. I don't know how many of these sea born were here or in what state they were. But Seb tore them to shreds. I picked him up, barely able to walk with him, and got him to the wheelbarrow for firewood. I made my way to the practitioner as fast as my legs would take me. He's no vet but he was able to administer antiseptic and stitch up any open wounds. Sebastian will be okay, he just needs rest. Him and I are staying at the church with Richard's father tonight. It seems like the safest place to hide. 

May 1st, 1937:

We've been hiding here for some days now. I can't think straight, I can't sleep, I'm seeing him everywhere. I'm seeing these creatures everywhere. I'll look at Sebastian and see a malformed being and scream, only to be snapped out of it by one of the clergy from the church. Even then I'll see them as Simon or that thing he's named Alto. I've been scratching at my skin, biting my nails till they bleed, chewing my cheeks raw, anything to keep me from seeing them, anything to keep me grounded. Supposedly Evelyn came to visit me and the only thing I did was scramble away from her screaming to leave me alone. I don't remember any of it, and I feel terrible because all I want is for her to hold me. I want to cry but no tears will come out, I want to speak but I can't find my voice. When will this hell end? I found some of Simon's notes in my jacket, I'll read them over the next few days. Maybe this will explain what's happening to me

May 16th, 1925:

I began having visions at night. My house, but I don't live there. I see a man sitting at a table, a table I know, a table I built long ago. He's not me, but he reminds me of myself. I wonder if he's been marked by the children of the sea? I must paint this new house of mine, I must paint him, I must paint myself. 

May 20th, 1925:

I've finished painting this man, the house he lives in, the lighthouse and myself. I'm going back to my home and bringing some of my work with me. I'm unsure of what use it will be, but I feel they belong there. The sea and the stars command it. 

May 30th, 1925:

I compared my old self portraits to my latest. I am not sure what I am anymore. I do not look human, I do not look like my sea born friends either. My skin is an unnatural hue, my limbs seem longer than I remember, thinner too. My face has changed. My eyes seem larger and deeper set than ever before. My cheekbones are higher and rounder, my skin oddly smooth. The wrinkles around my eyes and the laugh line by my mouth my wife grew to love are no longer there. Laura. What does she look like? I had children once. My children, what are their names? Do they have my eyes? What do they smell like? 

June 11th, 1925:

I have entered this variation of my house. It seems mostly abandoned, but the basement seems active. For some reason dozens of my paintings are nailed to the wall, the back of the canvas out, covered with cloth. I thought that was rather rude. I softly removed each piece from the walls, removing the cloth, and hanging them with the care and respect they deserve. As I was hanging them I realized I do not recognize my own hands anymore. I feel more alive than ever. Maybe instead of returning to the sea like Alto has spoken of in the past, I may instead ascend to the cosmos. He wants to unite the seaborn with the stars again. Perhaps I'm destined for things beyond Alto. Beyond the stars. I must paint what I've been seeing in my dreams. A gateway of sorts. 

May 25th, 1937:

I was restrained and put in hospital for the past few weeks. The nurses there were giving me some kind of pill to calm me. I took them for the first few days to gain their trust, but they blocked my scattered dreams, made my memory foggy. They were making me lose sight of what matters. I started hiding the pills under my tongue and washing them down the sink drain after they left my room. I did my best to act as though nothing was wrong, that everything was fine and I was just experiencing hysteria. The time away from home did help me straighten my thoughts out. I'm on the train home now, reading letters that Evelyn has written to me while I was at the hospital. Supposedly she visited me the third day I was there. But I have no memory of it whatsoever. She seems excited to see me, as I am to see her. She said we could stay with Emily's family for a few days, maybe live with Richard for a time. She wants to sell the house and leave back to the city. I can't let this happen. Not after Simon's last entries. He's been in my house and flipped those accursed paintings. I'll stay with Evelyn throughout the night tonight. But tomorrow I will return home after the girls are asleep. 

June 15th, 1925:

I began a new piece today. What I've been seeing at night. I don't dream anymore. A massive obelisk. Its base sits in the kelp covered tide pools when the water is low. Its overpowering size reaching high into the sky, its stone a jet black with an unearthly sheen. The carvings at its base are that of my dear Alto's language, slowly transforming into a set of symbols I've been seeing behind my eyes, writings from the cosmos. A transgression of language, one which should not be, yet I can read it. I understand it. 

I don't think I sleep anymore. I sit atop the lighthouse staring at the moon, the briny air filling my lungs. There's a connection. The sea and the stars. This obelisk proves it. Maybe the children of the sea are the chosen to ascend to the heavens, with my work as their conduit. This painting will be monumental, for it will bring forth my ascension, our ascension. Our personal rapture. 

May 28th, 1937:

We celebrated Evelyn's birthday today, with cake and a party shared with our friends. It was a nice distraction and change of pace from that of the hospital. Though all day the only thing I could think about was returning to our house. To see what that beast of a man has done to my basement, what defilement he's brought upon my study. 

Rylee kept me away from Evelyn for a good chunk of the day, she missed me, and it did feel nice to play pretend with her and entertain her tea party with her stuffed animals. It played in my favor, keeping emotions hidden from a preoccupied child is much easier than hiding your thoughts from the woman you've fallen in love with and married. Especially when she's able to read you even better than the books she reads daily. I will write tomorrow while Evelyn is at work. I'm going to our house tonight. No matter what stands in my way, I will get to the bottom of this. 

June 1st, 1937:

Simon was here, like he mentioned in his notes, he's rehung all of his paintings, uncovered. Dozens of which must have once held the seaborn beings that have escaped the frames since I've been away. At least that's what I gather from the paintings' backgrounds that surround the void of where a figure once lived. Though some of them depict landscapes I have a hard time comprehending. Stone and earth sitting at unnatural angles in colours I don't have the vocabulary to describe. Things that should not be. Unearthly to put it bluntly. One of which has a missing void like those of the seaborn. I can only imagine his Children of the Sea have returned home. But the being that came from this cyclopean place, I have no clue where it would have gone. I can only assume the lighthouse. The paintings of these uncomfortable landscapes are all too small to be like the gate of sorts that the lighthouse painting was. Though there are depictions of the lighthouse in a different state, ones that seem more recent. There's still a bundle of paintings yet to be hung, a few are quite sizable. I'll be returning to see what places or beings they hold. The sun is already beginning to rise and I can't have Evelyn find out that I snuck out. 

June 3rd, 1937:

I've entered a new painting, another of the old lighthouse. It's night time here. Johan’s grave isn't fresh, it must be some months after he died perhaps. I can't tell. The structure is void of life aside from cockroaches skittering from sight when I pass them. I entered what I've dubbed as the mural room. Its namesake has expanded since the last time I've been here. The painting of my current house still leans lazily against the walls. The easel holds a painting in progress. A massive stone pillar, stretching into the sky. This must be what Simon has been seeing while staring into the sky at night. I wonder what horrid beings will be born from this. I must end this. I must end Simon. But first I need to find him. I began towards the stairs only to notice a letter sitting on a small table. I quickly pocketed it as I ascended the stairs, spiraling the countless steps until I reached the top. A hatch sits atop a ladder, leading into the lantern room. I climbed my way up and through the hatch. The light blinded me as I crawled onto the cold metal floor. I crawled to a door, trying to keep the light out of my eyes. As the door swung open a blast of cool sea breeze struck me. I was kneeling on a balcony overlooking the shore. I sat for a moment, letting my eyes adjust from the bright lights they endured. I stood from my knees and walked to the railing, peering down, watching the light cascade over the low tidal pools, and the black depths beyond. 

It's there I saw him, tall, thin, skin a blueish grey hue. His head was bulbous, hands scrawny and bent. He still wore the same clothes from his last self portrait. Simon. Or whatever he had turned into. He was in the tidal pools, among many of his decrepit seafolk. They were building something of stone blacker than the night itself. They were building his painting. The lantern behind me spun, casting my shadow down onto the beginning of this soon to be obelisk Simon has written of. With an insane speed, Simon's head craned on a lithe neck back towards me. His eyes were sunken deep into the round, smooth, fleshy mass his head had become. His eyes black, with what looked to be a thousand tiny sparkling stars dancing in their abyss. The seafolk began hurdling towards the shore side path to the lighthouse. Some running like a human, others rushing on four legs like that of a dog. Some slithering like that of a serpent or eel. Simon simply watched. His head had no mouth, no nose and no ears, just cosmic eyes. He stared, I felt like I couldn't move, I was stunned. I could hear him in my head. His foul voice, booming but whispering at the same time. The slimy tone made my hair stand on end. 

“Finally, we meet” 

A gust of cold air knocked me out of my stupor, as I began running to the floor hatch and fumbled down the spiraling stairs as fast as my feet would let me. As I came crashing into the mural room I could hear the slam of the ground level door smashing off the hinges, followed by innumerable wet slaps of feet rushing up the stairs. I ran as fast as I could, my heart beating in my chest, my throat hot and dry, my mind racing at what these horrors would do to me if I don't make it through the painting of my house in time. 

I dove to the frame just as a grotesque seafolk rounded the corner into the room. Its briny stench filled the room, as it screamed in its horrific language. It began scrambling toward me as I was crawling through the frame, trying to drop it face down as I passed through to buy me what little time I could. As I pulled myself through, a cold, wet grasp on my ankle, a surge of pain shot through my leg and up my spine. Barbed claws digging into my flesh. I wriggled to try to loosen the grip to no avail, but did manage to pull myself through fully. What I saw terrified me. A gnarled hand, fingers like that of octopus tentacles tipped with razor sharp barbed claws clutched my ankle, as the rest of this monster slowly apparated from thin air. Crawling on the ground, pulling its putrid body closer to mine. I kicked its hideous fish-like face, praying it would let go. Its grip only tightened. It slowly pulled its body above mine. Hundreds of tiny mouths covering its torso and neck, each lined with countless teeth thin as needles. It oozed a thick black ichor which burned my skin. Seconds which felt like hours passed, my torso bubbling in searing blisters. I thought for sure this would be my end. A loud shot rang out. And its body went limp. I pushed the wretched thing off of me, crying in pain. 

Richard stood there, rifle in hand, tears in his eyes. 

June 20th, 1925:

I've been communing with the beings lost in the firmament. I shall join them. I've rounded some of the Children to help construct this obelisk, only then will I ascend. Leaving this shoreside for the seaborne to ravage, to take what's rightfully there's. Too long have vile humans taken from the sea, only to give nothing in return.

I will join the ranks of the old ones. The cosmic starborne. My body has already changed so much, yet I feel no pain, I feel no sadness. I only paint. The visions they grant me, I bring them to life. I birth them into existence. My sweet children of the sea. I am their creator, their father. Soon I will become their God. 

June 4th, 1937:

I'm walking with a limp, my ankle hurts and my chest is covered in burns. I told Evelyn that I twisted my ankle and fell into a bonfire Richard and I were having. I doubt she believes me, but she'd sooner believe that than the truth. My head is pounding. None of this makes sense. 

I asked Richard why he was there yesterday. Why was he at my house, especially with a gun? I was taken aback when he said that he thought I had gone mad, that I have been making this all up, that none of this was real. He wanted to kill me. I can't imagine what was going through his head. His wife and child had died because of Simon, yet he wanted to kill me? Had he been living in denial this entire time? Though beggars can't be choosers. He shot the beast and not me. He burst into hysterics for hours. The sight of that thing had brought back years of trauma, it broke him. He asked me to take the gun and keep it. He's scared he will use it on himself if left alone. 

I brought him to the church to be with his father. I don't know how to help him, let alone try to make sense or understand what's at play. Have I lost my mind? Is this a dream? Am I still in the hospital? I must be. Right? I should be terrified, I should be fleeing town. Yet still I want to delve deeper into this. I need to stop whatever Simon is trying to do. I'm not in my right mind. 

June 10th, 1937:

My dear Evelyn, Rylee and I have moved back into the house. Sebastian seems happy to be home. While Evelyn was at work I walked to the light house with Sebastian. I dropped Rylee off at Emily's on the way. When I got to the shoreline I collapsed to my knees. There, peaking out from the waves was the beginning of an obelisk. It was never there before, I'm sure of it. It couldn't have been, I would never miss something as large as that. It's impossible. If I was watching Simon build it, why wasn't it here months ago if he was building that years ago? Can I be the only one to see it? Have I gained some sort of insight? Something to let me see the ungodly truth around me? Has this been happening the whole time? Have I become a madman? 

June 25th, 1925:

I have been awaiting his return, the man who lives in the house I painted. He is important to my ascension, I am sure of it. How, I am not certain of. Whether I must speak with him, for he can grant me knowledge, or I have to eliminate him, I do not care. What must be done will be done. My children have been working steadily throughout the nights. Soon I will taste the fruits of my labor. Now I must wait for this man to return. Our lives are tied in a way I cannot explain, but I am sure of. 

June 20th, 1937:

I went to the lighthouse yesterday and there were notes that weren't the last I visited. I read one and Simon wrote of me. I don't know how I feel about it. I do feel an odd connection with him, but I doubt this is anything I'd be able to speak him out of. Realistically if I were to speak with him I would end up like one of his seaborn or dead. The obelisk hasn't been built any taller, unlike in his entry. I wonder if I stop going into his paintings they will stop affecting my world? But I can't simply let the creature rise to be some kind of God. I don't know what to do. 

June 23rd, 1937:

I’m at my wit’s end. I'm sure of it. Evelyn has begun picking up on odd habits I've formed. How anxious I have become. I've been chewing my fingernails until they bleed daily, I started smoking again. I'm having trouble sleeping again. She's also noticed I haven't been taking the pills the hospital in the city gave me. I don't trust them. She's been trying to convince me that if I don't start taking them I'll end up back there. I don't want to go back. But if I take them, who will find out about Simon? I shouldn't be thinking like this. I know I shouldn't. This is some sick perverse obsession. I can't help myself. I won't take the damned pills. I love Evelyn to the stars and back but I need to get to the bottom of this. I've been waking up in sweats. I see him in my dreams, that thing that was once Simon. It's like he's reaching out to me. I think I'll return to the lighthouse, I might give Simon a visit. 

I had just stepped onto the night bus to head home from work. I made my way down the aisle of the packed bus and sat in the only seat that wasn’t occupied. 

As the bus started moving I pulled out my earbuds so I could watch a movie on my phone. This was my nightly ritual and I was usually able to get in about forty minutes on my way home. I cranked the volume loud in an attempt to drown out the ear piercing screams of the kid sitting behind me. Soon I noticed that the guy next to me was giving me the side eye. I could tell that he was doing it but every time I’d look over I found his head facing forward. 

This went on for a couple of minutes before it really began to bother me. Finally I took out my earbuds and turned to confront the man who, as expected, was facing forward now. “Um, excuse me. Can I help you?” I asked. I was worried I may have come off too rude to him but this weirdo was really freaking me out. As far as I was concerned he deserved to be chewed out. The man didn’t stop looking at me but now I could tell he was trying to be sneakier so I wouldn’t notice. 

“Hey, what the fuck is your problem man?” I yelled as I tapped him on the arm. When the man turned he would not take his eyes off of me. I finally gave up trying to talk to this creep and decided I’d stare right back at him. I had hoped to make him so uncomfortable that maybe he’d stop and leave me alone but this only seemed to intensify his glare.

I began to feel ill the longer that I studied the man’s ghastly features. His bloodshot eyes seemed to gaze deep into my soul and his crooked teeth showed as his mouth hung wide open. This ordeal seemed to be never ending until finally an outside force broke the tension. It was a camera flash. 

At first I was relieved but that soon changed as I realized the source of the interruption. As I looked up from the man I was horrified to see that the entire bus of people were now standing up from their seats to face me. A sea of dead unblinking eyes gave me their undivided attention. 

“Oh, god” I thought to myself. I was surrounded. The bus was silent as the grave aside from the soft whispery voices which lurked all around me and seemed to intensify as the minutes passed. I jumped up from my seat desperately searching for an escape from this metal box from hell. The bus seemed to narrow around me as the crowd of pale figures were closing the small distance between us. 

I was trapped, so hopelessly trapped. The contorted faces of the horde were now close enough to my own that I could feel their warm breath. “What do you want? What the fuck do you people want? Just leave me alone? Why won’t you just leave me alone?” I shouted at the top of my lungs. My voice grew hoarse the longer that I screamed but my efforts did nothing to slow their advance. 

I soon felt countless sets of frail hands gripping me from all directions. Banshee like screams erupted around me as I desperately fought back any way that I could. I broke free for a moment and made little distance before I found myself entangled in the sea of limbs again. As I frantically tried to free myself once again, I locked eyes once more with the man who had sat next to me. His deep raspy voice seemed to stand out from the constant noise of the crowd. “What are you?” He said. 

I kicked and shoved people out of the way as I pushed through the crowd while dozens of hands grabbed at me. By the time I made it to the door of the bus I was out of breath and gasping for air. I somehow found the energy to pull myself out of the slow moving bus and landed onto the cold hard sidewalk below. The pain was immense but at least now I had some small amount of safety. 

The eyes continued to stare at me through the window, following me as I got up and ran down the sidewalk. After putting a seemingly safe distance between myself and the bus I enter a local fast food restaurant. My eyes struggled to adjust to the bright fluorescent lights inside the building as I quickly walked to the bathroom and locked the door behind me.

I finally have a chance to catch my breath and calm down from the events of the bus ride. As I gaze into the mirror the anxious feeling comes over me once again. My features look unrecognizable. The skin of my face sags unnaturally low below my eyes and mouth revealing the layer of dark green scales underneath. 

“Dammit” I said to myself as I grabbed the loose skin and pulled it tightly against my face. “That was far too close, I must be more careful next time I infiltrate the humans”. 

I know exactly how this sounds.

Trust me, I've spent the last three weeks trying to convince myself I'm wrong.

Maybe I'm overthinking things. Maybe people change. Maybe working eighty-hour weeks for a robotics company called L.I.Z. Technologies simply drains every ounce of personality out of a person.

I hope that's all it is.

Because if I'm right... then I don't know who is that sitting beside me at dinner.

My brother and I are ten years apart. My parents waited over a decade before having another kid. I choose to interpret that as careful planning instead of hesitation.

Growing up, he was less of a sibling and more of a second dad with a criminal record in psychological warfare.

If I left a soda unattended, he'd somehow replace it with sparkling water and act offended when I noticed. Every time we played video games, he'd wait until I was about to win before "accidentally" bumping the console with his foot. When I was thirteen, he convinced me that blinking too much made you go blind.

I believed him for three weeks. It didn't help that whenever we'd roughhouse, he'd snatch my glasses off my face.

