u/BlairDaniels

“Attention shoppers,” came a male voice over the intercom. “Please move to the back of the store immediately.”

“The back of the store?” I whispered to Daniel. “Don’t they mean the front of the store? To pay for our stuff?”

It was 8:50 pm – 10 minutes till closing time. We’d brought our two kids out on this late-night Walmart excursion in the hopes of burning off some energy; instead, they’d just thrown tantrums for new Legos and Hot Wheels. It was a disaster.

But apparently, the disaster was just beginning.

“Please move to the back of the store immediately,” the voice repeated overhead. “This is not a drill.”

I glanced around—but the other shoppers were just as confused as I was. An old lady looked up at the ceiling, scrunching her face. “What the hell?” a dark-haired woman asked her boyfriend, pushing a cart full of garden supplies.

“Didn’t you hear?” an older man said, leaning over his cart of bottled water and canned food. “We’re in a tornado watch. One touched down in Sauerville.”

A tornado? It was definitely storming outside. I’d seen the black clouds roll in from the east earlier. But it didn’t look that bad.

“Do not stay out in the open. I repeat—do NOT stay out in the open.”

There was a pause. Then, an explosion of sound, as everyone began to mobilize. Carts rolling, panicked voices, feet slapping on the floor.

No. No no no. This can’t be happening…

I hurried down the toy aisle, Tucker in my arms, Daniel and Jackson following me. Three zig-zaggy turns, and then we were in the electronics area. I glanced at the TVs on the wall—

And pictured the four of us, crushed underneath them.

“Stay away from windows and doors,” the voice continued on the loudspeaker. “And do NOT attempt to exit the store.”

“Is this—is it safe here?”

Daniel shook his head. “Big open areas aren’t good. I’m going to check in back, see if there’s a break room or something. You stay here, okay?”

I nodded.

Arms shaking, I sat down on the ground between two shelves of video games. Tucker sucked on a bottle in my arms while Jackson began to giggle. “Is the tornado going to hit the store? And everything will fly around, real fast?” he asked with a big stupid grin on his face.

“I don’t know.”

A tornado. A real-life tornado, like you see in the movies, plowing through our town. It was so… unfathomable. We were New York natives, transplanted here to Indiana only six months ago. I’d never been in a tornado watch my entire life.

Daniel jogged back into view. “Everything’s locked up,” he said, as he joined me on the floor. “But listen. Fairview’s a big town. The chances that it’ll hit this Walmart… I think we’ll be okay.”

“I never should’ve brought us here.”

“You didn’t know. None of us did.” He wrapped his arm around me. “They should’ve warned us. Like an emergency alert on our phones. Or a tornado siren, or something.”

The voice overhead rang out again through the store.

“Do not stay out in the open. Do not make yourself visible. That includes security cameras—please move to a spot that is not visible to any cameras.”

I frowned. “What does that have to do with tornadoes?”

A feeling of unease, in the pit of my stomach. I glanced up, and saw several black globes descending from the ceiling, hiding the cameras within.

“I guess we should listen to them and get out of sight,” I whispered.

I grabbed Jackson’s hand, Daniel picked up Tucker, and we jogged out into the center aisle. The store was an eerie sight—abandoned shopping carts, askew in the aisle, full of everything from pies to batteries to plants. Footsteps echoed around the store from people unseen, as they found their new hiding places.

We dodged a shopping cart full of soda, ran through kitchenwares, and then stopped in the Easter decoration aisle. There was a camera in the central corridor, but as long as we stayed in the middle of Easter aisle, we’d be invisible.

The four of us crouched on the floor, next to some demented-looking Easter bunnies. “I’m hungry,” Jackson whined.

“Sssshhh.”

“Mommy—”

I grabbed a bag of colorful chocolate eggs and ripped it open. “Here. Candy. Happy?” I whispered, thrusting them into his hands. Then I leaned back against the metal shelves, panting.

But I didn’t have long to rest. A mechanical whine overhead, and then the voice came through the speakers again.

“Keep away from aisles with food. If you have food with you, leave it and move to a new hiding place. If you have any open wounds, cover them with clothing.”

What… the fuck?

That had nothing to do with keeping safe in a tornado.

“We should make a run for it,” Daniel whispered to me, starting to stand.

“But… the tornado—”

“I don’t think there is a tornado. Listen. Do you hear any wind?”

I listened. But all I heard was silence. No howling wind, no shaking ground, no projectiles clanging against the metal roof.

“Maybe… maybe it’s still coming. I know what they’re saying doesn’t make sense but to go outside—”

“We need to get out of here. Now.” He grabbed Jackson’s hand as he held Tucker in his arms. “Come on.”

“Daniel, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I whispered.

But the next words from the intercom changed my mind.

“Assume a fetal position and place your hands on your head. Close your eyes and do not open them for any reason.”

“Let’s go.”

We broke into a sprint and ran down the central aisle, cameras be damned. The front door appeared in front of us—a little black rectangle looming in the distance.

And as we got closer, I saw Daniel was right.

There was a tree at the border of the parking lot, under a streetlamp.

It was perfectly still.

We continued running, past the clothing area, past the snacks lined up at the checkout lines. I ran towards the sliding glass doors as fast as my legs would carry me. Almost there. Almost there. Almost—

The doors didn’t open.

“No. No, no, no.”

Daniel slammed his body against the door. It rattled underneath him. I tried to squeeze my fingers into the gap between them, to try and pull them apart.

They didn’t budge.

“They… they locked us in,” I whispered.

“I want to go home,” Jackson said. Tucker was beginning to fuss too, making little noises like he was about to start full-on wailing.

I turned around—

And that’s when I saw him.

A Walmart employee.

He was sitting on the ground at the end of one of the checkout aisles. Facing away from us. Wearing the familiar blue vest with a golden starburst.

“Hey! Let us out!”

He didn’t reply.

“Did you hear me? I don’t care if there’s a fucking tornado. Unlock the door and let us out!”

Again, he said nothing.

But in the silence, I could hear something. A wet, smacking sound. I stared at the man, slightly hunched over, still facing away from me.

Was he… eating… something?

The speaker overhead crackled to life.

“Attention. Please do NOT talk to any Walmart employees.”

My blood ran cold.

The smacking sound stopped. And then, slowly, the man began to stand. He placed his palms on the conveyor belt and pushed up—and I could see that they were stained with blood. I backed away—but my legs felt like they were moving through a vat of honey.

No, no, no—

Fingers locked around my arm and yanked.

“Come on!” Daniel shouted.

I sprinted after him, deeper into the store. Tucker stared at me over his shoulder, and Jackson ran as fast as his little feet would take him. I was vaguely aware of the slap-slap-slap sound behind me, but I didn’t dare look back.

Daniel ran into the clothing area and I swayed, dodging circular racks of T-shirts and wooden displays of baby clothes. He skidded to a stop and ducked into the dressing room area. “In here!” he whispered, motioning at one of the rooms.

We piled inside and locked the door.

“Daddy,” Jackson started.

“You listen to me very carefully,” I said, crouching to his level. “You have to be absolutely silent. Do not say a word. Okay?”

Jackson looked at me, then Daniel—then he nodded and sat down on the floor.

“I’m going to try to call 911,” Daniel whispered, transferring Tucker to me and pulling out his phone. He tapped at the screen—then frowned.

“What?”

“We don’t… we don’t seem to have any service. I don’t—”

Thump.

I grabbed Jackson and pulled him away from the door. The four of us huddled in the corner. I held my breath.

Thump.

Under the gap of the dressing room door—men’s feet in black shoes. They slowly took a step forward, deeper into the dressing room.

“Don’t… move,” I whispered, holding Jackson.

The man took another step.

Don’t make a sound. Don’t move. Don’t—

Tucker let out a soft cry.

The man stopped. His feet turned, pointing at us. No. No, no, no. Tucker let out another cry—louder this time. My nails dug into Daniel’s hand. No—

A hand appeared. It slowly pressed against the floor, stained with blood. And then his knees appeared, as he lowered himself down to the gap.

No.

Could he fit under? The gap wasn’t small—it was like the stall door to a bathroom. If he flattened himself against the floor… there’s a chance he could fit under.

I watched in horror as his stomach came into view. His blue Walmart vest, as he lowered his body to the floor. Then he pushed his arm under the gap and blindly swept it across the floor.

As if feeling for us.

This is it. We’re going to die.

And then he lowered his head.

His face. Oh, God, there was something horribly wrong with his face. He smiled up at us with a smile that was impossibly wide, showing off blood-stained teeth. His skin was so pale it was nearly blue. And his eyes… they were milky white, without pupils or irises.

I opened my mouth to scream—

“Attention shoppers,” the voice began overhead.

No no no—

“Please make your way to the front of the store and make your final purchases. We will be closing in ten minutes.”

… What?

And then—before I could react—something unseen jerked the man out of view.

A strange dragging sound followed. As if someone was dragging his body out of the dressing room area. I stared at the door, shaking, as Tucker’s cries rang in my ears.

But he didn’t come back.

And within ten minutes, the usual hubbub of Walmart returned. Voices. Footsteps. Shopping cart wheels rolling along the floor.

Shaking, I finally got up and unlocked the door.

The store looked completely normal. People were lined up at the cash registers, placing their goods on the conveyor belts. Employees were scanning tags, printing receipts. People walked towards the glass doors, and when they did—they slid open.

As we slowly walked towards the exit, I spotted the older man who’d warned us about the tornado earlier. “What—what was that?” I asked, unable to keep my voice from shaking.

He shrugged. “I guess the tornado missed us! What a miracle, huh?”

Giving us a smile, he disappeared out the glass doors and into the night.

Marissa and I were two drinks in when we started trolling r/AskReddit. “Oh, wait, I got a good one,” she said, grabbing my laptop.

>u/throwaway1122333xa

>Dead people of Reddit, how did you die?

I looked at her. “Seriously?”

