u/Brotatochip411

​

This will be a 3 part burst series within the story! This specific story with Daniel and Frank lasts 3 separate days all in the same week, therefore I will post the next parts tomorrow and then the day after for a total of 3 parts! Check in tomorrow to see what Daniel will have to deal with alone next time ;)

THURSDAY DAY 1

Thursday morning arrived cold enough that the inside of the garage windows had frosted over around the edges. Outside, the last of the week's snow sat in gray piles near the road where tires had churned it into slush. Meltwater dripped steadily from the gutters, tapping against the pavement beneath the roof overhang in uneven little plinks.

Frank had started loading his truck for his annual trip to New Orleans, something I had just found out about last night, right before I got into my car. In typical Frank fashion, I was told at the last minute.

I had expected luggage, maybe a duffel bag if I was feeling generous enough to imagine Frank owning something made after 1973. Instead, I stood beside the coffee machine with both hands wrapped around a paper cup watching him carry armful after armful of things out of the storage room and into the truck bed. Three burlap sacks landed first with heavy thumps that rattled the suspension. Then came mason jars full of cloudy liquid, several bundles of dried herbs tied with twine, and a wooden crate with faded red markings painted across the side.

I watched for a while.Then Frank walked through the bay doors carrying an entire cardboard box full of chicken feet.

I stared at it. Then at him. Then back at the box.

"...Frank."

"Hm."

"What exactly am I looking at right now?"

He shoved the box into his truck bed and tightened a ratchet strap across everything.

"Travel supplies."

I waited.

Frank kept tightening.

I kept staring. I leaned against the bay door and watched him work. Apparently he had some old friend in New Orleans he'd known forever. Some voodoo practitioner he'd crossed paths with years ago and never fully got rid of afterward. Every year they met up, exchanged supplies, traded information and recipes, caught up on life.

Recipes.

"What kind of recipes called for chicken feet and cloud shit in mason jars?"

Frank had looked at me for a second and said:

"Depends what you're trying to kill."

I watched him lift another crate into the truck.

"...okay, but seriously. Chicken feet?"

"Trade."

Trade.

Just trade.

Like that explained literally anything.

I rubbed at my forehead.

"Frank, are you buying supplies or summoning a curse?"

He didn't answer me.

"Good talk."

He shut the tailgate.Then stood there staring at it for a second.I noticed him doing that sometimes. Little pauses where it felt like his brain was running through a checklist nobody else could see.

Then he turned and jerked his head toward me.

"Come on."

I frowned.

"For what?"

"Inside."

The garage smelled like cold metal and motor oil and stale coffee when we walked back in. Music crackled softly through the radio near his workbench while the space heaters hummed in opposite corners trying their best against winter. Frank walked past the tool cabinets, past the office, past the shelves where we kept spare parts, passed the hall where the "storage room" was, then stopped in front of a door I had never seen open. Actually, now that I thought about it, I wasn't even sure I'd noticed it before.Frank pulled a ring of keys from his pocket.

I stared at him.

"...there's been another secret room here this whole time?"

"No."

He unlocked it.

"...Frank, that is literally what a secret room is."

The smell hit first. Scents of smoke, old paper, salt for sure, and something bitter beneath it that reminded me vaguely of burnt cinnamon. The room wasn't big but it stretched farther back than I expected. Shelves lined every wall from floor to ceiling filled with various things from glass jars of who knows what, coffee tins with handwritten labels, small cloth bags hanging from nails and much much more. Several things I actively chose not to look at too closely.

"Salt's here."

He pointed toward one shelf.

"Ash there."

Another shelf.

"Iron's over there."

I followed behind him slowly.

"...why do you have this much salt?"

Frank looked at me.

"...Danny."

"Right. Sorry. Duh."

He moved farther inside.

"Don't touch that cabinet."

I looked toward it automatically. Old wood with several locks.

Chains wrapped around the handles.

"...okay."

Frank pointed somewhere else.

"Definitely don't touch that cabinet."

I followed his finger. My stomach sank. Because I hadn't even noticed there were two cabinets.

"...Frank."

"Hm."

"What happens if I do?"

He shrugged.

"No idea."

I stared at him.

"No idea?"

"Never opened it."

"...why keep it then?"

Frank looked at me like I'd asked why we kept spare tires. "Because somebody nailed instructions to it."

I blinked.

"What instructions?"

He looked at the cabinet.

Then back at me.

"'I have no idea.'"

...

"...you know what? Fair."

Near the back wall sat a thick black binder shoved between two coffee cans. Frank reached over and handed it to me. The cover had duct tape holding the spine together with coffee stains discolouring half of it.

Written across the front in faded marker were two words: SHOP NOTES

I opened it expecting invoices.

Instead:

ROAD SPIRITS

Don't acknowledge them.

Don't offer them a ride.

If they get in your car drive to the nearest 7/11 and ask for 7/12

CROSSROAD WOMAN

She's an alien, good luck.

MANANANGGAL

Salt lower body.

Use jars labeled MANANANGGAL

Danny screamed.

I looked up slowly.

"...you wrote that last part?"

Frank nodded.

"I thought it was important."

I flipped farther, it was filled with pages and pages of stuff. Some things were crossed out, some stained, some with notes crammed into margins. Some things I'd seen with frank since i started here, and some things I hadn't. Things I suddenly wished I had never heard of. My eyes caught one.

THE SMILING COWBOY

If he asks if you're happy—

Lie.

I stared for a while, remembering that horrifying cowboy that followed the lady into the car that day.

"...Frank."

"What now."

"How many of these have come back after you got rid of them the first time?"

Frank stood there thinking for a second.

Then shrugged.

"Enough."

For a few seconds the room stayed quiet except for the soft hum of heaters outside.

Then Frank looked at me.

"Three days."

I lowered the journal.

"Lock up before dark, if the church bells ring, stop what you're doing, and don't leave your truck facing the graveyard."

Then he tossed me the shop keys.

"Frank, I know all of those things, and honestly the rules don't matter because we have experienced things even when we have followed them."

"Danny, if you wouldn't have followed those rules before, you would definitely have been dead. If anything happens you have my journal and this room has all you need to handle it. Don't call me, don't text me, don't die."

"...that's it?"

Frank started toward the door.

"You'll be fine."

I stared after him.

"Frank."

He looked back, flipped me the bird, then walked out.

"Yep, yep. Okay. Thanks Frank."

I kept the journal with me, closed the door behind me, and headed back to the bay.

Frank's truck coughed to life outside with that same ugly sound it always made, like somebody shaking a toolbox full of bolts down a staircase. Through the front windows I watched him sit there for a second with one arm hanging out the window while the engine idled. His truck rolled down the road and disappeared past the trees, taillights shrinking smaller and smaller until they vanished entirely.

Then there was just me.

Me.

Alone.

In the garage.

I stood there for maybe ten seconds staring out at the empty road. Then twenty. Then thirty. Behind me the radio crackled softly through old speakers while somewhere in the shop one of the heaters clicked and groaned. I turned slowly. The garage suddenly felt bigger. You don't really notice how much space another person fills until they're gone. Frank wasn't exactly chatty, but he was...there. Always moving around, making noise, yelling at inanimate objects for disappointing him. The place felt different without him. I stood there staring around the garage for a while before shaking it off.

"Okay," I muttered to myself. "Three days. Easy."

I pointed around the shop while talking to absolutely nobody. "No weird customers. No haunted brides. No vampires. No flying torso women. No aliens."

The lights above me flickered once.

"...don't start."

Nothing happened. I nodded to myself. See? Fine.

Perfectly fine. Then something went thunk from the back hallway. I closed my eyes shut tight, not because I was afraid but...because I was annoyed.

"...Frank?" I called automatically.

Of course he didn't answer, I don't know why I thought he would.

I opened my eyes again and stared toward the hall leading toward storage. The hallway looked exactly the same as always. Same ugly walls. Same crooked framed calendar hanging near the office door. Same shadows where the overhead lights never quite reached.

I stood there for another few seconds before sighing through my nose. "Great."

Because apparently I had already reached the stage where I was talking to myself on day one. Slowly I started toward the hallway. My boots echoed lightly against the concrete floor while the sound of the heaters faded behind me.The black binder sat on the floor directly in the center of the hallway. I frowned, my lips twitching. Then frowned harder. Because I had been holding the thing, I remember holding it, I remember walking out with it. I remember—

I stared at it for several long seconds. No, actually I didn't remember setting it down. Very slowly I bent and picked it up. The pages had fallen open somewhere near the middle.

Across the top, in Frank's handwriting:

GREASE GOBLINS

Mostly harmless.

Steal tools.

Likes shiny things.

American cheese works.

For a long moment I honestly thought maybe Frank was screwing with me. I thought maybe he'd spent years filling this thing with increasingly stupid fake entries just waiting for the day someone had to use it and was unpleasantly surprised when they got attacked and or died. Simply because I refused to believe there was a creature walking God's green earth called a Grease Goblin.

"...American cheese?" I asked nobody.

I stared at the page then turned around to face the bay surveying the room. From somewhere inside the room came a tiny sound.

Tap.

A pause.

Then:

Tap. Tap.

And right after that, something small sneezed.

At first I didn't see anything. Then my eyes dropped lower. Near one of the tool shelves sat a little gray thing no taller than my knee. It had skin the color of dirty dishwater, huge ears folded back against its head, and greasy black hair hanging in wet strings around its face. Its little fingers looked stained permanently dark, like they'd spent their whole life digging through engine oil. Grease Goblin.

And in its arms—My wrench set. The entire wrench set. I stared at it. It stared at me. The Grease Goblin blinked once then slowly raised a shiny socket wrench and hugged it tighter against its chest.

"Um...little goblin...can I have that back?"

The little thing hissed at me. Like I was the one being unreasonable here. One second it was crouched beside the shelf and the next it unfolded upward like one of those spiders people make from pipe cleaners. Long little limbs. Greasy fingers. Toes spread too wide against the floor. And then it started running full speed toward me. Little greasy footsteps slapping softly against concrete.