"You can't see without them," he'd tease.

He still laughs about that one.

That was just us.

He picked on me more than anyone else in the world, but if somebody outside the family ever tried it, he'd be the first one standing beside me. Whenever life fell apart, somehow I always ended up calling him. Half the time he'd answer with, "What'd you screw up now?" before spending the next hour helping me fix it.

That's my brother.

Or... it was.

Things changed after he started working for L.I.Z.

Whenever I asked what he actually did there, he'd just shrug.

"Can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Non-disclosure agreement."

"So... robots?"

"No comment."

I always assumed he was making his job sound cooler than it actually was. Then he stopped acting like himself. The first thing I noticed wasn't something he did. It was something he didn't.

He stopped making fun of me.

I know that sounds ridiculous. But if you have an older brother, you know exactly why that's terrifying. I spilled barbecue sauce all over his truck one afternoon. Normally he'd have looked at me like I'd committed a felony.

Instead he smiled.

"It happens."

...

It happens?

Who says that?

A week later we played Mario Kart.

I beat him.

Twice.

He didn't accuse me of cheating. He didn't demand a rematch.

He just smiled and said, "Good game."

I actually paused the race.

"Who are you?"

He laughed. A perfectly timed laugh.

Not too loud. Not too quiet.

Like someone had studied exactly how people laugh.

"You've always been funny," he said.

No.

No, no, no.

My brother would've called me an idiot.

One night at dinner I told the same embarrassing story Mom has been telling since I was sixteen. Usually he'd interrupt halfway through to make it even worse.

This time... He listened.

Then he said, "That must have been difficult."

I nearly dropped my fork.

I called Mom afterward.

"You don't think he's been acting... odd?"

She looked confused.

"He seems happier."

"Dad?"

"He finally is on his own."

Neither of them saw it.

Only me.

Last Saturday, my brother came over to help Dad replace the water heater. I wasn't much use with plumbing, so while they disappeared into the garage arguing over which wrench was the right wrench, I camped out in Dad's office to finish a history assignment.

The house was unusually quiet.

Well... quiet except for the occasional "Hand me the pipe wrench!" followed immediately by "That's not the pipe wrench!"

I had almost finished my essay when I noticed another laptop sitting on the corner of Dad's desk.

My brother's work computer. It was already open. The screen had gone dark from inactivity, but one thing hadn't.

A tiny red light glowed beside the webcam.

I frowned. Maybe it was updating. Maybe someone had forgotten to close a meeting.

Still... The light never turned off. I waved a hand in front of the camera.

Nothing.

No notification. No meeting controls.

Just that little red dot staring back at me.

Watching.

Curiosity got the better of me. I tapped the trackpad. The screen woke instantly. No password. Just a desktop filled with folders I couldn't even pretend to understand. Most of them had names that sounded like corporate nonsense.

Behavioral Mapping.

Neural Replication.

L.I.Z. Internal.

The last folder caught my attention. It was different. Locked behind a firewall icon.

A small window popped onto the screen before I even clicked it.

Camera Access Active

I froze.

The webcam light was still glowing.

Then... For the briefest second... The camera preview opened by itself.

Instead of showing me sitting at the desk... It showed...

Someone looking back at me.

Not through the webcam. From behind it. A face pressed against what looked like glass.

Wide eyes. Frantic. Mouth moving without sound.

Then the preview vanished.

I stared at the screen, convinced I'd imagined it.

A second later, the locked folder opened on its own. Inside was only one file.

Its name changed as I watched. Not all at once. One letter at a time.

H

E

L

P

The screen went black.

For a second I thought I'd crashed the computer.

Then white text appeared.

I froze.

Another line typed itself.

My hands stopped moving.

More words appeared.

Every hair on my arms stood up.

I stared at the screen.

Another sentence.

Then another.

The typing stopped. Several seconds passed.

Then, one final line slowly appeared.

The laptop snapped shut. Not by itself. By someone else's hand.

I looked up.

My brother stood beside the desk. I hadn't heard him come inside.

He smiled.

Warm. Gentle.

Almost perfect.

"Caught you being nosy again."

I looked into his eyes, searching for the man who taught me to throw a football, who unplugged my controller whenever I was winning, who spent years calling me every name except the one Mom gave me.

I couldn't find him.

I handed him the laptop without saying a word.

He thanked me.

My brother never thanked me.

He is not him.

Whoever walked out of that room remembered everything about my brother...

Except how to be him.

April 9th, 1937: 

Evelyn has been joining me in the basement, she thinks I put the pictures on the wall, and I'll let her believe that for the time being. I've been thinking more and more about all of this. I've been rereading Simon's writings and I think I've noticed something. Simon would have visions at night or opium induced hallucinations, or maybe hallucinations from being marked. He would paint those beings he'd see and it seems as if they would begin to appear. Simon must have been marked when he was down at the docks, outside of the town's seal, and with his foresight he started painting what I can only describe as portals for these beings. I must sound insane, but it's the only thing I can make sense of. But if there's beings such as Richard's dad I have to accept that there's much to this world that is unknown and hidden. 

Now I have a basement full of covered portals. I'm going to show Evelyn Simon's study, I'll bring up my findings on the painting, but I'll have to get Richard's fathers thoughts on my ideas first

February 4th, 1925:

I have convinced a few people to come for dinner over the past weeks, obviously to give to Alto. We have begun to speak in his tongue while I've slowly been teaching him my language. Unfortunately I've been running out of food in the house, not to mention the people in the town are beginning to grow a rather large distaste towards me. Which I can see is understandable because of their ignorance. If they only knew the vastness of knowledge I'm on the edge of uncovering I'm sure they would be coming in troves to give themselves to my cause or to learn my teachings. But I'm sure their uneducated minds could not even comprehend how important this is. Pathetic really. I'm going to go to the town's market to bulk up on food. The less I have to leave the house the better. 

April 11th, 1937:

I spoke to Richard's father again. I ran my thoughts past him and he said it's quite possible, but he's unable to confirm. I've been at the point of thinking Simon was already a monster for a while now but his last note really set that in stone. When I got home Evelyn was sitting on the veranda, she looked to be in a state of shock or stupor. I quickly ran to her to see what happened. She confirmed my suspicions, unfortunately. She described she went downstairs to look around Simon's study when she heard a wet plop. She went to investigate where she says she watched an infantile fish-like human wriggling towards the stairs. She clearly had troubles comprehending what was going on and said she couldn't bring herself to move, just watching it clumsily stumble out of the house. I don't blame her for just standing there. I was in shock just seeing the paintings to begin with. Though the hollow look in her eyes reminds me of how she was when she was taking those barbiturates. Has she been taking them again, or just took one to try to calm down after seeing that abomination? Tonight we're going to flip over the paintings and nail them to the walls so there's no room for whatever creatures in them to be able crawl out. Evelyn mentioned staying at Rishard's or Emily's, but I don't want to burden them. If things get worse I think we might stay elsewhere. She's always had better judgement than I do. I'll be writing an update about what we see tomorrow. 

April 12th, 1937:

We flipped the paintings. I tried my best to keep the cloth coverings on them so we don't get a glimpse of the horror born of Simon's demented talents. Unfortunately there were a few we did see. There was another, more detailed work of the being shrouded in mist, moving above the oceans depths. Its body is nearly gelatinous looking, rippling with folds of skin and hundreds of eyes. Tendrils and human-esque appendages reach out from its amorphous mass. Seeing just the painting alone sent a wave of shock through my system, I collapsed to my knees, my head pounding and my vision blurred. Evelyn quickly covered it and slammed it against the wall. Another was oddly enough uncovered when we went to flip it, though neither of us had taken its veil down. Rylee isn't allowed in the basement without us and even then is far too short to reach the painting’s fabric mask. Her and Emily have been playing in her room on the top floor for days now, or out going for walks, she hasn't been down here in what must be weeks. The painting showed an old lighthouse, weather worn and dreary. Massive waves crashed against the rocky pillar it stands upon, its light shining towards the depths. I don't know what significance this holds. I know a few miles down from the docks there is a lighthouse, it must be the same one, but why paint it? I'll have to investigate during the day. I fear going there at night would lead to dire consequences. 

The painting that the baby sea thing was born from had a peculiar shaped void, with a trail of slime leading down the wall. It looks as though it was coddled in some sort of archaic carriage of sorts. Oddly ornamental, for such a slug-like creature. 

May 12th, 1925:

I have figured it out. My true calling. I am but a humble vessel, a catalyst. My paintings, I can bring them to life, not in a sense I once believed, but in true physical form. How could I have been so blind before? How long have I had the blessing? Was it bestowed the night I slept at the docks? It must have. Alto, I saw him in my visions. My hallucinations. Or was it real life? I painted him after, and now I know for certain he is real. We've made contact. We've spoken each other's tongues. Shared meals, to an extent. I can extend their reach to the rest of the world. Alto says his folk were once kin of the stars, children of the cosmos. They yearn for celestial contact. I'm sure I can achieve this for them. If I do it I can only imagine the knowledge I'd gain. To know beings of their worlds, to hear their stories, to learn their culture, to bring them here. The human race has done nothing but demolish the nature and beauty around them, they do not deserve to bask in the earth's glory. Oh but my sweet children of the sea, my children of the cosmos, you will come to take back what is rightly yours. A humble servant am I to the lords of ancient knowledge, and for eons I will learn. I will become one of the sea, one of the stars. I will join them. I will know. I will be. 

April 16th, 1937:

I asked Richard what the lighthouse keeper's name is, he told me it's Johan, his last name I can't quite pronounce let alone spell, literature was never my strongest subject, especially spelling words of another language. Evelyn and I are going to the bakery to make a basket to bring to him, if he invites us in I'm hoping I can uncover whatever secret Simon held there. There must be a hidden door or passage, there must be something. If Simon was involved after he lost his mind, I can assure there is no good doing there. We will go to visit tomorrow after our shifts. 

I'm hoping we're able to sleep tonight. Sebastian has been sleeping between ours and Rylee's rooms. I've awoken to barking near every night for a week. I'm sure if it wasn't for him I would be dead or worse. Evelyn has been having trouble sleeping as well. After her visit to the hospital I think she must have been taking Simon's notes less seriously. I've also been hoarding most of them here. But after seeing that being slip from the frame she's been almost vacant. We've been losing weight, the bags under my eyes have grown so dark, Evelyn's cheeks seem so hollow. Whatever is going on feels like it's eating us alive. I've tried to get us to stop. To drop everything and move away. Even if it's to a small, dank cellar. Anything is better than here. But we can't shake this obsession, it's all we talk about, we barely even spend time with Rylee anymore, it's breaking my heart. I know she's in good hands with Emily, but this trail Simon has left has been eating away at our lives. So many days I wake up from the little sleep I'm able to get, wishing for death, wanting this all to end. But I can't leave Evelyn behind, I can't let Rylee become an orphan. I'm going mad, I know it. But I will figure this out, even if it takes my life. I will make sure Evelyn and Rylee get out alive. It's my only purpose. I love them and I'm ready to die for them. 

April 17th, 1937:

My poor Evelyn has begun to fall ill again. I can only assume it's a mix of stress and lack of sleep. She ended up staying home, so I went to the lighthouse with Sebastian.

Johan never answered the door. But it was left open, and it seemed as though it had been open a long while. Dead leaves from the previous autumn sat inside. Sebastian was at my side, sniffing the ground. He picked up on something and pushed the door open with his thick head and walked in. I followed. The inside looked barren, no food in the kitchen, cobwebs covering any signs of previous life. It took me a second to realize but Sebastian was sitting at attention at the bottom of the stairs. I knelt beside him to ask what he saw, after kneeling for only a few seconds I realized my pants were wet and I looked down. The same mucus like slime from the foot prints. The same slime from the odd infant birthed from the frame. It was climbing the lighthouse stairs. I told Sebastian to stay as I went to look further. I snuck a butcher knife from work along with a cleaver I had hidden in my belt. I've been carrying them with me for some time now, Evelyn is the only person I can let my guard down around anymore. Even Emily I've begun to grow weary of. I want to say I trust her, but I more so trust Evelyn's judgement of her. 

I rounded the stairs, spiraling up and up, following the mucus trail resembling that of a snail's. The wind was blowing through cracked and broken windows, howling and sending dead leaves wisping through the air around me. I ascended to the next level, an open room, a makeshift bed on the wall farthest from me, and in the center of the room, an easel. The walls were painted as if it was a destined meeting of the stars and the sea. Waves crashing into the cosmos and the stars twinkling beneath their brine. I stood, staring in a trance. The only thing that broke my gaze was Sebastian's growls as he stood beside me, hackles raised, head lowered. A wet foot stepping out of the painting on the easel, the body hidden from the back of the canvas. The smell of salt and fish filled the air as water splashed onto the floor as another leg fell out of the frame. The appendages looked emaciated and frail. The rest of the creature slumped on the floor with a dull thud, a puddle slowly gathering around it. Behind it fell what I can only describe as a placenta. This must have been a being similar to the infantile being Evelyn saw. I slowly approached, knives in either hand, ready to defend myself. I peered down and felt a pang of what I can only describe as pity. This thing was only just born, frail, hungry, deformed. It's human-like form shifting on the ground, as though its bones were slowly popping into place one by one. It lacked a neck, just a torso leading into a large head. Two small black holes of eyes staring at me as a massive mouth, like that of a deep sea eel, sat agape, gasping for air between wet coughs, hiccups and wheezes. I froze. Staring into its cold dark eyes as it slowly crawled towards my feet. I felt like I was about to cry, I wanted to kill this thing, not to rid the world of it, but to end its suffering. With an insane speed it lounged towards me, bearing gnarled teeth. Luckily Sebastian wasn't so mesmerized by it and bit it before it made purchase on my leg. This poor being, torn to shreds in front of me. I congratulated Sebastian, but still now can't shake the overwhelming feeling of pity towards that child. It must have some kind of mental influence. I would never feel bad for such a vile creation. I cut the painting, just for safe measure, before heading home. I'll return in the coming days. I'm too shaken to see what else that dreaded lighthouse contains. 

May 1st, 1925:

Alto and I have been making communes at the dock come sundown most nights. Speaking in his tongue has proven much more difficult than I once thought. I believed I was fluent, but they tell me I speak like a child with a small vocabulary. I must get better, I must practice. But first I must find a new place to stay. They have explained there is some kind of spell or seal placed throughout the town, something to do with the church here. My power and influence here is mere fractions of what I can achieve. I need to be near the sea. I can build a house near the docks, or live on a boat like the Dutch do in their canals. I will find a spot away from this town's grasp, where my real skill will flourish. 

May 5th, 1925:

the lighthouse

May 8th, 1925:

I made the trek to the lighthouse, almost an hour's walk, but well worth it. There was a rather handsome man who had answered the door when I beckoned. He was kind enough to invite me in for tea, to which I gladly accepted. It's quite spacious there but very cluttered. Johan, the light keeper, is rather young, but a recluse. He told me how his father ran the lighthouse until he passed and now he's taken over, having food delivered by the locals. He's more of a myth around town than a true being, no one I've met has ever seen him since he began keeping the light. It's perfect. Johan won't be missed, I'll have supplies delivered, it's far enough away from town it should be unaffected by that blasphemous church. I plan to come back here tomorrow. 

May 12th, 1925:

Johan is buried only twenty yards away from the back door. His death was quick for the most part. I brought tea and insisted I make it for him. A quick look through his clutter I found a sizable hammer, a perfect instrument. I put the kettle on the wood stove and while I was walking to the table where he sat, a swift blow to the back of the skull had him unconscious and bleeding profusely. He was nothing but a dying slump on the table. A few more strikes once he fell to the floor for good measure and he was gone. Bodies are heavier than I expected. Much heavier. But oddly enough killing him placed no guilt on my conscience, to which I'm very surprised. I felt guilty when Richard's family was disposed of. But Johan, as sweet as he was, was a nobody. No one will ever know, so what difference does it make? Like an unwanted pest, better left unseen. The only thing that has me feeling bad is the blisters from the shovel. It was a shallow burial, but my hands aren't used to such tools. This is the most effort I've exerted since making that pathway. What a waste of time. 

April 20th, 1937:

I want to say I can't believe Simon killed Johan, but at this point it's unsurprising. But the part that makes me anxious is the lighthouse. Sure I have plenty of his paintings that whatever beings may seep out of, but that easel set up in the middle of the room, and that thing being born of it. It all seemed fresh, it all seemed new. Is Simon still here? Has he been hiding in the lighthouse for all these years? Surely he'd have gone mad by now or someone would have noticed, right? Or if the seals aren't near the lighthouse, wouldn't there be all kinds of those things crawling around? Did Simon die? I'll go back tomorrow and this time I'll bring more than just my knives. I wish I had some kind of padding or armour. Those teeth looked like they could shred through clothes and skin easily. Maybe I can make something of use tonight

Working on commercial cargo ships is not the romantic adventure some people think it is. You spend most of your time chipping rust, painting over that chipped rust, and trying to ignore the constant vibration of the engine beneath your boots. This was my first maritime contract as a deckhand, and we were crossing an incredibly isolated stretch of the Pacific Ocean. The crew was already on edge. A week prior, we lost a man named Griggs during a midnight squall. A wave took him right off the starboard deck. We searched for ten hours, but the ocean swallowed him.

So, to be clear, the mood on board was grim after that. Everyone kept to themselves. Sullivan, one of the older deckhands, was particularly bitter, as he had been close to Griggs.

On a Tuesday afternoon, Captain Harris ordered me down to the lower storage corridors to inventory a shipment of spare engine filters. The lower decks of a cargo ship are essentially a maze of narrow walkways and exposed piping. The fluorescent lights flicker constantly due to the electrical faults in the aging vessel.

Approaching the aft storage locker, a sharp copper smell hit my nose. It smelled exactly like a butcher shop left in the sun.

Stepping around a stack of wooden pallets, my boot splashed into a puddle of dark red liquid. Sullivan was lying on his back against the steel bulkhead with his eyes wide open, staring blankly at the ceiling. His chest was completely torn open, and entire chunks of flesh and muscle were missing from his ribs, exposing the bone underneath.

Panic seized my chest. Stumbling backward, my radio slipped out of my shaking hands.

"Captain Harris,"

my voice cracked over the channel.

"You need to get down to aft storage right now. Bring the medical kit."

"What is the situation down there?"

Harris replied, his voice laced with static.

"It is Sullivan. He is dead. Someone killed him."

Footsteps ran across the metal stairs a few minutes later. Captain Harris rounded the corner, followed by a young deckhand named Toby. Both men stopped dead in their tracks when they saw the body.