Up until then, our questions were along the lines of what 12-year-olds might post, despite the fact that we were in our late 20s. This was a rather macabre turn of events, although for Marissa—who survived on a steady diet of B-rate horror flicks and Diet Coke—it was to be expected.

“It’s funny because they can’t reply if they’re dead,” she explained.

“The mods are just gonna remove it.”

But at 20 minutes in, the mods still hadn’t removed our post. We’d accumulated several comments, which were basically what you’d expect:

Jokes:

>u/[redacted]

>I died in 2008, when your mom sat on my face.

Copypastas and similar:

>u/[redacted]

>I’m actually a coroner and it’s well-documented that the bodies are still “living” for moments or even minutes after they’re pronounced dead. Someone could be semi-comatose and still be able to answer how they died. The best example of this was in 2014 when Hell’s Demon threw Ghost Rider out of the ring and he flew twenty feet into the crowd!

And bots.

>u/[redacted]

>That’s a great question. Many of us wonder what the afterlife holds. It’s not curiosity – it’s a quest to know your purpose.

But then we saw it. One comment at the bottom, posted 3 minutes ago.

>u/[redacted]

>Car accident.

Marissa grabbed the laptop from me and hit Reply. Pics or it didn’t happen, she began typing.

“Dude, you can’t post that, everyone has AI now,” I said.

“I thought they didn’t allow you to generate gruesome images. Like a car accident.”

“Yeah, but they could just do, like, a car on fire…” I sighed and grabbed the laptop from her: 

>u/throwaway1122333xa

>Receipts?

Seconds after, the notification bell showed a red “1”. When Marissa refreshed the page, the reply appeared, with a single URL.

>u/[redacted]

>www.kwbtv.com/2026-02-08/[redacted]

A local news article loaded, showing a photo of a small sedan crumpled at the base of an enormous tree. “Driver dies in early Sunday accident on 217,” I read. “It doesn’t name the victim.”

“Oh, that’s clever. Finding some accident where the driver’s anonymous and just saying you’re that person,” Marissa said. “Check their post history.”

I clicked, expecting the posts to be hidden. But instead, the profile was open, and it looked like the only two posts they’d made were the replies to us.

“Huh, weird.” Marissa grabbed the laptop and typed:

>u/throwaway1122333xa

>Sorry you’re dead. What’s the afterlife like?

Within a minute, they replied.

>u/[redacted]

>cold and dark.

A chill went down my spine. I glanced at Marissa. She wasn’t smiling anymore either, her face lit in the blues from my computer screen. “Okay, this is stupid. This guy’s just fucking with us.”

“Nonono, wait.” So you think you’re in hell? What do you see? I began to type. But before I could hit reply, Marissa yanked the laptop out of my hands.

“No no no.” She erased my answer and wrote:

>u/throwaway112345

>Prove it.

The reply came within seconds.

>u/[redacted]

>look out your window.

Instantly, both of us turned to the window. I only saw the reflection of our faces, blue-lit and ghostly, reflecting on the glass. I ran over and, after a quick glance outside, pulled the blinds down.

“Was someone out there?” Marissa whispered.

“Not that I saw. Come on, that’s like the classic scary Reddit response. ‘Look behind you!’ ‘Look out your window, I’m watching you!’ You’re right. This guy’s fucking with us.”

“But what if…”

“We are posting on a throwaway account. There’s no way some random person on the internet could know where we live.”

Her eyes went to the screen—and she paled. “They replied.”

“What? What did they say?”

She turned the laptop to me.

>u/[redacted]

>why did you do that?

“That could mean anything,” I said.

“They saw you close the blinds!”

“They did not! Come on, even if they could somehow find us, unless they live like a mile away they couldn’t get here that fast!”

“What if it’s a ghost?”

“A ghost using the internet? Really?”

I stared at her, chest heaving. She looked back at me, wide-eyed.

“No more drinks,” I said, grabbing the bottle of whiskey and stowing it under the bed. “Come on. It’s late. We should go to sleep.”

“Caroline…”

“What?”

She was staring at something over my shoulder.

I whipped around. Through the tiny gaps in the blinds, I could see… the faint glow of red and blue lights flashing.

Like a police car was stopped on my street.

Like there’d been an accident.

Shit.

My heart pounded in my chest as I took a step towards the window. Then another. “Don’t look,” Marissa said in a small voice behind me.

I parted the blinds—

Peered out—

Nothing.

No one was there.

The street was dark, completely, save for the single streetlamp. “There’s nothing there,” I said, stepping away from the window.

“They replied,” Marissa said in a small voice behind me.

>u/[redacted]

>did you read the article?

She clicked back to the tab, that was still on the link they’d sent. Drivers die in early Sunday accident on 217. She scanned the website, biting her lip.

“Ignore it,” I said.

“Okay.”

We went out to the kitchen and drank some water. The room wasn’t spinning so fast and I felt the first waves of sobriety kick in. With it, the whole thing seemed even more stupid. Of course some troll was going to take our bait and reply to our question. Of course.

We were just drunk enough to fall for it and scare ourselves shitless.

What about the police car lights?

Must’ve just been a police car just driving by.

This is a dead end street, idiot.

I tried to slow my thoughts and forget about the whole thing as we walked back to my bedroom. “Want to watch a movie?” I asked, opening the laptop.

“Sure.”

Then I froze.

We’d left the Reddit page open. And in bright white text blazing across the screen, I saw we had five replies.

>u/[redacted]

>did you read the article?

>did you read the article?

>did you read the article?

>did you read the article?

>did you read the article?

Before I could stop her, Marissa grabbed the laptop and wrote out a response.

>u/throwaway112345

>Yes. We read the article. We know you died in a car accident. I’m really sorry that happened to you. Please leave us alone now.

“We should be ignoring them! You’re just fanning the fire!”

“I want them to stop!”

“And they will, if we just ignore them!”

There was a reply waiting for us. With shaking hands, Marissa clicked it.

>u/[redacted]

>Good.

“What the fuck does that mean?” she asked.

I grabbed the laptop from her. Scrolled up and clicked on that stupid fucking article again. Clearly there was something wrong with it, if they wanted us to click on it so much. Viruses or a scam or something else entirely. I’d rather know now.

But when the article loaded… it was different.

The image wasn’t of a sedan anymore. It was a silver SUV. In fact, it looked awfully similar to… my SUV.

“Wasn’t it a sedan before?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t really look,” Marissa said.

“That looks like my car.”

“I guess.”

I glanced at the headline. Drivers die in early Sunday accident on 214. The article still didn’t name a victim.

I turned to Marissa. “Wait… 214? Like, a few miles from here? Did it always say that?”

“No. It said 217.”

A horrible feeling settled in my gut. I turned back to the laptop—

Every muscle in my body froze.

The headline had changed again.

Local women die in early Sunday accident on 214

I blinked—

Local women die in early Sunday accident on Morning Glory Lane

Local women die in early Sunday home invasion—

A photo of my house, the window broken, police cars parked outside—

But the article still didn’t name victims, and before it could change again I closed out of the window. Out of Reddit. Everything.

And I swear I heard the soft rustle of footsteps outside the window, receding away from the house.

***

We called the cops. There were footsteps in the mud, sure enough, leading away from the house. Not much they could do about it—there wasn’t an actual break-in, and it was too muddy for the footprints to be examined and matched.

They advised us to put up security cameras and told us they’d patrol the street.

I don’t think that’s the end of it, though.

I keep waking up to shooting pain in my chest. And a dark red mark beneath my collarbone, about an inch long.

Like I’ve been stabbed.

Yes, I keep waking up to this pain at exactly 2:23 AM each morning. Each Sunday morning.

I checked my browser history… and that was the exact time Marissa and I clicked on the link.

Each week the pain gets worse. I don’t know how much longer I have. Or if it’ll never kill me, and I’ll just keep waking up to shooting pain.

But I do know this.

Be careful what links you click on.

And don’t ever post a question online, asking the dead how they died.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up to an alert no parent wants to see.

RABIES ALERT

Animals in the vicinity of Brookhaven in Franklin Township have been testing positive for rabies at a rate higher than expected. We recommend the following tips for staying safe:

Do not touch wild animals.

Stay away from wild animals, especially raccoons, skunks, bats, and foxes.

If you see any animal exhibiting the following symptoms, contact Franklin Animal Control immediately: [REDACTED].

We only moved to Brookhaven two months ago. It seemed like the perfect neighborhood. Safe. A little off the beaten path, out in the woods, but that was the way we liked it.

“But, like, a rabies outbreak?” I whispered to my husband David as he put frozen waffles in the toaster. “Has that ever even happened before?!”

“Bill says there’s an alert every summer. It’s just that time of year,” he muttered to me. “Like, it’s like Alpha Gal and Zika and all the things. You know, people are playing outside, animals out of hibernation…”

“Okay, but we never got anything like this is Sawyerville.”

“Yeah, 'cause they sprayed a hundred pounds of insecticide every year.”

“Maybe that’s better than rabies.”

“Rabies is really rare.”

He was right. As I brought up Google, it told me only 3 Americans die of rabies per year. A hundred thousand, though, got the rabies vaccine after an exposure.

You couldn’t wait for symptoms.

If you already had symptoms, you were dead.

So we just get the vaccine if a wild animal bites us. That’s fine. We’re fine. And we’ll fence in the backyard like we’d been planning to do anyway.

Unfortunately, our problem was not in the raccoons or skunks or whatever was in the woods.

We had bats.

I’d never looked for them before. It never even occurred to me. But that night I looked out the window, and saw no less than ten fucking bats swooping out of the eaves of our family room.

You will likely not feel it if a bat bites you, the website read, next to an up-close photo of the horrible, smushed-pug face of a little brown bat. Simply picking up a bat, or finding one in your home, is an exposure.

If you find a bat in your home, and cannot capture it to test it for rabies, immediately head to the nearest ER to receive the rabies vaccine.

I set my phone down and froze, staring out at the darkening sky, and the little silhouettes swooping and swerving mere feet from the window.

No, no, no.