I backed up.

"...nope."

Pat pat pat.

"Nope."

Pat pat pat.

"NOPE."

I spun around and immediately caught my boot on absolutely nothing. My foot tangled with the other one and suddenly I was airborne for a fraction of a second before landing flat on my backside hard enough to make my teeth click together.

"SON OF A—"

The binder flew from my hands and slid across the floor. The little footsteps got faster.

PATPATPATPATPAT.

I scrambled backward like a crab having a panic attack and nearly slipped again trying to get my feet underneath me.

"Oh God—oh God—"

I finally got upright and took off toward the break room but behind me I could hear those little feet coming right toward me.

I burst through the break room door and nearly ripped the refrigerator open.

Please let there be cheese.

Please let there be cheese.

Please let there—

Half-empty coffee creamer.

Expired yogurt.

Pickles.

Something in tinfoil that looked old enough to be Abraham Lincoln's lunch...

"COME ON—"

PATPATPAT.

Footsteps getting closer. I started digging through everything. Containers hit the counter, plastic bags flew over my shoulder, something wet exploded against the wall. Then finally, american cheese. And across the package in black marker: FOR GREASE GOBLINS ONLY.

PATPATPATPATPAT.

I yanked out a slice just as the footsteps reached the doorway. The Grease Goblin came around the corner and immediately launched itself at me. Both feet off the ground with its tiny greasy fingers spread wide.

I made a noise I will deny making until the day I die and threw the cheese. The slice hit the floor with a sad little flap. The goblin twisted in midair. Its whole body rotated unnaturally fast. It landed on all fours beside the cheese and stared down at it.

Then it looked at me.

Then the cheese.

Then me again.

The wrench set slipped from its hands and hit the floor. It grabbed the cheese slice with both tiny hands and took off down the hallway so fast its feet blurred against the floor.

PATPATPATPATPATPAT.

I stood there breathing hard.

Staring at my wrench set sitting on the floor.

"...I'm gonna kill him."

Not the goblin.

Frank.

It was December now, and it started snowing sometime last night. Huge white flakes drifted out of the black sky so quietly it almost looked fake. By morning the whole town had changed shape beneath it. Cars turned into rounded white humps. Telephone poles wore heavy white caps. Frank hated snow.

“Snow covers tracks,” he muttered while stabbing at the coffee machine with a screwdriver, I asked myself if that was some sort of voodoo doll he made for me with the way he was stabbing it, but I quickly puched the thought away. “Makes people stupid.”

I stood near the open bay door with both hands wrapped around a paper cup of gas station coffee watching flakes swirl through the gray morning light.

“That second part feels unrelated.”

“It isn’t.”

The garage smelled like its usual odor, cold metal, oil, and exhaust fumes. Space heaters hummed uselessly from opposite corners while old rock music crackled softly through the radio hanging near Frank’s workbench. Outside, snow drifted through the empty lot in slow spirals. For once, nothing felt wrong. No ghosts. No humming radios. No crossroads. NO ALIENS. Honestly? It should’ve worried me immediately. I’d learned by now that quiet days around Frank usually meant something awful was stretching before it moved.

Frank set his coffee on the ground, climbed onto the creeper, and kicked off toward the underside of a

car. “You keep staring out there like somebody’s gonna crawl out of the snow.”

“That’s because somebody probably is.”

“Fair.”

I glanced toward my truck parked near the edge of the lot. Snow had gathered across the hood and windshield in smooth white layers. It looked older in the snow. Older and stranger. Like something abandoned at the edge of the world.

I still hadn’t named it yet.

I thought maybe Johnny, Riley, Pedro, Chris.....

“You ever notice,” I said carefully, “that every horrifying thing you tell me about sounds like something people only survive by accident?”

Frank grunted beneath the hood. “That’s because most people don’t survive them.”

“Cool. So I thought of some names for the truck, people...names I really like-"

The bell above the office door jingled. Both of us looked up automatically, unfortunately for Frank, he was still underneath a car.

*BONK*

"God bless-"

A woman opened the door to the shop, shaking snow from her coat sleeves. She stayed at the door entrance, resting her elbow on the knob. Mid-thirties maybe. Curly mousey hair tucked beneath a knitted cap. Pretty in an old 1920s flapper kind of way. But it wasn’t her face that caught my attention. It was the smell of rot. It was faint, hidden beneath perfume and winter air. But there. The same sweet-sour smell meat gets after sitting too long in a freezer without power. Frank noticed too, I could tell by the way he covered his nose with an oil soaked rag on the way out from under the car. The wheels screamed across the concrete floor as if they could smell it too.

“Morning,” she said with a polite smile. “Sorry to bother you boys.”

Frank’s expression flattened immediately at boys.

“What’s wrong with it,” he asked.

She blinked once, thrown slightly by the lack of greeting. “My car,” she said. “It keeps dying on me.”

As she talked, I noticed she had an accent, trans-Atlantic maybe, I'd seen my fair share of Marilyn movies to recognize it.

“Outside?”

“In the parking lot,” she said, giving a quick, almost theatrical point out toward the snow-blown lot.

Frank wiped his hands slowly on his jeans.

“You drive it here?”

“Yes.”

“And now it won’t start?”

She nodded.

Frank sighed through his nose.

“You got kids?” he asked suddenly.

The woman frowned. “No.”

“Husband?”

“No.”

“Anybody waiting for you somewhere?”

Now even I looked at him.

“What kind of question is that?” she asked.

Frank ignored her and looked toward me instead.

“Daniel.”

“Nope.”

“Go check the car.”

I didn’t move.

“What?”

“The car,” Frank repeated. “Go look.”

“The car might bite me or something...won't it?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

The woman gave an uncomfortable laugh like she wasn’t fully sure he was joking.

I pulled my coat tighter and stepped out into the snow. The cold hit immediately. Sharp enough to burn my lungs. Her car sat near the edge of the lot beneath a coating of white powder. An older SUV, I had never seen the brand before but I knew it was expensive by the emblem on bumper alone.

I reached for the driver-side handle then paused. Something moved inside. Every muscle in my body locked.

“Frank,” I called without taking my eyes off the vehicle.

No answer.

Snow whispered around me. Slowly, carefully, I wiped condensation from the rear passenger window with my sleeve. At first I thought it was clothing piled in the seat. Then it moved again, a ratted buncle of long dark hair attacthed to the head of a woman sitting in the backseat. Her head tilted slightly downward.

“Frank.” This time louder.

Behind me I heard the garage door slam open.

“You open that door yet?” Frank shouted.

“Of course I didn't, the actual grudge is back there!"

“Good.”

The woman from inside stood near the garage entrance now, confusion spreading slowly across her face. “What’s wrong?"

Inside the SUV, the thing in the backseat slowly raised its head. Its face looked swollen. Pale skin stretched tightly across sharp bones. Its mouth hung slightly open. Its jaw pulled far down and far back, like the hinge wasn’t attached to anything solid anymore. The sound it made was soft and wet. Like fabric being torn slowly underwater.

“Frank,” I said, low.

“I see it,” he replied.

Snow hit the windshield in slow, soft bursts.

Frank took a couple steps toward the woman

"Little lady, I know what you are, You are welcome to step fully into the shop, did your nest not warn you of this following you? I know- " He was cut off quickly.

The woman didn’t move, but something in her posture shifted—shoulders pulling back slightly, like she was remembering what she was. I did not know what she was at this point, I was taking centimeter length steps back from the car hoping frank wouldn't notice before I made a run for it back into the shop.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, but her voice had changed. Less polite and sweet...less human.

I looked between them.

Slowly.

Because this was the part I understood least.

Frank, who stabbed coffee machines like they owed him money, suddenly was talking politely to someone. Let alone a someone who clearly isnt anymore human than whatever is in the back of her car.

The snow around her seemed to hesitate, like it didn’t want to touch her. “I was careful,” she said quietly. “I stayed off main roads.”

Frank gave a small, almost tired exhale.

“That thing doesn’t care about roads. You know that

manananggals are attracted to the vampire scent. It won't stop until it takes all of your energy. When you folk lose your energy your immortality does with it. They are just as lethal as the hunters. This may be the first time I met you, but I know your family head. They heed my warnings, I know they have told you this."

That was the most i had EVER heard frank speak. I was able to cover a lot of ground with my centimeters with that. Inside the SUV, the backseat creature shifted again. Its head tilted, like it was listening now.

The woman stared at her car for a long time. Long enough that the snow around her stopped trying to land on her. Then she sighed, not afraid, and not impressed.

“Frank,” she said finally, “just get rid of it.”

Frank didn’t move.

“That’s not how this works.”

“It attached to me,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward her chest, “So unattach it. My brother told me to come to you so here I am. You fix our...inconveniences...and we help with..yours."

Frank looked at her like she’d just asked him to uninstall death. “It doesn’t detach,” he said. “It escalates.”

The SUV’s backseat creature twitched at that. Like it agreed, or liked being talked about.

The woman rolled her eyes.

“I don’t care what it does. I have things to do. I have a schedule.”

Frank exhaled through his nose.

"You wont gave a schedule much longer,” he muttered. “If you dont go sit your half-dead ass inside and let us figure it out.”

There it was. The Frank I knew, this time it wasn't directed at me though so I made sure to give him a little gold star in my head, a nod in agreement, and put my best serious face on over my scared shitless one.

“I can go back to the nest,” she said. “They’ll deal with it properly. I am not sitting in that...building."

Frank shook his head once.

“No,” he said. “Because it’s already linked to you. And it’s already learning where you go.”

That made her pause.

Just slightly.

Frank continued.“And if it traces you back,” he added, “it doesn’t stop at you.”

Silence.

Then Frank nodded toward the car. “That thing knows where your nest is.”

The woman went very still. For the first time, her face seemed...soft. “…you’re sure?”

Inside the SUV, the creature pressed its forehead against the glass again. The window fogged, unfogged, then fogged again.

“I’m sure.”

The woman stared at him for another second. Then she shrugged. “Then fix it."