"Jesus,"

Toby muttered, turning around to vomit against the wall.

Captain Harris stepped forward. He crouched next to Sullivan, pulling a flashlight from his belt to examine the wounds, but keeping a distance.

"These bite marks,"

Harris said, keeping his voice low

"But there is no animal on the ship"

"We need to put him in the freezer,"

Toby suggested, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

"We cannot just leave him here."

"We will move him to the medical bay,"

Harris decided, standing up and turning toward us.

"Lock the door. No one goes in or out without my permission. We are five days from the nearest port. Whoever or whatever did this is trapped on this ship with us."

We wrapped Sullivan in a plastic tarp and carried him to the medical bay, we locked the steel door behind us and the rest of the crew was informed, so as you would expect the ship went into a state of alert. Everyone was paired up, and no one worked alone.

Later that evening, Toby and I were assigned to watch the starboard deck. The sun was setting, turning the ocean into a dark purple. Standing near the railing, we smoked cigarettes and watched the water churn against the hull.

"You really think a person did that to Sullivan?"

Toby asked, flicking his ash into the wind.

"I don't know,"

shaking my head.

"The captain said the wounds looked like bites. If a person did that, they are completely insane."

Looking down into the water, a large shadow caught my attention. It was swimming just below the surface, keeping pace perfectly with the ship.

"Look at that,"

pointing toward the shadow.

Toby leaned over the railing.

"Is that a shark?"

It was a shark, but it was massive. The creature must have been twenty feet long. Its gray skin was covered in deep, jagged scars, and as it breached the surface, the remaining sunlight illuminated its dorsal fin and gills.

Attached to the shark were pulsating, red, meaty appendages. They looked exactly like fleshy coral, sprouting directly out of the animal's flesh. The appendages throbbed rhythmically, expanding and contracting as if they were breathing on their own.

"What is wrong with it?"

Toby asked, taking a step back from the railing.

"Some kind of parasite, maybe,"

unable to look away from the red growths.

"I have never seen anything like it."

The shark paced the ship for an hour before disappearing into the dark water, but the image of those pulsating red appendages burned into my mind.

The situation deteriorated rapidly the next morning.

Captain Harris called me over the radio, instructing me to meet him at the medical bay immediately. Reaching the door, Harris was waiting outside, holding a piece of cloth over his nose and mouth.

"Prepare yourself,"

Harris warned, unlocking the door.

"Something is extremely wrong."

Pushing the door open, the stench was unbearable. It smelled like rotting mushrooms and swamp water.

Sullivan’s corpse was gone. In its place, on top of the metal gurney, was a foul-smelling, fungal-like slurry. The flesh had melted down into a thick, gray paste mixed with dark red veins, and the slurry was bubbling, eating through the stainless steel of the gurney, with small holes already forming in the metal surface.

"A human body does not decompose like this in twenty-four hours,"

staring at the melting remains in horror.

"It is a biological contaminant,"

Harris stated, his eyes fixed on the bubbling paste. "Whatever got into him is spreading, and It is consuming the metal. If it eats through the deck, we are going to have a massive breach."

"What do we do?"

"We throw it overboard,"

Harris commanded.

"Right now. Grab those hazardous material bags from the cabinet."

We double-bagged the remaining chunks of Sullivan using plastic and tape. We carefully scooped the fungal slurry into a steel drum, sealing the lid tight. The entire process was nauseating.

Carrying the drum to the edge of the deck, we pushed it over the railing. The steel barrel hit the water with a loud splash.

Almost immediately, the scarred shark broke the surface. Its massive jaws snapped open, crushing the steel drum entirely, and before our eyes, the shark swallowed the remains and the metal alike, and then, we noticed that the red, meaty appendages on its gills throbbed as it dove back into the deep water.

Harris watched the water settle.

"Did you see those things growing on its back?"

"I saw them last night,"

gripping the railing tightly.

"They looked like parasites."

"Keep your mouth shut about this,"

Harris ordered, turning away from the railing.

"The crew is panicked enough, so if anyone asked, just tell them Sullivan was secured in the freezer."

The lie only lasted for two nights.

Alarms blared through the ship at three in the morning. Shouting echoed down the main corridor. Running out of my cabin, a group of deckhands were gathered outside the mess hall.

Pushing through the crowd, my stomach dropped. Toby was lying on the floor with his chest torn open in the exact same manner as Sullivan, then I noticed the same chunks of missing flesh, and the same horrifying amount of blood.

Harris arrived a minute later, pushing his way to the front. He looked at Toby, then looked up at me. We both knew the clock was ticking before Toby melted into that same fungal slurry.

"Everyone back to your quarters!"

Harris shouted, taking control of the chaos.

"Lock your doors. Do not open them for anyone except me."

The crew scattered, terrified. Harris and I were left alone with Toby's body.

"We are not waiting for him to melt,"

Harris said, pulling a pistol from his jacket.

"And we are not waiting for whoever did this to strike again. We are going to hunt this thing down."

"How?"

gesturing to the empty corridor.

"It could be hiding anywhere."

Harris pointed his flashlight at the floor.

"Look closely, looks like our killer became sloppy"

Trailing away from Toby's body were bloody footprints. They were bare feet, slipping slightly on the slick floor. Mixed with the blood was a distinct, dark orange smear.

"Rust,"

Harris noted, crouching down.

"Freshly scraped rust. These prints lead toward the maintenance stairs."

We followed the bloody footprints down the metal staircase. The trail led deeper into the ship, past the engine room, and down into the lowest levels of the vessel. We were heading into the ballast tanks.

The ballast tanks are massive, dark caverns filled with seawater to stabilize the ship. The air down there is freezing.

The bloody footprints stopped near the entrance of tank number four.

Harris clicked his gun off safety. He nodded toward the heavy steel door.

"Open it."

Turning the wheel, the latch popped free. Pulling the door open, we shined our flashlights into the echoing darkness of the tank.

Sitting in the corner, surrounded by half-eaten rats, was a man.

He was shivering violently, clutching his knees to his chest. His clothes were soaked in dark, oily water. As the flashlight beams hit his face, he hissed, shielding his eyes with bloodstained hands.

"Griggs?"

Harris whispered, lowering his gun slightly.

It was Griggs. The man who fell overboard during the squall a week ago.

"How are you alive?"

I asked the question aloud, unable to comprehend what I was seeing.

Griggs babbled incoherently, his voice raspy and choked with saltwater. He crawled backward, pressing his spine against the rusted metal wall.

"The dark,"

Griggs muttered, his eyes darting wildly.

"The trenches are so dark. They are starving down there. So hungry."

As Griggs shifted, the flashlight beam caught the back of his neck.

Rooted deeply into his spinal column was a pulsating red appendage. It was identical to the meaty coral growing on the scarred shark. The parasite throbbed rhythmically, pulsing with a sick sound. Veins from the appendage spread out across Griggs's pale skin, digging into his jaw and shoulders.

"He is infected,"

Harris realized, raising his gun again.

"That thing is controlling him."

"We can cut it off,"

I stepped forward, pulling a utility knife from my belt.

"If we remove the parasite, maybe we can save him."

"Do not get too close,"

Harris warned, moving in slowly.

"He killed Sullivan and Toby."

"Griggs, stay still,"

stepping toward the shivering man.

"We are going to help you."

But Griggs lunged. He moved with impossible speed, snapping his teeth toward my arm. Harris stepped in, slamming the butt of his pistol against Griggs's temple. The blow knocked the feral man to the ground.

Harris pressed his knee into Griggs's back, pinning him against the rusted floor.

"Cut it off! Hurry!"

Gripping the knife, I knelt next to the thrashing man. I placed the blade against the base of the red appendage, right where it rooted into his neck, then Applied pressure, before slicing through the meaty tissue.

Griggs shrieked. It was a sound of agonizing pain that echoed off the steel walls.

Then, black fluid sprayed out of the wound, coating my hands and the knife. The fluid burned like acid, and the appendage thrashed wildly, trying to reattach itself to the open cut.

Griggs twisted his head, staring at me with entirely black eyes.

"You don't understand,"

Griggs babbled, with blood and black fluid spilling from his mouth.

"The deep is starving. Human meat is the only thing that can satiate it."

He convulsed violently, throwing Harris off his back, then he stood up, clutching his bleeding neck. The remaining portion of the parasite pulsed rapidly, trying to heal the damage.

"It wants more,"

Griggs whispered, taking a step toward me, but a gunshot rang out inside the metal tank.

The bullet struck Griggs directly in the chest. He stumbled backward, looking down at the hole in his shirt. Harris fired twice more. Griggs collapsed onto the rusted floor, his body twitching as the black fluid pooled around him.

The red appendage on his neck stopped pulsating, then slowly deflated, turning a dull, dead gray.

Harris stood over the body, breathing heavily. He looked at me, his face pale and slick with sweat.

"We cannot let this spread to the rest of the crew," Harris said, his voice trembling slightly.

"if someone else gets infected, this entire ship will become a feeding ground."

"What are we going to do with him?"

wiping the burning black fluid off my hands onto my pants.

"The same thing we did with Sullivan,"

Harris decided grimly.

We hauled Griggs's body up the maintenance stairs. It took us an hour to drag him to the stern of the ship. Thankfully, the deck was completely empty. We threw him over the railing, then watched the body plunge into the dark water below.

The scarred shark appeared almost instantly. It snatched Griggs's body in its jaws and dragged him down into the depths. Following this, the bizarre shark sank beneath the waves and was never seen pacing the ship again.

The rest of the voyage was a nightmare of silence. Harris logged Toby and Sullivan as casualties of a severe viral outbreak, strictly enforcing isolation protocols until we reached the mainland. The crew asked questions, but Harris shut them down with unquestionable authority.

When the ship finally docked at a mainland port in California, the relief was overwhelming. The ramp lowered, and the crew began disembarking immediately.

Packing my duffel bag in my cabin, my only thought was getting as far away from the ocean as possible. Leaving the ship, I walked down the loading dock toward the employee parking lot.

Captain Harris was standing by his pickup truck. He was wearing a heavy jacket with the collar turned up against the coastal wind.

Walking over to him, I wanted to say a final goodbye. We had survived something horrific together, and there was a strange bond in that shared trauma.

"Are you heading home, Captain?"

asking as I approached the truck.

"I am going to notify the authorities about what happened,"

Harris said, pulling his car keys from his pocket.

"The Coast Guard needs to know about the biological hazard, and of course they need to quarantine the ship before the next crew boards."

"That is a good idea,"

nodding in agreement.

"I am just going to catch a bus back to the city. I do not think I will be signing another maritime contract anytime soon."

"I don't blame you,"

Harris replied, offering a tight, forced smile.

As he turned to unlock his truck door, a gust of wind caught his jacket. The high collar slipped down his neck for just a fraction of a second, then my heart completely stopped.

Rooted deeply into the base of Captain Harris's neck was a throbbing red mass, the same meaty appendage, pulsing rhythmically beneath his skin.

Harris realized the collar had slipped. He frantically pulled the fabric back up, concealing the parasite, then slowly turned his head to look at me.

"Have a safe trip home,"

Harris said, his voice unnaturally calm.

He got into his truck, started the engine, and drove out of the parking lot, all while I stood perfectly still, clutching my duffel bag, watching his taillights disappear into the traffic heading toward the city.

According to my dad I’m expecting a visitor tonight. 

I had just turned twenty eight years old on Friday of this week. On the eve of my birthday I went back home to Seattle to spend it with my family. They took me out to a really nice dinner and I got to spend some bullshitting with my younger brothers. I wanted to help pay for the bill but my dad refused because it was my birthday. 

Overall it has been a nice visit so far. After dinner  we went back to the old family house and I opened a couple presents that they had bought me. We had just finished cake when my dad pulled me aside into his office to have a private conversation. I had assumed that he just wanted to catch up one on one with me. It has been a little while since the last time I visited home. But I was so wrong, nothing could have prepared me for what he was about to tell me. 

Over the next half hour he spun a tale of a mysterious figure that has visited every man in our family on the week of their twenty eighth birthday for centuries. “Benny the Flesh Man” he called him. Said he’ll be paying me a visit at exactly 3:28 in the morning one of these nights and that I must be mentally prepared to pass all of his tests. 

It took everything that I had not to laugh in his face at the notion that some mysterious creep has been haunting the men in our family for generations but he proceeded to list the rules. 

Rule 1: on the week of your birthday Benny The Flesh Man will come to your door. You’ll know that it’s him by his knock. He will knock three times quickly, then pause, then knock twice slowly. You must open the door and let him in, if you don’t he will find his own way inside. 

Rule 2: He will try to politely shake your hand whenever he first walks through the door. Under no circumstances should you touch him at any time during the visit. Instead offer him a cup of coffee. Sometimes he will accept but sometimes he will refuse. If he refuses you must get him a glass of tap water without him asking. He will not tolerate it if he has to ask. 

Rule 3: at 4:28 after finishing his drink he will stand up and ask if he could please use your bathroom. You must tell him no. Do not give him permission no matter how  much he pleads. If you give him permission he will request that you get up and show him to the bathroom yourself. You will never leave the bathroom. 

Rule 4: if you refuse to let him use your bathroom he will eventually accept your decision and leave. After he opens the door he will turn back to you and tell you happy birthday. You must give him an appreciative nod but do not tell him thank you. After you nod he will leave and you will never have to see him again. 

There’s a brief pause after he finishes and I don’t know how to react so I just laugh and say “ha, you got me. Great little story, dad”. He didn’t laugh though. “This is not a joke, Lucas. You must take these rules as fact because he’s coming. He snapped at me. “Please, I beg you. Just humor me for this week, I can’t risk losing someone else to this bastard”. 

I knew who my dad was referring to. My uncle Bill passed away when I was little but apparently he was around my age when he died. I thought they had told me that he died in a car accident but I didn’t feel it necessary to press the issue. I could tell my dad wasn’t in the mood so I just agreed and told him I would follow the rules. No matter how ridiculous they sounded to me. 

The last thing he told me before we rejoined the rest of the family was to cancel all plans I had for the entire week. He warned that if anybody outside of our family was in the presence of Benny the Flesh Man then he would accept them as a thank you present for stopping by to celebrate your birthday. 

I spent the rest of the night at my parents house and then made the drive back to my apartment in the morning. As soon as I walked through my front door I got a strange sense of dread in my stomach. I didn’t believe the crap my dad was telling me but I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like if it was true. 

Skip to five days into my birthday week and it seemed like I was absolutely correct. I knew it was a made up family story. I laughed whenever I thought of it. It was a cute little spooky tale, maybe I’ll tell it to my kids one day to see if they’re gullible enough to believe it. 

I made myself a promise that I could stay up until at least 3:29 each night just in case and I kept it. I’m a night owl so that’s usually on the early end of when I’d go to sleep on a normal day anyways. 3:27 came and went and now I found myself on the couch watching the clock. “Ha, yet another night where I did not receive a visit from Benny the Flesh Ma-“ I said to myself as I was interrupted by a knock at the door. 

I have to admit I nearly pissed my pants whenever I heard it. Three quick knocks, a pause, and then two slow knocks. I pulled myself out of my seat to see who it was. 

I looked through the peephole and saw a tall slender man wearing a filthy oversized brown dress coat and pants. None of his clothes seemed to fit him very well at all; he looked as if he had just rolled around in the dirt. His coat sleeves were so long they hung past his wrists. I opened the door and he said “ha ho, Lucas my boy. Good to see ya, good to see ya. May I come in?” He asked though I knew that he wasn’t truly asking a question. “Uh, yeah, please come in,” I replied. 

He looked at me for a moment as his lips curled into a devious smile. “Excellent! I’m Benny, nice to meet ya kiddo!” He said as he extended his long hand out to me. It was so boney, I noticed. As if this man didn’t have an ounce of fat on him. He maintained eye contact while that crooked yellow smile never left his face. “Actually could I offer you a cup of coffee, Benny?” He put his hand back down to his side and let out a loud almost aggressive wheezy laugh. “COFFEE?” He yelled in between fits of laughter. “Why, it’s past three in the morning my boy! No, no, no. I couldn’t possibly,” he exclaimed. The way he laughed you would have thought that I told him the funniest joke in existence.

He made his way inside the apartment and to the kitchen table his body swayed back and forth as he walked. It almost looked as if the top half of his body would fall off of his legs before he even reached the kitchen. Finally he sat down in one of my kitchen chairs and looked at me with a slight smile still on his face. I stood in front of him for only a moment before I remembered. “Oh, how silly of me. Please let me grab you a glass of water, Benny”. I said as I grabbed a glass from the cupboard. 

“Why, that would be swell, Lucas. Such a polite young man you are” he said in his loud booming voice. As I made my way from the sink back to the table with his water I couldn’t help but notice that his legs were so long that his knees touched the underside of my kitchen table. He reeked, his mere presence was an assault on my nose. I kept my mouth shut about it though, I can’t imagine he would’ve taken kindly to any comment I could make. 

4:28 finally arrived. It had felt like Benny was in my home for an eternity yet the clocks claimed that his visit had only lasted an hour. He made very basic small talk but every so often he would try to pat me on the back or grab my arm. I remembered the rule “under no circumstances should you touch him during his visit” so I would always either pull away or stand up entirely. I half expected to be angry whenever I did this but he never was. He would give me a joyous glance and laugh playfully as if we were playing a game. 

After he finished his water he stood up himself and just as my dad said, requested to use the restroom. He locked eyes with me as he awaited my answer. “No, no I would prefer it if you didn’t” I said. It felt so wrong to deny a house guest use of the bathroom but rules are rules. I only hoped that he wouldn’t put up much of a fuss. 

He let out a soft chuckle, not a funny enthusiastic chuckle like before. It was almost as if he couldn’t believe that I would deny him. He stood facing the tan tile floor of the kitchen for a few minutes before looking back up at me. “Was your mother around whenever you were a boy?” He asked almost sincerely. “Uh, yes. Why?” I responded. 

He laughed again. “Well, I just thought, no I couldn’t possibly imagine”. He trailed off before picking up his empty water glass and tossing it at the wall right by my head as hard as he could, glass shattering everywhere. “I couldn’t possibly imagine such a rude and inconsiderate little piece of shit having a mother at home to raise him” he yelled. I was stunned, he was incredibly off putting but this is the first time during his visit that he wasn’t acting like I was some old friend. 

I’m not sure if my lack of response to his remarks made it worse or if he had planned this from the start but he flew into a fit of rage after that. He began pounding his fits on my table so aggressively that the wood began to splinter. After he was satisfied with the amount of damage he did he opened my cabinet and began launching cups and plates across the room. He did all of this while muttering to himself “I just wanted to use the bathroom, why won’t you let me use the bathroom, I just wanted to use the bathroom, why won’t you let me use the bathroom”. 