***

“Well bats, you know, can’t be removed between July 1 and August 15. That’s the roosting season, and the pups can’t fly yet, so they will die if we install the grates and their mothers can’t return to feed them.”

“You… you can’t remove them?”

“Not until August 15, no.”

“Listen. I have a five year old girl and a seven year old boy with autism. They will not know if a bat bites them.”

“It’s federal law, ma’am. They’re a protected species.”

Like fuck they are!

“We’re in the middle of a rabies outbreak, and you’re telling me you can’t remove the bats in my house?!”

“It’s not a rabies outbreak, it’s just that time of year.”

“What happens if they get in the house?”

“If they’re in your living space, you need to call animal control.”

“But they could get in at any time! I can’t wait until it’s too late!”

“It’s only…twenty-two days until August 15. Just sit tight. Call animal control if you find one in your house. Try to catch it with a box or something, like a Tupperware, so they can test it and you don’t need to blow ten thousand dollars on the shots for no reason. It’ll go by fast. Promise.”

You expect me to… catch a bat… in the house… with Tupperware?

What the actual fuck?!

“So that’s it then. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Nothing you can do.”

Nothing I can do, my ass.

I’m all for the environment. But holy fuck, I’m not going to protect an entire colony of bats sitting in the eaves of my house. Risk my kids’ lives to save some baby bats. That’s right—the colony was probably a lot bigger than just ten, with all the babies sitting somewhere inside the walls, growing, waiting.

“You can go to jail if you kill them, you know,” David said behind me.

I turned away from the Amazon listing for wasp spray. “Well, I can’t just sit here and do nothing!”

“Okay. But also, if you spray them, it says they can burrow deeper into the house and actually maybe get inside,” he said as he looked at his phone. “I looked it up. They can’t chew through drywall like mice and squirrels can. If they could get in the house, they’d be in already. They’re just in the eaves or soffits or whatever. For the time being, we’re safe.”

“This is a nightmare,” I said, slamming the laptop and hiding my face in my hands.

“It could be worse. My parents, when they bought a new house, found all this black mold that the inspection missed. Had to fumigate the whole place.”

“Wait—shouldn’t the inspector have looked for bats?”

He shrugged. “They’re not in the house. Not really.”

Why am I the only one taking this seriously?!

***

We found the first bat on July 25th.

It was clinging to the outside of the chimney. I found it while the kids were playing outside. My head pounded and I screamed at them to go inside and tell David to bring out some Tupperware.

It wasn’t in the house.

But it had been where the kids were playing.

Such a small little thing I almost missed it. Wings all twisted and bony, clinging to the brick with its little claws. Fur almost blending in with the red brick. David managed to put the Tupperware over it, and drag a chair over to lean against it so it wouldn’t fall. We had captured it. Sort of.

We called animal control (who I’d put in my contacts as soon as I was done talking to the bat removal guy.) The woman reached out and grabbed it with her gloves…

And peeled it off the brick.

It was dead. Had been, for at least a few days. Fried in the heat wave.

“It probably died in the heat,” the animal control officer assured me. But I spent four sleepless nights googling, reading that rabid bats were more susceptible to heat death. Why did only one die? Not all ten?

When I got the voicemail, I felt like I was going to faint.

“The bat we removed from your home tested… negative,” the woman said, her voice sounding strange, uncertain almost. But I was barely paying attention.

The backyard was now off-limits to the kids. My husband thought I was being extreme. But the kids go out barefoot. If any of the bats were rabid, they would fall out of their roost (our FUCKING house) and be in the grass (to be trampled barefoot) or cling to the side of the house where my kids would touch it.

I cannot check every square inch of the yard for fallen bats every day. I just can’t.

***

I bought three 1-acre-rated bug zappers and set them up around the yard.

Bats eat bugs. Take away their food source, I reasoned, and they will leave.

When doing my research, Google’s AI helpfully told me “Bug zappers mostly kill beneficial insects. A better alternative to removing mosquitos from your yard is to attract bats.”

Fucking hell.

You’re killing beneficial insects! Pollinators! the results screamed at me. I’m sorry but at this point I don’t fucking care. Cut off the food source of the bats and they will go somewhere else. The end.

Do I sound unhinged?

Well, yeah. I am unhinged after finding a fucking bat on my fucking house and interrogating my children about whether they saw or touched a bat every single day.

I’m tired of telling my kids they can’t go outside and taking them on all kinds of impromptu field trips just to get them out of the house.

I’m tired of not feeling safe in my own home.

I’m tired of my husband refusing to move because it would cost too much. It would. We don’t have the money. He’s right. But we do have the money to buy bug zappers.

After having the zappers set up for a few days, I watched the house at dusk as I sat in the car in the driveway.

I watched them swoop out of a hole between the chimney and the house, plummeting down to the ground before swooping up at the last second. Their movements were wild and twitchy, every direction absolutely random as they scoured the yard for insects.

But the bug zappers hadn’t worked.

It was about a dozen, maybe more. Fucking hell.

So the next night I tried a new slant. I kept the outside lights on all night and set up a plastic owl on the deck. Owls eat them apparently. They’re afraid of owls.

Nope, did not a thing.

How to attract owls into your yard? I typed frantically into Google.

Green spaces, shelter, treeline... all things I already have.

“At least they’re not in the house yet,” David kept repeating.

He kept adding that word on the end now. Yet. Like it wasn’t a matter of if, but when.

***

After the kids went to sleep, I was in the kitchen, trying to do a quick load of dishes. As I stared out the window over the sink, into the darkness of the backyard—

Something swooped upwards, inches from the window.

I froze. Was that a…

No. It had to be a moth.

A big moth.

I turned off the faucet and walked over to the sliding glass door. My hand hovered over the light switch. Taking a deep breath, I flicked it on.

Something swooped wildly away from the light, and into the darkness.

That was a bat.

I stared out, waiting. At the scones outside, washing the deck in yellow light. The pitch blackness beyond. Nothing moved. All was still.

Maybe the light scared it away.

I turned off the light. Counted to ten. Held my breath and flicked it on.

No.

It was back. It swooped at eye level towards the glass, missing it by only an inch as its little body tilted upwards. In the lighting it looked too pale, almost gray, as its sharp wings fluttered wildly.

I watched in horror as it looped around the deck, over and over. Only three or four feet above the wood, at the level the kids would be standing. Then it wildly careened into the darkness.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Seconds later, it came back. Another few wild loops right above the deck, wings beating wildly. Why won’t it leave?!

Fuck fuck why is here?!

So close to the house?!

Right over the deck?

“David!” I yelled.

“It’s got to be rabid. Why is it doing that?!” I asked as we both stared at it, wildly swooping right over the deck.

“I don’t know. But it’s not in the living space.”

I looked at him.

“Yet,” he added.

“It might as well be! They play out there all the time!”

So now the deck was off limits. I found an old broom handle and shoved it into the groove of the glass door, so it couldn’t be easily opened.

Fuck this. Seriously.

***

One fell into the chimney.

The flue was closed, so it couldn’t get into our living space, but I could hear it frantically screeching, the thumps of its little feet as it looked for an opening.

I called animal control again. Nothing they can do if it’s in the chimney, they told me. Call back when it’s in the living space.

When.

“What if it gets in?” I sobbed to David.

“It won’t,” he replied. “Yet.”

“What do you mean, yet?!”

“It won’t get in.”

Fucking hell.

I grabbed postal tape and taped the space under the door. And all around the hinges. I made the door absolutely impenetrable to even the tiniest insect. There was no way a bat could get through.

No way.

How long does it take for a bat to die with no food or water? I typed into Google.

Three days. Three days I left the family room sealed, the crack under the door taped tight. Fuck I hated this. But at least they weren’t in the living space.

Yet.

I untaped the door and went into the family room and that fucking bat in the chimney was still alive, screeching for help, four days later.

I called the pest control companies. Can’t you come earlier than August 15? No, no, fucking no because there are laws about this and we wouldn’t want the baby bats to die in your chimney.

But there is a bat dying in my chimney right now!

It’s a baby!

Come and rescue it!

Sorry, can’t help.

What the fuck.

Only 1-3 people die from rabies in the US per year. Many more die from the diseases that mosquitos carry. The bats eat mosquitos. Statistically speaking, you’re more likely to die from having mosquitos in your yard than bats. That’s what they say, right? That’s what the internet says. The fucking pro-bat internet.

Do I sound unhinged?

I mean, they’re not in the living spaces yet.

Okay, so I’m a fucking eco-terrorist, I thought as I waited in line at Home Depot with a spool of copper mesh and a long dowel. My uncle told me that he got his bats to leave by poking copper mesh in all the holes they went into. He did it within the legal window of course. It was August eighth and I was not going to wait another week.

“It’s still alive,” I told David as I re-taped the door to the family room. I could hear it chirping frantically. “It’s been a week!”

“Maybe it’s a second one that fell in there.”

“Oh, no, no.”

That night I watched them fly out. Easily twenty-five. When they satiated their hunger and took to higher skies around ten o’clock, I went out there and shoved copper mesh into the holes.

For a split second I thought about the poor little bat babies starving to death in the cavities of the wall.

Sorry not sorry.

I’m not a monster.

They’re not in the living spaces yet.

This is an arms race.

I slept well that night. I thought I’d done it. I really did. I sealed up that hole like fucking Fort Knox. That night I snickered at the chirping coming from the family room. Soon. Soon this will all be over.

In the morning I went out to check my work.

Fuck.

The copper mesh had been busted in. Like twenty bats fucking pushed on it all at once. The metal was torn.

What… the fuck.

As I stared at the hole, that horrible black void, I heard a single chirp. I ran inside and locked the door, putting the broom handle in the rut of the sliding glass door so the kids couldn’t get out easily.

“How did they get through it?!” I asked David, my voice shaking. “How?!”

“You’re overreacting,” he said. “They’re not in the living spaces yet.”

That night I ordered wasp spray. Overnight, 4AM-11AM delivery from the Zon.