She turned and walked back into the snow like she wasn’t leaving a nightmare behind her. The bell over the shop door jingled once and she was out of sight.

“…so,” I said, “do we have to sludge the rims of the car or cut some strings?”

Frank didn’t look at me.

“No.”

“Okay good.”

“We’re gonna kill it.”

“Less good.”

Frank finally stepped toward the SUV.

Snow crunched under his boots like bone breaking in slow motion. Inside the car, the thing followed him with its eyes. I stayed where I was for half a second longer. Then very reluctantly followed.

Frank stopped beside the SUV and opened the back door. Cold air spilled out immediately. The smell hit worse up close, sweet rot and something metallic underneath it, like pennies left in milk. The thing inside didn’t lunge. It just… watched.

Frank pointed at the ground.

“Get out.”

It smiled.

Then it moved. Fast. The backseat buckled as it unfolded itself, not standing but splitting. The torso peeled upward from the waist like it had been unzipped. Then, the upper half came free. Two loud mushy pops of flesh rang in my ears as wet, leathery, wings stretched out of its back.

“Yeah,” I said, immediately backing up. “Nope. Hate that. Hate that a lot.”

I HURLED! Right onto the car. Great now I will have to clean that up too.

Frank didn’t even look impressed.

“Door,” he said.

“What?”

“Close it.”

“Oh—right—sure—because we’re casually dealing with airborne body horror today and the biggest concern right now is SHUTTING A DOOR'"

I slammed the SUV door shut.

It was already above the garage screaming by the time the sound of the car door slamming reached my ears.

Frank pointed at the ground near the car.

“Salt,” he said.

I blinked. “We have salt?”

Frank looked at me like I had personally insulted mechanics. "I have been dealing with this type of shit everyday for the past thirty years...of course I have salt Danny."

We booked it to the bay and slammed the door shut behind us. Frank shoved a container into my hands. It was not salt.

It was a half-empty jug labeled ICE MELT / DO NOT USE ON FOOD - Love christine

"Seriously?"

“Close enough,” Frank said.

The creature dove.

Frank grabbed a metal tray from under his bench, and dumped something into it that looked like salt, ash, and sand.

Did I forget to mention that the roof of the garage is completely GLASS. Plexiglass, but still see through, plexi didn't mean anything to me when I could clearly see the spawn of Satan through it. With a dull plunk, it hit the roof with its wings, screeching. The whole building shook. Frank moved quickly and calmly.

He slammed the tray down onto a feather he must have grabbed from outside on the run in. It recoiled instantly, wings jerking like they’d touched fire.

“Vinegar,” Frank said.

“What??”

He shoved a bottle at me.

“Pour it.”

The creature lunged again—

I dumped it all over the floor.

The thing screamed again and dropped to the roof. Its wings spasmed like they were glitching in a video game.

“We have to kill it before it can fly again,” he said. “It can’t reattach if it stays down too long.”

“It’s already unattatched! It’s VERY unattached Frank!”

The upper half twisted in the snow on the roof, dragging itself toward the front of the building.

Its mouth opened again but this time it didn't smile.

Frank picked up a handful of the ash-salt mixture from the tray and walked outside.

"Follow me."

"I'm good. I don't think going outside, where the thing we are trying to kill can freely FLY, is a good idea."

"Now."

You guessed it, I went.

Together we ran to the car swung open the back door and threw the mixture directly into the exposed waist.

The creature screamed so hard the snow around the lot clearned in a perfect circle.

Then Frank nodded.

“Good.”

“GOOD??”

“Now it really can’t rejoin.”

The thing tried anyway. It practically launched itself from the roof and fell like a baby bird that was kicked out of the nest too early. Flailing and dragging itself around like gravity was optional.

That’s when Frank smiled

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”

It died quickly after that.

"Want manananggal for dinner?"

"Mhm..whatever-"

I hurled again.

​

Little easter egg in here highlighting

r/zmcgraw95 story about the Malaga Inn

Three days after the incident with the ghost bride, Frank handed me a set of keys while I was changing brake pads with no explanation. Just the metallic clink of keys sliding across my toolbox hard enough to stop beside my hand. I looked down at them automatically expecting a pick up tag for an annoying customer Frank didn't want to handle. Instead, I saw an old Chevrolet emblem worn nearly smooth with age.

I frowned. “…what’s this.”

Frank was halfway beneath the lifted Ford in bay two, boots sticking out from under it while rain hammered softly against the shop roof overhead.

“Outside,” he said finally.

I stared at him for a second. “You know, technically, murdering me or offering me up for sacrifice puts more suspicion on you every day I work here.”

“Cops are on my payroll.”

“Wait, I'm sorry, WHAT?!"

Frank slid himself out from under the truck with a grunt, grease dark across one sleeve of his coveralls. He stood, wiped his hands off with his lucky rag, then jerked his head toward the back lot.

“Come on.”

The rain had settled into that cold steady October drizzle, water dripped from the edge of the garage roof in uneven taps as we crossed behind the shop toward the fenced storage lot. Most of the vehicles back there looked abandoned by both humanity and God. A rusted RV leaned sideways into dead grass, an old sedan sat missing all four doors, something beneath a massive tarp occasionally shifted shape enough that I had stopped asking about it weeks ago, and then I saw the truck. It sat near the rear fence beneath the weak yellow glow of a security light, dark green, square body, plenty of character from gentle age. One side mirror didn’t match the other and there was a dent near the tailgate that looked old and honest. Rainwater rolled down the hood in thin silver lines softly shaking from the quiet engine.

“…Frank.”

He lit a cigarette, shielding the lighter against the rain.

“You needed a vehicle.”

I looked back at the truck, then at him again.

“I was going to buy a new car after work today.”

“I don't pay you enough to buy a new car.”

“You said it...but anyway, your just giving me a truck? Whats the catch? Is it haunted with gremlins or tire leprechauns?”

“Not that I know of, i've been fixing it up since the day after your wedding.”

“You mean the day after you almost sacrificed me?”

Frank exhaled smoke toward the rain. “I hate listening to you complain about walking.”

I snorted quietly before I could stop myself, the truth is I would never buy a truck for myself but a free vehicle, I won't complain about that. Frank explained that he had rebuilt engine, put fresh tires on, new brake lines I could spot even from here, and replaced the windshield. Frank wasn’t a warm person, the closest he came to an emotion other than onryness,

was telling me I was “less useless than average.”

But this...this had taken time. I walked slowly around the truck, fingertips brushing lightly against wet metal.

“Where’d you even get it?”

“It's been sitting here for years.”

“Dead owner?”

“Could be, don't remember. They never came back for it."

The driver-side door creaked when I opened it.The inside smelled faintly like old vinyl, gasoline, cedar, and rain-damp upholstery. The bench seat had been repaired by somebody with functional hands but absolutely no artistic vision. Frank, obviously. I slid behind the wheel. The engine vibrated gently beneath me, deep and solid in a way newer vehicles never managed anymore. Outside, rain tapped against the windshield while the wipers dragged back and forth with an uneven squeak, and for the first time since the thing in the wedding dress had folded my old car around itself like paper, I felt something unclench in my chest. A small piece of normal life stitched awkwardly back together.

I rested my hands against the wheel.

“…thank you.”

Frank visibly disliked hearing that.

“Don’t get emotional in my parking lot.”

“You rebuilt me a truck and are giving it to me for free.”

“You work here for life, don't complain about walking again, and park in the old barn out back from now on.”

“Working here for life is a suggestion because you actually like me a little isn't it?.”

“It isn’t.” Frank leaned against the fence beside the truck, cigarette glowing softly in the rain-dark afternoon. “You almost died helping me with the bride,” he said plainly. “Felt rude not to replace the car.”

For a second neither of us said anything.

Then, naturally, he ruined the moment immediately.

“Truck’s got one actual rule.”

I sighed. “There it is.”

Frank pointed at me with the cigarette.

“No hitchhikers.”

I stared at him.

“That’s your big supernatural warning? Frank, that’s literally just common sense.”

“No,” he said quietly. “but you would think so.”

The tone changed the air instantly. Rain hissed softly around us.Beyond the ditch, the graveyard sat dark beneath the trees, rows of crooked headstones barely visible through drifting mist.

I looked back at him slowly. “You’re joking.”

Frank flicked ash into a puddle.

“If you ever come out to the truck at night,” he said, “and somebody’s already sitting inside?”

A pause. The engine idled softly beneath me. Rain tapped against the roof.

Frank met my eyes through the open driver-side door.

“Don’t start it.”

I leaned back against the seat and looked through the windshield toward the graveyard beyond the ditch. Fog had started collecting low across the ground, thin pale strands weaving between the headstones. October in this town never looked fully alive, even the air seemed tired.

“…why would there already be somebody inside?” I asked quietly.

Frank was silent long enough that I almost thought he wouldn’t answer. “Road spirits. There are things,” he said, “that attach themselves to movement. Roads, highways, crossroads, long stretches where people stop paying attention while they drive.”

Rain whispered through the trees around us.

“They hitch rides.”

He dropped the cigarette into the gravel and crushed it beneath his boot. “Sometimes they just want warmth,” he continued. “Sometimes they want to be noticed. Sometimes they’re trying to go somewhere.”

“And the most likely?”

Frank looked toward the truck instead of me.

“Sometimes they don’t remember they’re dead.”

Something moved cold beneath my ribs at that sentence. I laughed once under my breath, mostly because the alternative was admitting I suddenly wanted every door on the truck locked immediately.

“You know,” I muttered, “before I met you, my biggest concern driving at night was deer.”

Frank nodded thoughtfully. “Still should be.”

The wind picked up harder for a moment. Tree branches creaked softly above the fence line. I glanced down at the dashboard while the truck idled beneath me, low and steady. The gauges worked. Radio too, apparently, though the only station currently coming through was static and faint country music.

I ran a thumb over the cracked steering wheel. “What’s her name?”

Frank blinked once.

“You want to name it?”

“Every car has a name.”

“No they don't.”

“You named your car.”

“That was different.”

“You named it Christine.”