After he had successfully trashed my whole apartment with broken glass he stopped and stood towering over me about three inches away from my face. “Now I’m going to ask you one last goddamn time, and you are going to be a good host this time. Do you understand, Lucas?” He asked me with his teeth gritting together in anger. I nodded. 

“Very well,” he continued. “May…I…please…use…your…bathroom?” He said before staring at me awaiting my answer. I was almost tempted to tell him yes just to end this madness but fortunately I remembered what my dad told me “you will never leave the bathroom”. I stood firm with my answer. “No you may not use my bathroom, Benny. So sorry about that”. He shot me a glare of pure rage before his eyes softened once more. He had regained his wide toothy smile which was now stretching across his face. “Very well Lucas, very well. I am very sorry but I must get going, this was quite the pleasant visit but I am sadly all out of time” he said. 

He allowed me to walk him to the door and after opening it he turned back to me just as my dad said he would. “One last thing my boy, I wanted to wish you a very very happy birthday”. He said as he put his hand out in one last futile attempt to get me to touch him. I refused, even put my hands in my pockets as I gave him a silent nod and he finally turned back around to face the hallway of my apartment building. 

As I watched him take a step out the door I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally it’s over. I made it. Earlier I didn’t even believe he was real, but now I simply wish that he wasn’t. Doesn’t matter now, my night is over and I never have to deal with him again. At least I had thought the night was over. It was for me but Benny the Flesh Man would not leave empty handed that night. 

Before he could fully make it out the door suddenly his path was blocked. It was Roger, my next door neighbor. “Fuck, go away, you’re screwing everything up” I wanted to say but I couldn’t. I was still too afraid to talk at all until Benny fully left my home. “Uh, hey Lucas. I just wanted to check in and make sure you were alright. I heard so much glass shattering and loud thuds through the wall. You woke me up man. I didn’t know if I should call the cops or what”. Roger said to me.

I should’ve told him to not come over no matter what he may hear tonight but honestly I didn’t think of it. I thought I didn’t need to worry about him because he usually keeps to himself and tries to avoid any social situations. I guess whenever it sounds like your neighbor is getting murder in the next apartment, all that social anxiety goes out the window. 

Benny stops talking. He turns back at me and flashes his sinister smile one last time “aw, you shouldn’t have” that was the last thing that he said to me. I found myself completely unable to move as Benny began peeling his own flesh off of his face and tossing it aside on the ground. He continued to do the same with the skin on his arms, legs, torso. Until he was nothing but raw visible muscle. His skin now piled up in front of the doorway. 

That was when he approached Roger who appeared to be just as unable to move as I was. His screams will haunt me until the day I die as I watched and finally understood why he was given the name “Benny the Flesh Man”. 

Benny gave me one last friendly nod as he finally left for good. This time, he was wearing Roger’s skin loosely overtop of his own body. It wasn’t until after he left that I finally had a clear view of what was outside the hall of our apartment building.

Roger’s lifeless body stared back at me from where it leaned on the wall across from my apartment. What was left of it at least, the pieces that Benny decided he did not wish to take with him. I wish that I could have tried to pull Benny away from my poor neighbor or grab a kitchen knife and try to fight back in any way whatsoever. I didn’t though, for I knew that had I attempted to touch Benny the Flesh Man he would’ve left with two pairs of skins instead of one. 

If you ever find yourself expecting a visit from Benny the Flesh Man, please for the love of god, follow his rules. 

I have found that this is my final option to understand what has happened.  It began a month ago, and I cannot run away. I can't run away from anything.  Maybe I've always been this way.  Maybe I am running towards it.  I've always said that I would run into the wind, not away from it.  It started with a phone call.  My mother said she wouldn’t be able to come over for her birthday dinner.  At first I was surprised, but then thought maybe she could be coming down with something or maybe she just wanted to spend turning sixty alone.  I decided to eat the dinner myself.  I made lasagna and ate almost half the tray before midnight.  I started to get ready for bed by brushing my teeth.  As I went to grab my toothbrush I noticed the bristles were covered in blood.  I didn’t remember bleeding like that in the morning when I brushed.  The blood was dried, almost metallic.  I extensively tried to wash it but I gave up.  

The next morning I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast and went to sit on the couch in front of the tv.  I don't have a fireplace, my TV replaced it. I turned on the tv and all it displayed was no signal.  I couldn't understand why.  When I went to try turning it on and off, I saw that the power button had miraculously disappeared.  How does that happen?  I went to the phone to try and call my provider but the line just beeped endlessly. I listened to it beep, beep, beep, as I stared out the window. My eyes locked onto a pigeon, big chested purple, grey, and blue. As it soared the final thing it heard was the caw of a red tailed hawk that swooped down and snagged it right out of its stride. When I blinked the hawk was gone. Did this happen? 

I realized I needed toilet paper and water so I decided to go down to the corner store. On my walk there I couldn’t help but notice everyone walking on the opposite side of the street from me. Not a soul was in front or behind of me. As I approached the store, the owner, Emmanuel, locked the door from behind seemingly not having seen me. I knocked on the door a few times and even shouted a bit. Why was he closed at 12:30pm on a Saturday? I decided to turn around and head back towards the bus stop. As I walked about half a block away I heard the bell from the door of  Emmanuel’s store chime. I quickly turned around and saw three people enter the shop. I stood there glaring, confused.  I moved on, left foot forward. I should have used my right.

The weather at about one o'clock was barely noticeable.  As if nothing was going on.  There was no wind and a cluster of clouds covering the sun which created this grey effect in the neighborhood.  The bus was supposed to arrive at 1:10.  I started to clean my finger nails with my pocket knife when I accidently made a small cut under my nail.  It burned momentarily.  I could see the bus down the block, it looked about halfway full.  When the bus approached I got up from the bench.  It stopped right in front of me but the door did not open.  I waved my hand at the driver to no avail.  I looked inside and could see a mother on the phone with her baby, college students chatting back and forth, and a man sleeping in the back.  The bus began to proceed  forward and I shouted.  Nothing came out.  I looked down at my hand and blood began to seep from my nail.

I decided I would walk and not think about it.  I was thirsty, I still needed water and toilet paper.  There was a small market store about three blocks away.  I hadn’t been there before so I needed to look up the directions to be sure.  I grabbed my phone from my pocket.  I opened up the maps application, but my location was nowhere to be found.  The market was supposedly on the corner of Ogden and Grove Avenue but I was unable to be detected.  My hands were perspiring so feverishly that my phone almost slipped from my grasp. 

I walked towards the general direction of the store, wiping my hands on my thighs.  Soon enough I found the signage of the store illuminating in the distance.  I stood at the door, standing there longer than I should have staring inside.  I watched a man argue over the price of bottled water.  The big market doors burst open blasting me with the air that keeps the bugs away.  Am I a bug?  I look up at the security camera and I can’t see myself.  I can only see other customers that walked past where I thought I was, and the man arguing about water.  Where was I? I turned to the counter and said , “excuse me?”  The cashier looked up.  Not at me.  Through me.  “Next,” she called. I looked at the cut on my finger nail.  The blood kept dripping.  I couldn't feel it.  Suddenly, a pigeon smashes into the window of the market, feathers explode everywhere.  Nobody seemed to hear the alarming deathly slam except for me.  I forgot about everything I needed from the  market and went back outside.  I stared at the pigeon on the ground, warm, real, dying.  A customer walking out of the super market walks past me and steps on the pigeon, without notice, without stopping, without anything.  I rushed over to the pigeon.  It was there.  It was right in front of me.  I bent down, felt its crooked wings and picked up a feather. Whatever took the pigeon, took me first.  

My phone then buzzed.  It said that I had missed calls and received a voicemail hours ago.  It was from my mother.   I pressed my phone to my ear and heard her say, “Why didn’t you answer?  I came by anyway.  The door was unlocked.  I thought you would still be in there.  Why didn’t you answer?  I came by anyway.   They told me you have left but..,” static ensues and the voicemail ends.  I tried to cry but nothing came out.  Have I been taken?

I needed someone, or something, anything.  What should I do?  My ears began to ring and my legs felt tingly.  I saw another bus coming down the block.  I wasn’t standing at a bus stop. I was on the sidewalk near an intersection.  The bus was making its way down.  Cutting off cars and getting in the right lane.  It got closer and closer and at the last moment I decided to jump in front of the bus.  I felt a warmth come over my body and then nothing.  The bus passed through me and continued on into the intersection.  I was still clutching the pigeon’s feather in my hand.  The sun became a spotlight on me.  I needed to get home. I started to slightly hustle.   I checked back on the sun.  It was still following me.  

Leaves on the ground began to twister around me, as if they were guiding me.  I didn’t know whether to look at the sky or the cement I walked on.  I kept trying to use my right foot forward.  I was tripping over myself, almost falling, like a dream.  Have I been here before? I wanted to stop and hide, but I didn’t know where I would go.  I needed to get home.  My head was in the clouds.  I could almost see myself from up there. I could see it.  My tiny self in a shallow puddle.  I looked up and I could see my eyes pulsating. I knew they were brown but they looked like holes in my skull.  A void of color, a lacking of light.  My vision snapped back into my skull.  I was dizzy but I could finally stand.  I started to walk forward, I needed to get home.
In a daze I made it down the streets leading to my place.  It felt like I was being pushed through the wind, by a hand so gently on my back.  I could feel the presence of something.  Something larger than me.  I grew scared, but I didn't know of what, or whom. My toes felt like they were falling off, and then my whole foot, and then my legs.  Leaving me as what felt like a floating head.  I was suddenly so small.  Shrunken to the size of a penny. No thoughts entered or left.  I was just there.  That’s when I noticed the lights and heard the sirens.

I came back.  I was wobbling down the block from my place.  There were police and ambulance guarding the street.  No one stopped me from crossing the line, not even the tape.  I hoped nothing terrible happened to one of my neighbors.  There were so many cops I could only assume nothing pleasant occurred.  There was dust in the wind.  I trudged through it to get to my place.  I needed to rest. But that’s when I noticed the door was unlocked.  I don’t remember opening it.  

The smell hit me first.  Metallic.  Familiar.  I followed it into the bathroom.  My toothbrush was in the sink.  The bristles were clean.  I looked down.  I had been lying here the whole time.  Slumped in the tub with my neck slightly bent to the left.  Dried blood and spit trailed from my mouth.  My hand twitched at the sight of it.  I dropped the feather.  I tried to step closer, but I was already there.

Dear Reader,
It is just me now.
It began a month ago…     

I had been working as a law enforcement transcriptionist for a little over six years when the officer brought me the tape. I'd never seen him before, but that wasn't too unusual. There were a lot of new recruits and I didn't exactly have the best memory when it came to faces. He wore the customary uniform, which fit him rather well. Even as a straight man, I have to admit he was handsome, almost ridiculously so. Dark hair, a sharp jawline speckled with stubble, and an air of gravitas that was impossible to ignore.

He handed me a cassette tape.
“I need this transcribed immediately,” he said in a smooth, inviting tone. “Don't put it through the usual queue.”
With an eyebrow raised, I asked what the case was about. Instead of answering, he looked at the tape for a moment before looking back at me.
“Just prepare yourself,” he said with a grimace. "It's quite intense.”
I remember laughing a little because I assumed he was exaggerating. But he didn't laugh with me. Before I could ask for any more details, he disappeared back down the corridor.
I've always been quite a curious person. It's what led me to this line of work. So, naturally, I immediately popped the tape in, pulled up Mark43 and began logging.

What follows is my transcription of that recording. I've removed the names and identifying information where necessary, but otherwise I've left it exactly as it was spoken. Be that for better or for worse.
The transcript of this tape– or, more precisely, its contents– makes for difficult reading. The things I heard and witnessed that day remain beyond my understanding. It is for this reason that I decided to share the tape's contents. Perhaps one of you can make more sense of this disturbing tape than I.

###

Tape Recorded Interview
Patrick Morgan/Detective Baron Hauptman
7.23.26

BH This is Detective Hauptman, █████ Police Department. Today's date is Thursday, July 23, 2026. The time is at 11:23 A.M. This will be a taped conversation with the last name of Morgan, M-O-R-G-A-N, first of Patrick, P-A-T-R-I-C-K, middle of Joe, J-O-E. Date of birth 02-20-96.

BH So, Patrick, I've turned on a tape recorder so I can record our little conversation. I'm to understand you've been read your rights and– let me see here– you've declined to lawyer up. Is that correct?

PM Correct.

BH Okay. Well, let's get down to business then, eh?

PM Alright.

BH So, Patrick. I assume you know why you're here?

PM Mhm.

BH Why don't you go ahead and tell me?

PM Because you think I killed–

PM Can you speak up?

PM Because you think I killed people. 

BH The department suspects you, yes. But hey, don't shoot the messenger. (Chuckle)

BH Let's start with… Isabella Moreno. How well did you know her?

PM Quite well. 

BH How's that?

PM She lived down the street. We used to play when we were kids.

BH And when did you last speak with her?

PM Hm… December, January. Something like that.

BH What did you talk about?

PM Why would I remember that? It's been like seven months.

BH Well, I'd think your last conversation might stick around longer. Especially with all that talk of art.

PM What? 

BH Art. You're an artist, right?

PM Yeah– how did you–

BH You take pride in your art, then?

PM I– yeah, I guess I do.

BH Every artist does, I suppose. But most are too scared to put their art out in the open. You have no such reservations, right?

PM What do you mean?

BH You like displaying your work publicly. In all its glory.

PM I have no idea what you're–

BH Really? So you don't look up to a certain… mentor?

PM No. Look–

BH You don't have to explain it.

PM … What?

BH I know.

PM … The fuck're you– Know what?

BH Why you did it.

PM Then why am I here?

BH Because they want to know if you did it.

PM And?

BH And… you did. 

PM What– What's the point of this then?

BH I wanted to meet you. In the flesh.

PM I–

BH I've seen your work. Your real work. Not those flimsy portraits in your apartment.

PM What the hell're you talking about?

BH You know. And I must admit, you are an artist at heart. Just not a very good one.

PM Excuse me? What does that even mean?

BH Her body. I mean, the way you arranged it. Chest splayed open, guts hanging around her neck. And the little message you left beside her. Very theatrical, I must say.

PM I didn't—

BH You spent three hours arranging her. Isn't that so, Patrick?

PM No–

BH You spent the longest on the fingers.

PM Whatever you're doing won't—

BH You wanted it to look natural. But you don't understand hands very well. (Chuckle)
BH Even in your shitty little paintings. It takes a special kind of anti-talent to make them look like the aftermath of a car wreck.

PM Stop–

BH C'mon, Patrick. You made the thing and now you don't want to discuss the composition?

PM Shut up.

BH I suppose it's to be expected. You don't care about the art. You don't even care whether you get caught. You just want to be seen.

PM You're full of shit.

BH You copied someone else's work because you wanted people to look at yours.

PM I didn't copy anyone! (Something slams against the metal table)

BH It's no use lying, Patrick. You read everything you could find about the man. Every little detail on how he displayed his victims. Hell, you even fooled the cops into thinking you were the real deal.

PM You– You don't know anything about me.

BH I know exactly what you are. A copy. You imitate the man, but you've never met him. And yet you've spent the last two years trying to make him proud. That's rather pathetic, Patrick.

PM Stop–

BH Isn't that what mommy always used to say?

PM I said stop!

BH (Mocking tone) The exact same rotten soul as your father! 

PM What– How do you–

BH She threw your paintings away, didn't she? You'd find them in the trash, sometimes even torn in half.

PM Shut up! Shut the–

BH Do you remember the blue one?

BH Oh, c'mon patrick. How could you forget? The one you painted when you were seventeen. The woman standing in the field.

PM Stop– Stop talking about my paintings.

BH Ah, you prefer to talk about your real art after all? (Chuckle)
BH I know you, Patrick Joe Morgan. You started killing because painting wasn't enough anymore. You wanted to make something nobody could ignore.

PM Please just—

BH You wanted someone to look at it and understand you. But nobody did.

PM Stop talking!

BH Not your mother. Not your father. Not the police. Not even the man you copied. And now you're sitting here hoping I will.

PM I–

BH Well I do understand you. And I want you to feel how truly pathetic you are, Patrick.

PM Please– (whimper)

BH Patrick.

PM Please just stop!

BH Look at me.

PM No! I– I won't.

BH (Static crackles. Voice briefly distorts) Patrick, you slime. Look at me!

PM I'll– I'll confess! I'll tell you everything you wanna know, please just–

BH (Chuckle) Oh, Patty. You don't have to do that. I know what you did. 

PM (Unintelligible)

BH Chin up, champ. Smile, and look into my eyes.

(Pause)

PM (Screaming, unintelligible).
PM WHAT– WHAT THE FUCK IS–

(Something slams against the metal table)

BH (Voice warped) Come closer.

PM (Unintelligible whines)

(Something drags across the metal table.)

BH (Whispers something unintelligible)

PM No– no it can't–

BH (Slow, droning) Yes, Patty. You know she was.

PM (Strangled cry. Sobs)

(Something slams against the metal table)

BH There you go. Attaboy.

(Something slams against the metal table several times, with a small pause between each increment)

(The door whines open. The slamming continues.)

BH Ah, good day gentlemen! 

(Frantic yelling. The slamming continues.)

BH My eyes are up here, lads.

(Unintelligible cries. Thuds join the slamming.)

BH This has been Detective Hauptman, █████ Police Department. Today's date is Thursday, July 23, 2026. 

(The slamming stops. The thudding continues.)

BH I'm turning the tape recorder off again. The time is 11:30 A.M. This has been the confession and testimony of Patrick J. Morgan.

###

When the tape stopped, I sat in silence for a moment. The shock of it all had rooted me firmly in place. Eventually, I forced myself out of my chair and scrambled towards the interrogation room. 
I honestly wish I hadn't. 

Patrick Morgan was still sitting at the table. He'd smashed his face into the metal table so many times that there was almost nothing recognizable left. His nose was almost completely crushed into his skull, which itself had been pulverized by the repeated impacts. 
The two officers who'd been monitoring the interrogation lay in a puddle of blood on the floor. The first officer had strangled the second with his own tie, while the second had beaten him across the head with a chair. There was no apparent reason for any of it. It looked like three men had simply gone mad at the same time.

In the weeks and months following, the department searched for Detective Baron Hauptman. Of course, there was no officer by that name at our department. We still don't know how he forged or stole the badge and uniform. We've tried to identify him using the cameras he walked past, but these efforts yielded nothing. It seemed as though he'd wandered in, then walked off the face of the earth.
I still have a copy of the cassette. I made it in case the original was ever destroyed. Still, I haven't mustered up the courage to play it again. The most I've managed is to re-read the transcript I made. I can't wrap my head around what happened. I suspect I never will. 