This is where I crossed the line, you know. You could apply the philosophical principle of double effect to all the other cases. I just wanted the bugs out of my yard, so I set up the zappers. I just wanted to patch up holes in my house. Killing the bats or causing them to leave was only a consequence.

Try explaining away shooting wasp spray in the hole they come out of. There’s really no explanation. I thought wasps lived there. I was trying to get wasps. But there weren’t any wasps, and any police officer or animal control person or whoever the fuck was my jailer in this case would know that.

I didn’t care.

In broad daylight, I set up a ladder and aimed that wasp spray right in the hole in the copper mesh. Got you, fuckers.

I took a deep breath—and hit the trigger.

A horrible cacophony of screeching immediately sounded from the hole. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I hurried down the ladder, the metal wobbling underneath me.

Something whizzed by my ear, missing me by a hair.

No!

I booked it and ran. The chirping behind me got louder. I didn’t look back once and made it to the door, lunging inside, closing it behind me. Only then did I look.

A single bat flew through the air, just a flash of darkness before swooping up over the roof.

That was close.

I buried the wasp spray can at the bottom of the garbage like I was hiding a body. “You okay?” David asked, but seeing me breathless.

“I’m fine.”

That night, the bats came out that night like nothing happened.

And the bat in the chimney was still fucking screeching, nine days later.

The strobe lights.

Cheap Halloween ones. Three fifty-foot extension cords. Apparently they deter and disorient bats, if I’m to believe Redditor pm-me-your-toes. Timmy and Ava spent the last two hours turning the dining room into a rave with them—at least now I know Timmy doesn’t suffer from epilepsy, I guess.

After they went to bed I methodically set them up all around the backyard, pointing them at the sky. With a deep breath, I plugged them in.

The lights flashed wildly, slightly out-of-sync with each other, against the blue siding and the dark sky. A moth flit by, seeming to move in slow motion as it flashed across the sky. I checked the time. 8:38. Almost bat time.

I stationed myself by the family room window and stared out at the darkening dusk. The sky deepened blue and then I saw it--the first bat swooping down from the eaves, like a bullet through the night sky.

It caught in the strobe lights.

Like stop-motion animation, halting and jumping in its flight. It swooped straight down and I saw its small body, its leathery bony wings stretched wide, perfectly illuminated against the darkness.

There was something horribly wrong with it.

Its wings seemed to be twisted behind itself, grotesquely. Its little body seemed bent and broken. And its eyes... its eyes were pure red, like caught in a camera flash.

Then it was gone.

That didn’t look like a normal bat.

It has to be rabid.

But it looked worse than rabid. Not just weak or aggressive or acting strangely. It looked like its bones had been broken, many times over, and yet it was still flying.

The light must’ve just caught it in a weird, split-second pose.

But it looked so wrong.

Maybe the wasp spray had hurt them. Disfigured them. Maybe they were in the slow process of dying. Or maybe it was a baby, just learning how to fly and twisting all strangely.

I watched the others swoop out, but they avoided the strobe lights, flying further into the sky where they did loops high above our house.

So maybe it deterred them, slightly.

***

I went downstairs at 2 AM to get a snack. Was up tossing and turning for hours, and now I was hungry and that was keeping me up. I grabbed a yogurt out of the fridge—but before I went back up, I looked out at the backyard and the strobe lights flashing up into the sky.

The air was still.

No bats—at least none that I could see.

Was that really all it took?

Some $5 strobe lights?!

I peered out into the darkness. Nothing. I leaned over and flicked the light switch. The lights above the deck clicked on.

At first I didn’t see anything.

Then—

“Oh God oh fuck no no no…”

They were on the side of the house.

On the deck railing.

Little brown bodies clinging on with their sinewy hands. Small as mice. Still as death. Then one twitched, and several black wings stretched out into the night. One of them flew wildly into the air, and the rest followed, bony wings breaking and twisting.

No no no.

***

“We have to get out of here!” I sobbed.

It was 3 AM. David sat on the other side of the bed, not facing me. “We can’t afford to move,” he said tiredly. “You know that.”

“They were all on the house!”

“They’re not in the living spaces yet!”

“Stop fucking saying that! They will get in the living spaces! Don’t you get it?! And then it will be too late! And the kids!”

I got up to tear him a new one.

My foot caught on something, poking out from under the bed.

What the…

I pulled it out. It was a pair of bolt cutters… and in its jaws, a little piece of tangled copper wire.

“David—”

I froze.

Oh, God.

It was coming from the wall.

An awful, high-pitched chirp. Chaotic and frantic.

I’d recognize it anywhere.

My heart dropped. “David!”

The chirping got louder. I got up and slowly stepped forward, scanning the wall for cracks and holes. Bats couldn’t chew through wall—I knew that. But if there was an opening...

Scrtch scrtch scrtch

The chirps and scratches got louder, then softer, as the bat got closer, then further away. It was going the entire width of the wall. Searching for a way out.

“Do you hear it?!”

“I don’t hear a thing.”

I stared at the wall. “Get the fuck out of my house,” I whispered under my breath, as the frantic chirps continued. I lifted a hand, shaking, and pressed it against the wall. I could feel the slightest of vibrations, imagining its little body colliding with the other side as it haphazardly flew along the inside.

We’re safe. It can’t get through walls.

The screeching sound rang out from behind me. I spun around, staring at the opposite wall.

Scree-sc-scree

In front of me now.

Oh no. Are there two?!

I spun around, listening. Scrtch-scrtch-scrtch. Coming from every fucking direction.

They can’t get in—

They’re not in the living spaces—

But then I heard a metallic thump.

Oh God Oh God—

It’s in the vents—

The kids—

I tore out of the room and ran down the hallway. Burst into Ava’s room. Asleep. I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Come on, we have to get out of here,” I said, not even sure of my plan. The bats were outside. Was it safer to stay in?!

As she groggily pulled herself up, I ran into Timmy’s room.

He was already awake.

He stood there, near the window. And there, next to him…

A small shape on the wall.

Nononono...

“Timmy,” I called. “Timmy, come here, sweetheart.”

He didn’t respond. He just stood there, standing in the dark room, facing the window.

“Timmy!”

His hand reached up towards the little shape, clinging on the wall.

“DON’T TOUCH IT!"

I lunged forward. It was too late. His little fingers wrapped around the bat, and he brought it to his chest, looking down.

We have to catch it--

Get it tested--

Oh God--

I frantically glanced around the room for something, anything, to catch it with. I grabbed a cup off the desk and started for him. “Okay, just put it in he—”

My breath caught in my throat.

Timmy was looking at me.

His eyes sparkled in the near darkness. His face was tilted down, but he was staring straight at me, from underneath his eyebrows. His lips were curled into a smile, and a thin trail of drool dripped down his chin.

No, no, no.

“They’re in the living spaces.”

I whipped around.

David was standing in the doorway, silhouetted in the darkness. His voice was low and gravelly. My heart began to pound. The bat chirped frantically in Timmy’s hands. It rang clear through my soul.

David took a step forward.

Then another.

And another.

There was something wrong with his face. Something horribly wrong. His eyes were black pits, staring hollowly at me.

“Stop—”

Those black pits began to move.

I watched in horror as two bats squirmed their way out of his eye sockets. Their black wings stretched out, flapping in the air, glistening wet with viscera like a newborn child. Their movements jerky, uncoordinated, new like a foal learning to walk.

“I couldn’t let the babies die,” David repeated, as one of the bats crawled down the side of his face, its claws burrowing into his cheek. “We had to save them.”

I turned around. Pried the screeching bat out of Timmy’s hand. David took a wobbling step forward. “The bats are in the living spaces now,” he repeated. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

He took another step—and his body wavered forward.

He fell to the ground.

And then I heard it.

Chirping. So much chirping, a horrible chorus grating on our ears. It was coming from David. The shirt on his back began to writhe and ripple, as something roiled under his skin—

“Run!” I screamed.

I got Ava and the three of us ran for the stairs. I guided the kids to the car, not looking back as the chirping became a roar. I threw the door open and we ran to the car. I saw the bats clinging to the side of the porch, dark little shapes in the moonlight, but I pretended like I didn’t see them.

We had to run.

We had to.

***

We made it to the hospital. We got our rabies shots.

Timmy seems to be okay. So does Ava. It’s been a month now and the doctor thinks they are halfway out of the woods for contracting rabies. Although it’s not rabies I’m worried about.

David’s body was never found.

There were more rabies alerts sent out to the town, that I read about online from the safety of my parents’ house hundreds of miles away.

But there is something I haven’t told anyone.

Not my parents. Not my kids.

For the past few days, I’ve been having the worst headaches. It feels like there are twin knives slicing through my brain.

Right behind my eyes.

Tonight, I left. I told everyone I’m visiting a friend for a night. I’m driving to a remote hiking trail in the state park and hiking to the cliff that overlooks a gorge.

I can’t let them, or anyone else, catch this.

As I stare at myself in the rearview mirror, I can see the flash of a little black claw curling out.

And hear the muffled chirps of something deep inside my brain.

I’ll admit it. I’ve been on edge since my husband went missing. But I swear, there is something in my attic. And it’s not my fucking imagination, like my parents keep insisting.

It started five days after he went missing. I remember it because it was a Tuesday because that’s when a new episode of our show came out and I refused to watch him without it. I refused. I was sitting on our bed with a tub of ice cream and bawling my eyes out when I heard it.

Thump.

From directly over my head.

It sounded small. Like a bat, or a mouse. Too small to be a person. Unless that person was on all fours, frozen still, tapping the ground once with a single finger.

I froze and stared at the ceiling.

There’s nothing there, I told myself. Just the house settling.

But it happened again.

The very next night. Two thumps in a row. Thu-thump. From the same area right over our bed. It sounded heavier, this time. Like someone was knocking their knuckles into the floor.

Knocking so I’d let them in.