“That...I was a young boy once too...Christine, whew she was wild. My first wife.”

“It caught fire twice.”

“Exactly.”

“You should head home before the rain gets worse.”

I glanced automatically toward the sky. The clouds had lowered while we talked. The world beyond the shop looked dimmer now, evening arriving early beneath the storm cover. I reached for the gear shift.

Then stopped.

“…Frank.”

“Hm.”

“If I look over someday and there’s somebody sitting in here…”

He met my eyes.

“How do I know if it’s a person or not.”

For the first time since he handed me the keys, Frank looked genuinely serious.

Not irritated.

Not detached.

Serious.

“You’ll know,” he said quietly.

I opened my mouth to ask something else when the radio crackled loudly. Both of us looked toward it at the same time. Static surged through the speakers in a violent burst before settling into a low hiss.

And underneath it, very faintly, a was woman humming. Frank’s expression didn’t change, he just leaned through the open driver-side door and shut the radio off without a word.

“…cool,” I said finally, voice slightly thinner than I wanted. “Cool. Awesome. Love the haunted undertones.”

Frank stepped back from the truck.

“I told you it wasn’t haunted.”

I stared at him. “There was literally ghost humming.”

“That wasn’t the truck.”

I kicked the underside of the dashboard hard enough to hurt my foot immediately afterward.

“Jesus Christ,” I groaned, grabbing my boot. “I don’t want road spirits, Frank. I don’t want hitchhiker ghosts. I don’t want women humming through the radio!”

“Then don’t pick them up.”

“That’s not the issue! Im sure we have to do some sort of ritual now, or seance, somethings gonna come running at us... ” I shoved the driver door open and climbed back out into the drizzle, pacing once beside the truck with both hands dragging through my wet hair. “I had plans tonight.”

Frank looked unimpressed. “With who? Hot date?"

“Uh no, just a new friend, he works at the Malaga Inn.”

Frank’s face stayed completely blank.

“The guy from the front desk,” I clarified.

“The haunted hotel?”

Recognition.

“Oh,” Frank said. “The nervous one.”

“He’s not nervous, he’s observant.”

“He jumped when the ice machine turned on.”

“Because apparently the ice machine turns on by itself when nobody’s near it.”

Frank shrugged. “That’s normal for hotels.”

“That is not normal for hotels.”

The rain intensified slightly around us, soft drops turning sharper against the gravel lot. I leaned against the truck with a miserable sigh. Ever since my apartment got partially demolished during the thing with the bride, I’d been staying at the Malaga Inn while repairs were being done. Apparently the universe had decided that if I survived one haunting, I deserved complimentary exposure to several more.

The place was beautiful though, in the way old Southern buildings always were. It had tall windows, long halls, and antique mirrors that made eye contact feel dangerous. According to my friend, the hotel was incredibly haunted. Not fake haunted either, employees quitting regularly from fear, footsteps in locked hallways, something crying in empty rooms, a redheaded girl that shows up and disappears, falling chandeliers, etc. Honestly, me and him becoming friends had happened pretty naturally after we exchanged some stories of our own. Turns out if two people spend enough time discussing whether the sound upstairs is “pipes” or “the dead,” eventually you end up getting drinks together.

“We were supposed to exchange work stories tonight,” I complained. “Like normal people with deeply abnormal lives.”

Frank nodded once. “Sounds boring.”

I pointed at the truck again. “But THIS happened.”

The wind shifted suddenly across the lot, carrying the smell of wet earth from the graveyard.

“I was finally going to have one evening,” I continued. “One single evening where I sit in a haunted building voluntarily and hear somebody else’s paranormal problems for once.”

“You know what, he told me yesterday?” I said. “He said a woman in room twelve keeps calling the front desk at three in the morning asking for towels.”

“That seems perfectly normal to me, Christine always used five."

“The room has been locked for years because a woman drowned in the bathtub in 1987.”

Frank considered that.

“Maybe she’s still wet.”

I stared at him in complete disbelief.

“You know what, sometimes I genuinely think something went wrong during your creation.”

Frank pointed toward the truck keys still dangling from my fingers. “You taking it or not? No need for rituals or seances tonight. You can go.”

I looked back at the pickup sitting in the rain. The engine still idled low and steady.

“Yes, I’m taking it,” I muttered. “Because unfortunately I enjoy having transportation.”

“Good.”

“But if I die because some dead hitchhiker crawls out of the backseat asking for a ride to hell, im coming back to take you with us.”

Frank nodded calmly. “You can try.”

I opened my mouth to respond but I decided to let it go and leave as fast as those wheels would go.

The truck rolled out onto the highway with a low mechanical growl, headlights cutting long pale tunnels through the mist gathering over the asphalt. Rainwater hissed beneath the tires. Behind me, the repair shop shrank into a smear of yellow light and then disappeared completely behind the trees.The heater rattled lukewarm air, somewhere beneath that grandpa smell, lingered cedar and cigarette smoke baked permanently into the fabric from decades of ownership. With the road stretched empty ahead of me, I found myself thinking about the Malaga Inn. About polished wooden banisters, flickering chandelier light, about sitting in the lobby with cheap drinks while my new friend tells me about his ghost sightings between check-ins like we were veterans swapping war stories nobody else would believe.

Honestly, I needed that tonight. I needed one evening where I wasn't cutting knots off corpses or getting nearly sacrificed by ghost brides or learning new categories of dead things from Frank like he was teaching biology. I needed to sit in an old hotel and pretend my life hadn’t become profoundly insane.

The truck radio crackled softly. I froze for half a second before realizing it was only static this time. I reached over and switched it fully off again.

Silence returned except for rain and engine noise.

Outside, the woods thickened.Fog drifted low across the pavement in pale ribbons. The farther I drove, the quieter the world became. Then I noticed the crossroads. At first, I thought I’d just stopped paying attention. The intersection sat ahead beneath a single hanging traffic light swaying gently above the road. Four directions cutting cleanly through dense woods.

I slowed automatically.

“…what the hell?”

I had driven this route dozens of times heading toward town. There had never been a crossroads here. The yellow light overhead flickered weakly, buzzing faintly in the mist. Something about it made my stomach tighten immediately. The truck rolled closer. The light changed from yellow then to red.

I stopped at the line without thinking. Rain tapped softly against the roof. The crossroads sat completely empty in all directions. No cars. No movement. No sound besides the engine idling beneath me. Then the traffic light above the intersection swung harder in the wind, except there was no wind anymore. The trees stood perfectly still.

I looked up through the windshield and the light had gone green. I chopped it all up to being overtired and over paranoid, but can you blame me after all I have been through? I feel like i'm Dean Winchester and Frank is Idiot Sam always getting us almost killed.

I laughed once under my breath. Thin. Nervous.

"We're good, we are good. All good. Whew."

I kept driving. Five minutes later, I saw the crossroads again. My hands tightened around the steering wheel so hard the cracked leather groaned beneath my grip.

Same hanging light.

Same empty roads.

Same flickering yellow glow.

“No.”

I looked behind me. Only darkness and fog.

No turn-offs. No side roads. I had been driving straight.

The radio hissed softly.

Then—

click.

Like somebody changing stations.

"Hello?"

A voice coming from the static. I stared ahead at the intersection while cold pressure spread slowly beneath my ribs. The truck slowed on its own approaching the light. That was when I noticed the woman standing beneath it. She was tall, very thin, and barefoot in the rain. Her plum colored dress hung soaked against her body while long dark hair stuck to the sides of her scary, but beautiful face. She stood perfectly still at the edge of the crossroads, one hand hanging limp at her side.

Waiting. My mouth went dry instantly when Frank’s warning crawled back into my head. Road spirits.

Sometimes they don’t remember they’re dead.

The woman slowly lifted one arm and pointed toward the road to my left. The radio static thickened until it almost sounded like whispering beneath it. I hit the gas hard enough the truck fishtailed slightly.

The woman vanished past my window. I kept my eyes forward and didn’t look back. I didn’t breathe normally again until the intersection disappeared behind me. The road curved through woods slick black with rainwater. One minute passed, two, then yellow light appeared ahead through the fog again.

I actually felt my stomach drop. The crossroads waited silently beneath the swinging traffic light.

But this time, the woman stood in the middle of the road closer, her head tilted slightly toward the truck.

Then headlights appeared behind me. Relief hit so hard it almost hurt. Another vehicle emerged slowly through the fog behind me. Thank God, I almost laughed. Another driver, hopefully somebody normal.

The pickup rolled closer behind me and stopped at the intersection, its headlights shut off simultaneously while darkness swallowed it whole.

Every hair on my arms stood up. The truck engine coughed once. The woman in plum slowly turned her head toward me and smiled. It's...teeth were flat and square, packed tightly together, the color of old piano keys left in nicotine and grave dirt. Not sharp at first glance, they looked blunt. Ordinary, almost. Until you realize they weren’t made for biting chunks out of something. They were made for pressure. Endless pressure. The kind that crushes bone slowly while the mouth keeps smiling. I slammed the accelerator.

My truck surged through the intersection violently. The steering wheel shook beneath my hands while trees blurred past outside. The crossroads vanished behind me again and I kept driving faster now. Too fast for wet roads, but I didn’t care. The road curved sharply through the woods. Then suddenly the trees thinned out. The highway opened into enormous empty fields silvered beneath a sky that no longer looked like storm clouds. The rain had stopped completely. I eased off the gas slowly and noticed that the the world had gone silent again. When I looked up towards the heavens to none other than to curse God and ask him why me, A perfect pale circle suspended motionless in the sky maybe fifty feet above the ground. My breath caught painfully in my throat. The truck engine died instantly and everything electrical cut out. Darkness swallowed the cab except for the enormous white glow hovering over the field beside the road. Fog curled beneath it in slow spirals. And standing underneath the light were tall, thin, figures. Perfectly still, watching the truck and definitely watching me.

I slammed both hands against the steering wheel.

"FUCKING ALIENS FRANK? WHAT THE FUCK!?"

I kicked the underside of the dashboard hard and that made me more mad.