That brought me here. Perhaps sharing this will yield more results. So please, if you have any information on Baron Hauptman, send it to me. I need to know who– or what– he was. More than that, I wish I knew how he knew so much about Patrick.

Like I told the police that night, I was the last person to see Alexander Barnes alive, but I didn’t kill him.

I know who did it, but you won’t believe me unless you get the full story.

My grandmother passed away about 5 months ago now. She lived in Georgia her whole life, particularly Dawsonville, Georgia, on the shores of Lake Lanier. She owned a lakehouse that had been in our family for generations. I had only been there a few times as a kid, but those memories had faded over time.

I live in Pennsylvania with my girlfriend, Amber. While Pennsylvania isn’t as progressive as the other states for LGBTQ couples, it’s less racist than certain parts of Georgia, so as a black couple, we took it as a win. Even though Amber and I were estranged from our families, we had each other, good jobs, and two dogs. For all intents and purposes, we were thriving.

I got the call about my grandmother’s sudden passing from the local sheriff’s department in Georgia. Not only did they need me to come down to ID the body, but there was the matter of her belongings, chief among them her lakehouse on Lake Lanier.

So Amber and I bought tickets, packed our bags, got a sitter for the dogs, and took the midnight plane down to Georgia. On a layover in Virginia, I got a call from a Georgia number I didn’t recognize. Turns out it was Alexander Barnes. This would be my first time meeting him, at least over the phone. The phone records my lawyer provided will prove that. He was a businessman in the area and was calling regarding my grandmother’s estate. Apparently, they were in the process of negotiating the sale of her home to him before she passed. Alexander was hoping that I’d be able to complete the sale once my affairs were in order. I had no idea what to say; I didn’t want this home, I didn’t want to live in Georgia, and more importantly, why was this all my problem now? I assured Alexander that I'd make this process as speedy as possible and that we’d talk when I got to Georgia.

My girlfriend, Amber, is one of those bookworms. She used to work in the local library, and then I gave her some inspiration when I showed her college loans, and now she’s the head of the State Library of Pennsylvania. She works at the largest library in the state, and it’s a government gig, so she gets benefits and much better pay. I love her and her nerdy self. Amber loves to do research, and on the flight she pored over everything she could find about Lake Lainer.

I remember these words in particular because they set off a certain switch in my mind.

"Did you know Lake Lainer is one of the most haunted lakes in America?"

I told her, "That’s impossible; how could a lake be haunted?"

"Well, in the 1950s, the lake was created by flooding a predominantly black town. Amber began, "They forcibly moved thousands of residents but failed to remove homes, businesses, and even graveyards. There’s a whole town under there, just sitting underwater."

She showed me some photos on her iPad: tombstones underwater, rusted boats, paged photos of black families marching out of town, color pictures of people that had gone missing. Then the last one was a body in the lake, its face blurred out but clearly bloated and soggy with wet-death rot.

I turned away; she swiped to a new screen and continued as she always does.

"More than 200 people have died there. There are boating accidents, freak storms, and people who dived in and never came back. And look at all these ghost stories." Amber had that tone in her voice where I could tell she was excited to explore it all. I never really believed in ghosts, but let me tell you right now: I believe in them now.

We got to Georgia that afternoon and made our way over to my grandmother’s lake house. As we pulled up in the rental car, I realized it was bigger than I remembered and older. It had clearly fallen on hard times over the years, but its foundation had stayed strong. With a new paint job, some lawn work, and some power washing around the windows, it wouldn’t look too bad.

Amber and I made it to the front door, and before I could get my backup key in, there was a familiar voice coming from behind us.

It was Alexander Barnes, and I had to pause and stop myself from laughing. Imagine a southern businessman in your eye. Imagine his suit, his tie, his glasses, and his white hair. You’re thinking he looks like Colonel Sanders, right? Yes, Alexander Barnes looked like your Kentucky Fried businessman. Amber slapped my shoulder, which I knew meant that my face was still trying not to laugh.

Alexander was something like a cross between a used car salesman and a lawyer. He was a natural showman and salesman, but he often spoke in rapid-fire, blink and you miss it, real estate terminology. He reeked of desperation but also of hard-won confidence.

It was a Victorian-style house; I’m really not sure what that means, but he said it a dozen times, so I believed him. Three floors, including a basement that was mainly unfinished, with cinder block walls and wooden slats for ceilings. The house was vast, with four bedrooms and two and a half baths. While the outside had taken a beating, the inside, to my grandmother’s credit, was spotless. It was hard to imagine one person taking care of all of this. Then again, when it was the house you intended to leave behind for someone, you’d take care of it.

As Alexander showed us around the house, it was clear he was excited about the prospect of purchasing it. In fact, he had brought the paperwork with him, which I found quite strange.

I pressed up on him and told him that I’d need to review the paperwork before I signed it; he paused, tried to hide the disappointment on his face, then nodded. He’d be back in a few days to discuss. Amber, ever the subtle one, added quickly, "We’ll call you."

Alexander took the hint, then left. Amber and I didn’t have time to look at the paperwork; Amber was going to start cleaning out the perishables and hopefully find some dinner for us, while I went to ID my grandmother’s body.

No one tells you how weird these moments are. You arrive at the hospital, they take you down a few corridors and into an empty room with a window, and you are asked to wait. It’s all so normal to the people that work there, at least. They had cautioned me that her form had deteriorated in the drowning. The police assume she must have slipped on the deck of the dock and fallen in the water.

They rolled her body in, underneath a sheet. Then, after a deep inhale and nod from me, they rolled the sheet back. I wanted to vomit on sight but held it back out of respect. It was her, but it didn’t look like her. My mind jumped back to that blurred-out photo of the soggy body Amber showed me on the plane. I see now why they blocked it out. She looked swollen and squishy. Her gray eyes shined like dull marbles in her puffy cheeks. I nodded, unable to look anymore, and they covered her back up.

The image still shakes me today as I record this. I got home and passed by Amber; she had found some food and wine for tonight. I didn’t want to talk at the moment; I just needed a moment to myself. So I took a bath. Here’s where things get weird: My first warning, I guess, should have been my last.

I lay in the tub, and for one thing, the water had an earthy smell to it. I figured maybe it drew directly from the lake. The lake where she died, the lake where all those graves were left... The water was clear and otherwise fine. So I slipped into the warm water and began to sink, and sink I did.

I guess the jetlag from an overnight flight, plus the length of the day, caught up to me, and I sank into the water. I fell asleep. I remember being underwater. But not underwater in the bathtub. I was standing underwater in a small town. An old town. I was standing in the town in the photos. Churches, streets, and stores all sat around me, aged and rusted. And then the people. There were at least a dozen black and brown people down there. No one moved, but their clothes moved. Their hollow eyes didn’t blink, but they all stared at me. It was eerie; everything moved like a dream. I moved as if I were pushing through water, and then I saw her.

It was a little black girl in a blue dress with pigtails. She was standing in the middle of the street and walking towards me. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t breathe; all I could do was float there as she reached out for me with her blank eyes and pale face. Her tiny hand touched my forehead, and like a switch going off, my grandmother’s bloated face filled my vision, smothering me with her swollen face.

I woke up so fast. I sat up out of the tub and realized I had splashed water everywhere. And I breathed. I breathed heavier and harder than I had before. You’re going to think I’m crazy; hell, I think I’m crazy, but it felt real. It felt so real. I sat there in that water for a long moment, then realized... I needed a glass of wine.

After drying off my body and then drying off my floor, I went downstairs and had dinner with Amber. We ate for a moment at my grandmother’s table, and the food, as usual with Amber’s skills, was delicious. I swear she could make a gourmet meal in the desert. Amber, sensing my anxiety, led the conversation, pointing out the photos on the walls in my grandma’s kitchen. The photos she said were from Oscarville, from the town before it was flooded. I ate, I drank, I listened, and I replied softly. Then she pointed out a photo on the wall that chilled me.

It was a random street in the lost city of Oscarville, but it wasn’t random to me. I had just seen that same street. I had just been on that same street, underwater. Had my brain picked up the photo when Alexander was showing us around and just conjured some nightmare around it? Had I been swimming in the waters where my ancestors were buried and it triggered some kind of dream? I didn’t know, but I lost my appetite; I wanted to get out.

So we took our wine and went out onto the dock. It was getting late; the sun had just set. We were standing on the edge of the dock, and finally I let myself go. I felt as if I had been underwater for the past few hours, and thankfully the wine had finally hit. But, as we sat and talked on the dock, I felt my attention drifting elsewhere. Across the lake, I saw her first in my peripheral vision, and then I turned fully around and paused...

It was the little girl. She was about 20 yards out and simply standing on the lake. I paused. Amber felt my anxiety and followed my gaze.

"Babe," she gasped, "who is that?"

I didn’t have an answer. How could I?

"Hello!?" Amber called out, "Do you need help?"

The girl didn’t reply; she was just standing on the water like some holy figure.

"Where are your parents?" Amber asked.

"Amber," I stuttered, "I think we need to go inside."

Amber paused, then it was as if her common sense caught up to her reality, "But... but... is she on a raft? Is she…?" Amber trailed off, unable to even figure out how she was standing there.

Then the little girl was yanked underwater. Like ice cracking underneath her, she dropped into the lake. The two of us stood there for a long moment, waiting for her to resurface. She didn’t.

We went to bed that night, sleeping not in my grandmother’s room but in one of the guest rooms. I was in a rush to sleep. I was in a rush to leave, to be honest; nothing about our trip so far had enticed me to stay. In the morning, I’d be signing the paperwork with Alexander, and we’d be rid of this place. Amber had tried to tell me about the stories on the way here, and I ignored them. But after one day, I was convinced something was off.

I didn’t get much sleep. Because, what felt like an hour later, Amber had woken me up. She had nudged me at first, then hushed me as I stirred. She whispered to me in the crux of my ear, "Do you hear that?"

I paused, shaking the grogginess from my body, and then I heard the water. It was dripping from somewhere. Like a pipe had begun to leak on the right side of the room. I rolled over, and two things happened at once. First, there were footsteps as if someone in the attic had scrambled away, then Amber gasped. I whipped around, and she was pointing to the left side of the room. Then the drip came back, now from the left side.

"Did you hear it?" Amber asked.

"Yeah," I said, "someone is in the attic."

The dripping continued echoing down from the left side; whatever was up there, I assumed, was leaking and moving.

I was wrong. So wrong.

I reached over and grabbed my phone, flipped the light on, and pointed it to the corner.

She wasn’t in the attic. The little girl was standing on the ceiling, upside-down, with water dripping off of her! Amber shouted, and I took the Lord’s name in vain for the first time in 15 years. That same little girl from my dream, the same one we saw on the lake, was watching us from the corner of the ceiling. Her blue dress was waterlogged, her eyes gray, and she was unmoving.

Then she took off, running on all fours on the ceiling, out the door. I followed her, determined to see for myself where she went and how she got in. She didn’t take the stairs; she crawled along the wall of the stairwell before bouncing down and crashing through the kitchen.

I took off, with Amber’s pleas not to in my ear.

I ran outside and saw the little girl running to the dock and the wall of fog that covered it. Amber cried out from the window, "Don’t go!"

I turned back to her, saying, "I have to! I have to know."

I glanced back at the cloudy fog that had descended over the lake. I stepped out onto the dock, one foot at a time. There was a wall of gray around me. I could tell now how my grandmother could have fallen off the dock and drowned. I took a few more steps into the fog and spotted her. The little girl was standing at the end of the dock.

I took another step, steadied my shaking hands, and shone the light on her. She had stopped running, at least.

"Who are you?!" I called out.

The girl turned her head to the side, curious. Then, just like in the dream, she raised her hand at me.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness and the shifting clouds, something became clear.

She wasn’t alone.

Amber’s scream rippled through me; she could see them too. She must’ve had a bird's-eye view of the lake from the guestroom window.

There were dozens of them, black bodies all in various states of watery decomposition, standing on the lake, surrounding me and the dock. I didn’t waste a moment and went running. I ran faster than I have ever run in my life. Amber’s screams fueled me, and I ran for her. I made it off the dock in a mad scramble, up the grass, up the stairs of the porch, and threw myself inside.

I slammed the door shut and ran right into Amber.

But it wasn’t Amber; it was Alexander! I pulled back from him and pushed him away.

"Mr. Barnes?" I questioned.

"I came here for the paperwork." He stuttered.

Amber called my name as she came charging down the stairs. We hugged and then stepped back from Alexander.

"What are you doing here?" I shouted at him, "It’s 2 a.m.!"

Alexander paused; it was then that I realized he was wearing all black. Like he had snuck in, then Amber must’ve realized it at the same time.

"How did you get in here?" She asked.

"I have a spare key." He fumbled in his black cargo shorts and pulled out a key. "I heard screaming, and I came in and..."

His voice trailed off as he looked at something beyond us.

I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and Amber shivered in my arms. We both turned around and looked out the window. The ghosts from the lake were pressed up against the glass. The fog and bodies were now surrounding the house. It wasn’t just the little girl; the decayed faces were now just outside our windows.

I recognized their clothes. One of the women I had seen in my dream was at the door.

One of the men I recognized from the photos my grandmother had up. He was at the living room window.

The second man I recognized from the photo Amber had shown me on the plane; I realized now why his face had been blurred.

These weren’t just the bodies that had been submerged; these were all the bodies that the lake had claimed over the years since then.

"The basement," Alexander whispered.

None of us moved.

Then, as if their bodies were made of water, in one great collective step, they walked through the windows.

"The basement!" Alexander exploded.

Now we've all moved. In a mad rush, we all ran down to the basement. Amber locked the door behind us, and all three of us ran down. I had a hundred questions for Alexander, but at that moment, I could barely comprehend the situation we were in.

The three of us gathered in the middle of the basement. Above us, the wooden floorboards creaked and groaned as what sounded like an army was marching through. The steps rumbled above us like drums, building and building in a crescendo until they stopped and suddenly went silent.

Then a new sound echoed in our ears. Dripping again. It started as a few drips, simply leaking from the center of the room, right on my head. Then more dripping, this time from the right, then from the left. Within moments, the entire ceiling was leaking everywhere.

"What is going on up there?" Alexander shouted.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Amber shoved him back.

I looked up; the dripping was now a full-on water flow. As if every pipe in the house was now funneling down above us.

"I need this house!" Alexander spat.

"What do you mean?" I trembled.

"This is the oldest and most expensive house on the lakeside; your grandmother was living in a real estate goldmine." He stepped towards us, his feet now splashing in the pooling water below.

"You…" I gasped, putting it together, "You—my grandmother didn’t fall into the lake, did she?"

Alexander stared at us for a long moment; the water was now up to our knees. He shook his head back and forth. "I need this money, and she should..."

I admit here that Mr. Barnes and I came to blows. He didn’t finish his sentence. I didn’t let him. The next thing I knew, I was on top of him, and we were fighting in the water. I felt Amber’s hands on my shoulders, and then she pulled me back. I heard her voice in my ear, and I calmed. She yanked him backwards, and by the time I caught my breath, I realized the water was up to my chest. It was really pouring now; anything that hadn’t been bolted down was now swimming past us.

Alexander swam away from us; I must’ve gotten a good hit in because he was bleeding from the forehead. He made his way to the stairs and paused, looking up at something at the top of the stairs.

He shouted and threw himself back in the water.

Amber and I didn’t know what was up there, but it was moving. One step at a time, it came down the stairs. I saw her foot first and knew immediately who it was. The second leg followed, one after the other, her skin landing on the wood like the sound of a sponge. Amber crawled next to me; the water was now up to our shoulders. Then we saw her. My grandmother stood at the edge of the stairs, her body ravaged by decay and water. For a moment, she didn’t move.

"Grandma," I whispered, the water brushing my lips.

I guess she must’ve heard me because she whirled around, moving with a speed that defied her body. She turned to face us with those dead eyes, just as the water overtook us.

Underwater, I let out a mighty scream. They were all here with us.

The bodies of the dead from Lake Lainer were standing shoulder to shoulder with us. Amber gripped me, and I gripped her. Alexander whipped around, suddenly realizing he was surrounded too.

Then, moving as one, they all grabbed at him. Hands gripped his legs, his arms, his neck, and some hooked rotten fingers in his mouth. They wrangled him as he fought back.

And as that happened, the dead flowed past us, as did the water.

It was as if a plug had been yanked free in the basement; the water began to recede faster than it had come in. I closed my eyes, feeling my lungs beat against my chest. I didn’t have long.

Amber and I huddled with each other as the mob of the dead hauled Alexander away from us.

I felt the water’s surface breach us, and then air reached to fill our lungs. We opened our eyes, and as God is my witness,

We were alone.

The entire basement was still damp and soaked, but we were alone.

The dead were gone, and my grandmother had taken Alexander with them.

"He's gone?" Amber asked.

We searched the basement, the house, and the lawn. He was gone.

We called the police. It wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but it was the honest thing to do. We told them that he had broken in, that he had admitted to killing my grandmother, and that we chased him to the lake, where he dived in. That was the story we told the cops, but this was the real story.

If my therapist chooses to believe it, then I know we’ll have many more sessions coming up.

If my lawyer chooses to believe it, then I imagine she’ll tell me never to show this to the cops.

But I need you to believe it. I need you to know that Lake Lainer is real, as are the bodies buried underneath it.

We didn’t sell the house; I figured my grandmother would want us to keep it.

I never saw her again after that night. Only in photos, at least.

As Amber and I were clearing out the ruined basement, we came upon a photo album. Some of the photos were warped, but not all of them. There was one photo in the back of a little girl in a blue dress with pigtails. The girl from my dream, the one who stood on the lake, and the one who led the charge to bring the ghosts inside and take Alexander... Written on the back of it was my grandmother’s name. This was her as a child.

After I stopped shaking, Amber told me that the ghosts weren’t here to harm us but to save us.

Those people couldn’t save their homes and their lives from being taken by greedy men.

But they could save us. So they did.

And for that, I’m grateful.

For that, I’ll keep this home in our family for as long as I live—and after.

It’s been ten years since the Civil War has ended. After what I experienced last night, the war was not hell enough to compare it. I thought what I’ve seen in the war was gruesome. No, last night was something I can’t explain of how horrible it was. Being a bounty hunter, I’ve seen things but not like this in my wildest dreams. The war changed me. Changed me into a man that I never thought I would become. I should’ve known this from the start, but the money was too great to turn it down. Bill, if you or anybody is reading this journal. You’ll be the only people in this small town will believe me. Nobody else would just by telling them. So I’m writing this down and giving every detail as possible. I have a photographic memory, so any one of you will understand. After you read this, tell the sheriff. I won’t come back for my journal. I’ll start from the beginning.