Maybe Dad’s right. I’m just scaring myself out of my skin because of Julian being gone… But to make myself feel better, I pulled up my security camera footage from the last week. That’s what was so confusing about Julian’s disappearance. We put in the effort to make sure the entire 360-degree view around our house was covered by camera, and there wasn’t a single blind spot. And still we missed a spot, and still I woke up one morning to find the bed empty and Julian gone, his car still parked in the driveway. The cameras had shown nothing that morning or the night before—he or whoever took him had been careful to stay in the blind spot on the west side of the house, leading into the forest.

My parents had said in so many words that he’d left of his own volition. But that was ridiculous. Julian would never do that to me. Never.

The camera footage showed nothing of note. Just me, coming and going in the driveway as I got groceries and ran errands.

I scrolled back to the footage of me, the night before he went missing. Sitting out on the back porch alone, nursing a whiskey in my right hand and a cigarette in my left. I’d watched those clips probably a hundred times by now. Three of them had tripped the motion sensors, catching me at various points into the wee hours, alone. I’d just found out I’d miscarried and instead of leaning on him, I pulled away like I always did, licking my wounds alone in the darkness with my vices.

But anyway. There was no evidence that anyone other than me had entered the house—except for the blind spot.

If someone knew about the blind spot, and had taken out Julian, and now had their sights set on me…

I bought a lock the next day. Went up on a ladder and drilled it into the pull-down attic door. Clicked the chain and made sure it was secure. Not like a bat or raccoon would have the weight to push the ladder down on their own. But just in case.

That’s when I noticed it.

Two little indentations on the carpet. Exactly where the ladder would go. And a thin film of dust laying on the top of the slate-gray carpet.

The attic door was opened recently.

There was no way. I backed away, chewing my lip. There’s no one up there. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was. I couldn’t stop picturing some strange man, naked and atrophied, on his hands and knees with his ear pressed to the floor listening to my every movement. Coming down in the middle of the night and stalking the hallways.

Watching me sleep…

Oh, God. I never locked my bedroom door.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I stared up at the chain lock I’d just installed. If someone’s up there… will that really hold him in? Probably not. Oh, no, no—

THUMP!

I jumped a foot in the air as another thump reverberated towards me, from the other end of the house. But it was louder here, right under the door, coming through the cracks. I could even hear a kind of… wet squelch following it.

Oh fuck.

Call the police!

I ran to my phone in my bedroom and dialed 911. As I did, more thumps sounded overhead. Louder and louder. Oh, no, no.

“Please come fast—there’s someone in my attic!”

By the time I hung up the thumps had stopped. I stood on the bed, the door locked, staring at the ceiling above me. Please no. Don’t come out. Please.

The clock on the nightstand read 8:02.

Come fast. Please.

My entire body shook as I stared at the ceiling, a foot above my nose.

THUMP!

The entire ceiling seemed to shake. I screamed and leapt off the bed, pulling myself under it, into the darkness.

Then a bang like the shot of a gun sounded from downstairs.

“Police! Open up!”

Clutching the knife, I slowly reached for the doorknob. I turned the lock and opened the door a crack, peering out. Nothing. The attic door stood untouched, the chain hanging from the ceiling in the darkness. I held my breath as I passed under it.

Nothing.

Relief washed through me as I let the police in. “He’s in the attic,” I breathed, my voice shaking. “Please—please.”

They carefully unlocked the door. Pulled down the stairs. A horrible smell washed over us. One of the officers gave the other a look, then started up the ladder. I heard his creaking steps above us—

“Oh, God—“

“What? What’s up there?” I asked.

No reply.

Something clicked into place. I ran towards the ladder and hoisted myself up. “Ma’am—“ the other officer started, but I was already pulling myself into the attic.

And then I saw him.

Illuminated in the beam of the officer’s flashlight.

Not someone who had broken in.

Julian.

Julian’s body. He’d been propped up against some boxes in a seating position, though it looked like he’d just fallen over, his torso limply laying on the floor. His skin was darkened with horrible decay, and pieces of his fingers and flesh littered the area around him.

Little pieces that had dropped to the floor as he decayed.

Thump, thump, thump.

And then I remembered. Little wisps of memories. Sitting on the back porch with my whiskey. Getting drunker and drunker. Going in and out as I argued with him, as he talked about his dream of starting a family, and maybe after four miscarriages it just wasn’t going to happen for us.

And that maybe we weren’t meant to be.

More whiskey. More cigs.

Nearly blacking out.

I thought it had been a dream. A really bad one. Asking him to get me something from the attic. Swinging the old lamp on his head. Hurting my hand in the process. Closing the attic door and retreating back to the porch, cigarette in my left hand, now. Staring up at the stars and slipping into a memory-less void.

Blacking out.

Waking up to an empty bed the next day.

Car still in the driveway. No evidence on the camera of him ever leaving.

Because he hadn’t.

At this very moment, the police, the coroner, everyone has left. At this very moment, they don’t have all the evidence in a row to arrest me. But it’s only a matter of time. Days, weeks, it doesn’t matter.

I’m more concerned about the thing in my attic.

You see—the thumps haven’t stopped. No. I hear them all day and night now. Flesh sloughing off a decaying body in the stuffy heat of the attic. Hitting the floor above my bed.

And every time I hear it…

It feels like a knife is slicing through part of my body. Cutting the flesh straight from the bone. My heart seizes, and a part of me goes numb.

It’s been less than a day, and there are ugly red marks all over my body. Deep slashes. The skin is numb, and it’s only a matter of time.

There’s not much of me left.

The red slashes have crawled up my torso, my arms. In a few hours, they’ll be at my neck.

Days or weeks, it doesn’t matter.

I’m sure I’ll be gone by then. 

I'm desperate. In the spring, my 9 year old ASD/ADHD boy was doing so well. only melting down like, once every few days. He is homeschooled and was doing really well in his in-person classes with other kids. Still inattentive, but not being disruptive or anything, etc. It was amazing.

From about mid-May to now, things have been pretty much hell. He has like 3 meltdowns a day. I was keeping a diary of foods etc and nothing has really changed. He'll have a week or two of calm and then go back to melting down 3x a day. My nerves are shredded. He seemed better this past week when he was in a half-day afternoon camp (I was allowed to stay) and then... it's over and he's back to melting down all the time. I have tried troubleshooting/debugging so many things like diet, energy level (he has meltdowns after the pool often so I explained to him we need to do a low energy activity after the pool to relax)... It's seriously been hell. I have no idea what is wrong. Is it simply just loss of routine from the school year? But since we homeschool, the summer isn't that much different. The heat? Pre-puberty? I'm at a loss at this point. We had covid for the first time (first time we had a positive covid test) in late February and my mom thinks maybe it's long covid or something. I don't know. I know regression etc happens but this is just. so different. I don't understand. Should I investigate Pandas/Pans? Does he need more sensory input/outside play? We've been staying indoors for the past few weeks mostly because of the heat. I've been trying to create more routine (especially today) and it really didn't seem to help. I don't know. I'm in tears writing this. I posted here a few months ago talking about how well he'd been doing and how much progress he had made and I just don't know why this is happening.

It started out as a joke.

We went to our first open house, and when we got back, the light in the kitchen wouldn’t turn on. It turned out to be a blown fuse, but my husband started joking—“Maybe the house is jealous.”

I rolled my eyes. He looked up at the ceiling. “Don’t worry. She had nothing on you, babe. No rain shower, no granite countertops…”

I chuckled under my breath.

It was less funny when we got home from touring a new construction townhome to find the bathroom flooded. Water overflowing the bathtub, skating along the tile floor, dripping down the stairs. Thankfully the contractor said it hadn’t been overflowing long, and he thought there hadn’t been any damage to the subfloor. But it was still hours of cleanup, and that night we had an argument—

“You must’ve left the faucet on.”

“You were the last one in the bathroom!”

“I don’t even take baths, Carlie!”

We found a sweet little colonial on the edge of town with a lot of property. Perfect for starting a family. The night we sent in an offer, we opened champagne and decided to light a fire in the fireplace. Something we hadn’t done in ages.

Evan checked the flue.

I know he did. I saw him do it. I saw him crouch on his hands and knees and peer up the chimney to be extra sure.

But as the fire grew, thick black smoke wafted into the room. The flames curled outwards. In seconds the room was pooled with smoke and the flames were shooting out. I screamed and Evan ran to get the fire extinguisher.

When the firefighters came, they said the flue had been closed. And that we should spend the night elsewhere because of the possible carbon monoxide and other toxic fumes.

We came back yesterday.

We came back because of course I assumed they were all coincidences. Not that the house was plotting against us. Mad at us for moving out. That would be crazy.

Today I got the call from the realtor that our offer had been accepted. We were going to meet her at 2 o’clock and sign the papers. Evan and I went into the garage, into our little Civic, and started the car.

A metallic creak sounded behind us.

I turned around—to see the garage door rolling down.

I reached up and pressed the open button. It wouldn’t budge. “Stop the car!” The garage darkened as the door blocked the sunlight. “Evan!”

He finally cut the engine. “That’s weird,” he said, mashing the button. “Why won’t it…?”

I got out and walked over to the button on the wall. Pressed it. A blinding strip of sunlight appeared, the metal squeaked as the door began rolling open. “Must be something wrong with the receiver or whatever,” I said as I got back in the car.

He clicked into reverse and we began backing up, again. I leaned forward, pulling down the mirror to put on some makeup.

Snap.

What the hell was—

I screamed as the car shook. I lurched forward, my head slamming the dashboard. Oh no, what the hell, what—

Evan.

He was still sitting in the driver’s seat.

Blood everywhere.

The metal garage door between the two halves of his body.

Oh God, no, no—

I opened the door and stumbled into the garage. A slice of sunlight poured in underneath the car. Blood dripped into it.

No, no, no.

“Help!” I screamed. “Someone! HELP!”

I screamed it even though I knew there was no way Evan was alive.

I ran to the door. Smashed the garage door button. It wouldn’t open. One of the springs had snapped, still wobbling near the ceiling. I ran into the house, stumbling over my own feet, screaming.