“What do you MEAN ‘don’t pick up hitchhikers’?! WHERE ARE THEY BECAUSE I GOT FUCKING ALIENS FRANK?!”

They started walking towards me with slow, unnatural coordination through the silver-lit field, limbs bending with the careful precision of something pretending to understand human movement. Their skin pale enough to look almost translucent beneath the hovering light above them.

And as they came closer, I realized why the woman at the crossroads had looked wrong. These things looked like her, or maybe she looked like them. Some looked vaguely feminine, their faces narrow and delicate in ways that would’ve been beautiful if they weren’t so profoundly inhuman. Others were broader through the shoulders, taller, heavier in shape without actually looking much stronger. Male and female only in the loosest possible sense.

I was fully crashing out now.

“I DON’T WANT ROAD SPIRITS!” I punched the wheel again. “I DON’T WANT GHOSTS!” Another hit. “I DON’T WANT—WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU PEOPLE ARE!”

The figures stopped walking, I barely noticed. One of the figures tilted its head sharply. Another looked toward the others. The light above the field pulsed once.

“I WORK AT A MECHANIC SHOP!” I shouted at nobody and everybody simultaneously. “I SHOULD BE DEALING WITH OIL CHANGES! BRAKE PADS! DIVORCED MEN NAMED TODD!”

I kicked the door this time. The horn blared weakly and died halfway through. The things in the field had completely stopped approaching now, they just stood there staring at me. They looked confused.

“I HAD PLANS TONIGHT!” I yelled, voice cracking from genuine outrage. “I WAS SUPPOSED TO GO DRINK WITH MY FRIEND AT THE HAUNTED HOTEL!”

“AND ANOTHER THING—”

I slammed my fist against the steering wheel again hard enough the old Chevy emblem cut across my knuckles.

“WHY IS IT ALWAYS ME?!”

The nearest figure flinched, actually flinched. Then all at once the group shifted uneasily beneath the hovering light. One of the taller ones looked back toward the craft overhead while another slowly took a step backward.

I stared at them breathing hard.

“…what.”

The pale woman-shaped thing nearest the road looked at me one final time. Her flat teeth showed faintly beneath that impossibly horrifying smile. Then she glanced toward the others and very slowly

they began retreating.

I blinked.

“…are you serious.”

The figures moved backward through the field with sudden awkward urgency, exchanging sharp glances between each other while the enormous light overhead dimmed slightly. One of them pointed at me. Another made a quick jerking movement like it didn’t want to be there anymore. Then the light above the field contracted inward soundlessly. The fog beneath it spiraled violently outward across the grass and in the span of a heartbeat everything vanished. Darkness slammed back into the world.

The truck engine roared violently back to life beneath me, my headlights exploded on, my radio screamed Johnny Cash. I sat frozen gripping the steering wheel while my own breathing echoed loud inside the cab. My phone started ringing impossibly loud, when I looked down it was my buddy from the Hotel.

"Dude, i'm going to need 10 shots of straight vodka and your undivided attention. I almost got abducted by aliens."

Little easter egg in here highlighting r/zmcgraw95 story about the Malaga Inn

Three days after the incident with the ghost bride, Frank handed me a set of keys while I was changing brake pads with no explanation. Just the metallic clink of keys sliding across my toolbox hard enough to stop beside my hand. I looked down at them automatically expecting a pick up tag for an annoying customer Frank didn't want to handle. Instead, I saw an old Chevrolet emblem worn nearly smooth with age.

I frowned. “…what’s this.”

Frank was halfway beneath the lifted Ford in bay two, boots sticking out from under it while rain hammered softly against the shop roof overhead.

“Outside,” he said finally.

I stared at him for a second. “You know, technically, murdering me or offering me up for sacrifice puts more suspicion on you every day I work here.”

“Cops are on my payroll.”

“Wait, I'm sorry, WHAT?!"

Frank slid himself out from under the truck with a grunt, grease dark across one sleeve of his coveralls. He stood, wiped his hands off with his lucky rag, then jerked his head toward the back lot.

“Come on.”

The rain had settled into that cold steady October drizzle, water dripped from the edge of the garage roof in uneven taps as we crossed behind the shop toward the fenced storage lot. Most of the vehicles back there looked abandoned by both humanity and God. A rusted RV leaned sideways into dead grass, an old sedan sat missing all four doors, something beneath a massive tarp occasionally shifted shape enough that I had stopped asking about it weeks ago, and then I saw the truck. It sat near the rear fence beneath the weak yellow glow of a security light, dark green, square body, plenty of character from gentle age. One side mirror didn’t match the other and there was a dent near the tailgate that looked old and honest. Rainwater rolled down the hood in thin silver lines softly shaking from the quiet engine.

“…Frank.”

He lit a cigarette, shielding the lighter against the rain.

“You needed a vehicle.”

I looked back at the truck, then at him again.

“I was going to buy a new car after work today.”

“I don't pay you enough to buy a new car.”

“You said it...but anyway, your just giving me a truck? Whats the catch? Is it haunted with gremlins or tire leprechauns?”

“Not that I know of, i've been fixing it up since the day after your wedding.”

“You mean the day after you almost sacrificed me?”

Frank exhaled smoke toward the rain. “I hate listening to you complain about walking.”

I snorted quietly before I could stop myself, the truth is I would never buy a truck for myself but a free vehicle, I won't complain about that. Frank explained that he had rebuilt engine, put fresh tires on, new brake lines I could spot even from here, and replaced the windshield. Frank wasn’t a warm person, the closest he came to an emotion other than onryness,

was telling me I was “less useless than average.”

But this...this had taken time. I walked slowly around the truck, fingertips brushing lightly against wet metal.

“Where’d you even get it?”

“It's been sitting here for years.”

“Dead owner?”

“Could be, don't remember. They never came back for it."

The driver-side door creaked when I opened it.The inside smelled faintly like old vinyl, gasoline, cedar, and rain-damp upholstery. The bench seat had been repaired by somebody with functional hands but absolutely no artistic vision. Frank, obviously. I slid behind the wheel. The engine vibrated gently beneath me, deep and solid in a way newer vehicles never managed anymore. Outside, rain tapped against the windshield while the wipers dragged back and forth with an uneven squeak, and for the first time since the thing in the wedding dress had folded my old car around itself like paper, I felt something unclench in my chest. A small piece of normal life stitched awkwardly back together.

I rested my hands against the wheel.

“…thank you.”

Frank visibly disliked hearing that.

“Don’t get emotional in my parking lot.”

“You rebuilt me a truck and are giving it to me for free.”

“You work here for life, don't complain about walking again, and park in the old barn out back from now on.”

“Working here for life is a suggestion because you actually like me a little isn't it?.”

“It isn’t.” Frank leaned against the fence beside the truck, cigarette glowing softly in the rain-dark afternoon. “You almost died helping me with the bride,” he said plainly. “Felt rude not to replace the car.”

For a second neither of us said anything.

Then, naturally, he ruined the moment immediately.

“Truck’s got one actual rule.”

I sighed. “There it is.”

Frank pointed at me with the cigarette.

“No hitchhikers.”

I stared at him.

“That’s your big supernatural warning? Frank, that’s literally just common sense.”

“No,” he said quietly. “but you would think so.”

The tone changed the air instantly. Rain hissed softly around us.Beyond the ditch, the graveyard sat dark beneath the trees, rows of crooked headstones barely visible through drifting mist.

I looked back at him slowly. “You’re joking.”

Frank flicked ash into a puddle.

“If you ever come out to the truck at night,” he said, “and somebody’s already sitting inside?”

A pause. The engine idled softly beneath me. Rain tapped against the roof.

Frank met my eyes through the open driver-side door.

“Don’t start it.”

I leaned back against the seat and looked through the windshield toward the graveyard beyond the ditch. Fog had started collecting low across the ground, thin pale strands weaving between the headstones. October in this town never looked fully alive, even the air seemed tired.

“…why would there already be somebody inside?” I asked quietly.

Frank was silent long enough that I almost thought he wouldn’t answer. “Road spirits. There are things,” he said, “that attach themselves to movement. Roads, highways, crossroads, long stretches where people stop paying attention while they drive.”

Rain whispered through the trees around us.

“They hitch rides.”

He dropped the cigarette into the gravel and crushed it beneath his boot. “Sometimes they just want warmth,” he continued. “Sometimes they want to be noticed. Sometimes they’re trying to go somewhere.”

“And the most likely?”

Frank looked toward the truck instead of me.

“Sometimes they don’t remember they’re dead.”

Something moved cold beneath my ribs at that sentence. I laughed once under my breath, mostly because the alternative was admitting I suddenly wanted every door on the truck locked immediately.

“You know,” I muttered, “before I met you, my biggest concern driving at night was deer.”

Frank nodded thoughtfully. “Still should be.”

The wind picked up harder for a moment. Tree branches creaked softly above the fence line. I glanced down at the dashboard while the truck idled beneath me, low and steady. The gauges worked. Radio too, apparently, though the only station currently coming through was static and faint country music.

I ran a thumb over the cracked steering wheel. “What’s her name?”

Frank blinked once.

“You want to name it?”

“Every car has a name.”

“No they don't.”

“You named your car.”

“That was different.”

“You named it Christine.”

“That...I was a young boy once too...Christine, whew she was wild. My first wife.”

“It caught fire twice.”

“Exactly.”

“You should head home before the rain gets worse.”

I glanced automatically toward the sky. The clouds had lowered while we talked. The world beyond the shop looked dimmer now, evening arriving early beneath the storm cover. I reached for the gear shift.

Then stopped.

“…Frank.”

“Hm.”

“If I look over someday and there’s somebody sitting in here…”

He met my eyes.

“How do I know if it’s a person or not.”

For the first time since he handed me the keys, Frank looked genuinely serious.

Not irritated.

Not detached.

Serious.

“You’ll know,” he said quietly.

I opened my mouth to ask something else when the radio crackled loudly. Both of us looked toward it at the same time. Static surged through the speakers in a violent burst before settling into a low hiss.