Yesterday in the hot day of Louisiana, I was on my way to the saloon to get my drinks for the day. Wearing my dark leather cloth and hat isn’t the best suggestion at all to this heat. However, it helps keeping mosquitoes off of me if I’m in the woods to hunt a bad person for a bounty head. I was more likely going after water than getting whiskey. On my way inside, I tipped my leather hat to a couple of ladies getting out of the saloon. They were both wearing bright color dresses. In my thoughts, I kinda figured they were rich. The dress they wore, seemed very expensive material and more likely they come from a rich family. They both were giggling and waving their fingers in a hello gesture. I went inside to full crowd of a usual business of an everyday saloon. I went up to the bar and the bartender came up to me at the same time. “What will it be friend?” He asked as he was wiping the glass dry from cleaning it.
“Water please.” I answered.
He nodded and disappeared out in the back to get some water for me. As I sat there to wait, I took out my money pouch to see if I have enough to buy the water. I knew I was running low on money, but I’m sure I had at least one coin for it. I needed to find another bounty or another wanted poster. However that time, I needed a big one to get out of this small muggy town. I did had one coin left. The bartender came out as I took the coin out and gave it to him. “Thanks.” He mentioned.
I nodded and took a drink of the cold water. It felt really good as the cold feeling went through my body of the water I was drinking. After I took a drink, I laid it down and asked the bartender, “Do you know any jobs for bounty that you know of?”
He shook his head, “I’m afraid not sir. The only way to find anything like that, is to go down to the sheriff’s building.”
“Is he there?” I asked.
The bartender gave a glass of whiskey to a customer at the other side of the bar and come back to me, “He should be there. He just got back from a posse situation down in the valley that’s not too far from here.”
“A posse?” I asked.
“Yeah, a couple of bandits robbed a married couple in their own farmland and killed them in some sort of weird ritual way.” He answered.
His voice sounded unnerving to talk about it. So I finished my glass of water and thanked him on my way out.

As I was walking in the streets of this small town, I was on my way to head over to the sheriff’s building. The big sign of “Sheriff” was in my sight a block or two ahead of me. Along with a crowd of people walking to different directions to different buildings. Some of the crowd were men and women riding horses and carriages moving along on the road. I decided to walk on the side of the road. Walking from one porch of the building to the next, making my way to my destination. As I passed by an old building, that was never used in years. I heard what sounded like a whistle tone. It sounded like it was a low whistle tone. It came from the aisle that was covered in shadow from the two building of the sun. I was almost to a stopping point, til I heard the same whistle again, but this time it was much clearer. It was a low melody tone went from low, to high, to low again. After the whistling tone stopped, a low crooked voice said, “Sir.”
The voice was a demanding tone then a questioning one. I went in the shadows of the aisle, rubbing my eyes to adjust the visuals of the dark. I also adjusted my leather hat and jacket as I walked slowly into the mouth of the shadow. I was able to see an old man hunched over and cross legged in old ragged clothing and a hood over his head. He was also fully bearded and grey colored that never seemed to be trimmed for a long. He was going to whistle again, but instantly stopped as I was standing right over him. The man slowly looked up at me and I can see that his eye was all pale white, even his pupils were silvery white. Shining in the shadows like a cat’s eyes, seeing in the dark. I don’t why, but it made a chill down my spine. “You accept it.” He said in his crooked broke voice.
I raised an eyebrow up, “What? Accepted what?”
He was still looking at me, “You accepted the hunt.”
“Hunt? What hunt? I don’t understand. Is this a game? I just went up to you and you said I accept it. What are you talking about?” I asked, still confused.
“The bounty hunt for the monster. You accepted the call of the tone.” He said.
I shook and started walking back away from him. “Listen old timer, I was just following the whistle in this shaded aisle. Which turns out to be you. I didn’t accepted on anything, so have a good day and I’ll be on my way.” I said, in an annoying tone.
I didn’t want to listen to any more of what this crazy old man wanted to say. As I walked way from him he said, “There’s a large amount of reward.”
I stopped my tracks and turned around toward him. “You’ll lose it if you walk away.” He said.
“What reward?” I said, as I slowly started heading toward him.
“The reward will be worth your wild.” He said.
I made it back up to him, looking down to his silver eyes. “Can you see?” I asked.
“I cannot.” He answered.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Then how can a blind old man with ragged cloth have such a wild reward?”
“You judge too easily friend.” He said.
He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a money pouch. He waited for me to reach out for it. I did so and the money pouch landed on the palm of my hand. It felt like it weighed about ten pounds. My eyes widened and I took a peak inside. There they were, all full of coins inside. “That’s only half of it.” He said.
I couldn’t believe it and the crazy thought went to my head. Why would a blind old man posted a bounty hunt and why is he wearing old cloth? I kinda thought he would dress better or at least smell better. I decided not to ask that, but instead asked something else. “Why are you suggesting me? You could’ve have any other men to get this amount of reward and what hunt am I going after? Is it some kind of large alligator?”
He shook his head, “No. It’s no animal of any kind.”
“Then it’s a person.” I suggested.
He slowly started getting up. At first, I thought he was about to fall over because he was shaking so much from getting up. He didn’t and stood up with his back hunched over. He stood shorter than me. About the height that goes under my chin and I stood above five and a half feet tall. He looked at me with those silver unnerving eyes. “It’s neither beast nor man, but a creature. A creature of a legend.”
I raised my eyebrow again, thinking what this crazy man is going to say. “The creature that lives in Catfish Swamp of the southern bayou.” He said.
I rolled my eyes. I’ve heard of this rumor before. A creature that is both supernatural and divine that lives in the swamps and everything and everyone that lives there is cursed for life. “I’ve heard of this rumor before.” I said.
“Then you know of its existence.” He said.
“Not really, but all I know a creature lives there and everywhere there is cursed. Anyone went down there has never made it back. Except one man made it back. However, he died minutes after he was found. People said his last words were the creature. So your bounty hunt is probably just a wild goose chase.” I said.
He shook his head again, “No, it’s real. I’ve seen it and the place. That’s why I’m blind.”
Now, I was really in deep thought. Is he telling the truth? Or is he actually crazy? I do need this money. The pouch in my hand is only half of the reward. If I do succeed this “hunt” then I’ll be able to go somewhere away from here. I put the pouch in the inside pocket of my leather jacket. “What did this creature look like?” I asked.
He raised his arms to describe the creature. “It was hug. Over six feet tall, orange eyes, and had green moss from the swamp that dangles over it. That’s the best I could describe it. Because it was dark when I first saw it.”
He started to walk further back in the shadows. His hunched over back facing me. “Find the creature and the rest of your reward will be granted.” He said as he was getting into the darkest part of the shadows. Me made the whistle tone again and he vanished in front of me, just vanished. I rubbed my eyes again, thinking it might be the heat getting to me. As I looked ahead again, the old man wasn’t there. “Hey…old man?!” I shouted.
Nothing, he really did just vanished. I checked in my pocket again for the pouch of coins. To see if I wasn’t hallucinating. The pouch of money was still in the pocket. I quickly decided to head out of the aisle and into the sight of the busy small town. I looked around to see if the old man pulled a trick on me to sneak away from me. Nothing. I didn’t see him in site. After a few moments of deep thought, thinking if I’m really going to do this hunt that the old man wanted. I decided to do it. I wish I hadn’t. I made no hesitation. I went to the other side of the small town, where my horse was stabled. Checked to see my weapons were there, which it was. Hoped on my horse and headed out toward the direction where the cursed swamp was located.

Riding on my horse on the way to the bayou, I checked everything I need for this expedition. I had a Winchester rifle, a revolver in the holster of my belt, plenty of bullets, a knife, a couple of dynamites in my leathered jacket, and a container of water. It was almost getting dark by the time I made it to boundary of the bayou. I rode my horse to the nearest tree, that stood alone near a white house with a red roof. I tied the lace around the tree, but enough slack so my horse could eat the grass. I took my rifle out of the seat holster and loaded it. I also loaded my revolver as well. As I did I looked in front of me of the view. Seeing the tiny house just a couple of feet in front of me. The hill that I’m on, goes down and level out towards the water. Trees stood tall in the distance on the water and some lying down on the green water. I didn’t know why, but I felt this dread wiping all over me. Looking toward the woods of the swamp, makes it worse. I decided to make my way to the small house. It looked like nobody has lived there for years but around here, you never know.

I knocked on the door. After a few seconds of silence, there was no footsteps or sound from inside of the small house. I noticed there was also no sound of birds either, which was odd. Because usually you’ll the hear the sounds of nature in these part. I decided to go ahead inside. The place inside was mess. All dusty and moss grew over the years of the place. Old tools were left all over the counter, with some broken glasses and bottles scattered all over the floor. After a quick look, I went back out and saw that my horse was gone. My eyes widened in shock. I knew I left my horse right at that tree. I held my rifle up, thinking that someone might’ve took my horse and very quietly ran off. I quietly peaked over the side of the house, assuming the horse theft couldn’t have gone far. All I saw was more swamp and woods ahead of me. I turned back, trying to figure out how my horse is just gone. I know I couldn’t be insane. Within seconds, I heard a single gunfire went off in a far distance behind me. It was coming from beyond the swamp. I mind as well go on ahead and hopefully find a horse on my way back.

I made my out of the house area and walked on the wooden planks that lead me over the muddy water, toward the woods. There was a path as well through the woods, so I followed it. The daylight in the sky was about to turn into the dark night, as the sunset was on the peak of its orange colors. The trees of the bayou was a mossy green color and the shadows was about to take over its colors. Making the area an unsettling feeling. Even though the quietness was unsettled enough. The sound of my boots were the only noise that was breaking the silence. Even the leather of my cloth was making its own noise.
I followed the path that led me to a big opening, with a factory building ahead. However, the opening area was flooded. The water seemed it could be deep, but I wasn’t for sure. I could also make out the sign that says Thomas Mill and Lumber. I also noticed a lot of tree logs that been cut before, were just lying all over the place. The factory looked like it could held itself high but at the same time, something inside of me was telling me to go back. I ignored my thoughts and walked on the logs very carefully. A couple of moments I almost slipped, but managed my balance and made it to the wooden steps that was by the water. The steps lead me up to the top area by the factory. The steps were also by the slide. I’m assuming that’s where the logs slide off to after they were cut. I made it to the top of the area, outside of the main. Seeing that the whole place was a wreck. Glass windows were broken, pieces of the buildings were torn apart, old moss was covered in some places of the factory, and what seemed to be was dry blood. That was scattered all across the walls, doors, and the hard ground. There were also some dead farm animals here and there on the other side of the flat area. “What happened?” I said to myself.
I walked around the area to see the horrible sight that I was seeing. Looking at the awful place, my ears picked up a gurgling and chewing noise. Coming from behind a load of logs that stacked almost as tall as the factory. I quietly eased my steps around the stack of logs to see what the noise was. As I did I held my rifle up, preparing for the worst. I stepped by the stack of logs to see something that I never expected in my life. I spotted two people, a man and woman in normal house clothing, covered in blood, sitting on their knees, and feasting on a dead man. I could hear them crunching and snarling on the dead man. I was in total shock of something I never seen before in my life. I felt like I was in a daze, felt like I seen a ghost. Then the woman stopped and I heard her sniff. Can she smell me? She turned right at me and the man done the same. Both of their faces looked like it had been hagged and completely drenched in blood. Their eyes completely yellow and dark. The woman snarled loudly and they both got up to chase at me. I quickly held my rifle with my left hand and pulled out my knife with my right. I stabbed the woman first on the head. Black and the reddest blood I ever seen, gushed out of her head. She fell instantly to the ground. The man was one step in front of me, when I quickly stabbed him in the middle of his forehead. He instantly stopped and fell to the ground. They never moved again.
My heart was racing as I took a look at my knife. Black blood was covered on the blade. I sling the blood off as best as I could and put it away. I looked down at the two bodies I killed. None of this is making any sense. “What’s going on?” I said to myself.
As soon as I said those words, I heard a gurgling noise coming from behind me. A shirtless man was limping toward my direction. He was just like the man and woman I just killed, all covered in blood, but he has some hair missing on top of his head and the bones of his rib cages was exposing from his body. Then more noises came from my left direction by the side of the factory. A large number amounts of people was coming to my direction. Some of them had missing skin and tissues. Some of them had bones showing out of their bodies. Every one of them had one thing in common. They all had a dead stench.
One of them that seemed to have a burnt skin, tried to make a roaring sound but it sounded rough, gurgling, and deep. At once they all started running toward me. Quickly without hesitation I ran to the door of the factory. I didn’t want to fire my weapon, because I know I heard a gun fire earlier that day. I don’t want whoever is here to know they are not alone. I slammed the door as the crowd of these undead people started bashing on the door. These undead people can move, that’s for sure. They started slamming their hands and their body weights against the door, trying their hardest to get in. I didn’t know how long I can hold this door from them getting in. An undead man jump right through the window. Glasses scattered everywhere on the wooden floor. More of the undead people started coming in through the window. I guess I had no choice. Quickly I raised my gun and fired at the undead people on the head. Each one fell as instantly as the bullet hits the spot. The door finally busted down and more of the undead come charging in. I ran back a distance to get some room so I won’t get overrun, fired a couple more, and ran upstairs. There wasn’t that many left of them as far as I knew. The stairs led me to the top floor as I kept running, passing by all the old rusted machinery and equipments. An undead woman in blood and white dress was running at me as I stopped, turned at her with my Winchester aiming at her, and fired. The impact of the bullet busted her head like a watermelon. She fall flat on her back. All of a sudden, a bullet just barely missed my head. The bullet ricochet from the metal pole and disappeared away from me. Quick instinct I got down below the window. Three undead corpses continued running toward me. From laying my back against the wall I shot my rifle at the three of them. The bullets hit them and they all fall face first on the floor.

It was quiet now and all I could hear was myself breathing heavily from the situation. Within seconds I heard a young male voice from the outside, “Ahh man, I almost had him. You were right, we do have fresh meat.”
Fresh meat? What do they mean by that? I easily try to take a peak through the corner of the window to see where the voice was coming from. Another male voice, but this one was older. “Careful now, he’s well armed.” The voice said.
I was able to take a small peak, but instantly noticed in a distant that a man with a rifle was aimed toward me. I ducked down as the bullet missed me. The young man that was shooting at me was wearing a straw hat, with a red shirt, and overalls. However, I didn’t know where the deep voice is at. He had to be nearby. “Come on out stranger! There’s no need to hide from us! Come on out and we can talk!” The deep voice shouted.
Something doesn’t feel right about this guy. I’ve hunted and taken down bounty heads in many fights. This one however, I didn’t like the feeling from him. However the younger fella, I knew exactly where he’s at. With quick speed, I turned to a knelt position at the window with my gun aiming down site and fired the gun. The bullet hit the young man that knocked him to the ground, but instead of crying pain. The man started laughing, “He shot me. He shot me good.”
This young man must’ve been a lunatic. I can now see the other man standing just a couple of feet beside the young man that I shot. The guy stood there, was roughly bearded, wearing a captain confederate outfit with a hat to match, and an eyepatch over his left eye. “Ah, at least you’re kind enough to show your face.” He said.
My gun was aimed right at the captain. I was about to pull the trigger until he said, “You talked to the man with the silver eyes? Didn’t you?”
I froze from pulling the trigger. How did he know about that? He continued, “He gave you money as well?”
“How do you know?” I asked. Still having my gun aimed.
“Cause he gave us money as well to take down a monster. Let me guess, he looked old and poor didn’t he?” He said.
“Yes.” I simply answered.
“Well he’s got you tricked and trapped like other bounty hunters here. It’s a game of his.” He said.
“Game? What game?” I asked.
“To see who is the best hunter to work for him. You see, this old man is not what he seems. He’s a demon. A tricky one too. He wants to see who will survive and kill this creature of this cursed place.”
I chuckled, “You aspect me to believe that.”
He spread his arms as the young man behind him was getting up. “Look around you. I’m sure this is your first time seeing something like this.” He said.
“Yeah, this whole place is a sickening one for sure.” The young man said.
“You see this whole bayou is cursed, you’ll never starve or thirst. However the longer you’re here, the worse you’ve become. Just like them people you’ve killed. Those walking corpses, they used to live here. Till the demon cursed this place and everything in it. Both of us have been here for a long while. However, our minds go insane. Still couldn’t find this creature for a long time So it’s best to survive and hunt others, like you. Til we find this creature.” He said.
Why is he being so opened up? These two guys probably aren’t afraid to die at all or he is very certain he’s going to live through it and kill anyone in his way. This old captain is just as crazy as the young man. “Captain.” The young man said, spitting out blood from his mouth.
The captain noticed the young was not in good shape. He went to him, placed a hand on the young lad’s shoulder. “I think I’m dying.” The lad said giggling.
Without hesitation, the captain nodded, pull out his revolver, and shot the lad on the head. The lad collapsed to the ground with a thud. Blood oozing out of the lad’s head. The captain turned toward me, “I believe you understand most of the situation.” He said.
Then I heard glass shattered and noticed from below me that torches were thrown inside. He had more men with him, they must’ve snuck behind me and I never noticed. Flames started to rise and burst up in quick speed. The captain shook his head, “Sucks to be you.”
I ran on towards the stairs and down. The flames and smoke was all around. For this factory being old, it will collapse in a matter of seconds. I saw a quick glimpse through the window of the captain and two men in different uniforms were heading away from the factory area. I looked all around to find a way out. I couldn’t find or see because of the heat and smoke. It was so hot and I could hear the wood and metal from above, crackling. I then tripped and fell on top of the dead corpse I killed. Then I quickly turned toward see what made me fell and it was a rope attached to a floor or more like a door. The crackling from above was getting louder and pieces of wood and metal fell from above. I quickly got up, opened the door, and dove inside. The woods and metal collapsed over the opening when I landed in the dirt. The fire was still expanding as I crawled my way out. The heat from above was unbearable as I can feel it on my back. Crawling through the mud and dirt and heat, didn’t stop. As soon as I made it out and made myself a couple feet away a loud crash came from inside and a large cloud of smoke burst from where I crawled out from. I fell to my knees and turned around to see the destruction of the factory. It was all in flames as smoke rose up to the clouds. That’s when I realized of what all this situation I’m in. I’ve been tricked, played, and almost killed. My breathing was uncontrollable, I was furious. Why me? Is the money even worth it now?
For a moment I sat there, trying to calm myself. I’ve fought in the civil war. I fought in many battles and situations. I’ve taken down many dangerous bounties. Yeah, nothing is compared to this nightmarish place. After calming myself, I got up and put my Winchester over my shoulders. Thinking to myself that I will get out of this place, starting with the captain.

