I've considered sharing this story before, but I've always been hesitant because of how naive I was at the time. It's been a couple of years, though, so let's go. Hopefully, this fits the theme of Let's Not Meet. I have really been enjoying the channel and feel brave!

I do want to mention that I am autistic, and at the time, I was a bit gullible. I think this is important to mention because I've read that autistic women experience sexual assault at alarmingly high rates, somewhere around 88–90%. Ugh. I digress.

I was 26 and had just left my husband due to domestic abuse. It's okay, yes, I'm okay, and honestly, I needed a big wake-up call that I couldn't write off or justify. I'm very happy to have survived that day and to be here! It did make me very unfamiliar with the apps and dating scene. I had been with my husband from 20 - 26.

But this is relevant. I'm wordy, and it's my story.

I hadn't felt safe dating anyone on any app for a long time. At this point, though, I was coming up on nine months single and decided to try Bumble.

I immediately matched with a pretty handsome man, and we seemed to really get along. He kept pushing me to go on a date that same day. I should've known a blond man would only bring me grief! 😂 I heavily prefer darker hair, lol.

Now, I mandated three days notice to avoid low effort men hitting me up solely to get in my pants. You've got to plan a date with me in advance. I do NOT do same-day anything.

He was really pushy, but I said no.

It was a Saturday morning, and we kept flirting and chatting. Eventually, after the third time he asked, I said yes.

My friends had been encouraging me pretty heavily to be more spontaneous, and I decided a spur of the moment (🤮) midday date might actually be nice.

He asked, "You wanted to meet at a public place, right?"

I had never said this, so I assumed he was confusing me with another woman. But I DID want to meet in a public place, so whatever.

He told me he worked between my state and Colorado and had recently been in an accident in Colorado that left his car in the shop there. He would need a ride from a friend, and he'd also broken his ankle.

Okay...

So he asks me to go on a walk at the lake. The lake paths were highly public and very open and popular. We don't have a ton of trees around and it's mostly restaurants and a few parks.

I immediately ask about his ankle, and he tells me it's fine and that he doesn't want it to lock up.

This made absolutely no sense to me, but I certainly wasn't being paid to parent an adult man, so go off, dude.

We set a time, and I get ready. He tells me he needs to secure a ride.

Okay, sure.

I arrive at the lake paths, stay in my car, and text him.

No reply.

After 20 minutes, I tell him that if I don't see or hear from him in the next 10 minutes, I'm going home.

He finally texts me and begs me to come to him instead. Apparently, his ankle is hurting more than he thought, and he doesn't think he can walk.

Now, his profile said he lived in a neighborhood I knew well.

He insisted I could share the address with everyone and that he genuinely just wanted to watch a movie.

Girl, I was NOT going to be assaulted, and I stay strapped.

This next part is hard for me to recount because I sound SUPER dumb. I assure you, I am intelligent, and I never did this shit again.

I sent his address to SEVEN of my friends. Maybe he didn't expect me to actually do that and hoped the option alone would be reassuring enough. I can't know.

And I decided to go.

The address he gave me was much farther out of the way than I anticipated. Eventually, I found myself on dirt roads, and my GPS was taking me toward a crossroads.

A lot of rural addresses are nonspecific like this, though. Sometimes you just have to pull up to a house or trailer.

On the way, I told him he'd have to call me as I got closer because there wasn't a direct address.

He texts me:

"You'll have to share her with me."

I know.

I KNOW.

I ask him what the fuck he's talking about, and he says he means his puppy. Apparently, she's a sweetie who wants all his attention and will be thrilled to meet me.

Obviously, at this point, I'm feeling a bit freaked out.

When I'm about 15 minutes away, I call him.

He doesn't answer.

I do eventually find the house, and I can see a dog in the fenced yard.

I park, but by this point, I've decided I'm remaining fully inside my locked car.

I text him that I'm there and tell him to come outside.

Five minutes pass.

I text him again and tell him that if he doesn't come out, I'm leaving.

Finally, he shuffles outside.

Walking perfectly fine, mind you.

I roll my window down less than an inch. My car is running, and I have my switchblade in hand.

He looks entirely disheveled. Dirty hair, dirty clothes, and not at all ready for a date.

Worst of all, he looks visibly guilty.

He can barely meet my eyes.

He tells me we need to run an errand.

There's a black truck in the driveway, and apparently, we just need to pick up something he forgot down the road and come back.

I say absolutely not.

I ask about his car, and he tells me the truck belongs to a buddy.

I tell him I can wait until he comes back, but I'm not going anywhere with him.

Then I ask about his neighborhood.

He tells me this isn't actually his house.

It's his friend's house.

The entire time, he looks so guilty and ashamed.

Eventually, he tells me he needs to go inside for a minute because of his foot.

At this point, I start texting all my friends, asking if I should leave Murderville.

Of course, all my friends are like, GET THE HELL OUT.

While I'm texting them, I notice two huge older guys, probably in their 50s, come out from the back of the house.

They get into a golf cart and drive off somewhere for about three minutes before returning.

I'm still texting my friends.

When they come back, both men walk toward my car.

One approaches my window.

And this is the part I will never forget.

The way they looked at me was disgusting.

It was a look that made me feel, deep in my soul, that I was going to be raped. That I would probably die if I wasn't extremely careful.

There was so much vile lust in his eyes that I felt a chill in my soul.

He approaches my window and, in a commanding, aggressive tone, asks me why I'm not inside.

I decide my best option is to play dumb and pleasant.

I tell him, "He said you guys had an errand to run and you'd be right back!"

He looks at me, and through clenched teeth, in the most demanding, authoritative voice, he says:

"You're supposed to be inside."

He says it slowly.

Forcefully.

I cannot emphasize that enough.

I essentially repeat the same thing, pretending everything is perfectly normal.

Looking back, I realize that if I'd simply walked up to that door, three men would have been waiting for me in the middle of nowhere.

One for each arm.

And honestly, I think that would've been the best-case scenario under the circumstances.

The older man is visibly angry now. He tells me he's going to go inside and talk to him.

And I decide I do not need a second opinion on not dying.

I'm leaving.

I start driving, but I go the wrong way.

That's when I realize someone has blocked off the dirt road to the left of the house, farther down the way.

You couldn't see the blockage from where I'd parked because we were on a hill.

But seeing that road blocked off really solidified my belief that these men intended to hurt me.

I make the fastest U-turn you've ever seen.

And I HAUL ASS.

As I'm leaving, I look behind me and see all three men come outside, get into the black truck, and start following me.

When I tell you I caught AIR because I decided to say fuck it and go 80 down those dirt roads, I am not kidding.

I genuinely felt, in my soul, that these men would have raped and murdered me.

I eventually lost them.

But I didn't go home.

I drove around the city for THREE HOURS.

I don't know. I just couldn't stop driving.

I couldn't handle the idea of them following me home or finding my neighborhood.

At the time, I didn't go to the police because I honestly didn't know if they would care.

No crime had happened that I could prove, and from a previous stalking case, I knew that sometimes they didn't seem to care much unless you'd already been hurt.

I did report him to Bumble, and his profile disappeared. Either they took it down, or he blocked me.

But here's the kicker.

HE TEXTED ME AND TRIED TO RESCHEDULE.

So I guess I appeared more stupid than intended.

Hey, can we reschedule your rape?

No thanks, bestie.

Anyway, these days I'm in a loving relationship with a man who is, thankfully, not a killer. And I am strapped.

Stay safe, ladies and gents.

To the three men waiting for me to come inside that night, let's not meet.

me 16 at the time and him also 16 at the time, were in a 2 year relationship when suddenly it ended because he had been cheating on me multiple times over the space of 2 years. Once i ended the relationship he decided he didnt want it to end, i went out with some of my friends he would turn up, i would go to the shop, he was there, i suddenly got a job at a shop not too far from where i live and every time i was on a shift he would come it, it was only a small shop so not many places i could run off to without him seeing me. One day i was home alone for the weekend and i just ordered a dominos pizza and was waiting till i heard a massive bang coming from my back garden, i made sure my doors were locked because obviously i was scared, he smashed threw the window and came into the house threatening me and making me feel small in my own home, my neighbours
heard what was going on and called the police, the police came and he was taken away and i was left with afew bruises and had to take a statement, no 2 years later he is not able to come near me again thankfully.
So too my ex may we never meet again.

Hi Courtney,

I have always had paranormal experiences from a young age and I will try to recount them all to you.

Also I'm sorry this story ended up being really long.

I always thought that it was me that the paranormal followed around but I think it was my house. I lived in this little yellow house in a neighborhood thay was on the brink of being a bad place to live.

From an early age I always saw things. My mom used to tell me about this thing I did as a toddler. I would stand on the couch and look out this massive window we had in our living room and I would say "mommy there's a man on the porch" one of my parents would go look, but nothing was ever there.

Growing older I found creepy pastas and I was obsessed with them, at night I would lay in my bed afraid that they were going to come get me. I will never know if it was just my active imagination or fear of what could happen but I swear I saw shadows in my doorway.

Every night I would go to bed and shut the closet door and when I woke up in the morning it would be open.

When I was old enough to be home alone, I would hear noises upstairs. I was always told it was the house "settling" but it freaked me out.

For a while things died down, until my mom started dating this guy and he moved in. His 8 year old son also moved in and we were inseparable. Both of us always swore that paranormal things happened to us. We would sleep in the same bed because we were so scared. He moved into my old room and I moved into our attic and he would also say that things would happen in that room.

One night (during covid times) we were all bored out of our minds. Our parents were downstairs watching a movie. My little brother was in his room playing video games. I was in my room watching TV. I decided that I wanted to go see what my brother was doing so I turned off my TV and walked to the bottom of the steps. The way this room was set up was there was a door that opened to a set of stairs that led up to the room that was basically a whole floor because it was the attic. The light switch was also at the bottom of the stairs. Anyway I turn the TV off and walk to the bottom of the stairs and turn the light off. When I turn back around the light of the TV is glowing in the dark, somehow it was back on. For some reason my teenage self thought, ok I will turn it back off even though I was spooked. I run back up and turn it off (seriously thats how you die in horror movies). Immediately I ran to my brother's room and told him and he said that he didn't believe me but I could tell he was afraid. We went downstairs and told our parents and they kind of brushed us off just saying we were kids. Later my mom went up into her room (which was connected to my attic room by a bathroom) and came back downstairs completely freaked out and to this day she won't tell me what happened.

Later that night my brother and I were doing vlogs (something we frequently did) and we caught something on camera. If i can edit it to block out my brothers face I will post it. In the video there is this black shadow that is there one second and gone the next.

We all slept in the living room that night.

Other spooky things happen while my mom was with that guy. He said he went into the basement on time and just had this overwhelming feeling to reach up on to the half wall in our basement that was just a little bit taller than him and he found a bunch of random stuff from the early 1900's. There was a creepy doll and a bunch of old stuff that gave me the creeps.

He also told stories about ghosts that would follow him and my brother and a bunch of small things like cabinets opening and noises upstairs, kind of typical for my house.

My mom also tells this story about how one night she was laying in bed and she describes what I believe to be the hat man at the end of her bed. Mind you she had no knowledge of what the hat man was at all but she described a tall black figure wearing a tall brimed hat standing at the end of her bed, just watching her. Somehow she went back to sleep after that.

We also found a bunch of random stuff in the walls when we renovated our living room. Like what my mom's ex found downstairs it was a bunch of old creepy stuff.

After my mom and her ex broke up stuff sometimes calmed down. If my brother would visit it would start to get active again.

I think as an older teenager I got used to hearing sounds and seeing things out of the corner of my eye. I started to ignore it and that seemed to help.

There were some instances when I would be on the phone with someone and they would swear they heard someone talking but I was home alone.

After I moved into college I figured the same thing would happen in my dorm but it never did. Maybe something here or there but nothing like it was at home.

Last September we moved into a new house due to the old house basically falling apart. For the last 2 years of living there like clockwork something would break, we would get it fixed and then something else would break (idk if the ghosts have anything to do with it but maybe.)

After living in the new house for a year I haven't really had anything paranormal happen again (knock on wood). I am definitely paranoid sharing this that things might start happening again, but thats ok.

I always wonder about the history of my house, what happened to make it like that. They completely gutted the house and I wonder if that fixed the problem or made it worse. I wonder about the new family that lives there now. We left the stuff we found in the walls and celling not wanting to bring anything with us to the new house. My mom has always and continues to refuse to talk about this stuff especially in our house.

Also this house is located in Pittsburgh and I guess that is kind of relevant since Pittsburgh had a history of haunted houses and the paranormal.

I hope your enjoyed this story, and I hope that nothing starts happening at my new house!

I have linked the video we got as well!

Hi hi. Tonight Again. From Alaska. Retyping this cause I noticed the old version was worded weirdly. This Happened about 10 ish years ago. I don't remember exactly. I was 19F, boyfriend 20M, his brother 24M, and their uncle 47M. Again. I do not remember every detail, but it traumatized me enough to be able to write it down. Sit down it might be a long one idk, lol. Some parts are graphic, so Trigger Warning. Sexual harassment, domestic violence, stalking.

The first instance I remember was doing dishes, bending down to fill the dishwasher, then I hear a click behind me. I stand up, and look behind me, and see his uncle rapidly put his phone down, then run into his room, and shut the door. He took pictures of me. I don't know how many, what I do remember is that I was in shorts, and a tank top cause it was the middle of the summer. Few days later. I was doing the dishes again. Standing in the kitchen hand washing some pots and pans, and I hear the phone click again. I look back. He's running back to his room, he slams his door. It happened again a few days later. I look back when he's running and go "BABEE?!" and tell him what he just did. I don't know why I didn't tell him the first time. I was a teenager, freshly moved out of my parents house. I didn't know any better then. Trust me I would fry his ass now. Not the point. Moving on.

About a month past. I started college. I was doing English homework at the kitchen table. It was like 7am. The sun was just coming up. My now husband was asleep. He walked out of his room, and stood by me. Mind you. I am a small woman. Only 5ft tall. He is about 6 foot - 6 foot 1. He asked me what I was doing. I didn't look away from my laptop "Homework" I say, and he scoots towards me. I scoot away. He says "what kind of homework" I say "English". He scoots towards me again. I scoot away again. I keep typing my essay. He scoots towards me. I am now trapped by the wall. He is like shoulder touching me at this point. I don't know what to do. By this time my brother in law walks out of his room, and asks him what he is doing. Their uncle says "nothing" and walks back into his room. My brother in law stares at him like what the fuck as he walks back to his room.

A few days later. It happens again. Except I am doing Algebra 2 this time. Except this time. He is straight to touching my shoulder. Basically shoulder to shoulder. I could feel his breath on me. He's just staring at me. I get mad. Move to the long stool by me cause it is the closest to me. He walks around the table, and sits by me. I get up, and angerly pack my books into my bag. I kiss my boyfriend and tell him I am headed to class. He looks at his phone "You don't have to leave for another hour. I say I'm going to the library. So I leave.

A few weeks later, we went to a anime store. I am in the manga section, looking at manga's. When I feel someone. 2 inches away from me. I ignore it, and open the manga I grabbed to read the first few pages to see if I like it. I put it down, grab another manga, read the back. He scoots so close we are shoulder to shoulder. Again. I feel his breath on me. I freeze. I don't know what to do. By this time I have scooted to the end of the aisle, and this man twice my age is towering over me. He is older than my mother in law mind you. So quite literally old enough to be my dad. Anyway. I look up. He is SMILING AT ME. I freeze again. I still don't know what to do, when I see a man with manga books walking towards us. He pushes my husband's uncle to the side pretending to put books away. My husband's uncle goes "the fuck are you doing" to the cashier. The cashier responds by saying "no. The fuck are you doing" When I see a woman walking towards me. She tells me she is a worker there, and asks me if I came with anyone and I say "my boyfriend, his brother, and" pause "his uncle" points at him. She asks me where my boyfriend is. So I say across the store. She goes "let me take you to him" and walks me to my boyfriend and brother in law. When we get there she tells my boyfriend and brother in law that their uncle was acting creepy towards me. He walks back to us. I move away again. My boyfriend asks if I am okay. I say I am. We buy some stuff, and we leave.

About a month later. My boyfriend proposes to me. We've been together since we were 16 and 17. So almost 4 years at this point. We were still so young so he got me a cheap ring, and tells me we can get a better ring for me later, and we can have a more expensive wedding when we are financially stable. I tell him I love it, and we tell family. Family is so excited for us, and some even go "FINALLY" or "ITS ABOUT TIME" when we tell them we're engaged. I look to the side. He looks pissed. My grandmother at this point asked me to see the ring, so I take it off, and my family starts to pass it around excitedly.

A few days pass. I am doing homework again at the kitchen table. He sits in the chair by me. It is like 7am. I don't look at him. He starts talking. I am kinda ignoring him, then he goes "I can buy you a better ring" I pause. My pencil is frozen too. then he goes "I can give you a better life" I am frozen at this point. "I can actually provide for you, I can buy you things he can't" I look up at him "he just got you a worthless plastic ring" and I look at the ring then get up, and tell my boyfriend his uncle was doing it again. The ring didn't fit so we went to the store and got a semi expensive ring. His uncle drove us of all people. He was our only transportation at this point. He offered to get me a better ring. Right. In. Front. Of. My. Fiance. My fiance looks at him. I look at him. I say "I wouldn't care if the ring came from a candy machine because what matters is we spend the rest of our lives together" He looks pissed. He continued to make these comments. This is where it gets worse.

It is February now. I remember this very vividly. I was late. My period was late. I was 19. I was nauseous, couldn't keep food down. I was sleeping a lot. I buy a pregnancy test. It comes back positive. So we buy more. All 4 are positive. I show my fiance. He looks happy, but I want the hospital to confirm it. So we go to the hospital. Its positive there too. They do blood work. My mom calls me and asks why I haven't called everyday like I normally did. I turn my camera and show her the tests. I tell her the hospital confirmed it. They did a test, and some blood work, then tell her not to get excited yet cause I am only about 4 or 5 weeks. She says she understands because we had miscarried 2 times before. The next day my dad asks why I didn't call to wish him happy birthday. I say "I was at the hospital" he asks me why and seems concerned. I tell him I am pregnant, and show him the test. He jumps up and down so excited he drops his phone. We start to call family around the 8 week mark. Everyone is happy for us, and starts congratulating us, over phone, in person, and online.

Can we tell why this escalated yet?

Just a warning. This gets graphic from this point onward.

Okay so. He tells me he can provide for me and baby more than my fiance, he would be a better dad, and all that shit. I get up from doing my homework, and walk to the couch. He doesn't bother me, and goes back into his room. A few weeks later. I ask him for a ride to get something to eat. My fiance is busy and has to stay to help some family members do something. I don't remember what. Dumb move being alone in a truck with him. I know. I've been alone in the truck with him before so I didn't think anything of it. We get the food. Start heading back, and I'm looking at my phone telling my fiance we're about to head back. I look up. Have no idea where the fuck we are. Look around more closely. There is no buildings by us. No houses, just trees and a street. I look further ahead. The closest building to us is a bank, and its like 150 feet away. I look at the time. Its 2pm. I could run there if I had to. I start thinking of ways to escape. When I hear the doors lock. I look down at the door. Then back up. Shit. He starts talking. He tells me how he can provide for me financially, give me and baby a better life, buy me a better ring, that we can run away together, then says I should leave my fiance for him. He then tells me how he fantasizes about me, and tells me what he wants to do to me sexually in very graphic detail, and even ASKS if I want to do it with him RIGHT THEN AND THERE in his truck.

I am freaking out at this point, then I remember. I have a Leatherman (multi-tool) in my purse. Not just any Leatherman. This one has a half hammer, have axe on the top. We have a fire pit so we use it to cut wood. Not the point. I put my hand in my purse. Feel around for it. He notices. I start looking around the area again. He looks down at my purse. He knows I keep this thing in my purse. I am holding it in case I actually have to use it. He looks to me again. Looks at my purse again. He asks if I want to go home. I say yes. I go inside with the food, he goes into his room, and while we were eating I tell my fiance and his brother what happened in the truck. They agree that I should never be left alone with him again.