And underneath it, very faintly, a was woman humming. Frank’s expression didn’t change, he just leaned through the open driver-side door and shut the radio off without a word.

“…cool,” I said finally, voice slightly thinner than I wanted. “Cool. Awesome. Love the haunted undertones.”

Frank stepped back from the truck.

“I told you it wasn’t haunted.”

I stared at him. “There was literally ghost humming.”

“That wasn’t the truck.”

I kicked the underside of the dashboard hard enough to hurt my foot immediately afterward.

“Jesus Christ,” I groaned, grabbing my boot. “I don’t want road spirits, Frank. I don’t want hitchhiker ghosts. I don’t want women humming through the radio!”

“Then don’t pick them up.”

“That’s not the issue! Im sure we have to do some sort of ritual now, or seance, somethings gonna come running at us... ” I shoved the driver door open and climbed back out into the drizzle, pacing once beside the truck with both hands dragging through my wet hair. “I had plans tonight.”

Frank looked unimpressed. “With who? Hot date?"

“Uh no, just a new friend, he works at the Malaga Inn.”

Frank’s face stayed completely blank.

“The guy from the front desk,” I clarified.

“The haunted hotel?”

Recognition.

“Oh,” Frank said. “The nervous one.”

“He’s not nervous, he’s observant.”

“He jumped when the ice machine turned on.”

“Because apparently the ice machine turns on by itself when nobody’s near it.”

Frank shrugged. “That’s normal for hotels.”

“That is not normal for hotels.”

The rain intensified slightly around us, soft drops turning sharper against the gravel lot. I leaned against the truck with a miserable sigh. Ever since my apartment got partially demolished during the thing with the bride, I’d been staying at the Malaga Inn while repairs were being done. Apparently the universe had decided that if I survived one haunting, I deserved complimentary exposure to several more.

The place was beautiful though, in the way old Southern buildings always were. It had tall windows, long halls, and antique mirrors that made eye contact feel dangerous. According to my friend, the hotel was incredibly haunted. Not fake haunted either, employees quitting regularly from fear, footsteps in locked hallways, something crying in empty rooms, a redheaded girl that shows up and disappears, falling chandeliers, etc. Honestly, me and him becoming friends had happened pretty naturally after we exchanged some stories of our own. Turns out if two people spend enough time discussing whether the sound upstairs is “pipes” or “the dead,” eventually you end up getting drinks together.

“We were supposed to exchange work stories tonight,” I complained. “Like normal people with deeply abnormal lives.”

Frank nodded once. “Sounds boring.”

I pointed at the truck again. “But THIS happened.”

The wind shifted suddenly across the lot, carrying the smell of wet earth from the graveyard.

“I was finally going to have one evening,” I continued. “One single evening where I sit in a haunted building voluntarily and hear somebody else’s paranormal problems for once.”

“You know what, he told me yesterday?” I said. “He said a woman in room twelve keeps calling the front desk at three in the morning asking for towels.”

“That seems perfectly normal to me, Christine always used five."

“The room has been locked for years because a woman drowned in the bathtub in 1987.”

Frank considered that.

“Maybe she’s still wet.”

I stared at him in complete disbelief.

“You know what, sometimes I genuinely think something went wrong during your creation.”

Frank pointed toward the truck keys still dangling from my fingers. “You taking it or not? No need for rituals or seances tonight. You can go.”

I looked back at the pickup sitting in the rain. The engine still idled low and steady.

“Yes, I’m taking it,” I muttered. “Because unfortunately I enjoy having transportation.”

“Good.”

“But if I die because some dead hitchhiker crawls out of the backseat asking for a ride to hell, im coming back to take you with us.”

Frank nodded calmly. “You can try.”

I opened my mouth to respond but I decided to let it go and leave as fast as those wheels would go.

The truck rolled out onto the highway with a low mechanical growl, headlights cutting long pale tunnels through the mist gathering over the asphalt. Rainwater hissed beneath the tires. Behind me, the repair shop shrank into a smear of yellow light and then disappeared completely behind the trees.The heater rattled lukewarm air, somewhere beneath that grandpa smell, lingered cedar and cigarette smoke baked permanently into the fabric from decades of ownership. With the road stretched empty ahead of me, I found myself thinking about the Malaga Inn. About polished wooden banisters, flickering chandelier light, about sitting in the lobby with cheap drinks while my new friend tells me about his ghost sightings between check-ins like we were veterans swapping war stories nobody else would believe.

Honestly, I needed that tonight. I needed one evening where I wasn't cutting knots off corpses or getting nearly sacrificed by ghost brides or learning new categories of dead things from Frank like he was teaching biology. I needed to sit in an old hotel and pretend my life hadn’t become profoundly insane.

The truck radio crackled softly. I froze for half a second before realizing it was only static this time. I reached over and switched it fully off again.

Silence returned except for rain and engine noise.

Outside, the woods thickened.Fog drifted low across the pavement in pale ribbons. The farther I drove, the quieter the world became. Then I noticed the crossroads. At first, I thought I’d just stopped paying attention. The intersection sat ahead beneath a single hanging traffic light swaying gently above the road. Four directions cutting cleanly through dense woods.

I slowed automatically.

“…what the hell?”

I had driven this route dozens of times heading toward town. There had never been a crossroads here. The yellow light overhead flickered weakly, buzzing faintly in the mist. Something about it made my stomach tighten immediately. The truck rolled closer. The light changed from yellow then to red.

I stopped at the line without thinking. Rain tapped softly against the roof. The crossroads sat completely empty in all directions. No cars. No movement. No sound besides the engine idling beneath me. Then the traffic light above the intersection swung harder in the wind, except there was no wind anymore. The trees stood perfectly still.

I looked up through the windshield and the light had gone green. I chopped it all up to being overtired and over paranoid, but can you blame me after all I have been through? I feel like i'm Dean Winchester and Frank is Idiot Sam always getting us almost killed.

I laughed once under my breath. Thin. Nervous.

"We're good, we are good. All good. Whew."

I kept driving. Five minutes later, I saw the crossroads again. My hands tightened around the steering wheel so hard the cracked leather groaned beneath my grip.

Same hanging light.

Same empty roads.

Same flickering yellow glow.

“No.”

I looked behind me. Only darkness and fog.

No turn-offs. No side roads. I had been driving straight.

The radio hissed softly.

Then—

click.

Like somebody changing stations.

"Hello?"

A voice coming from the static. I stared ahead at the intersection while cold pressure spread slowly beneath my ribs. The truck slowed on its own approaching the light. That was when I noticed the woman standing beneath it. She was tall, very thin, and barefoot in the rain. Her plum colored dress hung soaked against her body while long dark hair stuck to the sides of her scary, but beautiful face. She stood perfectly still at the edge of the crossroads, one hand hanging limp at her side.

Waiting. My mouth went dry instantly when Frank’s warning crawled back into my head. Road spirits.

Sometimes they don’t remember they’re dead.

The woman slowly lifted one arm and pointed toward the road to my left. The radio static thickened until it almost sounded like whispering beneath it. I hit the gas hard enough the truck fishtailed slightly.

The woman vanished past my window. I kept my eyes forward and didn’t look back. I didn’t breathe normally again until the intersection disappeared behind me. The road curved through woods slick black with rainwater. One minute passed, two, then yellow light appeared ahead through the fog again.

I actually felt my stomach drop. The crossroads waited silently beneath the swinging traffic light.

But this time, the woman stood in the middle of the road closer, her head tilted slightly toward the truck.

Then headlights appeared behind me. Relief hit so hard it almost hurt. Another vehicle emerged slowly through the fog behind me. Thank God, I almost laughed. Another driver, hopefully somebody normal.

The pickup rolled closer behind me and stopped at the intersection, its headlights shut off simultaneously while darkness swallowed it whole.

Every hair on my arms stood up. The truck engine coughed once. The woman in plum slowly turned her head toward me and smiled. It's...teeth were flat and square, packed tightly together, the color of old piano keys left in nicotine and grave dirt. Not sharp at first glance, they looked blunt. Ordinary, almost. Until you realize they weren’t made for biting chunks out of something. They were made for pressure. Endless pressure. The kind that crushes bone slowly while the mouth keeps smiling. I slammed the accelerator.

My truck surged through the intersection violently. The steering wheel shook beneath my hands while trees blurred past outside. The crossroads vanished behind me again and I kept driving faster now. Too fast for wet roads, but I didn’t care. The road curved sharply through the woods. Then suddenly the trees thinned out. The highway opened into enormous empty fields silvered beneath a sky that no longer looked like storm clouds. The rain had stopped completely. I eased off the gas slowly and noticed that the the world had gone silent again. When I looked up towards the heavens to none other than to curse God and ask him why me, A perfect pale circle suspended motionless in the sky maybe fifty feet above the ground. My breath caught painfully in my throat. The truck engine died instantly and everything electrical cut out. Darkness swallowed the cab except for the enormous white glow hovering over the field beside the road. Fog curled beneath it in slow spirals. And standing underneath the light were tall, thin, figures. Perfectly still, watching the truck and definitely watching me.

I slammed both hands against the steering wheel.

"FUCKING ALIENS FRANK? WHAT THE FUCK!?"

I kicked the underside of the dashboard hard and that made me more mad.

“What do you MEAN ‘don’t pick up hitchhikers’?! WHERE ARE THEY BECAUSE I GOT FUCKING ALIENS FRANK?!”

They started walking towards me with slow, unnatural coordination through the silver-lit field, limbs bending with the careful precision of something pretending to understand human movement. Their skin pale enough to look almost translucent beneath the hovering light above them.

And as they came closer, I realized why the woman at the crossroads had looked wrong. These things looked like her, or maybe she looked like them. Some looked vaguely feminine, their faces narrow and delicate in ways that would’ve been beautiful if they weren’t so profoundly inhuman. Others were broader through the shoulders, taller, heavier in shape without actually looking much stronger. Male and female only in the loosest possible sense.

I was fully crashing out now.