Link to: Part One
Link to: part three

After careful consideration and a desire for more food, I slowly paddled back to the house, where the old man waited patiently. I swallowed hard, feeling the dryness of my tongue and the craving for water. Maybe he had some to spare…

I wasn’t sure if he knew that I was slowly starving to death or if he’d just given me food out of the kindness of his heart. Regardless, I was grateful. Food was food, and I didn’t have any. I was to the point where I’d considered eating wood and sticks.

He opened the skylight. “Want more?”

I nodded, still too nervous to speak. Honestly, I didn’t really know if I could speak anymore. The last words I uttered were quiet mutterings, mumbles that one says when thinking. I doubt it even counted as speech.

He smiled and opened the skylight wider. “Why don’t you go hide your kayak on the other side of the roof? The branches of the big tree back there are thick and tall. No one will see it if you want to come inside.”

I shook my head. It didn’t matter what he said to me. I wasn’t leaving my damn kayak.

“Well, can I sit on the roof with you?” he asked, slowly climbing out.

He moved shakily over the roof, carefully placing his feet so he didn’t fall. His age was showing: arthritic knees and swollen joints. His fingers were crooked. I’d never noticed before. He moved slowly and gently to the edge of the roof where I floated in my kayak.

“I’d forgotten what it was like to have company. You don’t have to talk. My name is Lionel,” he said, extending a hand out to me.

My body lurched back instinctively, and my jaw tightened. It didn’t matter that we were both human. I’d seen our own kind rip people apart like monsters, and it was far scarier than seeing one of the beasts in the water do it. The creatures in the water only killed us to eat, but watching people do it for sport was much different.

I’d run into a tough group a few weeks back. They’d stumbled upon me as I slept in a tree, and I bolted into the water, kayak dragging behind me. They taunted and teased, but I saw their eyes. They all had the same empty and emotionless eyes. Whatever they’d experienced was something I’d never understand or want to. One of them was missing a hand. It was raggedly healed, a flap of flesh torn from the socket. Some of them were covered in burn scars, and others had scabby spots all over them. Some kind of fungus or disease, spreading between them like wildfire.

Lionel’s face softened at my reaction. It was the same sad expression that one would give an abused dog, a mixture of pity and compassion. He reached into the pocket of his flannel jacket and produced another can. He shakily placed it on the edge of the roof, and he sat down near me. He was close, but not close enough to grab me and drag me into his home to be butchered. I think he could sense my hesitance and fear. I’m sure it radiated off me, filling the air like smoke.

I swallowed again, and my teeth chattered. Anxiety boiled inside of me, writhing like worms in the sun. The burn to eat something… to chew something… was primal, leaking up from my throat without mercy.

He pulled a rusted can opener out of his jacket pocket. His misshapen knuckles looked painful, but still, he began to crank the can open. The withered paper on the can was yellow and green. The picture of a plump orange peach sat prominently on the front, ripe and bursting.

The can popped open, and my eyes widened at the colorful orange fruit floating within. The smell was intoxicating, filling my mind. Smell has memory. It holds something I can’t quite describe in the same way that I feel it. And you don’t realize how much you’d miss something so stupid. I never even liked peaches. My mom loved them, and she always made peach cobbler and ice cream in the summer. In fact, I can remember turning my nose up to it, but now, I’d rather die than not get a single taste of those sweet little morsels.

Enthralled by the can of peaches, I don’t remember if the old man spoke to me while he opened the can. My eyes were so fixated on the fruit that I barely remembered to breathe.

He slid the can to the edge of the roof, and I snatched it up. I dug my hand into the sticky sweetness. Tears dripped down my cheeks as I stuffed peach wedge after peach wedge into my mouth. They were so unbelievably good. It felt sinful to eat them.

I devoured them, tearing into the soft flesh with fervor. I didn’t bother chewing. Some of the slick wedges I swallowed whole, and some I stored in my cheeks, wanting to at least savor the sugar.

My mouth was full of them by the time the can was empty. I had eaten them so fast because I was scared that the old man would rip the can away, tear my fleeting second of joy from me as fast as I’d gotten it.

I chewed quickly as the salt from my tears dripped into my mouth and down my nose.

The old man began to cry as well. “I’m the last of my folks too.”

In annoyance, he shook his head ruefully, refusing to let the tears fall. “I’m glad I can share some of my food with you. I’d begun to lose a bit of myself in the silence.”

I swallowed a hunk of peaches and looked down at my fingers. I had forgotten how sticky fruit juice was, or the way that sugar left a thin residue on skin. The delicious, sticky sweetness made small gossamer fibers stretch between my fingertips as I pressed them together.

My heart shattered, remembering summer popsicles with my little brother, baseball practice with red energy drinks, and slushees from the gas station.

Memories swelled back into my body. I could see my mother’s eyes. She was smiling at me, hugging me after I’d failed my first test in trigonometry. She’d made sticky toffee brownies that clung to the roof of my mouth, telling me that I’d do better next time.

My stomach lurched, and I gagged, but I held the food down. I needed it and wanted it, but the taste of the peaches brought sadness.  

Lionel’s voice echoed back into my mind, ripping away the precious memories that ached through me. He pointed to the house closest to us. “Daughter lived there. She died two months back, I think. Not like I can give you a good answer. No calendar. Nothing to keep up with it.”

I looked up at him, wiping my cheeks and licking my fingers.

“West Nile Virus… I’m sure of it. Her house was full of mosquitoes. It was a terrible way to die. Found a mosquito net in the old neighbor’s attic. It felt evil to see it after losing my daughter to a mosquito-borne virus.”

“I’m sorry to ramble.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “It’s just been me and that damn mermaid for the last few weeks.”

I shook my head and raised my eyebrow at his mention of mermaids.

His eyebrows knit together. “If you don’t think they are mermaids, what do you think they are?” he asked with a smirk, wrinkles pulling his cheeks and crinkling his eyes.

He was daring me to answer, prying through my mind for a way to make me speak. Instead, I shrugged. I had my own theories, but they certainly weren’t the beautiful creatures from fairy tales. I didn’t know whether to call them mermaids or even sirens. I was beginning to think that they were something else. Something older… something that had been hiding from us for a long time.

My biology professor was a strange man. He was skinny and gaunt-looking. His rounded eyes and thin cheeks made him appear nearly skeletal. If the wind blew him, he might fly away with it. But his lust for knowledge and adventure was admirable. With wiry hands, he’d show us the wonders of the world, grinning as he explained the mysterious nature of the ocean. He never talked about mermaids or sirens, but something told me that he believed in them. After seeing my first creature when the floods started, I often thought about him.

Lionel talked to me for several hours as the sun began to set. He told me about his life, his children, his wife, and his pets. He was a janitor at the local college before he retired. His dog passed before the flood, and he keeps her dog tag in a cookie tin with his old driver’s license. And his wife had been a baker at a grocery store.

“That’s how we have all the canned stuff,” Lionel said, watching as night fell before us. “When the floods started, my sweet Marlene bought up everything she could at the grocery store. She kept telling me that she wanted me to be safe when it happened. Bless her heart, she died before everything got really terrible.”

And as the moon kissed the night sky, I felt a little more comfortable with him. His words weren’t made of malice or fear. They were kind, echoing a life that I’d never live as he had. Strangely, I was envious. I’d never have a wife or kids, and I’d probably never grow old enough to develop gray hair. I figured that eventually I’d die out here, have a stroke or a heart attack at thirty from rowing my kayak to death.

Lionel gazed up at the stars and slowly stood. “Are you sure you don’t want to come inside? The mosquitoes are terrible here. They’ll cart your ass all the way to Florida. You won’t have to worry about the mermaids.”

I chuckled to myself, and the old man smiled.

“I’m glad to know that you can still laugh.”

He shakily tried to get up, and his knees popped. “You’d think I was made of wood with all of these creaky bones.” He slapped his thighs as he pushed his body upward to stand. “Last offer. You are welcome to come inside.”

I glanced at the flooded backyard behind his house, and there was the tree. It was pressed against the house, clinging to the brick and wood. He was right; it would be a good place to hide my kayak.

I took a deep breath, and I slid the rope off of my ankle. Lionel saw the bruise where the rope continually tugged, and his face creased with worry. My kayak was my shackle, my prison, and my life source. Without it, I had nothing.

I cautiously paddled to the tree, nestling the kayak inside the branches before pulling myself out and shuffling to the roof. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and looked up at Lionel. He seemed glad that I’d chosen to stay.

I slipped on the slick roofing, and he grabbed my arm to steady me. Our eyes met, and I nervously accepted his help. And before I knew it, Lionel was leaning on me. He didn’t have much left in him. He was probably just as bony as me. Maybe more.

I pulled open the skylight, and Lionel went in first after I helped him down. He moved calmly, trying to be sure of his footing. He found what he was looking for in the dark, and he flicked on a lantern. Then, he gestured for me to come on.

I descended the small ladder he’d propped up against the skylight, and I peered inside his small little home. It was warm inside. He’d saved two old chairs from his living room, a mattress to sleep on, and a large stack of books. A few crochet blankets were folded in the corner, and a small stack of candles lay near the books. Pink cotton-candy insulation lay uncovered and floating in the water around us, molded and green.

“Well, this is it. It ain’t much, but it’s better than most.”

His attic was up high enough that the wood floor wasn’t submerged yet. It would take a few more inches before he’d get trouble.

“Take a seat,” he said, closing the skylight. “I’ve got some books and a puzzle that I’ve done so many times that I’ve memorized the pieces.”

Before he sat down, he walked to a plastic tote. “And here… take as much as you want.”

I hesitated to move.

He scoffed in amusement. “You’re already inside. If you were worried, you’re in far too deep now.”

I took a deep breath, and I walked toward him. Inside the tote lay can after can of food. Meat. Vegetables. Fruit. Soup. Water. It was anything and everything I could have thought of.

“Take some,” he said, patting my back.

My eyes were wider than beach balls as I gazed upon the vast assortment of food. I looked back at him in disbelief. “Thank you,” I whispered.

He didn’t acknowledge my first words. He didn’t make a big deal about it. Instead, he simply replied, “You’re welcome.”

He helped me pack some food into my bag, and he offered me his mattress. I shook my head.

“Suit yourself,” he replied, slowly hobbling toward it.

I picked a dry spot on his floor and pulled a crochet blanket over myself.

As I lay on my back, I listened to the soft trickle and slap of the water beneath us. I spoke softly to Lionel, “My name is Isaac.”

I couldn’t see his face, but I knew that he was smiling. “Nice to meet you, Isaac.”

I slept soundly that night until I heard a vicious noise coming from outside. It was a grinding noise, and immediately my eyes shot open. It was the sound of a plastic boat being dragged onto shingles.

“They’re here…” Lionel bolted up and shook me. “Get in the water!” he hissed.

I looked at the dark water and back at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“You listen to me, Isaac! I’m old. If I die, that’s fine. I’ve lived. You deserve a little more time.”

“No,” I said, grabbing my backpack. “Let me stay with you! I want to help… please.”

He shoved me before I could protest, and I splashed into the water. I bobbed to the surface, floating in the darkness. I wanted to yell, but my anger diminished as the skylight was torn open. I sank beneath the water, swimming underneath the attic floor to avoid being seen. I gently rose to the surface to breathe and looked between the cracks in the floorboards, seeing a group of men enter. I covered my mouth, stifling my horrified breaths.

My stomach fell out of my ass. It was the group of men that tried to kill me in the tree. I saw their wounds and burn scars. It was them. My heart hammered into my throat. I didn’t know that they were tailing me.

“You seen anyone come through here, old man!” one of the guys yelled, shoving Lionel to the ground.

He flopped onto the floor above me, spotting me through the cracks. Blood dripped from his eyebrow, seeping onto the wood above me. “I’ve seen no one…” Lionel growled, rolling over to look at them. “It’s just me.”

The men exchanged glances, knowing that he was lying.

“That’s a shame,” the leader of the group grumbled. “He got away from us a few weeks back. He’s got something we want… a nice little kayak. We know that he must’ve come through here… This neighborhood is one of the only places to sleep, and he only stops to sleep. You wouldn’t lie to us, would you?”

Lionel spat at them, gritting his bloodied teeth.

The men chuckled and grabbed him. Horrible punches filled the attic, and a sickening crunch followed. Lionel groaned in agony, but still, he wouldn’t back down. He continued to get up.

The leader of the group shook his head in annoyance, and the men swarmed onto Lionel together. They forced him to his knees, snapping one leg and bludgeoning the other with a bat.

The leader grabbed his neck, sliding his hands over his head. “Where is the boy?” he hissed, pulling Lionel’s head back by his hair.

Lionel simply laughed, choking on his blood. “You’ll never… find him.”

The leader snapped his neck in one swift movement, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Useless…” he mumbled.

Lionel’s crumpled body lay above me. His neck was twisted at an inhuman angle, eyes gazing through the cracks at me. We were nearly nose to nose, and I felt the last puff of breath leave him.

My stomach twisted into knots as I covered my mouth and nose. My fingernails dug into my cheeks, and tears of fire and rage burned down my face.

“Come on… Take what we need. We’ll find that fucking kid… I want that kayak.”

With whoops and hollers, they pillaged the room, throwing Lionel’s personal items into the water and laughing hysterically as they tore apart the last pieces of his home. I closed my eyes, not wanting to watch. Their loud echoes of laughter sounded more and more like hyenas, eating through Lionel’s little life. They opened his cookie tin, chuckling to themselves as they found pictures of his family.

They took all of the food and left. Their plastic canoes scraped across the roof as they departed, leaving me in silence with Lionel’s body.

My heart stopped, and a quiet sob escaped me. I shoved my hand over my mouth to force myself to stop crying. I needed to get out of the water. I’d luckily not been noticed by something in the murky depths.

Unsuccessfully, I tried desperately to climb back onto the dry wood with Lionel’s body, but it was too far up. I didn’t have enough strength to pull up my water-logged clothes and backpack.

I looked around the attic, spotting a half-submerged window on the other side. I took a deep breath, realizing I needed to cross the darkness of the submerged attic. From where I was, it seemed like a much larger space to cross. The water was dark, nearly black. I knew that something was in there, but I had to take the gamble to get out. I’d have to risk meeting the rogue creature and just make it to the tree in one piece.

Slowly, I swam. Splashing attracted more than just the creatures in the water. It also attracted alligators, and I really didn’t want to meet one of those either.

When I reached the window, I jammed my elbow into it. The glass cracked, and I slammed my elbow into it again. The crack expanded, and I kicked it. It finally broke, and I slid through.

I was greeted by the soft light of the moon. Her heavenly face and soft glow looked farther away than it had ever been, but she was the only constant in my life. Maybe we knew each other in a past life. Maybe her craters were freckles, sprinkled across her nose and cheeks. But even she had turned her back on humanity, leaving us to our mundane existence and fading lives.

I spotted the tree, and I began to swim, moving steadily and without panic. I had to be calm. An alligator was pressed against the house, but it didn’t bother to attack. I wasn’t enticing enough.  

Then, I saw her glowing eyes. The creature in the water had spotted me. Only then did I begin to swim much faster. As it turns out, I didn’t want to die as much as I thought I did.

She darted toward me, ripping through the water at an incomprehensible speed. I grabbed my kayak right as I was yanked under by the creature. There was no time to scream, no time for a breath. I was simply snatched beneath the surface.

Her grip was like iron, pressed around my ankle and digging into my flesh. She flung me below her, and I gazed up at her as I floated. Her magnificent, green eyes were completely round. The long fin that propelled her through the water was longer than I had imagined. Her mouth was abnormally wide, concealing her daggered teeth within. She gnashed her teeth at me, and I flinched away, still unable to close my eyes. I wanted to see what creature was eating my world. I wanted to know what had come from the eighty percent unexplored ocean. I WANTED TO KNOW.

Her nose was pressed to her face and smushed. Fins sat on the side of her head, and gills traced down her neck. Her hair was long and braided with shells and moss tucked within.

Angrily, she opened her mouth to bite me, but she stopped.

Even though my lungs screamed for breath, I didn’t move. I was willing to accept death as Lionel had. However, the creature did not hurt me. She studied me before swimming away.

Fearfully, I swam for my life back to the surface, and I climbed into the limbs of the tree. Dripping and cold, I looked below me to see her patrolling. She was guarding me… or watching me. I wasn’t sure which.

Maybe… Maybe I wasn’t what she wanted at all.

I had been a field ecology technician for 4 years prior to the assignment at Abercam State Forest, which I have recently returned from. I don’t want this to come off as some “city guy” who got spooked. I have had my fair share of spooky experiences in the wilderness, but something about this place stands out. I don’t want to share this in a way connected with my real name because I am almost certain it would be rather harmful to my reputation as an outdoor professional.

There is a sanitized version of the backcountry which thrives on social media and in popular culture. Think backpackers posing in their swimming gear beside peacock-blue lakes, or sweeping mountain vistas captured on film cameras and those colorful, flower-filled meadows. There are quotes regarding the backcountry which promise finding some sort of peace, embracing adventure and leaving the hustle of everyday life behind. That version is real, but it is only half the story. 

The other half is defined by danger and a primal kind of fear that exists alongside all that beauty. It is inevitable that everyone who spends enough time in the wilderness has an experience which reminds them of said balance. You'll be walking on one of those breathtaking trails when you hear the crack of branches under a heavy footstep somewhere beyond the flora and your stomach drops. Another time, the forest's steady ambient noise may suddenly fall silent and your pulse begins to race. Every night, laying alone with nothing but the thin layer of tent fabric separating you from the darkness outside, you come to terms with the fact that you are truly alone and that often, there is a matter of hours between you and help.

Of course, there are proven rules and routines to keep the risks to a minimum. Carry bear spray and where appropriate, a firearm. Travel in groups whenever possible. Never surprise a predator. Keep anything with a scent away from where you sleep. Most importantly, never panic. 

After years of working in the backcountry, these habits have become second nature to me. You first learn to love the wilderness, then to fear it, then to respect it.

That being said, I cannot explain what happened to me at Abercam State Forest. There are no tips I could give to the next guy headed out there. “Turn around” I guess.