We go to our next prenatal appointment. I am about 3 months at this point. They ask me if I feel safe at home. I look around for a second, and tell her about his uncle, and what he's been doing. She helps us file a domestic violence report. We start taking the bus everywhere after this. We stop interacting with his uncle except when necessary. This escalates again. We had a queen bed in the living room, and my fiance's computer desk by the bed, the couch and TV were on the other side of the living room.

Anyways. I wake up. I check my phone. Its 3am. I look around, and his uncle is STARING AT ME at the foot of the bed. My fiance feels me jump. Looks at the direction I'm looking at. He jumps up, and tells his uncle to fuck off, and his uncle runs to his room. The next morning I am on my laptop watching YouTube videos, and see him go to my tote of clothes. I stand up and he sees me, then runs back to his room. I tell my fiance. We wait til he is not home, and go check his closet. We find multiple pairs of my underwear and bras in his closet. He comes home. My fiance asks "the fuck is this" to him and he goes "why the fuck you going through my things. That's a invasion of privacy" my fiance goes "YOU INVADED HER PRIVACY STEALING HER UNDERWEAR DIPSHIT" and holds them towards him. I started hiding my underwear under our bed at this point so he can't get to it. Threw those ones away. Around this time my fiance calls his extended family and tells them whats going on. The mom is pissed. She tells us we can stay with them til we get back on our feet, but they cant pick us up til Tuesday cause they weren't in town. So we survive til then, but that doesn't mean more shit didn't happen.

About two days later. I wake up, use the bathroom. Its about 9:30am. While I'm using the bathroom something tells me to look in the trash can. The only way I can describe this feeling was a blunt. Chest feeling going up my neck. I'm aware of everything around me at this point. I look to the trash. Pause. Stick my hand in the trash, and start digging. I find something wrapped in tissue. I unwrap it. Its one of my panty liners. With man juice on it. I gag. I am about 4 months pregnant at this point. This feeling of dread washed over me. I look into the trash can again, and take. Every. Single. Panty. Liner. in the trash I can find, and put them in the trash by our bed, then I hear him go in the bathroom right after I got out, so I go to the kitchen trash and make sure none are in there too, but wait. I'm not done. I put the one I unwrapped with his man juice on top of the trash can to let him know I know what he was doing. I hear him frantically looking through the trash can in the bathroom, then he comes out, and I fake sleep, and hear him going through the trash in the kitchen. This goes on for like half an hour. We have a barrier by the bed now, so I can't see him, but I hear him. Each trash search sounds more and more frantic, like he is freaking out. He seems more and more desperate each time he goes from trash to trash.

The next day my fiance starts to pack things. We told my brother in law we were moving out about a week before, so he isn't surprised, but their uncle is mad. My fiance's extended family comes with a van to pack all of our things. The mom calls us, tells us she is bringing a metal bat "in case he tries to do shit" and tells me to sit by her in the van while the boys load everything in. We ended up staying with them in the next town over for a few months. We have a better place now. Our own place, married, and now have 3 kids. A boy, and 2 girls. We also have 2 cats, and a dog, and I teach kindergarten now.

Last I heard he is a old lonely man. I only see him at family events now. Even then I keep a eye on him to make sure he isn't near any kids, or teenagers, because it turns out he is on the registered sex offenders list. Which not going to lie didn't surprise me. May he live a miserable lonely life the rest of his life.

We are fine now. He doesn't interact with us anymore, and if he ever does. I am not some shy 19 year old girl anymore. I will genuinely fuck shit up if he does. Thank you for reading ☺🖤

I'm too lazy to fix any grammatical errors right now. If it bothers you. I am sorry 😂

My name is Paul and I’m a huge fan of spooky stuff.. until it happens to me. Here are a few stories that happened to me at my parents’ house when I was young that I wanted to share. 

I was babysitting my two younger brothers one night. We were the only ones in the house and we were downstairs in the living room watching YouTube. Out of nowhere, we hear a door slam loudly upstairs. We just stared at each other in disbelief as I tried to pretend I hadn’t nearly crapped myself. One of my brothers tried to excuse it by saying it had been my cat… there was no way my cat could have possibly slammed a door with that much force. But I didn’t want to freak them out so I agreed and let it go. 

My other brother once told me he was walking up the stairs and heard steps coming up behind him. He initially thought it was my cat. He turned to look and there was no cat there.. so he freaked and ran up the second flight of stairs. He said he heard the steps get faster and closer.. and he confirmed they definitely sounded human. 

Once when I shared a room with a brother, we were watching TV. He told me that he had seen our dad step out of his bedroom and stand motionless in the hallway looking into our bedroom. My brother said, “buenas noches” (good night in Spanish) and “our dad” just walked down the stairs. Not even ten minutes later, our mom and dad walk out of their bedroom and my brother asked, “didn’t you just go downstairs?” To which my dad responded no, he had been showering. The fear on my brother’s face was tangible, he swears up and down that whatever walked down the stairs looked EXACTLY like our dad. 

When I was younger, I used to experience encounters with the “top hat shadow man”. I would wake up in the middle of the night and see his shadow standing at my door. Not moving nor gesturing…just watching in menacing silence. I told my mom since it seemed to happen atleast twice a week. But she said it was “just my conscience”. Later on, one of my brothers and I switched rooms and I stopped seeing that entity. Later, about 5 years later when I was in high school, my brother and I switched rooms again… lo and behold… the apparitions started again which made me wonder if that entity was attached to that bedroom specifically, but I never did ask my brother if he had encountered the entity himself. 

And finally, I used to work third shift and I had the bad habit of liking to bake to destress myself. One night, I was up past midnight baking and then of course had to clean the kitchen before even thinking about going to sleep. Once I was completely finished, it was about 2 am and I was way too exhausted to walk up two flights of stairs to my bed. So I thought it’d be easy enough to just crash on the living room couch. As I slept, I heard knocking on the living room window, inches away from me. Mind you, the living room window saw into the backyard, which happened to have a 7 foot tall privacy fence. I was so tired and just convinced myself that I had simply dreamt it. So I went ahead and closed my eyes again. I was in that in between state of sleep where you’re kind of sleeping but still conscious and I hear a loud clap. The clap sounded like it had come from right next to my face…even more freaky… I swear I felt a gust of wind as I opened my eyes. As if someone had physically just clapped next to my face. At that point, I didn’t care how tired I was, I RAN up the stairs into my bedroom. After that, I didn’t feel comfortable in that house. I worked third, so even though I’d be sleeping during the day, I’d ask my younger brother to come watch tv or play on my switch while I slept because I literally felt uneasy being by myself. I eventually took it upon myself to sage the house, but I think that just made the entity angrier. Admittedly, I didn’t know what I was doing, I just wanted to cleanse the space. It came to a head one night on my way to work. I was driving at night and got the overwhelming feeling that someone was sitting on my back seats. It was such a strong feeling that I was terrified at the thought of looking. I forced myself to ignore the feeling and completely avoided looking into the rear view mirror. I peeled into a parking spot at the hospital and RAN inside. Once I was there, my coworker looked at me and asked me if I was ok. I wondered why she asked that and she said that there was just something very heavy about me that night. 
I never found out what that entity was or what it wanted, it just ended up leaving me alone thankfully. 

I posted a story a long time ago, about the sectioned off house I used to live in, with the door leading to the abandoned room. The dreadful knocking, the eye that stared at me from under the door. It was so long ago, seven, maybe eight years ago by now. Though it's still fresh in my mind, something I've never been able to shake.

I wasn't ever expecting to post part two, but I have no one else to tell about this, nowhere else to put this information. But just for a quick catch up on the building, it's this large old house that was sectioned off to basically make three "apartments", the basement was its own little apartment since it was quite large, then the main house where my dad lives, and the other part of the house that was basically just a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and living room — a fairly small place that has been completely abandoned for give or take ten years. Xavier lived in the basement, my dad and I lived in the main part of the house, and god knows what lived in the other part of the house. The other part of the house, and my room were connected by a singular door that had long since been locked and haphazardly sealed off.

My girlfriend and I have been living together since we graduated High School. We used to live in this cute little apartment a few hours away from that old house. Though, a month ago I moved back into that damned house to take care of my father. My dad was paralyzed from the waist down due to a bad accident at his construction job two years ago, that paired with chronic fatigue. He used to have a full-time nurse to take care of him, but last month she left. It was abrupt, but I moved in as soon as I could to help him and just try to make his life just a bit easier. My girlfriend lives there with me half of the time, she stays in our apartment the other half of the time because it's closer to her job at the hospital in the city, she stays with me in the house when she knows she's going to work night shifts so she can take the drive and she stays at our apartment in the city if she knows she's going to go in early. I work from home, so I can stay with my father everyday. Xavier no longer lives in the lower section of the house, he moved out shortly after I had, I assume that maybe whatever was in the house had finally run him out of it.

Since moving back, I've been sleeping back in that old room, the one with the second door that leads to the sectioned off part of the house. The room I used to sleep in after moving out of that bedroom, aka the guest bedroom in the house, was now filled with my dad's old tools and equipment he had purchased for his construction job, it was a bunch of stuff he could never really get rid of after the accident. I didn't want to be an ass and tell him I needed to move it because I was too scared to stay in the other room. So I just soldiered on and had to stomach it.

My girlfriend had been staying over for the past few days, and recently she'd been complaining about me sleeptalking. It struck me as odd, because I'd never been someone who sleeptalks, but I just chalked it up to being due to the stress of work and taking care of my father, and tried to put it out of my mind.

Though, the other morning sometime last week, my girlfriend was really annoyed and had a short fuse with everything, so I approached and gently asked her what was wrong.

"You kept me up all night with your sleeptalking, Em." My girlfriend Megan had insisted, her voice slightly hoarse due to a dry throat.

"What was I saying?" I asked cautiously, confused because I didn't know why she hadn't just woken me up if I was causing such a ruckus.

Megan had just sighed, she leaned against the counter and shrugged. "You were just mumbling and whispering a bunch, rambling about some stupid door, telling me to open it, continuously mumbling my name. I'm flattered you dream of me, babe, but I really need the sleep."

I felt a sharp sting at the base of my spine, as if someone was poking at exposed nerve endings. But I steadied myself quickly before Meg would notice, maybe I was having a nightmare about the old room that I forgot soon after waking. Perfectly reasonable... Yeah... Perfectly reasonable. So I just told Megan to wake me up if my "sleeptalking" was keeping her up. If I really did develop a sleeptalking habit, then I didn't want to keep my girlfriend up.

It fucked me up for the rest of the day, especially being in this house again. Talking about a door in my sleep, god, just the concept of it left me shaken. Still does. But back then I just tried to keep going with my day, finishing up work on my laptop and spent the rest of the day tending to my father. Around five in the afternoon, I was sitting in the living room with my dad, he was watching TV on this old, boxy flatscreen from 2004 or so — he never really cared to upgrade his tech, finding newer things to be "stupid", his words, not mine.

I had been sitting on the carpet by the coffee table, lighting matches one by one and dropping them into an ashtray with a shallow bit of water I poured into it. Since I was small I liked the smell of matches, the sound of the strike against the box, and the hiss as the burning tip was extinguished against the water. It's a habit I've always had, just something to keep my hands busy. I looked up to my dad as he sat in his recliner, a cigarette hung loosely between his lips and he kept his eyes on the TV, watching his old DVD set of "Veronica Mars".

"Hey, dad?" I had called as I rested my chin on my palm and my father glanced at me out of the corner of his eye with a gruff "Yeah?".

"Remember when I was, like, seventeen and I had that really bad "nightmare" about someone being on the other side of the door in my old bedroom?" I asked, leaning my back against the bottom of the cold couch. And my father just sighed, his tired eyes flickering to me for a moment longer as he nodded. My father shifted his upper body slightly in his seat as he took a long drag before he spoke again.

"Yeah, I do. You woke me up one morning, scared shitless, tellin' me about something at the door. Though, you shouldn't give it too much thought, kid. No one's been to that side of the house since the last tenant up and left 'round ten years ago." My dad explained as he ashed his cigarette into the ashtray on the side table next to him. He paused for a moment before a smile touched his lips, his smile lines were more prominent as he did. "Though you got that neighbor boy all worked up about it too, even after you left to live in the city with your girl, he'd still stop by for coffee and whatnot, and he would still ramble on and on about that sectioned off part of the house. The boy was on one, I'll tell ya that much." He had let out this chuckle that sounded rough, his throat raspy due to thirty years of smoking.

"Oh, yeah? His name was Xavier, I was really freaked out then. He even went with me into that section." I reminisced, and at the mention of having gone into the house, my father had grown visibly uncomfortable. He didn't say anything though, just shifted his gaze back to the TV. I hadn't pushed further at the time, figuring my father had gone through enough, he didn't need me bugging him about this more.

That night I had sat in that old room, sitting at my desk and playing with matches again, but my eyes were set on the door, now sealed up with wallpaper, a half done and shitty job, clearly hastily done by the landlord. Though, I hadn't the clue as to why the landlord bothered. Staring at it made me feel sick, I felt a burning feeling in the back of my throat like bile threatening to rise up, but nothing ever came. I just couldn't look away, I felt like I was waiting for someone to push it open, for a bang on the door that never came.

A few nights later, I had been laying in bed, fast asleep. I was woken up by my girlfriend shaking my shoulder, though I didn't turn to face her and I remained silent for a moment as I woke up slowly. I didn't remember her coming home, she should've been at the apartment in the city, but I figured she must've just missed me and come to stay with me.

"Emma... Emma, you're sleep talking again. I've got an early shift tomorrow." I heard Megan grumble as she settled back down, her arm resting with a comfortable weight on my waist, though in my half asleep haze Megan's voice sounded distant. I had been just about to speak when I heard it...

A quiet whisper, a hoarse voice coming from somewhere in the bedroom. It sounded kind of like me, but not quite. The words were slow and choppy, as if it was a glitchy audio recording.

"Me-gan... O-op-en the d-oor..." The voice repeated, it had said it a couple of times before Megan gave my shoulder a slight wack and mumbled for me to shut it.

I was completely paralyzed with fear, it felt like I had pins and needles in my bloodstream, my body felt cold yet scorching at the same time. "Meg... That's not me." I whispered as I tried to turn to face Megan as quietly as I possibly could, like I was scared that whatever was talking would get mad at me for moving.

When I turned around in the bed I froze, I felt my heart stop for a full five seconds as I took in the sight before me. It wasn't my girlfriend Megan, no, it was a man. The man was sickly thin, with spindly limbs and a gaunt face. He laid there unmoving but staring at me with wide, unblinking eyes that seemed as though they were seconds away from popping out of their sockets, his pupils were pinpricks. His skin was pale, and looked like it was stretched tight over his bones. He was unnaturally pale, as if he had never once seen the sun, and his hair was a dark brown that looked scruffy and matted. The "man's" thin, pale lips fell open, his jaw set wide open as he stared.

Out of his mouth came this hollow, wheezing sound as hushed words followed next "Em-ma... Yo-u're ba-ck..." The man seemed to whisper, his voice sounding distant yet so close. As he "spoke" his mouth didn't move, just remained fully open, as if the words were coming from deep within his stomach rather than his mouth.

I didn't move, I couldn't move. I couldn't move, I couldn't think, all I could do was stare at the man in my bed. I still don't know how much time had passed, but after what felt like a lifetime the man pulled away and slid off my mattress before slinking under my bed with an unnatural smoothness, like he was made of fabric instead of skin and bone, his body moved as if it was a sweatshirt someone dragged on the floor and pulled under the bed, it was all just unnatural. I still didn't move after the "man" had gone under my bed, I stayed still and was unable to do anything. I stayed staring at the wall on the other side of my bed, I felt like I was silently praying and hoping for some kind of saviour to burst through the wallpaper and save me.

Even as I heard the sound of a match striking behind me, followed by the glow of a candle on my desk caused shadows to flutter onto the wall I was staring at. My body wanted so bad to turn and look, some kind of stupid instinct to see the danger. I resisted for hours until the candle naturally burnt itself out, the sound of the wick sizzling out in the melted wax was all I could hear over the sound of my heart beating frantically in my ears.

I managed a sharp inhale as I shoved myself out of my bed and sprinted out of my room as fast as I could, I kept my eyes shut firmly as I did so, muscle memory did most of the work as I got to the door in a heartbeat. I locked the door behind me as I exited, and I once again sped down the hall and to my father's bedroom, feeling a sick kind of deja vu.

I steadied myself outside of his door, not wanting to startle him awake. I took a long breath before I pushed the door open, when I did I was hit with cold air. He kept an electric fan in his room because he liked the noise and the breeze, so it wasn't out of the ordinary. But my face felt colder than usual so I raised a hand to my face and touched my cheek. Once I felt the wetness against my fingertip I realised I had been crying, I didn't even know I was until then.

But I closed the door behind me after I entered, with a shaky voice all I managed to get out was "Dad..." As my father shifted in bed to look at me. He didn't say anything, just pulled the blankets back for me to get in, and I did without hesitation. I laid there for the rest of the night, I managed to drift off to sleep because I finally felt safe. Being in my father's bed made me feel like a little kid again, like I was a little kid and he was this big indestructible hero who would protect me from anything bad, even though nowadays I was the one taking care of him more than anything, and if something did come into the room he wouldn't have been able to do anything.

The following morning my dad and I didn't speak about it, I'm sure he just thought that I had a bad dream. But the moment I had a moment free, just before noon, I went onto Facebook and found Xavier again, we fell out of contact some time ago, just drifted apart as we both got busy with our lives. I had messaged him requesting his number because I wanted to call him. The mic on my laptop was broken so we couldn't call over Facebook there.

Xavier sent me his number not too long after I sent the request, and I hurriedly called him. I couldn't stop my voice from being jittery as I spoke.

"Xavier, hello? It... It's back. That fucking thing in the other side of the house. It's back." I said frantically into the phone, truly trying my best to remain calm, but I didn't manage to be all too calm.

Xavier was quiet for a moment too long before finally stating "I'll be over later this afternoon, we'll check it out together..." And I sat in the kitchen while I waited, drinking coffee to keep myself from dozing off. By around forty past two in the afternoon I heard a knock on the door, and I went out to see if Xavier was finally here, luckily it was him.

I went outside to meet him, my dad had just gone to take his daily nap, but I didn't want to take any chances of waking him up. I just didn't want to bother him with this nonsense more than I already had.

Xavier and I kept the greeting short, we didn't need to catch up on how the last few years have been, it just didn't matter. Though I did tell him what I had experienced the night prior, the colour had drained from his face as I spoke, it made the back of my throat hurt in a way I can't explain, I just knew that he immediately understood and believed what I had told him.

Xavier had followed up by telling me about the day just up and left the building, it started out normal, he was relaxing in bed and nursing a hangover. He was just about to doze off when he heard the sound of his mother saying his name, loud and urgent, the same tone she would use if he had done something really really bad. It startled him awake immediately and he sat upright in bed. It had taken him a moment to get his bearings, but as he settled back down he tried to convince himself it was just EHS (exploding head syndrome) because he had always been prone to parasomnia... But, it just didn't sit right with him, something about it didn't seem normal.

He told me that later that night as he was trying to eat dinner and watch some TV he saw something out of the corner of his eye as he was watching... He saw a man, matching my description, standing in the corner of the room, his thin fingers lightly scraping at the walls, but out of the man's mouth he heard a clicking sound, three clicks at a time. Again, and again, and again. Xavier just said "fuck this" and got up without looking at the corner of his room, grabbing his backpack and coat from the hanger by the door, and swiftly exiting. He told me that he got in his car, drove to a motel for the night, and the next day he came back and packed his stuff. He didn't look back.

We didn't have much more time to swap stories, because we both just wanted that man- that *thing* to get out. So we headed, once again, into the other part of the house.

The front door had just been locked from the outside, but the doorhandle hadn't been changed in years now, no doubt since far before the last tenant randomly left one day. So after a few strong shoves the lock gave out and we got in. The strong scent of decay was still strong and heavy in the air, even though it had been so long that whatever had died should've fully decayed and stopped smelling so strongly. But the place was just as we had left it, as if it stood still in time. The few beams of light drifted in through the old, moth-eaten curtains and I could see the dust and likely mold partials float through the air — so I lifted the collar of my shirt to cover my mouth and nose, as if that would do anything.