“I DON’T WANT ROAD SPIRITS!” I punched the wheel again. “I DON’T WANT GHOSTS!” Another hit. “I DON’T WANT—WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU PEOPLE ARE!”

The figures stopped walking, I barely noticed. One of the figures tilted its head sharply. Another looked toward the others. The light above the field pulsed once.

“I WORK AT A MECHANIC SHOP!” I shouted at nobody and everybody simultaneously. “I SHOULD BE DEALING WITH OIL CHANGES! BRAKE PADS! DIVORCED MEN NAMED TODD!”

I kicked the door this time. The horn blared weakly and died halfway through. The things in the field had completely stopped approaching now, they just stood there staring at me. They looked confused.

“I HAD PLANS TONIGHT!” I yelled, voice cracking from genuine outrage. “I WAS SUPPOSED TO GO DRINK WITH MY FRIEND AT THE HAUNTED HOTEL!”

“AND ANOTHER THING—”

I slammed my fist against the steering wheel again hard enough the old Chevy emblem cut across my knuckles.

“WHY IS IT ALWAYS ME?!”

The nearest figure flinched, actually flinched. Then all at once the group shifted uneasily beneath the hovering light. One of the taller ones looked back toward the craft overhead while another slowly took a step backward.

I stared at them breathing hard.

“…what.”

The pale woman-shaped thing nearest the road looked at me one final time. Her flat teeth showed faintly beneath that impossibly horrifying smile. Then she glanced toward the others and very slowly

they began retreating.

I blinked.

“…are you serious.”

The figures moved backward through the field with sudden awkward urgency, exchanging sharp glances between each other while the enormous light overhead dimmed slightly. One of them pointed at me. Another made a quick jerking movement like it didn’t want to be there anymore. Then the light above the field contracted inward soundlessly. The fog beneath it spiraled violently outward across the grass and in the span of a heartbeat everything vanished. Darkness slammed back into the world.

The truck engine roared violently back to life beneath me, my headlights exploded on, my radio screamed Johnny Cash. I sat frozen gripping the steering wheel while my own breathing echoed loud inside the cab. My phone started ringing impossibly loud, when I looked down it was my buddy from the Hotel.

"Dude, i'm going to need 10 shots of straight vodka and your undivided attention. I almost got abducted by aliens."

The last customer didn’t leave so much as storm out. She was maybe college age, standing in the bay doorway in what was technically a “witch costume” if you were being chivalrous and legally blind. It looked more like she had raided a strip clubs wardrobe and commited pety theft at party city. Her phone was on speaker, held out in front of her like confidential documents.

“Dad, I’m telling you, it says buy two get two free.”

Frank didn’t look up from the clipboard. “It does.”

“I’m literally standing here and they’re saying it doesn’t apply to my situation.”

Her father’s voice crackled through the speaker, loud and immediately exhausting. “Ask them if they understand basic business ethics.”

Frank leaned slightly toward the phone. “We understand what our sale banner says, if that helps.”

“That is not what I asked,” the father snapped.

The girl turned red. “I have a Halloween party in forty minutes.”

“That sounds like a personel issue,” Frank said.

I was behind the counter pretending I didn’t exist, mostly because I had already explained the promotion six times that day and my soul was beginning to file complaints with HR, which was me. HR was me. It took another ten minutes, three increasingly dramatic sighs from the daughter, and one threat to “review the shop online in a way that would ruin the business,” before she finally peeled out of the lot. Silence hit the shop like a physical object.

I exhaled slowly. “I’m going to start billing customers and ghosts for emotional damage.”

Frank clicked his pen. “That's what the charge labeled "ED" on the bottom of the reciepts is for. I tell them its for the local eating disorder association. For a good cause."

I pointed toward the empty bay. “We should’ve closed an hour ago...and that "association" doesn't exist Frank. That's fucked up. Even for you."

“Two,” Frank corrected.

“Right. Two.”

He didn’t look at me. “Fall time change.”

I groaned. “Don’t start.”

“It gets dark earlier.”

“I know what daylight saving time is, Frank.”

“It’s making us close earlier.”

“That’s not how time works.”

He finally looked up. “It does if I say it does.”

I dragged a hand down my face. “Who invented that, by the way? Because I would like to have a word with them. A very aggressive word. Right after I’m done finding the guy who thought calculus was a good idea.”

Frank nodded once. “Add whoever decided tires should be fifteen sizes and whoever thought 2% milk was a good idea.”

I gestured vaguely toward the ceiling. “And while we’re at it, whoever decided Halloween was a full month now instead of one night. Because I’ve had enough of fake blood and people arguing over discounts.”

Frank didn’t respond to that, which was usually how I knew he agreed.

We were supposed to be closing. We had been supposed to be closing for a while now. But October had been doing what October did best, stretching everything thin. The shop had been stupid busy every day for weeks. People showed up late, stayed too long, askes for blinker fluid, and argued about promotions they had just invented in their heads. Frank had started locking the doors earlier and earlier to compensate, which meant I had been living in a timeline where “closing time” was less a fixed hour and more a moving apology.

Frank set the clipboard down.

“Grab the gate."

“Thank God,” I muttered. “I’m going home before I develop a second personality just to cope with retail.”

I was halfway to the bay controls when Frank stopped me with a single lift of his arm.

“What.” I exhaled through my nose, because I already knew there was going to be a problem. A supernatural problem.

He was looking outside across the lot, past the ditch, to the graveyard. The fence line cut it off from us like a boundary that was more hopeful than enforced.

Then something yellow and swift moved near it.

I squinted. “Tell me that’s a decoration from the costume store down the road.”

At first, I thought it was cloth caught on the metal fencing, some decoration that flew out of a car window, or a scarecrow somebody forgot to take down.

Then it moved again, but it didn't walk, run, or fly...it leapt.The thing rose a few inches off the ground in a stiff, unnatural hop, landed with a dull, heavy thud, and immediately rose again. One moment it was near the fence. The next, it was in the ditch line. The next, just beyond it. A white shroud clung to it, wrapped tightly, bound at the head, neck, and feet in thick knots that dug inward as if whatever was inside had been packed rather than laid to rest. The fabric wasn’t clean, at least not anymore. It had gone damp, heavy, darkened in places where something inside had started to press outward. There were no visible eyes, just two shallow impressions in the cloth where a face should have been.

Thud.

Closer.

And I caught it then...the smell.

Not rot the way you think of it. Not sharp decay or open death. The air that traveled in didn’t just smell; it had heft, a greasy, invisible weight that settled onto the tongue like a layer of grey silt. It was a sickly-sweet miasma, the scent of overripe peaches left to liquefy in a heatwave, underpinned by the sharp, mephitic sting of ammonia. As it hopped closer the deeper, the fetid odor became a physical presence, a cloying film that seemed to coat my lungs. It was the smell of something once living now surrendering its form, a putrescent soup of chemical breakdown that tasted of cold iron and sour milk. It didn't just offend the nose; it felt rank and ancient, a noisome fog that will surely cling to my clothes like wet wool. Great. More clothes to throw away.

“What is that smell,” I said, more worried about the hair in my nostrils than what ritual we will most likely have to do here shortly.

“Pocong.”

I stared at him. “That’s not helpful. I need you to explain in words I would use.”

“It’s old,” he said.

The thing hopped again and after staring awhile, I noticed the way the loose ends of the bindings moved after it landed, slapping softly against the ground a half-second too late, like the body and the cloth weren’t entirely in agreement about timing.

Frank exhaled once.

“Don’t look at it too long,” he said.

“Why?”

His eyes stayed on it.

“Because it wants you to notice that it needs help.”

Another hop.

I felt the words build in my throat before I spoke them. “Frank… there’s more.”

“I know.”

The graveyard wasn’t empty anymore. It was layered in figures resolving in staggered depths, each one wrapped tight, each one moving wrong in the same restrained, punishing rhythm.

He watched them for another long moment, then he said, “There used to be a mortician in this town.”

I stared at him. “Well yea..everywhere kinda needs one.”

“He wasn’t from here,” Frank continued. “Came in quiet. Did the work right. People didn’t ask questions because the results were better than what our previous mortician had done before.”

Another shift outside. Closer.

“They said he had rules,” Frank said. “Things you don’t skip. Things you undo. Things you check twice before you bury the hatchet.”

The front line reached the ditch and then stopped.... Perfectly still. Behind them, more gathered, too many to count cleanly now.

Frank exhaled slowly.

“He used to go back to his patients,” he said. “After the funeral. Sometimes the next day. Said he doesn't always get it right the first time.”

I looked at the field again.

“And after he was gone?” I asked.

Frank didn’t look at me when he answered.

“No one knew what his rules were or what he did with his patients, so they did nothing, except post a new hiring sign. But I know what he was doing."

"And that is?" I asked smaking my lips in annoyance. Get to the point frank, we are about to be eaten by modern mummies, I was thinking.

“Pocong are what happens when a burial is done wrong,” he said, voice even, like he was explaining the most normal thing in the world. “Body’s wrapped in a shroud; head, neck, feet tied off. That part’s normal. What isn’t normal is leaving it like that.”

Another hop landed at the ditch line. The sound carried, heavy and deliberate.

“The morticians, in his country, were taught that they were supposed to go back,” he continued. “After burial tl loosen the ties and let the body settle. Let whatever’s left… stop holding shape.”

He nodded toward the field.

“They stay bound,” he said. “Not just physically. Whatever’s inside doesn’t get the message that it’s over. So it lingers, confused and trapped in something it can’t move right in and can’t speak through.”

Another one reached the ditch. Then another. None crossed yet.

“They hop because they can’t walk,” Frank added. “They look for someone who can undo the knots. That’s the only part of the world they still understand. Help.”

I glanced at him. “That doesn’t look or sound like this current situation. Simply because THEY LOOK PRETTY FUCKING SCARY FRANK AND WHAT YOU JUST SAID MADE ME WANT TO CRY. LOOKING AT THAT OUT THERE DOESN'T MAKE ME WANT TO CRY!”

“No,” he said completely unfazed by my sudden outburst.