I ran to the front door.

It was locked.

I turned the deadbolt. Tried to. It was stuck fast.

Same with the sliding glass door.

How?!

I finally remembered my phone in my pocket. I dialed 911. I gave them my address. “Please, please come soon,” I sobbed, gripping the counter.

There was a pause.

“You said 214?” the woman on the other end asked.

“Yeah.”

“That address isn’t coming up, ma’am,” she said. “Are you sure—”

“I’m sure!”

“… Ma’am, there’s no 214 on the map.”

“Yes there is! I’ve lived here for eight years!” I screamed. You know an ambulance wouldn’t help anyway.

“Ma’am?” the tinny voice from the speaker asked.

“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop!”

A snapping sound cracked through the air. I looked up. There was a line on the kitchen wall, blurry through my tears. A seam, a crack, buckling open.

I stumbled up and backed away.

The crack widened. No beams or insulation—just darkness. Pitch black like the forest on a moonless night.

What the…

Hissing whispers filled the air. My body lurched forward, and then I was sliding towards the void, as if some magnetic force were pulling me. I screamed, but even my own voice seemed muted, muffled compared to the growing silence of the void.

My foot slipped into the gap. I pivoted and grabbed the side of the wall, holding on for dear life. “Stop!” I screamed. “Stop!”

With a sudden pop of air pressure, the force stopped. A beat of silence. And then—sound. Clinking of pots and pans. Whispers. The faucet running. And then, drifting out of the wall, my own voice.

“I remember that! That was so crazy.”

Evan’s voice.

“I know. And then that guy stopped in front of us…”

My heart twisted as I heard our laughter coming from the void behind me. It was replaying a conversation we’d had a few nights ago. Right here in the kitchen. But the sounds were out of order, as I heard myself complaining about the flood, the water running down the stairs. Clinking of dishes and thumps of shoes on tile.

And then—

A voice I didn’t recognize.

A woman’s voice.

Garbled through the staticky void. The click of high heels on tile. A murmur. Oh, no, no.

I yanked my foot out of the wall and walked to the table, shaking. I didn’t even notice the blood until I sat down. There was no longer a foot, really. Only blood and mangled flesh.

I turned around to see a hand reaching out of the slit in the wall. A hand that looked like my own, down to the green fingernail polish. It grabbed the corner of the wallpaper and pulled it over the crack, as the void resealed itself.

The tile floor felt warm under my feet.

Why is it warm?

The walls seemed to pulse. Maybe they always had. Maybe I’d never noticed. Just as I stared at the cabinets now, and noticed the wood-grain pattern repeated itself, looking more like eyes than anything else. Like the fake eyes on a moth’s wing.

Mimicry.

My heart dropped as I stared at the house, as what was left of my foot throbbed in pain. Then I hobbled up and stumbled towards the door. It unlocked for me this time, letting in the sunlight, pooling around my legs, feeling as warm as the house itself.

One of my favorite things to do is take my kids out to the McDonald’s play place. At night, when no one else is there, and it’s quiet.

That’s where we went last night. As soon as we went in my younger son Liam bounded up into the play structure. My older son Jack, who was starting to age out of the play place, sat down at a booth below with his Switch. I followed Liam up, just because I liked to make sure there wasn’t anything gross. I’d seen stale fries and wet puddles of… something on the floor of these things before.

There are three levels to the play place, enclosed in black netting. Adults can really only go up to the second level—the only way to get up to the third is to climb up the slide or crawl up fake rock-shaped ramps, which zigzag on top of each other and create really tight gaps that I definitely can’t fit through. I wasn’t going to do either, so after taking a quick look around (no puke or pee, yay!) I sat down on the plastic floor and pulled out my phone.

A minute later, Liam suddenly darted over to me. He looked grabbed my arm, looking spooked.

“There’s a kid coming down the slide,” he said.

But we were all alone. Weren’t we? Jack was still sitting at the booth down below, playing his Switch. There were no other parents in the play place room. And if there was a kid in here alone, I would’ve seen or heard them before now.

Unless they were hiding?

I swallowed. That wasn’t a great mental picture. Some random kid hiding in the slide? Waiting to scare us?

I stared at the opening to the yellow slide. No one came out.

“You saw someone?” I asked.

“I heard a noise,” he said. “And I got scared.”

“I think that’s just the air conditioning.”

Here’s the thing. If it were any other kid, I wouldn’t be concerned. Kids make up stories, kids have active imaginations, some kids have trouble with speech. My older son has some speech delays, and if it were him saying there was a kid on the slide, I wouldn’t have even given it a second thought.

But Liam is very articulate and precise. I don’t even remember the last time he was wrong about something. I stared at the yellow plastic, shining under the lights. The shadowed opening, curling up into the bend of the slide.

“Don’t worry, there’s no one there.”

As much as I believed him—there just couldn’t be anyone in there. The slide is right under the overhead lights, and just the slightest bit translucent. When I watch my kids from outside of the play structure, I can see their shadows when they’re sliding down. When they climb up it, I can see the silhouettes of their little hands and knees pressed against the plastic.

I stared at the slide.

There were no shadows.

I explained this to Liam. “If someone was in there, we’d see them.” I even called down to Jack. “Do you see anyone in the slide?”

“No,” he called back.

Liam finally seemed to calm down. The power in the words of a big brother. He got up, started climbing up the fake rock ramp to the third level. I couldn’t fit on the third level, so I stayed on the second, watching him climb. I peered through the black mesh netting at Jack below.

He was looking up from his Switch.

Staring up at the yellow slide.

“Liam! I see you!” he called out with a grin.

Wait—

That’s not Liam—

I whipped around to see Liam at the other end of the third level, pulling himself up the fake rock ramp.

“You see someone in the slide?” I shouted down.

“Yeah,” Jack laughed.

Again, my son has speech delays. Sometimes he doesn’t say what he means exactly. Sometimes he’s quoting a video, sometimes he’s daydreaming, or sometimes he’s saying what he thinks would be funny if it were happening. “Is someone actually in there?” I called down.

“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know.”

I stared at the yellow plastic slide, looping down from the third level like a snake. Stared at the shiny plastic under the lights. The shadowed opening—

There was a hand.

Two fingers, barely poking out from within the curve of the slide.

“Liam! Liam, come here!”

I couldn’t reach the third floor. Where Liam was. He stared down at me, crawling on his hands and knees. “I want to stay up here,” he said flatly.

“There’s someone in the slide!”

I glanced back at the opening. The hand was gone. Maybe I did imagine it? Liam started making his way towards the rocky ramp—

Thunk.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

I could see a shadow. Moving through the slide. The shadows of two hands pressed against the plastic of the slide. Moving upwards. Climbing the curve.

Following Liam—

“Hurry!” I shouted. “Jack, get help—get someone!”

I got on my hands and knees and crawled towards the rocky ramp. The plastic pushed into my shoulders. There was no way I could make it through the gaps, but I would be right here for him. I held my breath—

In seconds he was pushing himself through the tight space in front of me. I grabbed his hands and helped him through. We made our way down, towards the second floor—

Thump-thump-thump.

The kid was running right above us. Little pattering steps shaking the entire play place. But we were almost there, almost at the second floor—

The footsteps reversed direction.

And then I heard it.

A quiet squeeeaaaak—

Of someone coming down the slide.

“Run!” I screamed as we made it to the middle of the second floor. I pushed him in front of me, down the stairs, towards the exit.

But just before I followed him, I turned back.

Just in time to see a shape emerge from the yellow slide.

It was a little girl. Something… mimicking… a little girl. Something with gray skin, needle-like teeth, yellow eyes. Straggly hair tangled around its face. Its lipless mouth curved up into a smile.

“RUN!” I screamed.

I burst out into the dining area. Grabbed Liam and ran. Jack was already out in the main restaurant, I could see him, trying and failing to get someone’s attention. “There’s someone in the play place, something horrible,” I breathed to the employees before I ran out into the parking lot with my kids.

The next day, when I’d recovered, I drove there in hopes to give a more detailed account of what happened. But I found that the play place was entirely dark. I could barely make out the curve of the yellow slide, the black netting, in the white light of the streetlamps beaming in. Multiple OUT OF ORDER signs had been placed around, even though the McDonald’s itself was open.

A few weeks later, it closed for renovations. I saw a construction crew demolishing the play place. Only the play place.

I’d always wondered why so few McDonald’s have them now. I’d assumed things like COVID, inflation, and general cutting of corners were responsible.

But maybe that’s not it at all.

What if ours wasn’t the only one that was… occupied?

We got caught in traffic, and it was less than an hour until closing. We hurried past the jellyfish, undulating under a UV light. Past a huge tank with a blacktip reef shark, tail sweeping through the water. We tried to hit all the best exhibits, but we still lost track of time.

When we went to exit, the doors were locked.

“Hello?” Derek called. “Can someone open the door for us, please?”

No reply. The concession stand, the ticketing booth, were all dark and empty.

I peered out the window, at the falling dusk, the desolate parking lot. Really desolate—I didn’t see a single car. “Maybe they all left.”

“Without noticing we were still here? No way.”

But as we walked down the hallway, past a display of lionfish flitting through the water, it looked like I was right. The lights were dim, and there wasn’t a single sound coming from everywhere. The ambient music they piped over the speakers had been turned off.

We did a full circuit through the aquarium, past the mantaray touch tank (closed and shuttered), past the glowing jellyfish, past the huge shark tank. No one was there.

“Should we call the police?” I asked as we made our way back to the entrance.

“I guess so. I still can’t believe they’d lock up without doing a sweep of the whole place…”

I pulled out my phone. Only one bar. I dialed—a single ring sounded in my ear, before cutting off midway.

“I don’t think I have reception,” I said.

Derek pulled out his phone. “Me neither.”

“There’s got to be someone still here. A janitor, or something. Come on,” I said, walking back towards the hallway. When we’d done the lap around, it had been quick. If someone was in a back room, we wouldn’t have seen them.