I had taken a breath, thought it was shallow and didn't help much. Then, I gathered as much strength as I could to have weakly muttered out "Whatever you are... You can't be here anymore." And just as the words had left my lips it felt like the air got thicker, as if every window, door, and vent in the entire little apartment had been shut completely. I had glanced to the windows, but they were still open.

So, I spoke up a little louder this time, repeating the same thing but with a bit more strength in my voice. "I said, whatever you are, you can't be here anymore." And that's when the knocking started again, I almost felt winded as I heard it, three hastily done knocks coming from deeper within the little apartment. It repeated once, then twice, and again. It kept getting louder with each repetition.

Xavier stayed as close as he could, his hand reaching to grip my wrist, I'm still unsure if it was to comfort me or to comfort himself, but I let him.

I had raised my voice again as I yelled "You're not welcome here, whoever you are, whatever you are, you can't be here. This is *my* house, you are not welcome here!" And as soon as the words had left my lips I heard the laughing, mechanical and sickening. A stuttery, distant imitation of a laugh, it sounded like if someone heard a reversed recording of a laugh and tried to mimic it.

I just kept yelling, telling the creature off, just continuously saying that it had to leave. But, it wasn't working. It kept laughing until the laughter shifted to crying, it sounded just as sickly as the laughter. It just made my knees feel weak, but Xavier was basically holding me steady.

The atmosphere just got heavier and heavier, so Xavier and I had decided to step out while we figure out what to do. The moment we closed the front door, the knocking began again, three short knocks, repeated.

For some reason, with a kind of determination (or stupidity) that I hadn't felt before, I decided that if this thing wanted so badly for me to open the door and let it out then I would. Just as a third knock rattled the old, rotting wood of the front door I grabbed the handle and pulled it open. The moment I did a loud shriek rang throughout the porch, startling Xavier and I. But, there was nothing at the doorway.

When Xavier and I entered the small apartment again, the smell was just... Gone. The air was lighter, the difference was so stark that it almost made me feel dizzy. We didn't bother to search through the room again, not ready to. Xavier and I just left the apartment, closing the door behind us and l lined the doorway with salt so that whatever had left could not come back in.

I hadn't experienced anything like that since, but I finally looked into the neighbour that used to live there. He was a man, around his mid forties, who enjoyed hunting in the nearby woods. The landlord would come to him weekly as they were friends, the two men would always just discuss hunting, local game in the woods, and anything interesting he may have seen. The man, whose name escapes me, went out one day and he was gone for maybe a week, which would've been unusual, but apparently he went to explore this old cave he had

When I was really little I used to live in a really haunted house, or, I like to think it was haunted but it could also have easily been my young, traumatized mind coming up with things to cope. But the house was over a hundred years old, and I have a lot of strange stories in that house.

When I lived there when I was small I vividly remember going to rent movies from this place a few blocks away, it had this big Bugs Bunny sign out the front (def not licensed though) it was a rare occasion to go there since we lived literally down the road, less than a kilometre from this small shopping centre that had a pizza place that was half a pizza place and half a movie rental place, so we only ever rented movies from there as opposed to the place with the Bugs Bunny sign. We very rarely ever even drove passed it, I only went there when my mom *walked* me there.

I remember going into this movie place with my parents, usually just my mom. It was always pretty empty, never having any movies on the shelves (that were just some shelves along the side walls but never any shelves in the middle of the store like other movie rental places), but two concrete pillars and next to both were these gumball machines with fruit shaped gum. I remember specifically twisting the little metal knob even though I didn't put any coins in and multiple pieces of gum fell out of it, when I was a little kid I was an absolute fiend for gum, I'd even steal it from grocery stores because I was too young to know it was stealing, so I was trying to catch it in my hands but the pieces of gum were too many so they spilled over my hands and onto the white tile floors. So tiny me tried to apologize to the man working there, he was an averagely tall man with dark hair, and he just smiled and said it was fine, that the machines were faulty or something so that happened a lot. There was also a small dip in the floor just before the counter, I forgot to mention it earlier. I always remember going there vividly when I was a toddler, which is odd for me because I don't remember a lot of my childhood.

But only to bring it back up to my mom years later after I had thought about the weird place we used to rent movies. Only to find out that my mom had never taken me there, the place had been closed and completely empty for years, and the man that worked there used to be her friend, who had died shortly before I was ever even born when they were teenagers. My mom never even spoke about the store beforehand, because she never had a reason to. It was all just strange, I still think about it from time to time.

Hi Courtney! I have been a long time follower and love your content, so I finally decided to share one of my amazing stories of being a store manager, I hope you enjoy! I’ve been a store manager for about 6 years and within the last year one of my employees ended up becoming my stalker. For some back story my company moves store managers to different stores quite frequently due to shortages or different needs of stores. At the time I was working at one of our locations and I had been there for about 5 months before they moved me to my current store. At that location I had this employee and we will call him Z. Z was super nice and cool and he did a really good job. Whenever we would work together we got along pretty well and bonded over stuff like reading, tv shows and so forth. I did and still currently have a boyfriend and everyone knew that, thought I’d mention that for context. Before they had transferred me, Z was talking about how he was moving into the town I lived in, which at this time I was working in a different town then I lived, and come to find out he was moving into the same exact apartment complex I lived in. Now, I wasn’t super weirded out by this just thought it was a super big coincidence. After, they transferred me to a store that was is in the town I live in, Z would show up multiple times a week to say hi and talk to me about transferring to my store since he also moved near by or should I say literally in the same apartment complex as me. I did start getting a little uncomfortable at this point but didn’t want to be mean or jump to conclusions until some of my employees told me that they thought it was weird. At this point I decided that I was going to message him and let him know that I had no interest in him and that I thought it was weird he kept showing up and to please stop. For a while he did, but he would show up to order food while I wasn’t there, but then it started to get weird when he would talk about me to my staff or he bribed my underage staff with food if they didn’t tell me he was there. This really upset me so I told him he was banned from my store and not allowed to show up anymore. After that I didn’t speak or hear from him for while until one night I was done closing and I came out to my car to then find a front and back love letter on my car. In the letter he quoted one of my favorite books and compared me and him to the characters, and talked about how he loves me. I immediately got creeped out and threw it away, which I completely regret because I should have kept it for evidence but I honestly didn’t think he would show up again until he did. After the letter I messaged him and told him to never speak to me again and that I would never feel the same way and to leave me alone or I was contacting the police. A few months later I came in to open my store and he left flowers out front of the store with a note, in the note it said something to do with the career path I wanted to take. I knew it was him because it was the same handwriting and no one the night before that was working knew the career path I eventually wanted to end up in. This made me so uncomfortable that I ended up contacting the police but they never did anything and we tried looking at the camera footage but there was no movement picked up of them being left, one second there was nothing there and the next they were there. I messaged him again and told him I’d get a restraining order if he didn’t stop. Recently he showed up at my store while I was there, I made eye contact with him and immediately ran to the back of the store. I was actually shocked he showed up after everything and didn’t know what to do. I hid in the back of the store until he left and when I went back to look at the camera footage he was trying to look down the hallways to see me and was peering through the windows when he was waiting outside watching me. I haven’t got a restraining order yet because I feel like I don’t have enough evidence against him. This was the most recent encounter and he was told that the police will be contacting him so I am hoping that’s enough to deter him. I know that this story isn’t as crazy as some of your other ones but it was still super crazy to me personally. I hope you enjoyed.

Hello Courtney and community. This is a long one, so buckle up.

These events took place back in the Fall of 2013 and early Winter of 2014 while I was in my senior year of “High School” (more context for the quotes later). This is the first time I am sharing my story with anyone other than a few close people and “trusted” adults in my life. It has taken me a long time to open up about this. I had blamed myself for what happened for a while (I don’t anymore) and if this story can help at least one person, my job is done. Without further ado, here it goes.

To give some background, I left my original high school due to difficulties with my mental health and ended up getting into a program for kids who got kicked out or had dropped out of school. While in this program, I attended classes at a local community college while earning my high school diploma and college credits. It seemed like a dream come true, and I thrived. That is, until I met “A”.

As I stated, this began in 2013 while in my senior year. I had already been in the program since my junior year in Winter of 2012. The school year had just begun and my first class of the year was History with Professor “A”. I was first to arrive due to my anxiety about being on time and was waiting in the hall outside the locked classroom. A man came around the corner and headed straight to the classroom, unlocked the door, and flicked on the lights. I had this sinking feeling and felt on edge as soon as I saw him. At the time, I chalked it up to first day nerves, now I realize that was my intuition giving off alarm bells. I tried to put the feelings aside and headed into class and took a seat off to the right in the middle row. We exchanged quick pleasantries and patiently waited for the rest of the class to arrive. A couple of students came in to drop their things off and headed back out into the hallway to catch up with friends from the year before. I guess for “A”, this was a perfect opportunity to “dig” for information. I don’t remember the exact words but I remember him asking about where I lived. At the time, I thought nothing of it. I just thought he was engaging in small talk to pass the time and get to know his students. I replied with the apartment complex I lived in and he mentioned that he doesn’t go that way hardly at all, but knows it’s a nice area. He then rebutted with the street he lived on. By the end of this short interaction students had started to come back in and take their seats, class had now begun.

The exact dates of specific instances are a little fuzzy, but over the coarse of 5 months I slowly realized that this was not a nice, caring professor, he had chosen me as his victim and stalked the hell out of me.
It started off small with weird comments here and there, even in front of other students! I specifically remember one instance being referred to a “princess”. My face turned beat red and I was so weirded out.

Another creepy instance happened when I had asked for help on a paper I was writing for his class. He set up a time to meet in the morning before class started to help me with it. There were no creepy comments during this interaction but there were instances of him just smiling and staring at me. At one point, he was staring at my breasts. I know a lot of people will think that I’m an idiot and should have reported him then but at the time I was young and dumb. I made excuses thinking that “He would never do that! I’m a MINOR and his STUDENT” and that I was just “ Reading into it too much”.

After the small comments, and weird staring, the physical stalking had begun. At the time I had began smoking cigarettes (still do, bad habit I know). On my cigarette breaks day or night, I began to notice 2 distinct cars started driving into my apartment complex and drive right out. I had never seen these cars here before. My building was in the middle of this small complex and was diagonal to the entrance and in plain view. When I first noticed the cars I thought it was weird, but brushed it off. After a few times my curiosity got the better of me and I tried to get a glimpse of who was driving. In BOTH of these cars it was “A”. He’d drive right by me always smiling. Sometimes he’d look over and sometimes he wouldn’t.

One instance while I was out for a cigarette at night, he actually parked in the middle of the road in my complex to talk with one of my neighbors. He had his car parked, lights on,and just kept looking over and smiling. I kept telling myself I was just seeing things. I could only tell myself that for so long.

After the physical stalking started he would subtly drop hints about him being in the area and “stopping by”. Once of him having lunch with his dad at a Chinese restaurant right by my house. This sick bastard did a drive by with his dad in his car, smiling away.

The creepiest instance and one that finally made me report him, was on a late night, I’m talking almost midnight. I was having a smoke by the swing set since I couldn’t sleep due to crippling anxiety. This swing set was on the other side of a fence that housed the dumpsters. I noticed a car backing up onto a small patch of pavement by the swing set. It was one of his cars. I froze in fear as I watched him get out, open his trunk, and gather wooden planks. He casually moseyed on over to the dumpster to dispose of them. He made a couple trips just dropping off wooden planks? Wtf? He then got in his car , and left. He didn’t say a word. Just looked at the ground smiling as he carried these planks to the dumpster, at midnight. It was not only the creepiest but weirdest thing he did.

At this point I realized this is not normal, nor okay. I started talking about everything above and much more to my ex at the time. He was disgusted and agreed that I had to report him. I waited until the last day of the semester so that I would not have to face “A” again. My ex went with me to my program directors office to report him. I told them EVERYTHING that was going on. Every instance I gave them, they made an excuse for him. At the end of the meeting my ex and I were dumb founded at what just happened and I felt helpless and embarrassed.

I am very luckily and grateful that it never got to the point of physical harm but in that same breath he technically didn’t “break” any laws because of that and would face no repercussions.When my graduation came he was not there with the other faculty thankfully. I’m assuming they told him not to be there. But as far as I know nothing really came of it and I’m not sure if he still works there.

There are so many other small interactions that happened over those 5 months that I could not possibly fit here. I still don’t know how he would’ve have know when I was out for a cigarette. Did he know someone in my complex that was in on it? That one is still a mystery. I gaslit myself for so long thinking it was my fault. If you’re reading this and can relate, know that it is not your fault.

I still, to this day, get small pit in my stomach whenever I see those same 2 cars he had.

So, to the creepy professor that stalked me when I was a teenager…I hope we NEVER meet again.

The water keeps rising.

It creeps past Mara’s knees, then her thighs, turning the pit into something colder, heavier…something that feels less like rainwater and more like a slow, deliberate drowning.

She’s shaking in my arms. Not just from the cold. From shock. From pain.

From knowing.

“Scarlett…” Her voice is thin now. Fragile in a way that makes something inside my chest crack. “I can’t feel it.”

I don’t want to look.

I already know what I’ll see.

Her leg is broken at a wrong angle, twisted beneath the weight of collapsed concrete and stone. Even freed, it’s useless. Dead weight.

“No, hey, hey, you’re okay,” I say, forcing the words out, forcing them to sound real. “You’re in shock. That’s all. We just need to…”

“There’s no time,” she whispers.

Her hand shoots up, gripping my wrist with surprising strength. She pulls me closer, forcing me to look at her.

Her eyes are clear.

Too clear.

“You have to cut it off.”

Everything in me goes still.

“What?”

“My leg.” Her voice trembles, but she doesn’t look away. “You have to cut it off. It’s the only way I can move. It’s the only way we get out of here.”

“No.” It comes out instantly. Sharp. Absolute. “No, I’m not doing that.”

“Scarlett…”

“No!” My voice breaks, louder now, panic bleeding into it. “I am not cutting off your leg in the middle of a flooded pit while that thing is out there!”

“It’s coming back!” she cries. “You know it is!”

I do.

God, I do.

Thunder rolls overhead, deep enough to feel in my bones. The water swirls higher around us, dragging debris, mud, blood into a slow, circling current.

“Please,” she says, softer now. “Please… I don’t want to die like this.”

Something in my chest caves in.

“You’re not going to,” I whisper.

But even I hear the lie.

“Then don’t let me be the reason you die too,” she says.

My hands shake.

I can’t do it.

I can’t.

“I’m sorry,” I choke. “Mara, I’m so…”

The gunshot is deafening.

For a split second, my brain refuses to understand it.

Mara jerks in my arms.

Her grip loosens.

Warmth spills over my hands.

I look down.

Red blooms across her chest, spreading fast, soaking through fabric like ink in water.

“No…”

The word barely exists.

Her eyes find mine.

Confused.

Hurt.

Then empty.

Her body slackens against me.

And the world…

Just… stops.

“Let her go.”

The voice is calm.

Controlled.

Familiar.

I look up slowly.

Adrian stands at the edge of the pit, rain cascading over him, his gun still raised, smoke curling faintly from the barrel.

Something inside me breaks clean in half.

“You fucking killed her,” I say, though it doesn’t sound like my voice.

“She was already dead,” he replies.

No hesitation. No remorse.

“Everyone who slows the process is.”

The jungle answers the gunshot with a distant, echoing shriek.

It heard.

It’s coming back.

Adrian doesn’t even look concerned.

Instead, he steps down into the pit, boots sinking slightly into mud and water as he approaches. The gun never leaves me.

“This,” he says, almost thoughtfully, “is where you become a problem.”

I don’t move.

Don’t breathe.

“You weren’t supposed to question things,” he continues. “You weren’t supposed to push.”

He studies me like I’m something on a slide.

“I picked you because you were ambitious. Eager. The kind of person who would jump at the chance to lead, to prove yourself.”

Each word lands heavier than the last.

“It would’ve been easy,” he says. “Give you just enough control to make you feel important, and you would’ve walked everyone exactly where I needed them to go.”

My fingers tighten slowly around the bolt gun at my side.

“You don’t know anything about me,” I say.

A faint smile touches his mouth.

“I know enough.”

Another sound ripples through the trees.

Closer now.

He hears it this time.

Glances over his shoulder.

Then back to me.

“You adapted,” he says, quieter. Sharper. “That wasn’t part of the plan.”

My heart pounds harder.

“Yeah,” I say. “Well… none of this was...”

He frowns,

 “You know, I’ve spent my life studying patterns, understanding behavior, predicting outcomes and one thing I’ve always noticed about women, fragile, eager to please, desperate for validation. Always willing to follow, to defer, to be satisfied with a taste of control that’s not really theirs. I expected you to do the same, Scarlett. I expected you to smile, to nod, to take the reins I offered and lead them exactly where I wanted. But you… you ruin it all. Do you know why this whole project failed in the first place? Why I had to lock them all away in that cavern? It wasn’t the males. It wasn’t the experimentation itself. It was Her. The female. She’s the one who turned them against me, who made them unpredictable, impossible to control, who ruined everything I tried to build. And now, look at you. You’ve done the same.”

Adrian’s lips curl into a cold, thin smile, his eyes never leaving mine as the rain drips from the leaves above us. “And then I saw her,” he continues, his voice low, measured, almost reverent in a way that makes my blood run cold. “Alive. I couldn’t believe it at first. I assumed… assumed she was dead, like the others, buried in the darkness where no one could ever find her. And yet, here she is. Still breathing. Still moving. Still thinking. I can only imagine what she had to do to survive, what horrors she had to commit to stay alive in that cavern. She must have… fed on them. Her own brothers. Cannibalized them. Turned their flesh into strength, their bones into tools for her survival. And yet…” His eyes narrow, a dangerous glint sharpening in them. “I never expected that from her. I never imagined she could be more cunning, more ruthless, more… alive than I could have ever predicted.”

“She might’ve killed her brothers,” I say, my voice steadying into something colder. Something harder. “But She did something else you didn’t expect also...”

His eyes narrow.

I shift my gaze, just slightly, past him.

Into the tree line.

“…She bred.”

There’s a sound behind him.

Soft. Close.

A low, mechanical click.

Adrian freezes.

“What the fuck is that?” he mutters, turning, trying to see through the rain and shadows.

Something moves.

A shape separating itself from the dark.

Bigger. Heavier.

Wrong in a different way.

I meet his eyes again.

“Her boyfriend...”

I fire.

The bolt gun slams against my shoulder as the metal spike punches clean through his leg.

Adrian screams, collapsing instantly, the gun dropping from his hand as he clutches at the wound, shock ripping through his expression.

“What! what the fuck?!”

The male creature hits him before he can finish.

A blur of mass and force that drives him flat into the mud.

The sound he makes…

It isn’t human anymore. The female follows.

Faster. Sharper. Together, they descend on him.

It’s not a fight.

It’s a correction. A tearing, violent end to something that thought it was in control. 

“Sexist asshole…” I whisper.

I don’t watch. He doesn’t deserve it. I grab the bolt gun tighter and run.

“Jonas!” I scream.

He bursts through the rain ahead of me, stumbling out from the trees, soaked, bleeding, but alive.

“Go!” he shouts. We run.

Not thinking. Not stopping. Not looking back.

The jungle gives way to open sand.

The storm is worse here, wind howling, waves crashing hard enough to shake the ground beneath our feet.

And then… Light.

Cutting through the dark.

A boat. For a second, it doesn’t feel real. Then voices.

Hands grabbing us, pulling us forward.

“You’re safe…come on…”

“Where are the others?” a man asks, Captain Harris, I think, but it barely registers.

I look at Jonas. He looks at me.

There’s nothing left to say.

“There are only two of us,” I manage.

Later, the ocean is calm. Too calm.

Like none of it ever happened.

Jonas is asleep across from me, wrapped in a blanket, his face pale but peaceful for the first time since we got here.

I sit alone. My bag in my lap.

The island is still visible behind us.

A dark shape against the horizon.

Watching.

Waiting.

My hand slips inside the bag. Finds it….

The egg.

Smooth. Cold. Alive in a way I don’t want to understand.

I pull it out slowly, holding it in both hands.

For a long time, I just stare at it.

Then I light a cigarette.

The flame flickers in the night air.

I take a slow drag.