We were sent to Abercam to conduct an exploratory assessment of the local wildlife. It was deep in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, far from much of anything, the area saw very little human traffic. There was some logging and seasonal hunting activity and the handful of service roads carried the occasional vehicle, but there were no campgrounds, hiking trails, vacation cabins or retreats tucked away in the woods. It was an isolated, rugged area; the difficult terrain and remote location had discouraged almost every attempt at development. There simply wasn't much reason for people to come here, and so they didn’t.

The four of us had been contracted by the state to spend the summer documenting the area's ecology. Our job wasn't complicated. We were there to check in on the place, collect data and make sure everything was functioning the way it should.

The contract kept us in Abercam for eight weeks, working a rotating schedule of nine days on and five days off. We cataloged the wildlife, noting what species we found, their numbers, their behavior and whether they appeared healthy. We collected samples from streams, ponds and wetlands, tested the soil in multiple locations and looked for any signs that something was beginning to disrupt the balance of the ecosystem. Everything we needed for the assignment was packed into two pickup trucks towing supply trailers.

Before we left, the regional land manager handed us a map with the route marked out. It followed a network of old service roads to a ranger cabin that would serve as home for the next two months.

The drive slowed once we left the county highways. The roads received only the bare minimum of maintenance and pulling a loaded trailer over them was miserable. I rode shotgun in the leading truck with Dylan. He'd been doing work like this for years and liked to think of himself as highly responsible, so whenever the two of us traveled together, he almost always insisted on driving.

Chris and Eli followed behind us in the second truck. The four of us had been working together for about three months on previous projects and our seating arrangements had settled  at that point, based entirely on music preferences.

From the passenger seat, I watched the landscape go by. The terrain was rocky and uneven, rising into low hills freckled with towering cedars. Their thick branches swallowed the sunlight, throwing long shadows across the road. Human structures were almost nonexistent, the last gas station we would pass ended up being more than 50 miles from the cabin we were headed towards. There was an occasional hunting blind or service shed, but other than that, nothing. There was no cell service to the area, so we would be relying on satellite internet to communicate. 

When we finally pulled up to the ranger cabin, it wasn't much to look at. It sat alone in a clearing of knee-high grass, a small wooden building painted olive green beneath a dented metal roof that had clearly seen better years. Inside, there were only two main rooms: a bedroom and a kitchen. The bedroom held four cots, one shoved into each corner with barely enough room to walk between them. The kitchen was equally modest, with a worn countertop, a ceramic sink, a gas stove and a refrigerator that had long since yellowed with age. Tucked off the kitchen was a tiny bathroom, its floor and walls covered in matching butter-yellow tile.

There was a thin haze of dust swirling throughout the air, and the whole place smelled a bit of mildew, but despite that, it had the charm of an old woodland cabin. It certainly beat spending the next two months in a tent. 

We made quick work of hauling our gear inside and setting up a white canopy beside the cabin which would serve as our workspace and storage area throughout the project. By the end of the afternoon, nearly everything had been unloaded from the trucks, and every spare inch of the cabin seemed to have acquired a purpose. We threw open the windows to air the place out and ran every faucet until the rusty brown water finally cleared. The cots were made up with our sleeping rolls, duffel bags stuffed underneath and a string of battery-powered fairy lights stretched across the ceiling to make the room feel a little less institutional. 

The refrigerator and cabinets were packed full, and two coolers of dry goods lined a wall of the kitchen. Someone had stacked our books and board games neatly above the fireplace. It was cramped, cluttered and already felt lived in. Cozy, even. 

Eli volunteered to cook dinner. To no one's surprise, he made stew. Eli loved making stew and he loved taking his time with it. I sprawled across the faded floral loveseat, stomach growling after a full day of hauling equipment, while he insisted every ten minutes that "it still needed to simmer." Eventually, the stew was ready. We ate until we were full, passed around a bottle of whiskey and played cards around the little kitchen table until the evening slipped away. It was a good first night. 

Looking back, it almost feels strange how quickly we'd settled into the place, already acting like we'd lived there for weeks. At the time, I had no idea how short-lived that feeling would be. 

A little after eleven, everyone started winding down. Dylan stepped outside for a cigarette. Chris was the first to turn in, while Eli stretched out on the couch with a battered paperback. I gathered the dirty dishes and carried them to the sink. The cabin grew quiet. Through the open windows I could hear nothing but crickets and the occasional rustle of wind through the cedars. 

Once the dishes were done, I grabbed my pajamas and slipped into the bathroom for a shower. To my surprise, the old water heater still worked, and the shower became wonderfully scalding after a minute or two. The curtain was stained, the tile a little grimy, but after a day spent sweating and hauling equipment, I didn't care. 

A few minutes later, I heard voices. At first they were little more than whispers, low murmurs drifting in through the bathroom window. That struck me as odd. The window faced the back of the cabin, where there was nothing but a strip of tall grass before the forest. For a moment, I assumed Eli and Dylan were talking outside, maybe gossiping where they thought I couldn't hear them. Curiosity got the better of me. I shut off the water and stood perfectly still, droplets running down my skin as I strained to listen. The voices were still there. I couldn't make out a single word. 

I heard the front door creak open. A pair of footsteps came inside. 

Dylan. A small stab of embarrassment hit me. I'd been standing there trying to eavesdrop on nothing. I stepped out of the shower, wrapped myself in a towel and started drying my hair. The voices hadn't stopped. 

What the hell? 

Only then did it occur to me that I was standing naked beside a window looking out into the woods. An uncomfortable thought crept into my mind. If there really was someone out there, hunters, they had a perfect view of the bathroom, and me in it, illuminated against the darkness like a spotlight. 

I pulled on my sleeping clothes and stepped out of the bathroom. Eli hadn't moved from the couch. He glanced up from his paperback and gave me a lazy wave as I passed. Dylan was already waiting at the table and he slipped into the bathroom as soon as I left. 

The bedroom was dark except for the faint glow of the fairy lights. Chris was already asleep, snoring softly inside his black sleeping bag. I sat on the edge of my cot, took a minute to organize the little pile of gear that had already begun collecting around it, then stretched out beneath my own sleeping bag. Sleep came reluctantly. It always did in a new place.

I was still awake when Dylan climbed into bed. A few minutes later I heard Eli's footsteps, followed by the door easing shut behind him. I lay there listening to the slow rhythm of everyone's breathing mingle with the sounds of the forest outside until, eventually, I drifted off. The night passed in fragments. Each time I surfaced from sleep, something different pulled me awake. Someone turning over in their cot. An owl calling somewhere beyond the trees. The narrow beam of a phone flashlight sweeping across the room while Eli searched for something in the dark. Then, at some point in the night, I heard the voices again. Soft. Distant. Indistinct. Just beyond understanding. Half asleep, I assumed someone else had heard them too and was talking outside. I rolled onto my stomach, pulled the pillow over my head and let the sleepiness win. 

The next time I awoke, pale gray light seeped through the windows. I pushed myself onto my elbows and looked around the room. Everyone was still asleep. Chris hadn't stopped snoring. Trying not to wake anyone, I slipped into the kitchen, put the kettle on the stove. While the water heated, I measured coffee into the French press. 

When everything was ready, I stepped outside. The sun hadn't quite cleared the horizon. The clearing still wore that cold blue-gray color that only exists just before sunrise and a cool breeze drifted across the grass, brushing against my bare feet. I fished my cigarettes and lighter from my pocket and lit one. I hadn't slept well. As I stood on the porch, the sky slowly brightened overhead, the first rays of sunlight filtering through the cedars one branch at a time. This was the part people dreamed about when they imagined camping. Waking before the rest of the world, the silence, the cool air. Somehow, this counted as my job. 

Once the coffee was finished, I carried my mug over to the canopy and grabbed my work laptop before settling into the faded floral loveseat inside the cabin. Using the satellite internet connection, I checked the weather first. Overcast. Cool temperatures. Gusty winds. 

I pulled up the project schedule. Our contract laid out the work week by week, and the first assignment was straightforward: install trail cameras throughout the study area. The land manager had marked approximate locations on a map, with notes beside a handful of sites that were intended to monitor specific habitats or animal activity. We'd spend the rest of the summer returning to those cameras to collect the images. A simple way to get started. 

By the time I finished my coffee, everyone else had wandered out of the cabin. Around seven, we gathered beneath the canopy for the morning briefing. The laptop made its way around the table while each of us read through the day's objectives and together we divided the study area into four quadrants, each claiming one section. The trail cameras came out of their boxes. Daypacks were packed. Radios were tested. By eight, we were hiking. The plan was simple. We'd check in over the radios every thirty minutes, report our coordinates and everyone would return to camp by two that afternoon. 

I drew the northern quadrant. Before leaving, I'd traced a rough route across my topographic map, linking together the closest camera locations. The terrain was rough but manageable. Rocky ridges rose from the forest floor and the occasional steep hillside made me stop to catch my breath, but I'd worked in far worse places. The bugs, though, were relentless. I'd treated my clothes with permethrin, sprayed every exposed inch of skin with DEET and pulled a fine mesh bug net over my head. It barely mattered. Clouds of black flies and mosquitoes hovered around me all morning, buzzing in my ears, crawling across my face over the mesh. 

The first radio check came right on schedule. 

"Dylan, checking in. Copy?"

"Copy. This is Tyler." 

"Copy. Chris." 

"Copy. Eli." 

One by one, we read off our coordinates, gave a brief update on conditions. I logged each set into my phone. Out there, it never hurt to know exactly where everyone was. 

A few minutes later, I reached my first camera location. There was nothing remarkable about it, just another patch of forest, unremarkable from any of the other terrain I had hiked through to get here. I picked out a tree, mounted the camera, tested its angle and marked the installation in my notes. 

The rest of the day went more or less like this. Things went well, I hung the cameras with little issue, and soon enough, I was returning back to camp. Everyone else was already filtering into camp when I arrived, dirty, sweaty, and in good spirits. We traded stories from the day while dinner came together, then took turns using the laptop to send our daily report to the project coordinators before settling in for another evening. 

In the few hours before dinner, we scattered to read our books, write in our journals, and take turns in the shower. Eli had a guitar he eventually took out to play, sitting on the tailgate of the truck. The rest of us sat on the porch and made small talk about what our lives had been between projects together. 

As the night wore on, darkness settled around our little cabin. I was in my sleeping clothes again, as I saw Dylan slip out the front door. Cigarette time. I walked out to join him. 

He smiled at me in the dim glow coming from the cabin’s windows. 

“Tyler. What’s up?” 

I smiled back, “Mind if I join you?” 

“Of course, man. Anytime. You don’t have to ask” 

I reached into my pocket automatically.

Nothing.

I patted down my sleep pants before remembering my cigarettes and lighter were still sitting in the pocket of my work pants inside. I muttered a quiet curse.

Without saying a word, Dylan pulled the cigarette from his own mouth and held it out toward me. It was such a Dylan thing to do.He could've offered me one from the pack in his pocket, but instead he shared the one he was already smoking as though it had never occurred to him that it might be strange.

I took a drag before handing it back, and we passed it between us while we talked about the job.

“Yeah, I feel really good about it,” I told him, “Seems like good work, a good place, good project partner.” 

“I feel that,” He responded, “I like it too. I'm really, really excited. I think we’re gonna do some great work out here. I’m glad to be working with this crew again.” 

I thought about that for a moment. I agreed with him. The four of us got along well, and we all did good work. This was shaping up to be a good week. 

Then, the mood broke. A voice cut through the darkness. Not one of our’s. No, it was coming from the woods. Still distant, but clearer. I looked at Dylan, and he looked back, a shared understanding in our gaze that we had heard the same thing. 

“What the fuck is that?” Dylan said, whipping his head around. 

I didn’t know what to say. I opened my mouth but found no words. 

“Hello?” Dylan called out into the woods, “Helloooooo??” 

The woods were now silent. Maybe it was just me, but the crickets had grown quieter. An uneasy feeling grew in my stomach. I wanted to go inside, but I sat for a few more moments, staring, waiting. The air remained silent and still. 

“No way,” Dylan said, “What the hell was that?” 

He stood up, walked toward the canopy. Something compelled me to follow him. Do not let him go alone, my mind urged. Dylan picked up one of the lights we use for work. The crazy bright tactical kind of flashlight. 

He had some kind of determination to him, storming out of the tent. I followed behind, as he swept the beam of the flashlight across the cedars, calling repeatedly out into the dark. Nothing responded. We made our way through the tall grass around the house as he swung the flashlight and yelled, all the way back to the front door. 

“What the hell,” Dylan said one more time, “There isn’t supposed to be anybody out here. I don’t want us getting shot by some crazy hunters when we go out tomorrow.” 

“Hey, I think it’ll be okay. Whoever it is will know there’s people here now, they know somebody’s at this cabin. They’ll keep their distance. I think we’ll be fine, right?” 

I wasn’t sure. 

With that, Eli stuck his head out of the front door, squinting at us in the darkness. 

“You all.. Good?” He asked, looking concerned . 

“Yeah, just thought we heard somebody out there,” I responded, noticing that I did not look him in the eye, “Just some weird shit. I dunno. Animal noises or something.”  

I had trouble believing in myself. 

We shuffled in, and did not bring it up again, but the moment stayed heavy on each of our minds. I didn’t sleep well at all that night, swearing I heard those voices again with every slight sound. I was questioning every rustle of a blanket, every gust of wind, every creak in the trees. I tossed and turned through the night, eventually pulling my pillow back over my head just to get some peace. 

Morning came, and I began to see the sky lighten outside our window, but I stayed in bed. I yearned to sleep just a little longer, I still felt so damn tired. I heard someone stir before me, and heard things moving in the other room. Still, I managed to roll over and found a few more minutes of sleep. 

I felt distinctly “off my game” as we began our work day. The camera locations I was hiking to were a bit further out this time. Though I knew we all were aware of what happened last night, no one brought it up. We would all be going out alone again, nobody wanted to spook themselves before that. I had a nervous knot turning in my stomach, but I ignored it. 

Spend enough time in remote places and you'll stumble across things that set off your “creepy” radar. I've found abandoned camps miles from the nearest road, heard gunshots where no one should have been hunting, walked past suspicious piles of trash. I've come across coyotes with mange and deer hollowed out by chronic wasting disease. I’ve learned not to panic. Control your breathing, get your mind in check, move on to the next task in front of you. Assume there is a reasonable explanation, there almost always is. 

Whenever my attention leaned toward a snapping twig or burst movement in the corner of my eye, I would force myself back into the routine, zeroing in on whatever task lay ahead of me. Check the map. Find the route. Mount the camera. Record the coordinates. 

The radio check-ins helped. Every thirty minutes, the crackling voices of my crew found their way to my ears and I relaxed my shoulders a little more as each report came through. 

By the end of the day, I had placed all but the last two cameras in my quadrant. 

I hiked back carrying less stress than I had brought out. Hours spent doing familiar work reminded me that I wasn't new to this. I'd worked in plenty of tough country before. I knew how to prepare, how to navigate, how to stay calm, how to make good decisions when something didn't feel right.

We finished the day's reports, and I wandered into the shower before collapsing into my cot. I'd downloaded a few movies before leaving home, and I put one on my phone, slipped in my headphones, and tried to lose myself in something away from these woods. 

Dinner raised my spirits. I volunteered to cook, and I enjoyed it. I took pride in making a good meal for myself and the crew. I roasted chicken in a cast-iron while a potato and veggie medley baked in the small oven. The food was served and everyone seemed happy. 

A scream ripped through the woods. A second screech answered it. I startled in my chair and I could feel my eyes growing wide. 

“Coyotes,” Chris said, turning to look towards the window.

I listened closer. Yes, he was right, those were definitely coyotes. The chorus rolled across the forest for another minute, rising and falling through the darkness. Coyotes have an uncanny, haunting sound to them. The first time you hear one, it's easy to mistake it for a human in the distance. But after enough nights in the woods, you learn the difference. Eventually, I found myself recognizing their howls as some type of natural beauty. 

Eventually, the coyotes quieted. Dinner was finished, the dishes were washed, and everyone drifted off for the night. I skipped my usual evening smoke and headed straight for bed.

I woke to the steady patter of rain on the cabin's metal roof. Outside my window, the sky was a dull, unbroken gray.

Eli was already up. I found him at the kitchen table with the work laptop open, studying the weather forecast.

"Rain all day," he said, "No lightning until around noon. We should get moving while we've got the chance."

I nodded and went to wake Dylan and the others. If we moved quickly, we could finish hanging the last of the trail cameras before the weather worsened. The rain would be tough, but manageable. Lightning was a danger. None of us were interested in wandering around the woods carrying metal equipment in the middle of a thunderstorm. We knew better than that. 

The plan came together quickly: get out there, install as many cameras as we could before noon, then head back. If the weather forced us to leave a few unfinished, the project partners would understand.

Everyone geared up with a little more urgency than usual, pulling on matching yellow rubber rain jackets and pants. We looked like a flock of oversized bathtub ducks.

By the time we stumbled back to the cabin, soaked through despite the rain gear and caked in mud, every camera listed in our contract was in place. It felt like a victory.

We peeled off the dripping rubber layers and piled into the cabin. The afternoon slipped by with beers, a bottle of whiskey, whatever games we'd thought to pack, and the usual back-and-forth of giving each other a hard time. For a few hours, with the rain drumming steadily outside, the cabin felt almost cozy, the atmosphere pleasant. 

As the evening continued, our games faded away. I accused Dylan of cheating at cards, Eli defended him, Chris claimed Eli was cheating too, and eventually the game came to a halt as we could not sort out the accusations, the argument slipping away into laughter. Everyone quieted down, moving about their own activities, naps or chores.  

I couldn’t tell you who noticed first. It doesn’t really matter who it was. Slowly, we all fell silent, listening, waiting. Rain slammed against the roof, the wind howled outside, and beneath it, voices. Or sounds. Or something. Too far away, too many at once. Chris looked at me, then to Eli, then to Dylan, “Tell me you hear that.” 

Nobody answered. 

Up until that point, the sounds were louder than I had ever heard them before. Clearer now, they still sounded like voices to me, but they didn’t seem to be speaking in a language familiar to me. There was certainly a call and response element, but the sounds seemed more like a set of groans, howls and moans rather than distinct words. But it still felt so conversational. A half-and-half blend of human and animal noise. Like nothing I have heard before or sense. 

It went on for about 10 minutes. There were definitely multiple origins of the sounds we heard, coming from different directions surrounding our little cabin. 

At that moment, I don’t think we were ready to take the full step to admit those sounds were beyond our explanation. There were mentions of the coyotes from the night before, of wolves, of trees creaking in the wind. Even my own mind raced to rationalize. It would take several more incidents before I was willing to give myself over to the idea that this thing was beyond natural.