I sprinted further back into the aquarium. The jellyfish still undulated under the UV light, oblivious to us. Can they even hear? I thought, as I shouted at the top of my lungs and they didn’t seem to react.

The sharks swam in the enormous tank, watching us with bulging eyes. The little terrarium with the turtles spilled golden light out into the darkness. “Is anyone here?!” I called.

Nothing.

At exactly seven thirty, the lights dimmed over our heads. I pulled out my phone again—no reception. I sat on the floor against a fake outcropping of rock, hiding my face in my hands. “We’re trapped in here,” I whispered.

“Someone’s got to come back. I mean, they have cameras, right? They can probably see us right now.” He took a deep breath. “And anyway, worst case scenario, the aquarium opens at 8 AM tomorrow. That’s in like twelve hours.”

“We can’t stay here all night!”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, I’m starving!”

“So? There’s food here.”

Derek. Always keeping his calm, even in the worst of scenarios. I still remembered that time the engine blew out on our flight to LA. I was catatonic, throwing up in a bag and thinking I was going to die. Derek was calm the whole time, rubbing my back, telling me we’d be fine. Later he told me he was about to have a full-blown panic attack. But he shoved it all down and kept calm for me.

This time, though, he really did seem calm. “Come on,” he said, pulling me up from the floor.

Most of the café was locked, but there was a little fridge of drinks and freezer of Dippin’ Dots that were unsecured. We sat in the empty seating area downing the dots, actually having an okay time. “We’re really sleeping with the fishes now,” Derek said. “Haw, haw,” I replied, rolling my eyes and grabbing another chocolate. Our voices echoed into the huge space, the sharks swimming by peacefully behind me in their enormous tank.

Suddenly, Derek’s face dropped.

“What?”

He shook his head and looked down at the ice cream. “Nothing.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “No, what?”

“I just… thought I saw something,” he said quickly.

“What?”

“Just…” His eyes flicked up, and then widened, as he stared at a spot over my shoulder.

I whipped around—just in time to see a dark shape flit out of view in the tank. My heart plummeted. “Was that a person?”

“Looked like it.”

A diver? In the tanks right now? Maybe cleaning the tank or something? Feeding the sharks? I shot up and ran over to the window. Up against it now, I could see into nearly the entire tank. And there—a person, in full scuba gear, darting behind a fake stand of coral.

I slapped at the window. “Hey! We’re locked in!” I shouted. “Can you let us out?!”

I could see the trail of bubbles coming up from behind the fake coral. But I couldn’t see the scuba diver anymore. Derek joined me and we watched, perplexed.

“Why isn’t he coming out?”

“I don’t know,” Derek said, his green eyes focused on the water.

“Shouldn’t he be, like, cleaning or feeding them or something?”

“I guess.”

It’s almost like… he’s intentionally hiding from us. Dread sank into me. That’s crazy. Right? Why would someone doing maintenance on the tanks hide from us? Some dumb kids who got stuck in the aquarium?

The fake coral had little holes in it. He could very well be watching us. Even though we couldn’t see him.

I backed away from the tank. “I don’t like this,” I whispered.

“I know. It’s weird.”

I pulled out my phone again. Zero bars, this time. I tried to call the police, but the line didn’t even connect.

Fuck.

I tugged Derek out of view of the tank. “Come on,” I said.

We ducked into the hallway, decorated to look like an underwater tunnel with fake rocks that cut away into fish tanks. Dim lights reflected on the floor, casting deep shadows. “There’s got to be an emergency exit somewhere,” I said, turning a sharp left into the room with the jellyfish. The UV lights were still on, illuminating the edges of their transparent forms. They silently undulated through the water. Up and down, up and down.

I scanned the darkness for a red “EXIT” sign. But I didn’t see any. There’s got to be one somewhere. I ran deeper into the aquarium, Derek following close behind, our footsteps echoing across the glass tanks—

Shlop.

I froze.

“What was that?” I whispered.

It sounded like something heavy and wet hitting the ground. Coming from up ahead—the shark tank. Derek grabbed my shoulders, pulling me into an alcove behind one of the fake rocky outcroppings. My back hit the spherical window looking into the sea turtle tank, distorting our reflection.

A wet slapping sound echoed from ahead.

It has to be the guy we saw in the tank.

I held my breath.

Don’t come down this way.

Please.

The silence stretched on.

Derek slowly leaned forward, peering around the edge of the rock. Then he darted back in. He held a finger to his lips, eyes wide in the sickly blue light from the tank. 

What? I mouthed.

He’s there, he mouthed back, pointing.

I leaned forward slightly. He was standing there in the hallway, facing away from us. The man in the scuba gear. Water dripping down his body and pooling on the floor. Before I could get a good look Derek yanked me back, pulling me close to him. He held his finger to his lips again, shaking his head.

My heart pounded in my ears. My lungs burned and I let out my breath slowly, silently, as quietly as I could.

Go.

Please.

The minutes ticked on, but I didn’t hear any footsteps. He was still there. He knows we’re here. He’s waiting for us to come out.

We stood, frozen, against the window.

And then I heard it.

Tap, tap, tap.

I wheeled around.

No.

He was right there.

On the other side of the window. One hand lifted, a slender finger tapping on the glass, silhouetted by the vivid blue water behind him.

But there was something terribly wrong with him.

The scuba mask was fused to his face. No—it was part of his skin. Waterlogged, beige flesh lifted off his eyes and cheekbones to hold a foggy piece of glass, shielding enormous eyes. His body was twisted, almost fish-like, ending in flippered feet.

Pain shot up my arm and I realized Derek was yanking me away. I’d frozen in shock.

I finally tore my eyes away from him and we ran back through the aquarium, towards the entrance. A loud splash sounded from somewhere—and a minute later, that awful wet slapping sound behind us. I forced myself to not look back, to keep my eyes ahead, on the fish, the sharks, everything passing us in a blur—

We burst out into the entrance area. Derek grabbed a chair from the concession stand and hauled it above his head. In a quick motion, he threw it at the glass door. It shattered, bits of tempered glass raining down on the floor.

Slap-slap-slap—

“Run!” I screamed.

It was too late.

Something knocked me to the floor. And then I was sliding, being pulled by my ankles. Sliding towards the tanks.

The smell of rotten fish wafted over me.

He’s going to throw me in the tank.

Food.

I’m food…

I kicked wildly. Derek grabbed me by the arms and then suddenly I was free, being pulled out the door, into the darkness outside.

We scrambled up and ran to the car. I couldn’t breathe until we were locked inside.

“What was that?!”

“Let’s get out of here,” Derek said, ignoring my question.

No one believed our story, of course. Not the police, not our friends, no one. Scared teenagers flipping out over the guy who feeds the sharks at night. That’s what everyone thought.

Maybe I would even think it, too. That I’d scared myself into imagining things in the dim light of the closed aquarium.

Except.

There are thick scratches on my ankles, scabbing over from where that thing touched me.

And the slightest bit of skin, webbing between my toes. 

It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I noticed it.

I’d hit up the drive thru. But as I sat at the stoplight, sucking through the straw, I noticed something odd.

The clear plastic lid had the four little buttons on it. You know, the ones that say DIET or SODA that the cashier presses down to indicate which soda is which. Except on mine, the little plastic words didn’t say that.

They said POISON, CALAMITY, DISEASE, and CANCER.

What? Is this some kind of joke? I stared at the lid, the little bubble next to CALAMITY pressed down. A horn honked behind me, and I jerked forward into the intersection. When I got home, I pulled out my phone and took a photo.

Someone gave me a joke lid, I typed to my friend Sam. Is this some TikTok trend or something?

Omg that’s so creepy, he wrote back. Poison??!

I headed up to my apartment with the food. I hadn’t taken another sip of soda since noticing it. Bet you can buy those on Amazon or something. Some 16 year old thinks he’s being really fucking funny. I didn’t think it was the girl who handed me the food. She seemed to serious and uptight to pull something like this, even from just the few second interaction.

I stared at the coke on the counter, the little bubbles floating up to the surface.

Is someone trying to scare me?

But I rarely went there. No one would even know me. Unless it was just some psychopath in there, doing this to everyone?

I frowned and walked back over to the drink, staring at the lid.

CALAMITY.

The other three things could be causes of death. Poison, disease, cancer. But… calamity? Accident, maybe?

I walked over to the window and looked out at the rain. The parking lot below was dark, full. I closed the curtains, grabbed the coke, and poured it down the sink. I threw out the cup and straw, keeping the lid. I poked around the bag—ugh, they forgot to give me a fork. I grabbed one from the drawer and sat down, popping open my salad.

I threw it out, I texted Sam. You don’t think they poisoned it or something do you? I drank about half!!

I think you’d know if they poisoned it, he wrote back.

But it’s so weird, right?

Yeah. Kind of creative though. Maybe someone’s trying to go viral or something. It’s kind of cool.

I stared down at my salad. Should I throw out the food too?

Nah. I think you’re fine.

I set the lid in front of me on the table, turning it around in my hands. That’s when I noticed—the bubble next to CANCER had a white ring. It looked like someone had pushed that down, then popped it back up, and pushed down CALAMITY instead.

Dread washed through me.

So they pushed ‘cancer’ down first…?

My heart began to pound. For some reason, that scared me more than getting the weird lid in the first place. Because it felt so… intentional, I guess? Whoever did this had thought about it. Had changed the answer on purpose.

Just to scare me?

Fuck, who was this creep?

For a few minutes, I searched for it online: but it didn’t seem like Amazon or Google came up with any novelty drinking lids. At least not ones with creepy words on them. Custom design? But you couldn’t 3D print something like this. Weird.

Sighing, I got up, heading towards the trash.

I was three steps away when my foot caught on something.

I slipped forwards, my chest whacking the floor just as my hands were coming out to brace myself. The plastic salad bowl clattered on the floor—and then I heard something whiz right by my ear. I jerked out of the way, and then scrambled up.