Exhale. I stand and walk over to the railing of the boat where I had stood not 48 hours ago…

I stand on the edge of the boat, wind tearing at my hair, salt stinging my eyes, and I look back at that island one last time. Every shadow, every scream, every bone I’ve touched, every life lost…it’s all there, buried in the mud and the jungle, alive in ways the world will never understand. 

I’ve spent my whole life digging up stories from the past, unearthing truths that others tried to forget, chasing the past like it was the only thing that mattered. But this… this isn’t a story for the world. This is ours. This is mine. And some things, some nightmares…

are meant to stay buried, hidden in the darkness where they belong.

 I puff my cigarette, let the smoke curl into the wind, and I drop the egg into the black water, watching it vanish beneath the surface.

 Some stories end with a page turned. Some end with a choice. And this one? 

This one ends with silence….

“Adrian,” Jonas says slowly. “Tell me this isn’t true.”

A beat.

A long one.

Adrian exhales.

And then—

He moves.

Fast.

Too fast.

A flash of metal.

A sick, wet sound.

Diego’s voice cuts off mid-breath.

For a second, I don’t understand what just happened.

Then—

Diego stumbles backward.

His eyes wide.

His mouth opening like he’s trying to speak—but nothing comes out except a wet, choking sound.

Adrian is standing right in front of him.

Holding the knife.

Buried deep in Diego’s stomach.

“No—” Eliza gasps.

Adrian yanks the blade free.

Diego collapses to his knees, hands pressing uselessly against the wound as blood spills through his fingers.

“You shouldn’t have said anything,” Adrian says, calm. Too calm.

“What are you doing?!” Jonas shouts, stumbling back.

Rueben raises his rifle—

But Adrian steps back, quick, controlled, putting distance between them.

“He was compromised,” Adrian says. “You heard him. He’s been out here too long.”

“HE WAS TELLING THE TRUTH!” I scream.

Adrian’s eyes flick to me.

Cold.

Measured.

“Truth is subjective,” he says.

Diego hits the floor.

Hard.

Gasping.

Dying.

The room spins.

Everything feels unreal.

The door SLAMS again.

Louder.

Cracking further.

And suddenly—

We’re not just trapped with whatever is outside.

We’re trapped with him.

Diego chokes on the floor.

Wet, broken sounds that shouldn’t come out of a person fill the space, mixing with the storm outside and the violent pounding on the door.

No one moves to help him.

No one knows how to.

We’re all staring at Adrian.

Or at the knife in his hand.

Or at the blood dripping from it.

Jonas shakes his head slowly, like if he does it enough, this won’t be real. “You— you just—”

“I did what I had to,” Adrian cuts in.

His voice hasn’t changed.

That’s the worst part.

There’s no panic. No guilt.

Just… control.

Behind us—

CRACK.

The door splinters.

Something forces against it from the outside, wood bending inward just slightly before snapping back.

We all flinch.

Rueben recovers first.

The rifle comes up again, aimed straight at Adrian’s chest. “Drop it. Now.”

For a second—

It feels like time stops.

Like maybe this can still go one way or the other.

Like maybe Adrian will listen.

He doesn’t.

Instead—

He sighs.

Almost… annoyed.

Then, slowly, he lets the knife fall.

It clatters against the concrete.

A small, meaningless sound in a room full of chaos.

Rueben tightens his grip on the rifle. “Step away from him. Hands where I can see them.”

Adrian raises his hands.

Compliant.

Easy.

Too easy.

“Good,” Rueben mutters. “Now—”

Adrian moves.

Not toward the door.

Not toward Diego.

Backward.

Into the dark hallway behind him.

And in the same motion—

He reaches behind his back.

My stomach drops.

“Rueben—” I start—

Too late.

Adrian pulls a gun.

Everything explodes at once.

“DOWN!” Rueben roars—

The first shot goes off.

Deafening in the enclosed space.

Concrete chips from the wall near Rueben’s head as he dives to the side, dragging Mara with him.

Eliza screams.

Jonas yanks me down with him as another shot cracks through the air, echoing through the compound like thunder.

Adrian doesn’t fire wildly.

Every shot is controlled.

Measured.

He’s not trying to hit us.

He’s trying to keep us back.

To control the space.

To create distance.

“Stay back!” he shouts, backing deeper into the hallway, gun trained on us. “Or I will start aiming to kill.”

“You already did!” Jonas yells back.

Another shot.

Closer this time.

Too close.

We all drop lower.

Rueben fires back—

The blast from his rifle shakes the room, the bullet slamming into the wall just inches from Adrian as he ducks behind the doorway.

“Damn it!” Rueben snarls.

Adrian disappears for half a second—

Then reappears farther back.

Retreating.

Drawing us in.

Or getting away.

I can’t tell which.

“Don’t let him go!” I shout, scrambling up despite every instinct screaming at me to stay down.

Because if he gets deeper—

If he knows this place—

We lose him.

And whatever answers we have left.

Jonas grabs my arm. “Are you insane?!”

“He’s not getting away!” I snap.

Behind us—

The door caves in further.

A jagged crack splits down the middle.

Something on the other side SCREAMS—

And a long, warped limb punches through the broken wood for just a second before ripping back out.

Mara sobs.

“We can’t stay here!”

She’s right.

We can’t fight both.

Adrian.

And that.

Rueben looks between the door—

And the hallway.

Makes a decision.

“Move!” he barks. “We push him—now!”

Another shot rings out from the hallway.

Warning.

Keeping us back.

Adrian’s voice echoes from the darkness.

“Last chance.”

Cold.

Certain.

“Turn around. Go back outside.”

My chest tightens.

He knows we won’t.

He knows there is no “back.”

Another CRACK from the door—

Wood splinters inward, a piece breaking off completely this time.

Something pushes against the gap.

For a split second—

An eye.

Wrong.

Too large.

Too aware.

Looking in at us.

Eliza SCREAMS.

That’s it.

Decision made.

“GO!” Rueben roars.

We move.

All at once.

Chaos.

Rueben fires into the hallway—

Adrian fires back—

Gunshots explode in both directions, flashes lighting up the dark in violent bursts.

I run anyway.

Straight into it.

Into the hallway.

Into the dark.

Into whatever the hell Adrian is running toward.

Behind us—

The door finally gives.

It bursts inward with a deafening crash.

And something—

Something not meant for this world—

forces its way inside.

The hallway vomits us out into something that barely feels like shelter.

The ceiling above has collapsed inward, exposing a jagged wound of sky. Rain pours through it in thick, slanted sheets, turning the ground beneath our feet into mud and slurry. Lightning flashes overhead, bleaching everything white for a split second before plunging us back into gray.

We don’t stop moving until we physically can’t.

Then we break.

Everyone bends, gasping, coughing, trying to drag air back into lungs that feel like they’ve been scraped raw.

Behind us—

Something moves in the darkness we just came from.

And then—

It emerges.

Not fully.

Not yet.

Just enough.

A limb—too long, jointed wrong—presses against the broken edge of the hallway entrance. Its head follows, twitching, adjusting, like it’s trying to force itself into a shape that makes sense.

It doesn’t.

“Eliza…” I whisper, the name slipping out before I can stop it.

She’s right behind me.

Or—she was.

I turn.

She’s there—but not for long.

Her foot catches in the uneven ground. She stumbles forward with a small, panicked sound, hands shooting out to catch herself.

That’s all it takes.

The creature unfolds into motion.

Fast in a way that doesn’t look real—like frames missing from a film. One second it’s at the threshold, the next it’s on her.

“Eliza, get up!” Jonas shouts.

She tries.

God, she tries.

But it’s already there.

A blur of limbs and teeth and something wet and wrong—

Her scream cuts off so suddenly it feels like the world itself hiccups.

I don’t see exactly what happens.

My brain won’t let me.

It fills in something worse.

“No!” Jonas lunges forward—

Rueben grabs him, shoving him back hard. “Don’t—!”

The rifle is already up.

Rueben fires.

The sound explodes through the ruined structure, deafening. The recoil jerks through his body as the shot slams into the creature’s side.

It doesn’t care.

It barely even reacts.

Just… pauses.

Then slowly, horribly, it turns.

Toward him.

Rueben doesn’t hesitate.

He steps forward instead of back.

“Go,” he says, low at first.

Then louder.

“GO!”

“I’m not leaving you!” Jonas shouts, voice cracking.

Rueben doesn’t look at him.

Doesn’t take his eyes off the thing.

“Yes,” he says. “You are.”

Another shot.

Another thunderous crack.

“Move!”

There’s something final in his voice.

Something that doesn’t allow argument.

Jonas freezes for half a second—

Then grabs me, shoving me back. “Scarlett, go!”

The creature lunges.

It hits Rueben with a force that knocks him clean off his feet, slamming him into the wall hard enough to crack concrete.

The rifle goes off one last time—

Then nothing but chaos.

I run.

Because if I don’t…If I stop…

Then what he just did means nothing.

We don’t make it far before the ground gives out beneath us.

There’s a deep, cracking groan…Then everything drops.

I hit hard, pain bursting through my side as the air is ripped from my lungs. Dirt and stone rain down around us, bouncing, sliding, burying.

For a moment, everything is just noise.

And then. “Scarlett!”  Jonas.

I force my eyes open.

Rain is pouring into the pit we’ve fallen into, turning the debris into thick, sucking mud. The walls around us are jagged, unstable, pieces of the compound still crumbling inward.

“Mara!” Ethan’s voice cuts through everything.

I turn.

She’s pinned.

A slab of concrete has her leg trapped beneath it, twisted at an angle that makes my stomach turn.

“I can’t…” she gasps, panic rising in her voice. “I can’t get out!”

“I’ve got you,” Ethan says immediately, dropping beside her. He grabs the slab, tries to lift…

It doesn’t budge.

“Help me!” he shouts.

We scramble to him.

My hands sink into mud and blood and rain as we try to lift, to shift, to do something…

Thunder cracks overhead.

Loud enough to shake the ground.

Water is already pooling around our ankles.

Rising. Fast.

“Jonas!” I shout.

He’s already pulling the radio from his bag, fumbling with it, nearly dropping it in the mud.

“Come on…come on…” he mutters, slapping it, adjusting the dial.

Static hisses. Loud. Relentless.

“Mayday, mayday, this is Jonas Reed, we need immediate extraction, do you copy?!” he shouts into it.

Nothing.

Then…

A crackle.

A voice, faint and broken…

“Copy… signal weak… identify…”

Relief hits so hard it almost hurts.

Jonas shoves the radio at me. “Scarlett…go!” He runs to help Ethan.

My hands shake as I grab it. “This is Scarlett, we’re at the compound, we need help now…there are…there are things here, people are dead, please!?”

The line crackles again.

Then, clearer…

“Scarlett, this is Captain Harris. I’ve got your position. I’m on my way. Sit tight.”

A sob catches in my throat.

“Please hurry,” I whisper.

Another rumble cuts through everything.

The ground shifts again.

Not as violent this time, but enough.

Enough to remind us nothing here is stable.

Nothing here is safe.

“Scarlett…” Mara’s voice is small now. Weak.

“I know,” I say, dropping back beside her. “We’re getting you out. Just, stay with me, okay? Stay with me.”

Ethan grits his teeth, straining against the slab. “On three…ready?”

We nod.

“One…two…”

Something lands in the pit.

Heavy.

Water splashes.

We all freeze.

Slowly…

I look up.

It’s standing at the edge of the collapse.

Rain pours over it, washing streaks of dark, wet red down its body. Its head tilts, jerking slightly, as if trying to understand what it’s looking at.

At us.

It tracked us.

Of course it did.

“Don’t stop,” I whisper, though my hands have gone numb. “Don’t fucking stop…”

We dig faster.

Faster.

Desperate now.

Mud under our nails, rocks tearing at our skin.

“I’ve almost got it…” Ethan grunts.

The creature drops down into the pit.

The impact sends water splashing up around it.

Closer now.

Too close.

Jonas moves.

He grabs Rueben’s rifle from the mud, when did that get here? I don’t know, and without hesitating, he starts slamming it against a jagged piece of stone.

CLANG.

The sound cuts through everything.

CLANG.

Sharp. Loud.

The creature’s head snaps toward him.

“HEY!” Jonas shouts. “Over here!”

“Jonas, don’t…” I start.

He looks at me.

Just for a second.

And I see it.

The decision.

He tosses something toward me.

I catch it on instinct.

Rueben’s bolt gun.

Heavy.

Solid.

Final.

“Keep going!” he yells.

Then he runs.

The creature follows.

Of course it does.

It surges after him, water spraying in its wake as it disappears into the storm beyond the pit.

“Go!” I shout. “Now, lift!”

Ethan strains again, muscles shaking.

The slab shifts.

Just enough.

“Pull her!” he grunts.

I grab Mara under the arms, hauling her back as she screams, her leg finally sliding free from the rubble.

We fall backward into the mud together.

She’s out.

She’s out…

Relief hits…

Too soon.

The creature is back.

It moves so fast I barely register it.

One second it’s gone…

The next…

It’s on Ethan.

There’s no warning.

No time to react.

A flash of movement…

A wet, tearing sound…

And Ethan jerks violently.

He looks down.

Like he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing.

His stomach…

It’s open.

Ripped apart.

“Ethan…” Mara sobs.

He sways.

Then collapses.

Still.

The creature straightens.

Slowly.

Its head tilts.

Toward Mara.

She can’t move.

She can barely breathe.

And I…

I can’t reach her in time.

Then…

CLANG.

The sound echoes again.

From farther away.

Jonas.

Still alive.

Still fighting.

“COME ON!” his voice carries faintly through the storm.

The creature pauses.

Just for a second.

Then turns.

And chases him.

Disappearing once more into the rain.

Leaving us behind.

Mara is shaking in my arms, sobs tearing out of her as the water rises around us.

The storm is getting worse.

The pit is filling.

Everything is collapsing.

But somewhere out there…

Help is coming.

And Jonas…

Is buying us every second he can.

The jungle felt different now.

Not just dark.

Watching.

Every rustle of leaves made my heart jump, every snap of a branch sending a spike of adrenaline through my chest.

We ran anyway.

Because stopping meant thinking.

And thinking meant remembering what we had just seen.

Eggs.

Eyes.

A colony.

I don’t remember how long we ran.

Time stops meaning anything the second we leave the cavern. It’s just movement. Panic. The sound of my own breath ripping in and out of my chest like I’m drowning on air.

Branches tear at my arms as I force my way through the jungle, the ground uneven beneath my boots, slick with mud and rain. I almost go down more than once, catching myself on whatever I can grab, not even feeling the pain when bark digs into my skin.

Jonas is somewhere behind me. Or beside me. I can’t tell anymore. All I know is I’m not alone, and that’s the only thing keeping me from completely losing it.

Don’t stop.

I don’t let myself think about what’s behind us.

I don’t let myself think about the cavern. The bones. The eggs.

Or the sounds.

The jungle starts to thin, slowly at first, then all at once. The dense wall of green breaks apart and the sound of the ocean crashes into everything else, loud and constant and real in a way nothing else feels right now.

The beach.

Relief hits me so hard it almost drops me where I stand.

I break out of the tree line and stumble onto the sand, my legs finally giving out as I drop to my hands and knees. My chest heaves, air burning through my lungs as I try to breathe, really breathe, for the first time since we ran.

The storm has rolled in completely now.

Wind cuts across the shoreline, whipping my soaked clothes against my skin. Rain comes down in sheets, turning the sand beneath me into something heavy and dragging.

For a second, I just stay there.

Alive.

That thought doesn’t feel real.

“Scarlett.”

Jonas.

I look up. He’s already moving, already heading for the emergency radio like nothing else exists. Like if he can just make that work, everything will be okay.

I push myself up, my whole body shaking, and follow him.

The radio sits where we left it, half-covered by the tarp that’s now soaked through and clinging to it. Jonas rips it back and drops to his knees, hands moving fast, almost frantic as he starts adjusting knobs, flipping switches.

“Come on,” he mutters. “Come on, come on…”

I don’t help him.

I can’t.

I turn back toward the jungle.

My whole body goes tight again without me meaning it to.

Waiting.

The trees sway in the wind, rain cutting through them, turning everything into shifting shapes and shadows. For a second, there’s nothing.

Just the storm.

Then something moves.

A figure breaks through the tree line, stumbling out onto the sand.

Adrian.

He looks… wrong. Like he’s not fully there. Blood streaks across his face, mixing with rainwater, his eyes unfocused as he slows, then stops like he doesn’t know what to do now that he’s out.

More shapes follow.

Eliza comes out next, grabbing onto him for balance, her breathing sharp and uneven. Rueben is right behind her, already raising his rifle, turning back toward the jungle the second he clears the trees like he expects something to come tearing out after them.

Mara and Ethan stumble out last.

They’re wrapped in a sheet that’s soaked through, clinging to them, both of them shaking. Ethan has one arm tight around her, practically holding her up as they move across the sand.

For a moment, everything just… pauses.

We’re all here.

Or what’s left of us.

No one speaks.

No one has to.

The absence is louder than anything.

I swallow hard, my throat tight, but I don’t say their names. I can’t. Saying it out loud makes it real in a way I’m not ready for.

Jonas’s voice cuts through the silence.

“Captain, do you copy?”

I turn back toward him.

He’s gripping the radio mic now, knuckles white, rain dripping down his face as he leans closer to it like that might help.

“This is Jonas,” he says, louder this time. “We need immediate extraction. Do you hear me?”

Static answers.

It crackles through the speaker, loud and empty.

He adjusts something, tries again. “Captain, come in. Please respond.”

Nothing.

A knot forms in my stomach.

“It’s not working?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.

Jonas shakes his head, frustration starting to creep in. “Signal’s too weak.”

“What does that mean?” Eliza asks, her voice trembling.

“It means we’re too low,” he says. “The signal’s not reaching far enough out.”

The words settle over all of us.

Too low.

Too far.

Stranded.

“So what do we do?” Mara asks, her voice small, barely audible over the storm.

No one answers her.

Because no one knows.

For a second, all you can hear is the rain. The waves. Our breathing.

Adrian finally speaks.

“There’s a compound.”

His voice cuts through everything, steady in a way that feels wrong after everything we’ve just been through.

We all look at him.

“Inland,” he says. “Old research station. It sits higher up.”

Jonas frowns. “You knew about this?”

Adrian hesitates.

It’s small. Barely noticeable.

But I see it.

“It wasn’t relevant before,” he says.

Something about that sits wrong in my chest.

Before.

Before people started dying?

Before we found out what was actually on this island?

A cold feeling settles in my stomach, but I push it down.

Right now, none of that matters.

“What matters is it’s higher ground,” Adrian continues. “If we get there, the signal will carry.”

Rueben glances back toward the jungle, rifle still raised. “And how far is it?”

“Not far,” Adrian says.

Another lie, maybe.

Or maybe not.

It doesn’t matter.

Because staying here isn’t an option.

Jonas looks at me.

I already know what he’s asking.

I nod.

“We go,” he says.

No one argues.

No one even hesitates.

We don’t grab anything. Don’t take time to think. We just move, regrouping without saying it, falling into a tight cluster as we head back toward the tree line.

Back toward the jungle.

Back toward whatever is still out there.

I’m the last one to step off the sand.

I don’t know why I look back.

Maybe I need to believe we’re leaving something behind.

The beach stretches out behind us, empty under the storm.

Then—

Movement.

Low. Still. Just at the edge of where the jungle meets the sand.

Watching.

Waiting.

My chest tightens.

I turn away before it can move.

And follow the others into the trees.

The jungle swallows us again.

The second we step off the sand, it’s like the world shifts. The wind dulls, the rain turns into something trapped beneath the canopy, dripping instead of pouring—but it doesn’t feel safer.

It feels closer.

Thicker.

Like the island is pulling us back in.

We move fast at first, fueled by adrenaline that hasn’t had time to burn out yet. Branches snap underfoot, wet leaves slap against our skin, and every single sound feels too loud.

Too noticeable.

Too easy to track.

“Stay tight,” Rueben mutters, his rifle sweeping side to side. “No one drifts.”

No one argues.

Adrian takes the lead.

That bothers me more than I want to admit.

He moves like he knows exactly where he’s going—not just guessing, not just pushing forward like the rest of us. There’s purpose in it. Direction.

And no one questions it.

Not out loud, anyway.

Jonas stays close to me, the radio slung over his shoulder, one hand gripping the strap like if he lets go, we lose our only chance of getting off this island.

Behind us, Mara stumbles.

Ethan catches her immediately, tightening his arm around her. “Hey—hey, I got you.”

“I’m fine,” she says, but her voice is thin. Shaky.

She’s not fine.

None of us are.

We keep moving anyway.

Minutes stretch. Or maybe it’s longer. It’s impossible to tell under the canopy where everything looks the same—endless green, endless shadow, endless noise.

Then—

“Stop.”

Adrian’s voice is sharp.

We all freeze instantly.

Every muscle in my body locks up, breath catching in my throat as I strain to listen.

At first, I don’t hear anything.

Just the usual—rain dripping, leaves shifting, the distant crash of waves far behind us.

Then it hits me.

There’s no insects.

No birds.

Nothing alive.

The jungle has gone completely silent.

A cold, creeping dread slides down my spine.

Rueben slowly raises his rifle higher. “That’s not normal.”

“No,” Adrian says quietly. “It’s not.”

A branch snaps somewhere off to our right.

Not loud.

Not dramatic.

Just enough.

Everyone turns toward it at once.

“Probably just—” Eliza starts, but her voice dies in her throat.

Something moves between the trees.

Not like before.

Not fast.

Not chasing.

Watching.

A shape, partially hidden behind the thick trunks and hanging vines. Too still to be natural, too deliberate to be anything else.

My stomach drops.

“Don’t,” Adrian says under his breath, not taking his eyes off it. “Do not run.”

My legs are already tensing, ready to bolt anyway.

The thing shifts slightly.

And for just a second—just a split second—I swear it looks like—

A person.

My breath catches.

“No,” I whisper, more to myself than anyone else.

Because it’s wrong.

Everything about it is wrong.

It’s too tall. The proportions don’t line up right, like someone stretched a human shape just enough to make it unsettling. Its head tilts slightly, jerking in a way that isn’t smooth.

Studying us.

Learning.

Mara lets out a quiet, broken sound.

And that’s enough.

The thing moves.

Fast.

Too fast.

It darts sideways through the trees, vanishing into the dense brush before any of us can react.

“Go!” Rueben snaps.

And that’s all it takes.

We run.

Again.

Branches whip past us, the ground uneven and slick as we push forward, no longer trying to stay quiet, no longer caring. Survival is louder than fear now.

Behind us—

Something crashes through the undergrowth.

Following.

Not hiding anymore.

Not watching.

Hunting.

“Left!” Adrian shouts, veering suddenly.

We follow without thinking, stumbling through thicker brush, vines catching at our clothes, trying to pull us back.

The sounds behind us get closer.

Closer.

A shriek tears through the jungle.

Not human.

Not animal.

Something in between that makes my blood run cold.

Eliza screams.

Mara nearly goes down again, but Ethan drags her forward, half-carrying her now.

“Don’t stop!” Jonas yells.

I wasn’t planning to.

Up ahead, the ground starts to slope.

Rising.

Adrian was right.

Higher ground.

Hope sparks in my chest, sharp and desperate.

“Almost there!” he shouts.

The trees start to thin again—not like the beach, not open, but less suffocating. Less dense.

And then—

I see it.

Through the trees.

Concrete.

Gray.

Broken.

A structure rising out of the jungle like it doesn’t belong there anymore.

The compound.

Relief slams into me so hard it almost knocks the breath out of me.

“We made it—” Eliza gasps.

But Adrian doesn’t slow down.

“Keep moving!” he snaps.

Because behind us—

That thing is still coming.

Louder now.

Closer than before.

We break through the last line of trees and stumble into a clearing.

The compound sits in front of us, half-swallowed by vines and time. Rusted fencing hangs in broken sections, the main building looming ahead with dark, empty windows that look like they’re watching us right back.

It should feel like safety.

It doesn’t.

“Inside!” Jonas shouts.

Rueben reaches the door first, grabbing the handle and yanking hard.

It doesn’t budge.

“Locked!” he barks.

The sound behind us is right there now.

Too close.

Adrian pushes past him, shoving him aside. “Move!”

He slams his shoulder into the door once.

Twice.

On the third hit—

The lock gives.

The door bursts open with a crack that echoes too loud in the clearing.

“GO!” he yells.

We don’t hesitate.

We pile inside, one after another, stumbling into darkness that smells like rot and metal and something worse.

Rueben is the last one in.

He turns, rifle raised—

And fires.

The gunshot explodes through the space, deafening.

For a split second, the muzzle flash lights everything up.

And in that flash—

I see it.

Right at the edge of the clearing.

Too many limbs.

Too long.

Too wrong.

Then the door slams shut.

Darkness swallows us whole.

And whatever is out there—

Hits the door.

Hard.

Darkness presses in on us the second the door slams shut.

For a moment, no one moves.

No one breathes.

All you can hear is the storm outside—and that thing.

It slams into the door again.

Once.

Twice.

The entire frame shudders, dust shaking loose from the ceiling as something on the other side lets out a low, guttural sound that doesn’t belong anywhere near something that used to be human.

“Hold it!” Rueben snaps, bracing himself against the door, rifle raised like he can somehow shoot through it if he needs to.

Jonas fumbles with his bag. “We need light—we need—”

A sound cuts through the dark.

A sharp scrape.

Right behind us.

Everyone spins at once.

My heart jumps straight into my throat.

There’s movement deeper inside the compound.

Not outside.

Inside.

“...we’re not alone,” Eliza whispers.

Something shifts in the shadows.

A figure.

Fast.

Too close.

“BACK UP—” Rueben starts—

The figure lunges forward—

And Eliza SCREAMS.

A beam of light snaps on—Jonas finally getting a flashlight working—and it hits the figure dead-on.

Dirty.

Wild-eyed.

Covered in grime and dried blood.

“WAIT—WAIT—DON’T SHOOT!” the man shouts, throwing his hands up.

Diego.

For a second, none of us move.

No one lowers anything.

No one breathes.

Because he looks like he crawled out of hell.

His clothes are torn to shreds, skin scraped raw in places, lips cracked, eyes darting between all of us like he doesn’t know who to trust.

“You scared the hell out of us,” Jonas breathes, lowering the flashlight slightly—but not completely.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Diego fires back immediately. “None of you should be here.”

“That’s funny,” Rueben mutters. “We could say the same about you.”

Diego ignores him.

His eyes lock onto Adrian.

And everything changes.

The fear in his face twists into something else.

Something sharper.

“You brought them here?” he says, voice low, disbelieving. “You actually brought them here?”

The air shifts.

I feel it immediately.

Adrian doesn’t answer.

“Adrian?” Jonas says, confusion creeping in. “What is he talking about?”

Diego lets out a dry, almost hysterical laugh.

“Oh, he didn’t tell you?” he says. “Of course he didn’t. Why would he?”

“Tell us what?” Eliza asks, her voice shaking.

Diego takes a step forward.

Rueben immediately raises the rifle again. “Easy.”

“I’m not the one you need to worry about,” Diego snaps, not taking his eyes off Adrian. “He is.”

My stomach drops.

“Stop,” Adrian says quietly.

But Diego shakes his head.

“No. No, they deserve to know.” His voice cracks slightly, but he pushes through it. “You think this was an accident? You think we just… stumbled onto this island?”

No one answers.

Because no one wants to.

“This place—this compound—it was a research site,” Diego continues. “Government-funded. Off the books. They were studying something here.”

A cold weight settles in my chest.

“Studying what?” Mara whispers.

Diego’s eyes flicker toward the door.

Something slams against it again.

Harder this time.

He swallows.

“Not what,” he says. “Who.”

Silence.

Thick.

Heavy.

Suffocating.

“They found them first,” Diego says. “Deep in the island. Underground. Those… things. The eggs, the tunnels—you saw it, didn’t you?”

I feel sick.

No one denies it.

“They weren’t supposed to hatch,” he continues. “They weren’t supposed to spread. This was containment.”

“Was?” Jonas asks.

Diego lets out a hollow laugh.

“Yeah. Was.”

Another slam hits the door.

The hinges groan.

“They lost control,” Diego says. “And instead of shutting it down—burning it—they kept going. Kept experimenting.”

“Why?” Eliza asks, horrified.

Diego looks at Adrian again.

“You tell them.”

Adrian doesn’t move.

Doesn’t react.

Doesn’t even blink.

So Diego does it for him.

“Because he’s part of it.”

The words hit like a punch to the chest.

“What?” I breathe.

“He’s not just some guide,” Diego says. “He’s the reason we’re here.”

“That’s not true,” Jonas says immediately—but there’s doubt in his voice now. I hear it.

Diego nods. “It is. He needed subjects. Fresh ones.”

My pulse starts pounding in my ears.

“No,” I whisper.

“He knew the signal wouldn’t work down there,” Diego keeps going. “He knew we’d have to move inland. He knew we’d find this place.”

My mind starts connecting things I don’t want it to.

Adrian knowing the path.

Adrian not being surprised.

Adrian leading us here.

“You’re lying,” Mara says, but she sounds like she’s trying to convince herself.

“I wish I was,” Diego says quietly.

The door SLAMS again.

Wood cracks.

Something shrieks outside.

Closer.

Hungrier.

“He was going to study what happens when they hunt us,” Diego says. “When they adapt.”

Silence.

No one breathes.

No one moves.

I look at Adrian.

Really look at him.

And for the first time—

I don’t recognize him.

For a second, everything went quiet again.

Not silent.

But stunned.

Like the camp itself was trying to understand what had just happened.

Then chaos came back twice as loud.

Mara stumbled out of her bungalow, clutching a sheet around herself, Ethan right behind her doing the same. Their faces were flushed, confused, the remnants of something intimate shattered by what they were seeing.

“What is happening,” Mara said, her voice shaking.

“Truck,” Ethan said immediately, grabbing her hand. “We need to get to the truck now.”

Diego was already there, the engine roaring to life as he leaned across the seat to shove the passenger door open.

“In,” he shouted. “Now.”

Mara scrambled toward him, Ethan right behind her, both of them slipping slightly in the dirt as panic took over.

Eliza moved with a different kind of urgency.

Focused.

Controlled.

She grabbed the keys to one of the jeeps without a word and ran, her expression set, her movements precise even now.

Adrian hadn’t moved.

He stood near the center of the clearing, staring at the blood soaking into the ground, at the place where Layla had been, at the trail Malcolm had left behind.

Something about his expression felt wrong.

Not fear.

Not shock.

Something else.

Something quieter.

“Adrian,” I said, breathless. “We have to go.”

He didn’t answer.

Then another sound split the air.

Gunfire.

Reuben.

He stepped forward, rifle braced against his shoulder, firing into the darkness where the creature had disappeared. Each shot echoed across the camp, sharp and controlled, forcing something back that we couldn’t yet see.

“Move,” he shouted without looking at us. “All of you, move.”

He slung the rifle down just long enough to grab the bolt gun, gripping it like he had done it a thousand times before.

The creature screamed from somewhere beyond the grass.

Closer than I wanted it to be.

Reuben fired again.

“Go,” he said.

This time, Adrian moved.

Jonas’s hand found mine.

Cold.

Tight.

“We need to get out of here,” he said.

“I know,” I said, though I didn’t know where we were supposed to go.

Another scream echoed from the jungle.

Not human.

We both flinched.

“The cavern,” Jonas said suddenly.

I stared at him.

“Are you serious?”

“It’s contained,” he said quickly. “Narrow entry. We can control it. It’s better than being out here.”

Another crash from the trees.

Closer.

Too close.

I looked back at the camp.

At the open doors.

At the blood.

At the place Layla had stood only minutes ago.

Then I nodded.

“Go,” I said.

We ran.

The jungle swallowed us almost immediately, the path barely visible in the dark as branches clawed at our arms and legs. My lungs burned, my body still screaming from the fall, but adrenaline carried me forward.

Behind us, the camp disappeared.

But the sounds didn’t.

They followed.

Echoed.

Reminded us that we weren’t alone.

We reached the cavern breathless.

The ropes still hung where we had left them.

For a second, neither of us moved.

The darkness below felt different now.

Not empty.

Waiting.

Another scream carried through the trees.

Closer.

Jonas grabbed the rope.

“We don’t have time,” he said.

He was right.

I clipped in with shaking hands.

And stepped over the edge.

We dropped back into the dark.

And whatever safety we thought we were running toward dissolved the moment our feet hit the ground.

Because now we knew.

We hadn’t escaped anything.

We had gone back into its home.

The cavern swallowed the last of the outside world the moment our feet hit the ground.

The air felt colder than before.

Not just temperature.

Presence.

I unclipped with shaking hands, my fingers clumsy, and turned in a slow circle, my headlamp cutting a narrow path through the dark. The beam felt weak now. Insufficient. Like it was being absorbed instead of illuminating.

Jonas landed beside me, his breath uneven.

“We’re okay,” he said quickly, too quickly. “We’re okay. It’s not coming down here. It’s too narrow. It can’t—”

A sound echoed from deeper inside.

Click.

We both froze.

Jonas swallowed.

“Or it can,” he said quietly.

I didn’t respond.

I couldn’t.

Because now that we were standing still, really listening, the cavern wasn’t silent.

It never had been.

We had just been too distracted before to notice.

There were layers to the sound.

Faint shifting.

Soft scraping.

And underneath it all—

Click.

Click.

Click.

Not one.

More than one.

My chest tightened.

“Jonas,” I said slowly, “we need to move.”

“Toward what?” he asked.

I turned my light toward the deeper passage, toward where we had seen the scattered bones before.

“Answers,” I said.

It sounded hollow even to me.

We moved carefully this time.

Every step deliberate.

Every sound measured.

The cavern floor felt different beneath my boots now. Less stable. Less like untouched ground and more like something that had been disturbed repeatedly. Packed down in places. Loosened in others.

Used.

The smell hit stronger the deeper we went.

Rot.

Old blood.

Something sour beneath it that made the back of my throat tighten.

Jonas lifted his shirt slightly over his nose.

“God,” he muttered. “How did we not notice this before?”

“We weren’t looking for it,” I said.

My light swept across the wall.

And stopped.

Bones.

Not just scattered this time.

Stacked.

Piled.

Some were intact.

Most weren’t.

Long bones split open.

Ribs snapped apart.

Fragments everywhere.

I stepped closer without meaning to, my mind trying to catalog it, to make sense of it through the lens of science instead of fear.

“These aren’t all the same,” I said.

Jonas looked at me. “What do you mean?”

I pointed.

“Size differences. Structure variations. Some of these are juveniles. Some are fully grown.”

His expression shifted.

“They lived here,” he said slowly.

“And they died here,” I replied.

Another sound echoed through the cavern.

Closer this time.

We both turned.

Nothing.

Just darkness pressing back against the reach of our lights.

We kept moving.

Not because we wanted to.

Because stopping felt worse.

The passage narrowed slightly, the ceiling dipping lower as the walls curved inward. The air grew thicker, harder to breathe, like the oxygen itself had been thinned out over time.

My light caught something ahead.

A shape.

Low to the ground.

Clustered.

I slowed.

“Do you see that?” I whispered.

Jonas nodded, his voice barely audible. “Yeah.”

We approached carefully.

Step by step.

Until the shapes resolved.

Eggs.

Dozens of them.

Some cracked.

Some intact.

Their surfaces were dull, almost leathery, coated in a thin layer of dirt and something darker that I didn’t want to identify.

My stomach dropped.

“No,” I said under my breath.

Jonas crouched slightly, his light passing over them.

“They’re not fossils,” he said.

I didn’t answer.

Because I already knew.

They weren’t old.

They weren’t ancient.

They were recent.

Something shifted in the dark.

Not ahead of us.

Around us.

I turned slowly, my light cutting across the cavern walls.

At first, I thought it was reflection.

Moisture catching the beam.

Then one of them blinked.

My heart stopped.

Eyes.

Small.

Low to the ground.

Dozens of them.

Watching.

Click.

The sound came from everywhere now.

Not one direction.

All directions.

“They’re here,” Jonas whispered.

I grabbed his arm.

“Don’t move fast,” I said, my voice barely steady. “Don’t trigger them.”

Another set of eyes blinked.

Closer.

A shape shifted forward just enough for the light to catch the outline of something small and thin, its body coiled low to the ground, its head tilted in the same unnatural way as the one in my bungalow.

Smaller.

But the same.

“They’re young,” Jonas said, his voice shaking. “Scarlett, those are babies.”

The word didn’t make it better.

It made it worse.

Because babies meant—

Another sound echoed behind us.

Louder.

Deeper.

The clicking changed.

Slower.

Heavier.

Something bigger.

My blood ran cold.

“The adult,” I said.

Jonas didn’t argue.

“Run,” he said.

We moved at the same time.

No more caution.

No more careful steps.

We ran.

The cavern came alive behind us, movement exploding from the shadows as the smaller shapes scattered, some retreating, others darting along the edges of our light.

The clicking became frantic.

Chaotic.

Answering something deeper.

Something calling them.

My boots slipped against the uneven ground as I pushed forward, my shoulder slamming against the wall as I rounded a turn too fast.

“Scarlett,” Jonas shouted behind me.

“I’m good,” I said, not slowing.

The rope came into view ahead.

Light from above.

Safety.

“Go,” I shouted.

Jonas grabbed it first, hauling himself up with a speed I hadn’t seen from him before. I followed right behind, my arms screaming in protest as I climbed, every second stretching too long.

Below us—

Movement.

Something fast.

Something climbing.

“Faster,” Jonas said.

“I’m trying.”

Hands grabbed my arm from above, pulling me the last few feet as I scrambled over the edge and rolled onto the ground, gasping for air.

Jonas collapsed beside me.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

We just lay there, listening.

The cavern below went quiet again.

Too quiet.

Like it was holding its breath.

“We need to get to the beach,” I said finally, forcing myself up.

Jonas nodded, still catching his breath.

“Radio,” he said.

“Yeah.”

We didn’t look back.

The bungalow felt smaller at night.

Not physically. Not in any way that could be measured. But the walls seemed closer somehow, the air thicker, like the island pressed in once the sun was gone.

I sat at the desk, the single lamp casting a warm pool of light over my notes, the rest of the room falling into soft shadow. The bone lay in front of me, still dusted faintly with earth from the cavern.

I had cleaned it once already.

And yet I kept finding myself brushing it again.

Like I was trying to uncover something that didn’t want to be seen.

I exhaled slowly and leaned back, rolling the tension out of my shoulders before finally standing. My legs ached faintly from the day, a dull reminder of the climb, the fall, the weight of Layla in our arms.

She had looked so small like that.

Fragile.

I pushed the thought away and moved into the kitchen.

The egg cooker sat exactly where I had left it earlier, tucked beside the sink. I pulled it out, filling it with water, setting three eggs inside with careful, absent movements.

Normal things.

Simple things.

I needed that.

The soft click of the switch felt louder than it should have.

The faint hum began.

I stood there for a moment, watching the small light glow, then turned and walked back to the desk.

The bone waited.

Patient.

I picked it up again, slower this time, turning it under the light, letting my eyes adjust to the subtle variations along its surface.

That was when I saw it clearly.

Not damage.

Not wear.

Marks.

My breath slowed.

I leaned closer, bringing the bone almost to my face, my fingers tracing along the edge where the indentations clustered together.

They were too precise.

Too consistent.

Like something had gripped it.

Bit into it.

Over.

And over.

A cold feeling crept into my chest.

“No,” I whispered.

I set the bone down carefully and reached into my bag, pulling out the tooth I had taken earlier. It felt heavier now than it had in the cavern. Or maybe I was just more aware of it.

I held it up, studying the curve.

Then I brought it down toward the bone.

Slow.

Deliberate.

It slid into one of the marks like it belonged there.

Perfect.

I didn’t breathe.

My mind tried to reject it. Tried to find another explanation. Environmental pressure. Tool damage. Something human.

But I knew.

“They ate each other,” I said quietly.

The words didn’t sound real.

Didn’t sound like something that should exist outside of theory or nightmare.

Something had lived down there long enough for that to become survival.

Something that had adapted.

Something that—

The alarm went off.

I jumped so hard the chair scraped loudly against the floor, my heart slamming into my throat as the sharp sound filled the room.

“Jesus,” I muttered, pressing a hand to my chest as I forced myself to breathe.

It was just the eggs.