What the hell?

The fork was standing straight up, the tines wedged into the wooden floor.

I touched my ear. My hand came away red. Blood.

What the…

I stared at the soda lid, a few feet away from me, glinting in the light.

My heart pounded in my ears.

The CALAMITY button had popped back up.

And the CANCER button was pushed down.

 

Three weeks ago, my wife went missing. I came home from work and she was just... gone. I’ve spent hours and hours with the police, leading search parties, all of it. There hasn’t been a single clue to what happened to her.

Except that I keep seeing her around the house.

I know that sounds crazy. Look, I don’t believe in ghosts either. Never did. And I don’t actually ever see her ghost, really. I never see her clearly enough to call it that. No, I see her when I’m half a bottle deep, when the room is spinning and everything is hazy. I see her when I’m teetering between sleep and waking. I see her in the in-between spaces.

Not just figuratively.

The first time I saw her, she was crammed between the sofa and the bookshelf. The room was spinning but I saw her, like a single frame in a flipbook animation. Just for a split second. Her naked body contorted into the tiny space. A tangle of limbs and dark hair.

And then she was gone.

I collapsed. What the fuck? The room spun and I stared at the space, which kept sliding out of my central vision as the vertigo hit. It looked empty. I’m not proud of this but I crawled towards it on my hands and knees, feeling around the space, calling out her name.

“Emily?”

Nothing.

Of course, nothing. She was gone and ghosts didn’t exist.

But then I saw her again.

Around 3 AM I woke up to pee. I stumbled to the bathroom, half-asleep, lit by the little star nightlight. It had been there since I moved in with Emily, almost a year ago. The house was still in her name. She didn’t have a will.

Who knew how much longer I’d be able to live here.

My head pounded, and I stooped to the cabinet, where we stowed some extra Advil. I reached for the handle, swung the door open—

She was stuffed inside the cabinet.

Eyes milky white. Lips blue with frost. One arm twisted above her head, the other one…holding a finger to her lips, as if ssshhh-ing someone.

What the fuck what the fuck.

I stumbled back. No. No. She was gone again. The cabinet was dark and empty. I held my chest, panting, stars floating in my vision.

This is insane.

I’m hallucinating.

I need to see a doctor.

And so, I did. I saw a doctor who prescribed me medication. I took the medication. And for a week and a half, everything was fine. I didn’t see her. The grief seemed lighter. I drank less. I took a walk, even.

Until last night.

I was a few drinks in. I descended the stairs to the basement. The lightbulb above me didn’t seem to be working. It was flickering. I hadn’t been down there in a year probably. Emily was the only one who went down, since a lot of her parents’ stuff was still down here.

I walked towards the chest freezer on the far end, to see if we had any more frozen dinners in there. I didn’t think we had, but it had been a while since I’d checked.

The freezer stood at the opposite end in the darkness, stark white against the gray cement, as I walked towards it.

I should’ve realized what was going to happen. But I kept walking. I grabbed the lid of the freezer and yanked.

I stared down at my wife’s naked body, stuffed in the freezer.

I screamed and leapt back. The lid fell with a thunk. I stared at it, heart pounding, knees weak.

She’s not actually there.

You’re just hallucinating.

Not real. Not real.

I took a step towards the freezer, reaching out, my hand shaking.

And then it moved.

Thunk!

The freezer lid lifted an inch, then thunked back down.

No. No, no, no.

The light flickered. I stared, frozen.

Thunk!

She’s not actually there! You’re hallucinating this! All of this!

If someone put her in the freezer, she’d be dead by now!

This. Isn’t. Real!

I ran over to the freezer and yanked the lid off.

It was empty. Except for a few pieces of freezer-burned meat at the bottom. I slammed the lid shut and let out a cry of exasperation. “Stop!” I shouted, to no one, the room starting to spin. “Stop it!”

I took in a deep, shuddering breath, and then turned around for the stairs.

I froze.

My wife was crushed into the tiny crawlspace under the stairs. One arm hanging above her head. The other shushing me. Her knees up to her chin. Her eyes milky white. Skin, lips blue.

I blinked.

She didn’t disappear.

Dread sunk into me. I forced my eyes shut, counted to ten. Opened them.

She was still there.

No, no, no.

I took a step forward. Another. She didn’t disappear. Oh, God, she didn’t disappear.

“…Emily?”

And then I heard it.

A drop of water, hitting the floor.

There were thin rivulets of water trailing down her face, dripping off her chin. There’s no smell. Water… oh, no.

She had been in the freezer.

Someone had taken her out.

Recently.

And then I realized why her finger was lifted to her lips.

Beyond the stairs, at the other side of the basement, was… debris. Trash. Empty bottles. A blanket.

Someone had been living in our basement.

Had killed her.

Had moved her body.

And she was warning me to keep quiet.

I am looking for a particular book I read as a kid, as I want to read it to my kids now. I hated reading but it was one of the only books I liked, about a horse with a mysterious illness that ended up being some sort of bug or parasite it was ingesting in the hay. I feel like it was probably part of a series with other animal rescue/veterinarian books. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

I'm reading the summary to Mustang in the Mist which is part of the animal ark series, and it seems similar (the horse was affected by "grass sickness" caused by a bacteria) but I really feel like the plot of the book included a specific insect or parasite in hay.

It first happened on a Wednesday.

I was standing in the hallway, waiting for my sons’ art class to end. A woman I vaguely recognized—one of the other teachers—hurried over to me. “Your daughter’s looking for you,” she said.

I blinked.

“Uh, I don’t have a daughter.”

“Oh—sorry. I must’ve gotten mixed up.” She smiled and headed back for her classroom at the end of the hall.

I figured it was an honest mistake. Especially considering that I’m a very average looking woman, with brown hair, brown eyes, and an average build. Probably half the kids in the class could be mistaken for “my kid.”

But then it happened again.

I was grocery shopping late at night. One of the only ones in the store. I heard the pattering of footsteps behind me, and when I turned around, one of the employees was running up to me. “Excuse me! Ma’am?” she called. “I think your daughter is looking for you. She’s at the—”

“I don’t have a daughter,” I said, cutting her off.

“Are you sure?” Then she shook her head and nervously looked away. “Sorry. I… my mistake.” She turned around and headed back down the aisle.

Well, that was weird.

What’s the saying? If I had a nickel for every time someone thought I had a daughter… I’d have two nickels, which isn’t much, but it’s weird it happened twice.

I finished up my shopping. When I got to the counter, I saw the employee at the end of the cashier lines, whispering to another employee.

Weird.

A few days went by, and nothing happened. I’d almost completely forgotten about it, when I got a call from my sons’ pediatrician. “Hello, Ms. Montgomery?” the receptionist asked. “I’m calling to schedule an annual physical for your daughter…”

“I don’t have a daughter.”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. It says here—” She cut off. “Nevermind. Have a good day.”

I stared at my phone. Three times, now? This felt really, really weird. How could so many people suddenly think I had a daughter?

I told my husband all about it. He thought it was a hilarious coincidence, and didn’t seem nearly unnerved as I was. “Maybe the girl’s mom looks like you. And she’s describing her to the teacher, and the cashier girl, and they think it’s you.”

“I guess that’s possible. That doesn’t explain the doctor, though.”

“Maybe someone just moved here with a similar name.”

“Maybe.”

The whole thing felt… wrong.

Especially because I’d always had this weird feeling. That I was meant to have a daughter. There was always this weird void somewhere inside me, a whisper that would surface every now and then. A daughter who looked like me, who I’d give all my wisdom to. Who would draw with me, play dolls with me, do all the “girly” stuff with.

It was stupid. Because gender didn’t matter anyway, especially not when it came to loving my children. But there was still a strange emptiness I felt, sometimes. Maybe I was pregnant one time with a girl, and miscarried before I even knew it. That was an offhand thought I’d had several times. And the body remembers the score.

On my lunch break the next day, I walked down to the local Panera. Halfway there, I heard someone calling out behind me. “Ma’am! Ma’am!” I turned around to see a man, looking frazzled. “Your daughter is back there, calling for you!”

“I don’t have a daughter,” I said, my voice a weak thread.

He turned around and pointed back, as if I should go to her anyway.

I looked up. And just for a second, I saw a little brunette girl. Just slices of her, through the group of people behind me. Ponytail bobbing. Little blue dress. Flickering through the chaos of the sidewalk.

When the group passed, she was gone.

I stood there, unable to move. The man had already hurried off, and I couldn’t move. That’s her. I knew I didn’t have a daughter. I knew there was no way that was my child. I knew it.

Then why do I feel like she’s mine?

After work, I drove to pick up the boys from school, but my head was somewhere else. I kept thinking of the girl. I knew it was crazy but I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

I pulled up to the curb to let the boys in. The minivan door rolled open. But instead of the usual chaos, yelling and punching each other, there was only silence. And then—

“Mommy?”

Ice slid through my veins.

It wasn’t my boys.

It was her.

“I’m—I’m not your mommy,” I forced myself to say. I glanced in the rearview mirror to see a sliver of dark hair, a little ponytail. Her face hidden out of view.

“Mommy,” she said again.

Oh God. It was fun to entertain the idea of an imaginary daughter, but hearing a different kid’s voice calling me ‘mommy’ was like a jolt of electricity. “I’m not your mom!” I yelled. “I don’t have a daughter!”

I glanced up at the mirror again.

I froze.

The girl had readjusted, and I could now see her face.

Her lack of face.

Skin, stretched over the contours of her skull. Only skin. And yet, as I stared at her, I could swear the way her cheeks moved… she was smiling.

I screamed.

A second later, Brady and Aiden crashed into the back, fighting as usual. I looked back at them, panicking, but the girl was gone. Shaking, I pulled away from the curb and started for home.

Maybe I would’ve chalked it up to stress. Sleep deprivation. Something else.

But every night, now, I hear her voice. In the middle of the night, jolting me out of my dreams.

“Mommy?”

Coming from the closet.