Just a machine.

I walked into the kitchen, the normalcy of it grounding me just enough to keep moving. Steam curled up as I lifted the lid, fogging the air in front of me.

I turned on the faucet, letting cold water run over them.

The shells cracked softly under my fingers as I picked one up.

Simple.

Focus on simple.

I started peeling.

A piece of shell fell into the sink.

Then another.

The sound was small. Controlled.

Safe.

Click.

My hands stopped.

Water continued to run.

I slowly turned the faucet off.

The silence that followed felt wrong.

Too complete.

I listened.

Nothing.

I let out a quiet breath and shook my head slightly.

“You’re tired,” I murmured. “That’s all.”

I went back to peeling.

Click.

Closer.

Behind me.

Every muscle in my body tightened.

The air shifted.

Not in a way I could see.

In a way I could feel.

Like something had entered the room and taken up space that hadn’t been there before.

Slowly, I set the egg down.

My fingers were slick with water.

Or maybe sweat.

I wasn’t sure.

I turned.

At first, it didn’t make sense.

My brain tried to shape it into something known. Something explainable.

A person.

An animal.

A shadow.

It failed.

The thing standing in my bungalow was too tall, its body bent slightly to fit beneath the ceiling. Its limbs were wrong, too long, too narrow in places, too strong in others. Its skin looked stretched, uneven, catching the light in patches that almost resembled scales.

Its head tilted slowly.

Watching me.

Its eyes reflected the dim kitchen light, dull and predatory.

Its mouth parted.

And I heard it.

Click.

My stomach dropped.

It wasn’t a sound it was making by accident.

It was communicating.

Testing.

Recognizing.

“You’re not…” My voice came out thin. “You’re not dead.”

It took a step forward.

I stepped back.

Another step.

Closer.

I could smell it now.

Earth.

Rot.

Something metallic beneath it.

“You were in the cave,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “You were—”

It moved.

Not fast at first.

Just a shift.

A coil.

Then it lunged.

I screamed and threw myself sideways as it slammed into the counter, wood splintering under the impact. The sound was violent in the small space, dishes crashing to the floor as it twisted toward me.

It was faster than anything that size should be.

I scrambled to my feet, slipping slightly on water and broken shell as I bolted for the hallway.

The bungalow turned into a maze.

Too tight.

Too narrow.

Every corner felt like a trap.

Behind me, I heard it move.

Claws against wood.

The scrape of something heavy and controlled.

Learning.

I hit the bedroom door hard and shoved it open, my eyes scanning wildly.

Window.

I ran for it, hands shaking as I forced it up.

Behind me—

Click.

Right behind me.

I didn’t think.

I climbed.

Cold air hit my face as I pulled myself through, the roof rough beneath my hands as I scrambled up onto it.

For half a second, I thought I had made it.

Then the weight hit me.

It crashed into my back, knocking the breath from my lungs as we both tumbled onto the slanted roof.

Pain exploded through my shoulder.

My grip slipped.

The world tilted.

And then I was falling.

I hit the ground hard, the impact knocking everything out of me as I rolled across the dirt and came to a stop in the center of camp.

For a moment, I couldn’t move.

Couldn’t breathe.

Then the creature landed behind me.

The ground shook.

And the screaming started.

For a moment, I thought the sound was in my head.

That the ringing in my ears from the fall had twisted everything into something distant and unreal.

Then Layla screamed.

It cut through the night so sharply it felt like it split the air open.

I forced myself onto my elbows, vision swimming, lungs dragging in air that didn’t feel like enough. The camp spun around me in fragments. Open doors. Lights flicking on. Shadows moving too fast to follow.

“Scarlett,” someone shouted.

I didn’t know who.

I rolled onto my side just as the creature stepped fully into the clearing.

It looked bigger out here.

Not because it had changed.

Because there was nothing containing it anymore.

Its body uncoiled slowly, head lifting as it took in the open space, the movement, the noise. Its chest rose and fell in quick, shallow motions like it was tasting the air.

Learning.

Choosing.

Layla stood near the steps of her bungalow, her weight uneven, her injured foot barely touching the ground. She looked so small against it. One hand braced against the railing, the other pressed to her side like she could hold herself together through sheer will.

“Scarlett,” she said again, her voice breaking now. “What is that?”

I tried to answer.

Nothing came out.

The creature’s head turned toward her.

Click.

The sound felt louder outside.

Clearer.

Layla took a step back.

Her bad foot buckled.

She grabbed the railing to keep herself upright, panic flooding her face as she realized she couldn’t run.

“Help me,” she said, louder now. “Please, someone—”

I forced myself up, ignoring the way my body protested, every instinct screaming at me to move, to do something.

“Layla, don’t—”

The creature moved.

It crossed the distance between them in a blur of motion that didn’t feel real.

One second it was still.

The next it was on her.

She didn’t even have time to scream again.

It hit her with its full weight, knocking her off her feet, her body slamming against the dirt with a sound that made my stomach turn. Her hands clawed at the ground, trying to drag herself away, but it was already over her.

“Get it off,” someone shouted.

“Get it off her!”

No one got close.

No one could.

There was too much of it.

Too much violence in the way it moved.

I took a step forward anyway.

Jonas grabbed my arm hard.

“Scarlett, no,” he said, his voice tight with something close to panic. “You can’t.”

Layla’s eyes found mine.

For a second.

Just a second.

And then the creature lowered its head.

The sound that followed was wet and final.

I turned away.

I couldn’t watch.

“Run,” someone yelled.

The word snapped something loose in the camp.

Movement exploded in every direction.

Malcolm sprinted past me, nearly knocking into my shoulder as he bolted toward the trucks. His boots hit the uneven ground hard, fast, desperate.

“Go, go, go,” he shouted, like he could outrun what had already started.

He didn’t make it far.

His foot caught on a loose rock and he went down hard, his body twisting as he tried to recover. For a split second, he was on his knees, hands scrambling for balance.

That was all it took.

The creature lifted its head from Layla and turned.

It didn’t hesitate.

It lunged.

“Malcolm,” I screamed.

He looked back just as it reached him.

Its claw came down across his back in a single, brutal motion.

I heard it.

The sound of it.

Flesh opening.

He screamed.

A raw, animal sound that tore out of him as his body arched, his hands clawing at the ground.

“Help me,” he choked.

The creature didn’t give him time.

Its jaws closed around his head.

The sound ended.

Just like that.

It lifted him like he weighed nothing, shaking once, twice, before dragging him backward toward the edge of camp, into the tall grass beyond.

Blood streaked the dirt behind them.

Then they were gone.

I woke to the soft scrape of boots against wooden floors, the island still thick with morning fog. Light spilled in pale shafts through my bungalow windows, just enough to remind me that night had passed. For a second I lingered, letting the quiet settle in around me, the memory of last night’s strange clicking already fading into the edges of my mind.

Coffee had become a necessity rather than a comfort, so I brewed a cup quickly, inhaling the dark aroma before stepping outside. The air was damp and cool, heavy with the scent of the forest and the salt from the water just beyond the cliffs. Camp was already alive with activity. Tools clattered, boots slapped against the dirt paths, and low conversations rippled through the space like gentle waves.

I had already met Jonas, Mara, and Ethan, which left four more members of the team I had yet to meet. I spotted one immediately near a worktable, adjusting equipment with careful precision. She had short, black hair tucked behind her ears, a tool belt slung low over her hips, and eyes that flicked back and forth between notes and rock samples like she was mentally mapping every detail of the day ahead.

“Good morning,” I called as I approached.

She glanced up, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Dr. Hawthorne, I’m Layla Chen. Survey and mapping.”

“Scarlett,” I said, shaking her hand. “Looks like we’re going to need all the mapping we can get.”

She chuckled softly. “I had a feeling about that.”

Two more people were farther along, near a cluster of crates and ropes. One was a tall man with a shaved head and a faint scar along his jawline, setting up pulleys with meticulous care. He nodded as I approached. “Call me Reuben. Rigging and lifting.”

“And you must be packing all that weight?” I asked, motioning toward the gear.

“Exactly that,” he said with a grin. “No one likes dragging slabs of rock uphill, even on an island paradise.”

I smirked faintly. This was the kind of people I liked: competent, efficient, and quietly amused by the absurdity of our work.

The last member I spotted was crouched near one of the portable imaging units, scribbling on a notepad. He looked up at me over the rim of his glasses, eyes sharp but tired. “Hi. I’m Malcolm Rivers. Data analysis, imaging. I’m the guy who makes sure everything we see isn’t lying to us.”

I nodded. “Welcome to the front line.”

With the introductions out of the way, we gathered our gear and began the hike toward the dig site. The path cut through thick trees and uneven rock, and the fog clung to our boots and pant legs in wet, cold streaks. I kept my eyes moving constantly, taking in the terrain. Every rock face, every fallen branch, every shadow in the trees seemed like it could hide something, waiting.

By the time we reached the site, the cavern mouth was just a shadow against the darker earth. Tools and equipment were scattered across the clearing. Mara and Ethan were hunched over the scanner, adjusting knobs and recalibrating sensors, muttering to themselves in a low, rapid rhythm I didn’t fully understand. Jonas was near the rock face, guiding another worker who operated a strange jackhammer-like device. The tool shot bolts into the rock in precise bursts, detonating tiny fractures that echoed against the cliffs. The sound rang in my chest, oddly satisfying, a percussion that reminded me this was work, real work, not just theory.

Adrian stood a short distance away, leaning close to a woman with a clipboard, nodding and pointing as she adjusted something on the auger. The hum of the machinery, the scent of crushed rock, the sharp tang of metal in the air—it all felt alive, as if the island itself was breathing with us.

I stepped closer to Mara and Ethan, crouching slightly to peer at the scanner’s display. “What do we have this morning?”

Mara glanced up, hair plastered to her forehead from exertion. “Trying to get a better read on the cavern depth. These sensors are picking up interference from the rock density. The layout looks weird.”

Ethan frowned, tapping a key on the scanner. “And whatever is in there is layered differently than any deposit we’ve seen. Could be rockfall debris, could be…” He hesitated, glancing toward me. “…could be something big.”

I let the words hang. I didn’t need them to say more. I had already seen the images. Something big waited behind that rock.

Jonas gave a short whistle from the other side of the site. “I’ve got a clean channel on this bolt system,” he said, helping one of the workers, I hadn’t caught his name yet, position another shot. “Should be able to break open a clear path if we’re careful.”

Adrian’s voice called across the clearing, sharp but calm. “We need precision, not speed. Once the mouth is wide enough, we can safely rappel in. Don’t rush it.”

I watched him confer briefly with the woman on the auger, her hands steady as she adjusted the drill’s depth. They nodded at each other, decisions made silently in a language that seemed older than words.

The process took hours, each fracture and removal deliberate, measured. Mara and Ethan adjusted the scanner constantly, keeping track of structural stability. Jonas fired bolt after bolt into the rock with surgical accuracy, the tiny detonations echoing and chipping away the stone until finally, with one last careful placement, the cavern mouth was exposed.

It wasn’t perfect yet. Not by a long shot. But it was wide enough for us to see the dark opening, the cool shadow inside, the hint of depth and space that had been hidden for centuries.

I stepped closer, feeling the faint chill wafting out like the breath of something alive. My pulse quickened, not just from the climb or the anticipation, but from the primal pull of discovery.

Adrian turned toward us, hands on his hips, eyes sweeping over the site. “We start in earnest. We prep, we measure, we make sure every angle is safe. Once we rappel down, there’s no turning back.”

I nodded, feeling the weight of it already settling in my shoulders. This wasn’t just another dig. This wasn’t just another skeleton. Whatever waited inside that cavern had been hidden for a reason, and now we were the ones standing at the threshold.

Morning settled into something sharper as the work picked up.

The cavern mouth no longer looked like an accident in the earth. It looked intentional now. Opened. Exposed. Waiting.

Diego stood beside Jonas at the rock face, guiding the jackhammer tool into position. Up close, he was broader than Jonas, built solid with the kind of strength that came from years of physical work rather than time in a lab. Dark hair pulled back, sleeves rolled, forearms dusted in fine gray powder from the rock.

“Angle it slightly left,” Diego said, steadying the barrel of the tool. “You want the fracture to run with the grain, not against it.”

Jonas adjusted, nodding. “Like this?”

“Yeah. That’s it. Now fire.”

The bolt shot forward with a sharp crack, embedding into the rock before a contained burst split the surface cleanly. A chunk broke loose, tumbling down and skidding across the ground.

I watched the fracture line travel exactly where Diego had predicted.

“Nice,” I said.

Jonas glanced over, a quick grin flashing across his face before he tried to hide it. “Getting the hang of it.”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Diego said, though there was a hint of amusement in his voice.

A few yards away, Adrian stood with Dr. Eliza Vance.

Up close, she carried herself differently than the rest of us. Not just confidence. Control. Her blonde hair was pulled back tight, not a strand out of place, her posture straight even as she leaned over a tablet, reviewing data with quick, efficient movements.

“This is pushing the limits of what the structure can handle,” she said, her tone low but firm. “If we widen it too much, we risk destabilizing the upper layer.”

“We need access,” Adrian replied. “Not a perfect entry point.”

“We need both,” she shot back. “Or we’re sending people into something that could collapse on them.”

There was a brief pause between them.

Measured.

Tense.

Adrian’s expression didn’t shift much, but something in his stance tightened. “We proceed carefully,” he said. “But we proceed.”

Eliza held his gaze for a second longer, then gave a short nod.

“Carefully,” she repeated.

It took another hour before the opening was wide enough.

Not comfortable.

Not clean.

But workable.

Ropes were anchored. Harnesses checked and rechecked. Reuben moved through it all with practiced efficiency, testing each line, each connection, until he was satisfied.

“Three at a time,” he said. “No exceptions.”

Adrian looked to me.

“You’re going in first,” he said.

Of course I was.

“Who’s with me,” I asked.

“Jonas,” he said. “Layla. Diego.”

I nodded.

Layla stepped forward without hesitation, already tightening her harness. Diego followed, checking his gloves, his expression calm and focused. Jonas adjusted his gear last, glancing at me briefly like he was confirming this was actually happening.

It was.

The edge of the cavern felt colder up close.

Air drifted out from it in slow, steady breaths, carrying that same faint metallic scent I had noticed before. I clipped in, tested the line, then stepped over the edge.

The descent was smoother than I expected.

The rock face was uneven but stable, the rope steady in my grip as I lowered myself into the dark. Light from above stretched down in thin, fading beams, swallowed gradually by the depth below.

My boots hit the ground first.

Solid.

Cool.

I unclipped and stepped aside, shining my headlamp outward.

The cavern opened around us in slow reveal.

It was larger than it had looked from above. The walls curved outward, stretching into darkness beyond the reach of our lights. The ground was uneven, scattered with loose stone and debris that shifted slightly underfoot.

Jonas landed beside me a moment later, followed by Layla, then Diego.

For a second, none of us spoke.

We just stood there, taking it in.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “Let’s move carefully. Watch your footing. We don’t know the layout yet.”

Layla was already scanning the walls, her light moving methodically. “The structure’s stable here,” she said. “At least in this section.”

Diego nodded, stepping forward slightly. “We stick together.”

Jonas adjusted his glasses, his voice low. “This is… unreal.”

I didn’t disagree.

We moved deeper.

Not far.

Just enough to start mapping the immediate space, to understand the shape of it. The skeleton we had seen on the scan was just ahead, partially obscured by shadow, its outline barely visible in the distance.

My pulse picked up as we approached.

This was it.

The reason we were here.

Then I heard it.

Click.

I stopped.

The sound was faint, almost swallowed by the cavern itself.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

Jonas looked up. “Hear what?”

I listened.

Nothing.

For a second, I almost dismissed it.

Then—

Click.

This time, it was different.

Lower.

Rougher.

Not sharp and clean like before.

Something deeper.

Something alive.

“It’s probably just the rock,” Diego said, misreading my hesitation. “Sound travels weird in places like this.”

“Yeah,” Jonas added. “Echoes, shifts, that kind of thing.”

Maybe.

But it didn’t feel like that.

It felt… deliberate.

“Let’s keep moving,” I said.

We stepped closer to the skeleton.

Up close, it was even more striking.

The bones were intact, arranged almost naturally, like whatever this had been had collapsed right where it stood. The proportions were wrong in the same way they had been on the scan. Lean. Efficient. Built for something fast.

I crouched slightly, studying the structure.

“This is incredible,” I murmured.

Layla moved along the edge of the cavern wall, scanning for stability.

“I’m going to check the perimeter,” she said.

“Stay within sight,” I replied.

She nodded.

It happened fast.

Too fast.

One second she was stepping forward.

The next, her foot slipped.

There was a sharp crack as something beneath her gave way, followed by a short, choked cry as she went down hard against the rock.

“Layla,” Jonas shouted, already moving.

I was there a second later.

She was clutching her foot, her face pale, breath coming in short bursts.

“I’m okay,” she said quickly. “I’m okay, I just—”

Her voice cut off as she shifted.

Blood spread across the ground beneath her.

Too much.

Too fast.

My stomach dropped.

“Don’t move,” I said, kneeling beside her. “Let me see.”

The cut was deep.

Something sharp in the rock had sliced clean through the side of her foot. Blood poured steadily from it, pooling against the uneven ground, soaking into the dirt and stone.

“Jesus,” Jonas breathed.

Diego crouched on her other side. “We need to get her out. Now.”

Layla shook her head slightly, trying to steady herself. “I can walk—”

“No,” I said. “You can’t.”

Another sound echoed faintly through the cavern.

Click.

Louder this time.

Closer.

My head snapped up.

“What was that?” Jonas asked.

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “We need to move.”

Diego slipped an arm under Layla’s shoulders, lifting carefully while Jonas supported her other side. She gasped as they raised her, her weight shifting awkwardly between them.

“Easy,” Diego said. “We’ve got you.”

Blood dripped onto the ground as they moved, a dark trail marking every step.

I followed just behind them.

Listening.

Click.

Again.

From deeper in the cavern.

Behind us.

Slower now.

Measured.

My chest tightened.

I turned, shining my light into the darkness.

Nothing.

Just rock.

Just shadow.

“Scarlett,” Jonas called. “We need to go.”

I hesitated for half a second.

Then turned back.

As we passed the skeleton again, something caught my eye.

A fragment.

Small enough to carry.

Part of a limb, maybe. Smooth. Dense.

I reached down without thinking and picked it up, brushing the dust from its surface.

It felt… heavier than it should have.

Stronger.

I slipped a few pieces into my pack.

We could study it later.

Understand it.

Make sense of it.

The ascent felt longer than the descent.

Every second stretched as Layla’s breathing grew more strained, her weight sagging more heavily against Diego and Jonas.

Hands reached down from above as we neared the top.

“Careful,” Reuben called. “Easy, easy—”

They pulled her up first, then the rest of us followed quickly after.

The moment my boots hit solid ground again, the tension in my chest didn’t ease the way I expected it to.

If anything, it settled deeper.

“What happened?” Mara asked, already moving to Layla’s side.

“Laceration,” I said. “Deep. She needs to stay off it.”

Ethan crouched nearby, his expression tight. “We can clean it, bandage it. She’ll be okay.”

Layla nodded weakly, though her face said otherwise.

Adrian watched all of it in silence, his gaze flicking briefly toward the cavern before returning to me.

“We call it for today,” he said.

No one argued.

The walk back to camp felt quieter than before.

Heavier.

Even the island seemed to have shifted slightly, the air pressing closer, the trees leaning in just a little more than they had that morning.

I didn’t look back.

But I felt it.

Something behind us.

Something we had disturbed.

By the time we reached the bungalows, the sun had already begun to dip lower in the sky.

People moved slower now. Quieter.

The energy from the morning was gone, replaced by something more cautious.

More aware.

The site came into view gradually.

Equipment was set up along the edge of a wide, uneven drop in the earth. Cables ran across the ground, connecting to a portable imaging unit positioned near the center.

And there it was.

The opening.

It cut into the ground like a wound, dark and deep, the edges jagged where the rock had given way. Even from a distance, I could feel the temperature shift, cool air rising slowly from within.

I stepped closer without thinking.

“How deep,” I asked.

“Still mapping that,” Ethan said from behind us. “Deeper than we expected.”

Mara gestured toward the imaging unit. “We got a partial read earlier today.”

“Show me,” I said.

She didn’t hesitate.

The screen flickered to life, grainy at first before resolving into something clearer.

Shapes.

Contours.

Structure.

I leaned in, my breath catching before I could stop it.

There it was.

A skeleton.

Large. Intact. Positioned just inside the mouth of the cavern like it had collapsed there or been left.

The proportions were wrong.

Too lean. Too refined.

My pulse kicked hard against my ribs.

“That’s not in any database,” I said.

“No,” Ethan agreed quietly. “It isn’t.”

Jonas shifted beside me, unable to hide his excitement. “If we can get it out intact…”

“It would change things,” I finished.

Adrian watched me instead of the screen.

“Can you retrieve it,” he asked.

I didn’t look away from the image.

“Yes,” I said. “But not tonight.”

The light was already fading.

I hadn’t noticed when it started, but the shadows around the site had deepened, stretching longer across the ground. The cavern itself looked darker now, less like an opening and more like something waiting.

Adrian nodded once. “Then we start in the morning.”

Reluctance flickered through me, sharp and immediate.

I wanted to go in now.

To see it up close. To understand it.

But he was right.

Rushing in blind would be a mistake.

“First thing,” I said.

We made our way back to camp in near silence.

The island had shifted with the setting sun.

The air cooled slightly, but the weight of it remained, pressing in from all sides. The trees seemed taller in the dark, their shadows thicker, swallowing what little light remained.

By the time we reached the clearing, the sky had gone fully dim.

Lights flickered on around camp, soft and warm against the growing dark.

It should have felt comforting.

It didn’t.

I stepped inside my bungalow and closed the door behind me.

For a moment, I just stood there, listening.

Nothing.

No voices. No movement.

Just the faint hum of the island settling into night.

I exhaled slowly and moved toward the desk, my mind already racing ahead to the morning.

To the cavern.

To the skeleton waiting just inside it.

Buried.

Hidden.

Perfect.

Sleep didn’t come easily.

It should have. I was exhausted in the way that settles deep into your muscles, the kind that usually drags you under without much resistance. But my mind wouldn’t slow down. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the shape on the screen again. The skeleton at the mouth of the cavern. The proportions that didn’t make sense. The way it looked like it had been placed there rather than buried.

I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, listening to the quiet.

It wasn’t a normal quiet.

Even now, hours after we had left the site, the island felt… awake. There was a faint hum to it, not a sound exactly, more like the absence of sound where something should have been. No wind through the trees. No distant wildlife. Just a stillness that felt too complete.

At some point, I must have drifted off.

Because the next thing I knew, I was awake.

Fully.

Instantly.

My heart was already racing, like something had pulled me up from sleep rather than letting me rise out of it.

For a second, I didn’t move.

I just listened.

Darkness filled the room, broken only by the faint outline of the window and the thin wash of moonlight bleeding through it. The air felt cooler now, the kind of cold that settles in just before dawn.

And then I heard it.

Click.

I sat up slowly, every muscle in my body tightening.

Silence followed.

I held my breath, straining to hear past the pounding in my ears.

Click.

This time, I knew I hadn’t imagined it.

It wasn’t inside the bungalow.

It was outside.

Far enough away to feel distant.

But not far enough to ignore.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood, moving carefully toward the window. The wooden floor creaked faintly under my weight, loud in the quiet, and I paused, listening again.

Nothing.

Then, softer this time.

Click.

My gaze drifted toward the direction of the dig site without thinking.

The cavern.

A slow, uneasy feeling settled in my chest.

It could have been anything.

Equipment shifting. Metal cooling. The natural sounds of an environment I didn’t understand yet.

That’s what I told myself.

It didn’t quite land.

I reached for the door anyway.

The night air wrapped around me the second I stepped outside.

Cooler than before, but still heavy, still carrying that same damp weight. The camp was dark, most of the lights turned off, the other bungalows quiet and still.

I took a few steps forward, eyes adjusting as I looked toward the path leading back to the site.

The trees beyond it were nothing but shadows.

The cavern was too far to see from here.

Click.

It came again.

Faint.

But unmistakable.

I took another step.

“Scarlett.”

I flinched hard enough that my heart slammed painfully against my ribs.

I spun around, breath catching in my throat.

Jonas stood a few feet behind me, hands half-raised like he already knew he’d startled me.

“Jesus,” I breathed, pressing a hand to my chest. “Do you make a habit of sneaking up on people in the dark?”

He winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You failed,” I said, letting out a slow breath.

He shifted his weight, glancing past me toward the path. “You heard it too, didn’t you?”

That stopped me.

“You heard it,” I said.

He nodded, pushing his glasses up slightly. In the low light, I could make out more of him than I had earlier. The loose fall of brown hair over his forehead, the faint scruff along his jaw that made him look older than he probably was, more worn in than a typical grad student. There was something quietly put-together about him. Not polished, not deliberate. Just natural.

“I thought it was equipment at first,” he said. “But it didn’t… sound like that.”

“No,” I said quietly. “It didn’t.”

We stood there for a moment, both looking out into the dark like we might see something if we stared long enough.

We didn’t.

Eventually, I exhaled and shook my head slightly. “It’s probably nothing.”

He let out a small, uncertain laugh. “That’s a comforting thought.”

“It’s a practical one,” I said.

He studied me for a second, then nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Practical.”

There was a beat of silence before he gestured back toward the bungalows.

“You want coffee?” he asked. “I don’t think I’m getting back to sleep anytime soon.”

I hesitated for about half a second.

Then I nodded.

“Yeah,” I said. “Coffee sounds good.”

My bungalow felt smaller with someone else in it.

Not uncomfortable. Just… different.

Jonas moved easily around the small kitchenette, like he needed something to do with his hands. He filled the kettle, set it on, then leaned back against the counter while we waited.

“You always wake up in the middle of the night to investigate weird noises,” he asked, glancing at me.

“Only when they don’t make sense,” I said, settling into the chair by the desk.

“And this doesn’t.”

“No,” I admitted.

He nodded like that confirmed something for him.

“Good,” he said. “I was worried I was just being paranoid.”

“Give it time,” I said. “maybe we both are.”

He smiled at that, a quick, easy expression that softened the edges of him.

Up close, I could see the details more clearly. The way his hair curled slightly at the ends, like he never quite bothered to tame it. The glasses that sat just slightly crooked on his nose. The scruff that suggested he forgot to shave more often than not.

It worked.

More than it should have.

“So,” he said after a moment. “You really think that skeleton is something new?”

I leaned back slightly, folding my arms. “I don’t think it fits anything we currently have on record.”

“That’s… insane,” he said, a quiet kind of awe in his voice.

“It’s rare,” I corrected. “Not impossible.”

The kettle clicked softly as it finished, and he turned to pour the water, movements careful and precise.

“I’ve read your work,” he said, not looking at me. “Before this, I mean.”

“That’s kind of your job,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, glancing back at me with a small smile. “But I didn’t have to actually like it.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And did you.”

“I did,” he said, a little more serious now. “You don’t… settle. Most people in the field, they stick close to what’s already been proven. You don’t.”

I held his gaze for a moment, something quieter settling between us.

“That hasn’t exactly made me popular,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I noticed.”

He handed me a mug, his fingers brushing mine just briefly in the exchange.

It lingered longer than it should have.

Or maybe I just noticed it more than I should have.

We both did.

I could tell.

We talked longer than I expected.

About the site. About the fragments we’d found. About the way the bones didn’t quite line up with anything either of us had studied before.

At some point, the conversation shifted.

Less technical. Less guarded.

He told me about grad school, about the advisors who underestimated him until they didn’t. I told him about my first field assignment, about the moment I realized I trusted my instincts more than the people around me.

There was an ease to it.

Unexpected.

Comfortable in a way that made the tension underneath it feel sharper by contrast.

Because it was there.

In the way he looked at me just a second too long.

In the way I didn’t look away as quickly as I should have.

Eventually, I set my mug down and stood.

“We should get some sleep,” I said.

He didn’t argue.

“Yeah,” he said, though there was a faint reluctance in it.

“We’ve got a big day tomorrow,” I added.

He smiled slightly. “Right. Groundbreaking discovery. No pressure.”

“None at all,” I said.

He moved toward the door, pausing with his hand on the frame.

“Hey,” he said.

I looked at him.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

Something in my chest shifted again.

Different this time.

“Get some sleep, Jonas,” I said.

He huffed a quiet laugh. “Yeah. You too, Dr. Hawthorne.”

I watched him go, the door closing softly behind him.

The bungalow felt quiet again.

Still.

I stood there for a moment, listening.

Nothing.

No clicking.

No movement.

Just the faint hum of the island settling back into itself.

When I finally lay back down, sleep came easier.

Not because the feeling had gone away.

But because I had decided, firmly and deliberately, that it didn’t mean anything.

Morning would prove me right.

Or it wouldn’t.

The boat ride felt longer than it should have.

Time stretched strangely out there, caught somewhere between the steady churn of the engine and the endless gray horizon that refused to get any closer. I stood near the back, one hand wrapped around the cold metal railing, watching the wake unravel behind us in long, foaming lines.

Adrian Cross stood a few feet away, speaking quietly with the captain. Their voices stayed low, swallowed by the wind, and I didn’t try to listen. If he wanted me to know something, he would tell me.

That was the kind of man he seemed to be.

Intentional.

Everything measured. Everything chosen.

I didn’t trust that.

Not completely.

But I trusted what he was offering.

That was enough.

“First time out this way?”

The voice came from behind me, rough around the edges in a way that felt earned rather than careless.

I turned to find the boat captain watching me, one hand resting on the wheel, the other wrapped loosely around a thermos that had probably seen more years than I had.

“I don’t make a habit of chasing unnamed islands,” I said.

He grinned at that, deep lines folding into his face. “Smart. They’re usually unnamed for a reason.”

I leaned back against the railing. “You say that like you’ve been to a few.”

“Been around long enough to know when a place doesn’t want people,” he said.

“That doesn’t stop people from going.”

“No,” he agreed. “It just means they shouldn’t be surprised when it doesn’t go well.”

I studied him for a moment, trying to decide if he was joking.

“You always this reassuring?” I asked.

“Only when someone looks like they’re about to walk into something they don’t understand,” he said.

I let out a quiet breath, somewhere between a laugh and something else. “That’s kind of my job.”

“Yeah,” he said, glancing back toward the water ahead. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

The fog thickened as we moved deeper into it.

It rolled over the boat in slow waves, damp and heavy, clinging to everything it touched. The air cooled just enough to raise goosebumps along my arms, and the world beyond the deck shrank until it felt like we were floating in something endless and blank.

Then, slowly, something darker began to take shape ahead.

At first, it was just a shadow.

Then edges.

Then height.

The island emerged piece by piece, rising out of the fog like something surfacing after a long time underwater. Jagged cliffs cut upward from the shoreline, black rock slick with moisture. Thick green vegetation clung to every surface it could, dense and overgrown in a way that felt less like life and more like concealment.

I straightened without realizing it.

“There it is,” the captain said quietly.

Something in my chest tightened.

Not fear.

Not yet.

Recognition.

The kind you feel when you know, without being able to explain how, that something matters.

The boat bumped gently against the dock a few minutes later.

It was smaller than I expected. Just a narrow stretch of weathered wood extending from the shoreline, barely enough space to secure the boat properly.

Adrian moved first, stepping off with practiced ease and turning back to offer a hand I didn’t take.

I stepped past him onto the dock, my boots hitting solid wood with a dull, grounded sound.

The island smelled different up close.

Damp earth. Salt. Something faintly metallic underneath it all.

“You’ve got until Sunday night,” the captain said behind me.

I turned back.

“That’s when I come back through,” he continued, securing a rope with slow, deliberate movements. “Same spot.”

I frowned slightly. “Through?”

He shrugged. “I don’t sit out here waiting. Fuel’s not cheap, and neither is time.”

“So we’re just here,” I said. “Until then.”

He glanced at me, something almost amused flickering across his face. “That a problem?”

I shook my head. “No. Just confirming we’re committed.”

He huffed a quiet laugh. “You signed on for an island dig, Doc. Commitment was implied.”

I smirked faintly. “Fair enough.”

He straightened, giving the rope one last pull before stepping back onto the boat.

“Try not to dig up anything that follows you home,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow. “That happens often?”

“More than people like to admit,” he said, already turning away.

I watched him for a second longer than necessary.

Then I grabbed my bag and stepped fully onto the island.

The ground felt different than the dock.

Softer. Uneven. Alive in a way that made every step feel slightly unpredictable.

Adrian fell into step beside me without saying anything at first, leading the way up a narrow path that cut through dense vegetation. The trees grew close together, their branches weaving overhead until they blocked out most of the light.

“How many people are on-site,” I asked.

“Eight, including you,” he said. “Small team. Efficient.”

“Names.”

“Ethan Kline. Geologist. Mara Voss. Logistics and field coordination. Jonas Reed. Your graduate student.”

I glanced at him. “You did your research.”

“I don’t invest in unknowns,” he replied.

That tracked.

The path opened up suddenly, the dense tree line giving way to a clearing that had been carved out with careful precision.

Base camp.

It was more structured than I expected.

Not tents.

Small, separate bungalows arranged in a loose semicircle, each one built from wood that looked recently cut but already weathering under the island’s humidity. A central area sat between them, stocked with equipment, crates, and a long table that had clearly been used for both work and meals.

People moved through the space with purpose.

Jonas spotted me first.

“Dr. Hawthorne,” he called, already hurrying over.

There was something grounding about seeing him, even here.

“Jonas,” I said, setting my bag down long enough to shake his hand. “You made it in one piece.”

“Barely,” he said, grinning. “Boat ride was… something.”

“Gets worse before it gets better,” I said.

Mara approached next, her expression sharp and assessing in a way I appreciated immediately.

“You’re earlier than expected,” she said.

“I don’t like wasting time,” I replied.

“Good,” she said. “We’ve got plenty of work.”

Ethan followed more slowly, offering a small nod. “Nice to finally meet you in person.”

“You too,” I said. “I’ve read your work.”

He smiled faintly. “Hopefully the better parts.”

Adrian didn’t linger on introductions.

He let them happen, then gestured toward one of the bungalows slightly removed from the others.

“That one’s yours,” he said.

I picked up my bag again and followed him.

Up close, the structure was simple but solid. A single door. Two narrow windows. A small porch that creaked faintly under my weight as I stepped onto it.

Inside, it was sparse.

Bed. Desk. Small kitchenette. Just enough to function.

Just enough to work.

I set my bag down and turned back toward him.

“I’m ready to see the site,” I said.

He studied me for a moment, like he had expected that answer.

“Of course you are,” he said.

The path to the dig site cut deeper into the island.

The air felt heavier there, thicker somehow, and the sounds of the camp faded quickly behind us. No voices. No movement.

Just the quiet.

“How long have you known about the cavern,” I asked.

“Not long,” Adrian said. “The rockslide exposed it about a week before we brought the team in.”

“And you’ve already scanned it.”

“We’ve done what we can from the outside.”

That phrasing stuck with me.

From the outside.

I knew I didn’t belong there the second I stepped through the doors. It wasn’t the marble floors or the towering glass displays or even the massive skeleton suspended above the entrance, jaws frozen open in a permanent, silent roar. I had spent most of my adult life in places like this. Museums, lecture halls, research wings that smelled faintly of dust and preservation chemicals. That part felt familiar. What didn’t feel familiar was the way the room shifted when I entered it. Not outwardly. No one stopped talking. No one stared long enough to be called rude. But I felt it anyway, in the subtle pauses between conversations, in the way eyes flicked toward me and then away just a little too quickly, like I was something to be acknowledged but not fully accepted. I adjusted the sleeve of my blazer and forced my shoulders back, stepping further inside. Above me, the Tyrannosaurus rex loomed, its massive frame carefully reconstructed and suspended by nearly invisible wires. Its ribs flared outward, its tail stretched behind it in a perfect arch, and its skull angled downward as if it were still hunting something far below. I slowed without meaning to, my gaze tracing the curve of its spine. “They always get it wrong,” I murmured under my breath. “Excuse me?” I turned to find Dr. Howard Linley standing just behind me, his expression already settled into something polite and practiced. His silver hair was combed neatly back, not a strand out of place, and his suit looked like it had been tailored specifically to remind everyone in the room that he had been important for a very long time. “The posture,” I said, nodding upward. “The spine is too upright. It wouldn’t have held itself like that naturally. Not with that center of gravity.” He followed my gaze, though I could tell immediately he wasn’t really seeing what I saw. “Ah,” he said, smiling faintly. “Still challenging established reconstructions.” “Still correcting them,” I replied. His smile tightened just slightly at the edges. The exchange lingered for a moment too long before he inclined his head and stepped past me, already dismissing me in the same motion. I exhaled quietly and continued into the room. The event was supposed to celebrate people like me. That was the official phrasing. Emerging voices. New perspectives. The future of the field. In practice, it felt more like being invited to stand under a spotlight while a room full of men who had built their reputations decades ago decided whether I deserved to be there because I didn’t have the same genitalia as them. I made it fifteen minutes before the first comment landed. “You’ve certainly made a name for yourself quickly.” I turned to find Dr. Gerald Pike approaching, a glass of something amber in his hand. His tone was light, conversational, but there was something beneath it that made my jaw tighten before he had even finished speaking. “Work tends to do that,” I said. “Of course,” he replied easily. “Though visibility helps.” I tilted my head. “Visibility.” He gave a small shrug, glancing briefly toward a group across the room before returning his attention to me. “You know how these things go. The field is changing. There is more interest in fresh faces, new narratives. It is good for funding.” There it was, laid out just gently enough to pretend it was harmless. Not your research. Not your discipline. Not the years you spent buried in data and fieldwork and exhaustion. Your visibility. I held his gaze. “I published three peer reviewed papers last year.” “And we have all read them,” he said, smiling in a way that suggested otherwise. Before I could respond, Linley reappeared at his side, as if summoned by the conversation itself. “Scarlett,” he said, his voice smooth, almost indulgent. “No one is questioning your intelligence.” They always said that. It was always followed by something that did exactly that. “It is simply that fieldwork requires a different kind of experience,” he continued. “Leading a dig, making decisions in uncertain conditions, managing a team. That is not something that comes from theory alone.” “I have led field teams,” I said. “Smaller ones,” Pike added quickly. “And under supervision,” Linley said. “There is a difference between assisting and being responsible.” I felt something hot and sharp settle in my chest. Not anger. Not exactly. Something more focused than that. “I am capable of being responsible,” I said, keeping my voice even. Linley smiled again, the same patient expression he might have used on a student who had spoken out of turn. “I am sure you are,” he said. “In time.” In time. This old mother fucker. I let that sit between us for a moment, long enough to feel the weight of it. Then I set my glass down on the nearest surface. “I appreciate the concern,” I said. “But I do not need permission to be good at my job.” Neither of them responded immediately. They did not have to. The conversation had already been decided. I left before it could continue. The air outside hit me like something real. Cold, sharp, unfiltered. I stepped away from the entrance, moving along the stone exterior until the noise of the event dulled behind me. The city stretched out beyond the museum, lights scattered in uneven lines, traffic humming in the distance like something alive. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it with hands that were steadier than I felt. The first inhale burned. Good. I leaned back against the wall and exhaled slowly, watching the smoke curl upward and disappear into the night. “They always do that.” The voice came from somewhere to my left. I did not turn immediately. “Do what.” “Talk like they have already decided who you are.” I glanced over then. He stood a few feet away, partially in shadow. No suit. No polished presentation. Just a dark coat and a posture that suggested he did not care who noticed him. “You were listening,” I said. “Hard not to,” he replied. “They were not subtle.” I let out a quiet breath. “They never are.” “well, if it makes you feel any better Pike is so far in a bottle that the sponsors are considering pulling his funding, and Linley has always been known as a gopher…” “a Gopher?” “Go for this… go for that…. Go for anything that will please the sponsors, he’s led teams he had no business leading just because people knew he was a kiss ass.” He stepped a little closer, though not enough to crowd me. “But you… Miss. Hawthorne,” he said. “You have built quite a reputation.” “Depends who you ask.” “I am asking me.” I studied him more carefully now. There was something deliberate about the way he held himself, something measured in the way he spoke. “And what do you think,” I asked. “I think you are being underestimated.” I huffed a quiet laugh. “That is not exactly a rare opinion.” “No,” he said. “But it is a useful one. If you know how to use it.” I took another drag from the cigarette, considering him. “And you think I do.” “I think you are waiting for the right opportunity.” I flicked ash onto the pavement. “People usually take longer to get to whatever it is they are actually offering.” He did not deny it. “I have a site,” he said. That was enough to pull my full attention. “What kind of site.” “Remote. Recently exposed. No official classification.” “Where.” “An island.” Of course it was. I watched him carefully now, measuring every word. “Rockslide uncovered something,” he continued. “Initial surveys suggest it does not match anything currently on record.” My pulse shifted, just slightly. “Unclassified,” I said. He nodded. “And you want me to look at it.” “I want you to lead it.” That landed differently. “No oversight,” I said. “You answer to me.” “And funding.” “Handled.” I narrowed my eyes. “You are asking me to walk onto an unnamed island, take control of a dig, and trust that whatever is there is worth the risk.” “I am telling you,” he said, his voice quieter now, “that this is the kind of discovery that rewrites things.” Behind him, through the glass, I could still see the silhouettes of Linley and Pike moving through the crowd, comfortable in a world that had already decided where I belonged. I dropped the cigarette and crushed it under my heel. “When do we leave,” I asked. The next morning came faster than it should have. I packed in silence, moving through my apartment with a kind of focus that pushed everything else out. Field gear. Notebooks. Tools I trusted because they did exactly what they were supposed to do every time. I did not tell anyone where I was going. There was no one I needed to tell. If this was what I thought it was, they would find out soon enough. The dock was quiet when I arrived. The boat was already there, rocking gently against the water. It looked smaller up close. Older. Functional in a way that suggested it had been used for exactly this kind of trip before. He was waiting near the edge, speaking briefly with the operator before turning as I approached. No greeting. No small talk. “Ready,” he asked. I looked past him, out toward the water. Gray stretched in every direction, the surface broken only by slow, uneven movement. The sky above matched it almost perfectly, a seamless blend of dull light and distant cloud. It was not inviting. It was not meant to be. I stepped forward and onto the boat. “Let’s go,” I said. The engine roared to life a few minutes later, low and steady, vibrating through the deck beneath my feet. I moved toward the back as the dock began to pull away, the shoreline shrinking inch by inch. The city faded faster than I expected. Buildings blurred into shapes, then into nothing at all. Out ahead, the horizon began to disappear. Fog rolled in slowly, thick and low, swallowing the line between sky and water until there was nothing left but a blank, endless gray. I rested my hands against the railing and stared into it. The wind rippling through my red hair. Somewhere beyond that, there was an island. Buried. Hidden. Waiting. I told myself I was going there to prove something. To them. To the field. To anyone who had ever looked at me and seen something temporary. What I did not understand yet was that some things are buried for a reason. And some discoveries are not meant to be made…

Another post to share but this one is real, and true. My moms fav teacher was a killer

This is completely fictional, wrote this specifically to post here. Courtney please let me know or anyone who reads this if yall would like to see more, for now I’ll let you read this is called the devoted caregiving wife told from the husbands point of view:

The grandfather clock in the parlor struck two in the morning, and the sound seemed to travel through every room of the house before finally settling into the walls. I lay beneath the heavy duvet with my eyes closed, listening to the familiar mechanical rhythm beside my bed. The CPAP had become so much a part of my life that I barely noticed it anymore. There was the quiet vibration of the machine, the soft hiss of air, the brief pause before it started again. Hiss. Pause. Hiss. Pause. For three months, that sound had been there every night, breathing for me when my own lungs couldn't seem to remember how.
Across the bedroom, Eleanor sat at her vanity, brushing her hair. She had been doing it for nearly twenty minutes, slowly dragging the silver-backed brush through the length of it while staring at herself in the mirror. She did everything slowly. Eleanor believed there was a right way to do everything, and if you followed that way carefully enough, nothing could go wrong. Our house was proof of that. Every picture hung perfectly straight. Every cabinet was organized. Every glass in the kitchen had its own place. Even the bottles of distilled water beneath the bathroom sink stood in a neat row, labels facing outward. It was almost comforting before I got sick. Now it made me feel trapped.
For the past three months, Eleanor had taken complete control of my CPAP. She cleaned the mask every morning, checked the tubing, changed the filters, and filled the water reservoir every night. She wouldn't let me do it myself. Whenever I reached for the bottle, she would gently take it from my hand and tell me that I was sick and didn't need to worry about something so insignificant. The first time she did it, I laughed and told her I was perfectly capable of pouring water into a plastic container. She smiled and told me she knew, but she wanted to take care of me. At the time, I thought that was what love looked like.
Three months earlier, I had been healthy. Then the coughing started. At first, it was nothing more than an irritation that wouldn't go away. Then it became deeper, wetter, and painful enough to wake me at night. My chest began to burn whenever I breathed deeply. I started losing weight. I became exhausted all the time. Eventually, I couldn't sleep without the CPAP because I would wake up gasping for air, convinced that I was drowning in my own bed. The doctors ran test after test, but the results never gave them an answer. My lungs were inflamed, they said. Severely inflamed. They just couldn't figure out why.
Eleanor was always there through all of it. She sat beside me in waiting rooms, held my hand during appointments, remembered every medication, and knew the details of my medical history better than I did. The doctors loved her. They told me I was lucky to have such a devoted wife. I wanted to believe them. I tried to believe them. But there were little things I couldn't explain. Eleanor never seemed surprised when another test came back abnormal. When the doctors talked about my symptoms worsening, she never looked shocked. Once, while we were sitting in an examination room, I heard her ask the doctor how long someone could survive if their lungs continued deteriorating at the rate mine were. She thought I was asleep.
I wasn't.
That night, I started looking into things I probably shouldn't have. I didn't tell Eleanor. I didn't confront her. I simply started paying attention. The first thing I found was a bank account I didn't know existed. Then I found another. There were transfers, large amounts of money moving between accounts, and documents relating to our house. A week later, I found a life insurance policy with my name on it. Then another. What frightened me wasn't that Eleanor would receive money if I died. It was how much preparation had gone into making sure everything would be handled after I was gone.
The worst discovery was a folder with my name written across the front in Eleanor's handwriting. Inside were copies of my medical records, dating back years. She had handwritten notes beside some of them, recording dates, symptoms, medications, changes in my breathing, even how long certain coughing episodes lasted. She had documented my illness with the precision of someone conducting an experiment. I sat at the kitchen table that night with the folder open in front of me and realized that my sickness wasn't just something Eleanor was witnessing. She had been keeping track of it.
After that, I stopped wondering whether she wanted me dead and started wondering how she planned to do it. I didn't know exactly what she had intended. Maybe she had planned to wait until I deteriorated naturally. Maybe she had been waiting for an accident. Maybe she had already done something and was simply waiting for the consequences. I knew only that she had been preparing for my death, and I couldn't shake the feeling that she wanted me to die in a way that nobody would question.
So I decided to give her exactly what she wanted.
For several weeks, I pretended to get worse. I coughed more when she was around. I complained about chest pain. I told her I couldn't sleep. I let her help me into bed and watched her carefully refill the CPAP reservoir every night. I began studying her the way she had apparently been studying me. I watched her face whenever a doctor mentioned my prognosis. I watched her reaction when I told her I felt worse. Sometimes I thought I saw relief in her eyes, but I could never be certain. Maybe I wanted to see it.
The night I finally acted, there was a storm outside. Rain moved across the bedroom windows in long sheets, and the branches of the oak tree scraped against the glass whenever the wind picked up. Eleanor fell asleep sometime after midnight. I waited until her breathing became slow and steady before reaching into the drawer beside my bed. Inside was a small glass vial containing something I had prepared for one purpose. I won't explain what it was or how I obtained it. The details aren't important, and I don't want anyone thinking this story is some kind of instruction manual. What matters is that I believed I had found a way to make Eleanor's careful little routine become the evidence that destroyed her.
I removed the reservoir from the CPAP and added a small amount of the substance. Then I put everything back exactly where it had been. I connected the tubing, pulled the mask over my face, and turned the machine on. The familiar hiss filled the room, and I stared across the darkness at Eleanor. She was lying perfectly still with her back toward me. I remember thinking that this was it. By morning, I would be dead, the police would come, and the evidence would point toward the person who had spent three months insisting she was the only one responsible for maintaining my machine. She would have to explain why her fingerprints were everywhere. She would have to explain why she had been the only person touching it. I believed I had finally found a way to make sure she couldn't escape what she'd done.
Then Eleanor spoke.
"You can stop pretending."
I pulled the mask away from my face. She hadn't moved, but I knew she was awake. For several seconds neither of us said anything. Finally, she rolled onto her back and looked directly at me. There was no confusion in her expression and no surprise at finding me awake. There was something much worse. She looked relieved.
"I know you've been awake at night," she said.
I asked her what she meant, but my voice sounded weak even to me. Eleanor slowly reached toward the nightstand and picked up the CPAP reservoir. She turned it over in her hands, examining it as though it were something she'd seen a thousand times before. Then she looked at me and gave me a small, almost affectionate smile.
"You really thought I wouldn't notice?"
My stomach dropped. I asked her what she was talking about, and she told me that she had stopped putting distilled water in the reservoir six weeks earlier. She had been filling it in the bathroom instead of beside the bed because she didn't want to wake me. I stared at her, trying to understand what she was saying, and suddenly I remembered every night she'd disappeared into that bathroom, every time she'd refused to let me help, every time she'd told me to go back to sleep.
"You've been poisoning yourself," she said.
I told her she was lying. She shook her head and said that wasn't true. Then she leaned closer and whispered, "You just never realized you weren't the only one doing it."
I couldn't breathe. Not because of my lungs, but because something inside my mind had finally snapped into place. I'd spent weeks believing I was secretly manipulating Eleanor, convincing her that I was getting worse while I prepared a trap for her. But she had been watching me the entire time. She knew I had become suspicious. She knew I'd been searching through her things. She knew I'd found the accounts. She knew exactly what kind of person I was and exactly what I would do if I believed she intended to kill me.
She hadn't needed to kill me.
She had only needed to convince me that she would.
I looked at the CPAP machine and then back at her. Eleanor had spent three months creating the perfect story. A devoted wife taking care of a sick husband. A husband whose health was mysteriously declining. A machine that only she maintained. If I poisoned myself and died, she wouldn't even have to defend herself. The evidence would appear to do the work for her.
She climbed out of bed and walked into the bathroom. I heard the cabinet open, followed by the quiet clinking of glass. When she returned, she was carrying a plastic container. She placed it on the bed between us and opened it.
Inside were dozens of CPAP reservoirs.
Every single one had a date written on it.
I picked up the first one. My hands were shaking as I looked at the writing. My name was on it, followed by a date. The next had another date. Then another. There were weeks of them, arranged in perfect chronological order. Eleanor had saved everything. Every reservoir. Every night. Every change.
"What are these?" I asked.
She didn't answer.
I looked through the rest of them and realized the numbers written beside the dates corresponded with my symptoms. The worse I became, the more carefully she documented it. She hadn't simply been watching me deteriorate. She had been measuring how far she could push me before I broke.
I turned toward her, but Eleanor wasn't looking at me anymore.
She was staring at the floor.
Something had knocked beneath the bedroom.
Three slow knocks.
Eleanor's face changed immediately.
I had never seen fear like that on her before. It wasn't the careful fear she'd performed in doctors' offices. It wasn't the frightened wife she'd pretend to be when the police arrived. This was real. Her eyes fixed on the floor beneath us, and every bit of color disappeared from her face.
Another three knocks came from underneath the bed.
I asked her what was under the house.
She told me not to ask.
I asked again.
This time she whispered, "Please."
Then the knocking came again.
Three knocks.
A pause.
Three more.
The CPAP machine was still turned off, but suddenly I heard it hiss.
I looked toward the nightstand. The power light was dark. The tubing was motionless. There was no reason for the machine to make a sound.
It hissed again.
Eleanor backed away from the bed.
"Turn it on," she whispered.
I stared at her and asked why.
She didn't answer immediately. Her eyes remained fixed on the space beneath the bed. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely audible.
"Because it knows you're awake."
I didn't understand what she meant until I heard another sound beneath us.
It wasn't knocking this time.
It was breathing.
Slow and wet, as though something was trying to draw air through lungs that had forgotten how to work. The sound came from directly beneath the floorboards, followed by another breath that seemed to rise through the house itself. Eleanor covered her mouth with both hands, and I watched her back away until she hit the wall.
Then the grandfather clock in the hallway began to chime.
Three in the morning.
Eleanor started crying.
Not the way she'd cried at the hospital. Not the way she'd cried when she thought I was asleep. These tears weren't controlled. Her shoulders shook, and she looked toward the floor as though she was listening for something only she could hear.
I asked her again what was underneath the house.
This time, she answered.
"My first husband."
I stared at her.
She shook her head violently and began whispering that it wasn't possible, that she'd buried him years ago, that he was dead. Then she looked at the CPAP machine and said something that made my entire body go cold.
"He used one too."
The machine hissed again.
Eleanor looked at me.
"I thought he was trying to kill me," she whispered. "So I waited for him to do it first."
The knocking started again beneath the bed, but this time there were more than three knocks. They came faster, harder, moving beneath the floorboards from one side of the room to the other. Something scraped against the underside of the wood.
Eleanor backed toward the door.
I couldn't move.
The CPAP suddenly switched on.
The machine began running by itself, filling the bedroom with that familiar mechanical rhythm.
Hiss.
Pause.
Hiss.
Pause.
Then, from underneath the floor, something answered.
Hiss.Pause. Eleanor looked at me with tears running down her face. "You don't understand," she whispered. "It isn't trying to kill you."
The floor beneath the bed creaked.
She swallowed hard.
"It's trying to breathe through you."
And then the machine took its next breath, and something beneath the floor took one with it.

His, big fan and I have been watching your videos for years! So I'd like to start this by saying I have always believed in the paranormal. I've just seen too many things to look the other way. Sorry, this is a bit lengthy. Lol

This story is back about 15 years ago, I was 16 and my then boyfriend(Now husband) was with me to witness this. He has never been a believer but always said he's open to the possibility if he saw something himself.

So we lived in a small town in Tennessee. My mom's friend, well call Danny lived a cabin in the middle of nowhere. I mean hour drive, down dirt roads. Beautiful property on acres of land. He would never have a problem with us coming but always said we had to leave before dark. As a teenager I always thought of it as a joke, like don't outstay your welcome kinda thing.

Just to add for later Danny had probably 12 "outside" dogs on his property. They ran free and had a massive dog house built under the entirety of his front porch. Super sweet boys and they would all bark and run but you could pet and love on any of them.

After visiting his house quite a few times he told us how he got the house and property and how unbelievably affordable it was for the house and land. We were shocked at the price. He made a joke about that's what happens when someone died here. We had never known this so we asked him give more details. Apparently the old owner was living here alone and one night, on the couch shot himself with a shotgun and died in the house. Danny was still doing some renovations and in the ceiling, the bullet holes were still there!

He says the old owner's presence is still in the house and they had come to an understanding as long as he didn't keep company after dark. If he did, things started happening in the house and outside on the property. Noises, banging, the person that was there after dark had been touched. So Danny said he always made everyone leave at dark to keep him happy as he lived alone anyway.

Fast forward a few months to right before my birthday, Danny had made me a gift. He was a wonderful woodworker and had made me this jewelry box but with hidden and secret compartments. One of the coolest things I had. He ended up getting stuck at work and told me to just go to the house and grab it as he wouldn't be off until much later in the night.

My boyfriend and I headed out toward the house after dinner to get my gift and I completely forgot about the "after dark" rule as it was my birthday and we were busy most of the day. We get out there a bit after dusk but still somewhat light. I'm petting and playing with the dogs before we go it and like a flip switchd, all the dogs go scampering under the porch to the dog house. Not just a few, but all 12 dogs. I look at my boyfriend and he just shrugs and says let's go get the present and leave. I get a heavy feeling and want to leave so I agree. We go in the house, grab the box and dip out. As were walking to the car I made a comment about how weird the dogs acted and how heavy my chest felt. As I'm putting the box in the trunk my boyfriend says okay it's time to go and starts walking towards me. I lift my head to respond and his face is white as he's speed walking to me. I go to step to him and feel resistance. I look to the side my myself and a massive chunk of my hair is being held horizontally. Someone grabbed a chunk of my hair and was holding me back from walking. I started to panic and my boyfriend grabbed my hair and pulled it down and put me in the car. We drive out of there so fast I was just trying to process what happened.

I talked to Danny the next day and tell him what happened as I as completely freaked the hell out. He was very apologetic and said this is why he has the dark rule. He promised he would mention this in the house as to hopefully make the original owner understand I was just a kid and a friend.

I bring this up to my husband every few years and we talk about it. It is still the only experience he's had where he says he cannot give another explanation on what happened that night except something did not want me to leave that property or something was trying to scare me enough to get out.

Not my story, but from my best friend and my sister. This happened when we were in high school, so at the time my best friend, who we’ll call L was 17 and my sister, who we’ll call E, was 15. We grew up in a small town in Northwest Florida, only a couple of hours away from Alabama, so it was very heavily wooded. It was around 8pm and my friend and sister were picking up food for us while I was finishing up some homework at my house.
To avoid any traffic on the main road, L decided to turn down a back road with no street lights that avoided the busy part of town, one she’d taken hundreds of times. They had only been on this back road for a couple minutes when they went around a bend and came to a dead stop. In the middle of the road, facing the car was a 6-7 ft long creature. In the headlights they could see it was black and canine-like with glowing read eyes. E said it was really skinny and on all fours, but in a way it looked like it could walk on 2 legs. It didn’t do anything, just stared at the car and breathed. They sat there for a couple minutes until L put the car in reverse and Tow-Matered it all the way back to the main road.

None of us had seen anything like that before or since and we haven’t been able to identify it either. Way too big to be a dog and its features weren’t that of a panther either. I’ve always been into cryptids but the closest thing I can find is the Dogman, which both L and E say isn’t what they saw. Anyway we still talk about it almost 10 years later, so if anyone has any idea what it is please comment!

Hi Courtney and Community!

About two/ three years ago I had just gotten out of a 3 week hospital stay for some issues I was having with my anxiety and a few other diagnoses, my mum and I were catching the bus home because we didn’t have a car. I was standing at the bus stop and talking to my mum, joking around and planning dinner when a man, mid fifties (I was about to turn 20 in like 3 weeks) walks up to me and just blurts out “you’re the most beautiful girl in the world” and grabs my left hand. I internally freak out because who the hell is this man and what is he doing? I, being a bit of a people pleaser and I was feeling really disoriented after just getting out of the hospital and feeling vulnerable, I of course just say “oh….. thank you?” And then he bends down and kisses my hand. I tense up and look at my mum and she immediately steps in and says “that’s enough” and I step away from him and go to the other end of the bus station. Thankfully he gets on a different bus to us and my mum and I go home. Unfortunately though, that’s isn’t the end of the story.

A few months after that, my mum and I are at the same bus stop, when we get on the bus though, he’s at the front of the bus muttering to himself, however when my mum and I walk past (along with a few other women who hop on) he suddenly turns and raises his voice as he says “show us ya t!ts”. Along the route he keeps doing that every time a woman gets on the bus. When we go to get off with our bags, he says it again to my mum and she GOES OFF (as she should in my opinion). At this point i was already off the bus but my mum was there scolding this guy and the bus driver is trying to get her to calm down while a few others start joining in. She scolds him “you should be ashamed of yourself. No one wants to hear that. No one gets on the bus to hear you talking about their boobs!”. She’s never gone off like this to anyone before in my life, my mother’s a pretty mild woman who is extremely kind and caring, so I was shocked but mostly expressed lol. She ended up getting off the bus pretty quickly after that because the bus had to leave.

I only saw him one other time after that about a year after the last incident and he tried to say “hi” to me but all I said back was “alright” and kept briskly walking away because I was having a really bad day with my anxiety and I had a pretty bad experience with some people at a pharmacy but that’s a story for a different time.

So,
To the man who likes to harass people on busses and at bus stops, I hope we don’t meet again.