A long pause.

"You are right,” Frank went on. “This is what happens when nobody comes back to check. When you die and don't pass your superstitions on…”

He watched the line of them, unmoving now.

“…it eventually becomes a problem.”

Frank let the silence sit just long enough, then clapped his hands once sharp, final, I knew then a decision was made for both of us.

“Welp we can't get rid of them unless we know how and we aren't guessing,” he said. “We’re gonna have to ask.”

I blinked at him. “Asking who.”

“The mortician.”

I stared at him for a full second. “The dead one.”

“Most helpful kind,” Frank said. “Less opinions.”

“No thank you,” I said immediately. “No, no, absolutely not.We are not doing—whatever version of a séance you’re about to pitch me. I have seen enough movies to know how that goes, and I would like to keep my organs on the inside of my body.”

Frank didn’t argue; he just walked past me toward the back of the shop, already assuming I would follow, which annoyingly I did.

“I don’t need candles and a circle,” he said over his shoulder. “I need the right questions, asked in the right place, with something that remembers him."

“Great. Frank’s making up a whole new kind of séance,” I said, my voice flat, aimed at the empty air around me. “That sounds like a great idea.”

“He worked in town,” Frank continued, ignoring me. "Which means something of his is still around.”

We stepped into the narrow "storage room". Frank moved with purpose, pulling open drawers, shifting boxes, scanning like he already knew what he was looking for but I knew he was scrambling. Seems like he really doesn't know how to handle this situation compared to the others we have had.

I leaned against the doorframe. “And when we find… whatever it is, what then? We politely invite him back from the dead and ask for instructions?”

“Yes.”

“That’s insane.”

“It's efficent.”

“That is not the word I would use.”

Frank stopped at a rusted filing cabinet shoved into the corner. He yanked it open; the drawer screamed in protest, metal dragging against metal.

Inside were old records. Yellowed papers, handwritten logs, things that predated computers for sure. He flipped through them quickly, then slower, then stopped.

“There you are,” he murmured.

I pushed off the frame. “If that’s a cursed object, I’m out.”

He pulled out a thin ledger, its cover warped with age, edges darkened like it had absorbed more than just time. When he opened it, the smell hit immediately, not decay, not exactly, but something medicinal and earthy, like dried herbs pressed into paper.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Burial records,” Frank said. “Handwritten. Dates, names… and notes.”

“Notes,” I repeated. “That’s great. Love a man who annotates death.”

Frank turned the book so I could see. The handwriting shifted line to line some careful, some hurried but every few entries, there were marks that didn’t match the rest. Small symbols. Loops. Lines drawn through names and then corrected. And beside a handful of them, a second note, written darker.

Returned.

“Those,” Frank said, tapping one of the entries, “are the ones he went back for.”

A cold, quiet understanding settled in my chest. “And the ones without that?”

He closed the ledger.

“Are outside.”

I swallowed. “Great. Fantastic. Love that for us. There have got to be hundreds of them Frank.”

Frank tucked the book under his arm and grabbed a piece of chalk from a shelf, just a stub, worn down from use. Then he walked back out into the main bay and dropped to one knee, clearing a space on the concrete with the side of his hand.

“What are you doing,” I asked, already regretting the question.

“Talking,” he said simply.

He began to draw, not a circle, not anything neat or symmetrical, but a series of lines that connected. Names from the ledger, written out of order. Dates that overlapped. Marks copied exactly as they appeared on the page. It looked less like a ritual and more like a map drawn by someone who didn’t want it to be understood at a glance.

“Stand there,” he said, pointing to the opposite side.

I didn’t move. “Why.”

“Because he needs two points of reference.”

“Why do I have to be a point of refernece?"

“Because I said so. Stand there.”

I exhaled hard through my nose, then stepped where he pointed. “If something pulls my guts out, I’m blaming you personally.”

“Yea, yea. Just, if you become a ghost don't haunt here. Too many already.”

Frank set the ledger in the center of the chalk markings and flattened his hand over it.

Frank inhaled once.

Then, steady:

“How do we finish your work.”

The moment the words left his mouth, the ledger jerked on the ground and the pages flipped and stopped on a blank page. It was only nlank for for half a second then something began writing.

But it wasn't writing in ink it was writing with pressure. Letters pressing up through the page like something beneath it was carving its way out.

CUT.

I leaned closer despite myself.

ALL.

A pause.

THREE.

I frowned. “Three what—”

KNOTS.

The word appeared harder, deeper than the rest.

Frank didn’t move.

“Keep reading,” he said quietly.

“I’m not reading it, it’s writing itself—”

“Read it Danny.”

“‘Three knots,’” I said reluctantly.

More letters formed.

HEAD.

NECK.

FEET.

The air tightened further, like the room was holding its breath with us.

I swallowed. “Okay. That matches what we saw.”

“Wait,” Frank said.

The page shifted again.

DO NOT—

The letters dragged slower now, like whatever was writing them had to force each one through.

CUT FIRST.

I blinked. “What does that—”

Another line carved in beneath it.

ASK.

I felt my stomach drop.

“Ask what?” I whispered.

The response came immediately.

PERMISSION.

I let out a short, disbelieving breath. “You’re kidding. I thought the whole point of them showing up in the first place was that they were asking for help?"

Frank didn’t react.

The page continued.

THEY WILL AGREE.

“They’ll agree” I repeated, glancing toward the bay door without meaning to.

WAIT.

The next word.

Then...

IF YOU CUT WITHOUT ASKING

The letters stuttered, as if something resisted them.

THEY WILL STAY.

A long pause followed.

Then, slower..

OR

The word dragged.

HOLD.

I frowned. “Hold?”

Frank’s voice was quieter now. “Just read it.”

HOLD IT.

Another pause.

DO NOT PULL AWAY UNTIL THEY DO.

My stomach turned.

“If you don’t cut the knots,” I said slowly, “you… hug it?”

The page finished the thought.

THEY WILL FIND PEACE.

The ledger snapped shut and the pressure in the room vanished. It was over.

I stood there, staring down at the book on the floor.

“…do I really have to hug those things?,” I asked. Rembering the putrid smell that followed them and how close I would have to get to it if these ghosts wanted a fucking hug.

Frank exhaled once.

“That’s just the alternative.”

“Ask first,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Then cut,” I added.

“In order.”

“Head. Neck. Feet.”

Frank nodded.

“And if we mess it up…” I trailed off.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

Outside, across the ditch, hundreds of bound figures waited in silence. I closed my eyes for a second, then picked up the ledger on the floor and handed it back to Frank.

“Alright,” I said, voice tight. “Let’s go ask permission from things that smell like death and look like Casper the friendly ghost.”

“Before dark,” he said.

Which, in this special piece of hell,

wasn’t a suggestion.

We headed out of the bay and crossed the ditch towards the graveyard. The first pocong stood where I had seen it before, angled slightly toward us, the cloth at its head darkened, tightened into a knot that would make every boyscout proud.

Up close, the smell hit harder. I swallowed it down, jaw tight.

“Okay,” I muttered. “Okay. We’re doing this.”

Frank didn’t step forward first, he let me. I stood there for a second, staring at it, at the faint impressions beneath the cloth where a face should have been, at the subtle rise and fall that wasn’t breathing but looked like it wanted to be.

“Can...can I help you release these knots?,” I whispered.

The thing didn’t move or react.

For a moment, I thought maybe this was all—

Then it leaned, a slow, deliberate shift forward until the knot at its neck brushed against my chest. I froze. Every instinct in my body screamed to step back, to shove it away, to do literally anything except stand there and let something dead lean into me.

“Wait,” Frank said quietly.

The pressure increased.

The cloth dragged slightly against me damp, heavy, carrying that smell with it, pressing it into my skin.

I clenched my jaw so hard it hurt.

“…okay,” I said, voice thin. “Okay, thats a yes, right? That counts?”

Frank didn’t move.

“Wait.”

The thing held its pressure on my chest for a moment longer and then it stilled. Just… leaning there.

“Now,” Frank said.

I moved fast pulling out the wire cutters I grabbed on the way out of the bay.

Head. The knot at the crown split under the blade, loosening just enough for the cloth to sag slightly. Then the neck. This one was worse it was way tighter. The cutters caught for a second before sliding through. The moment it gave, the entire shape of the thing seemed to shift, not physically, but internally. Like something inside had been rebalanced.

“Feet,” Frank said.

I dropped lower, hands shaking now. It was cut.

The final knot snapped loose.Then the entire form collapsed inward, the tension gone all at once, the shroud folding like empty fabric.

An apparition like mist formed from the shroud on the ground and stood up tall and strong.

It started to move away then lightly turned towards me, enough that I felt it acknowledged my help. Then instead of hopping like before, it walked, back toward the graveyard. It stopped right infront of a grave, laid down, and disappeared into the ground.

I exhaled so hard my chest hurt. “Okay,” I said. “Okay. That’s—better. You were right, asking for instructions is better than guessing.”

Frank had already moved to the next.

“Again. I'll take this side, you take the other."

The second one pressed harder into my chest than the first. No hesitation this time. I didn’t flinch or step back.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “I get it. I get it.”

It held, then stilled.

Head.

Cut.

Neck.

Cut—

The smell surged so violently I gagged, turning my head just enough to keep from vomiting directly onto it.

“Don’t break contact,” Frank said.

“I’m trying not to blow chunks on them,” I snapped.

Feet.

Cut.

Release.

Again, the same result, the collapse, the rising, the quiet return. The line had shifted softly closer as if the others had noticed what was happening and understood.

I swallowed. “They know.”

“Yes,” Frank said.

“That we’re helping.”

“Yes.”

We moved faster. Not careless, never careless, but with rhythm now. The field began to thin.

The smell peaked halfway through so thick it felt like breathing through liquid. My eyes burned and my hands slipped. At one point I had to stop and gag into my sleeve while Frank shot me a look that would have killed me if looks could kill. The sun dropped faster than I liked. That gray edge crept in, the one that meant we were running out of whatever grace daylight offered.

“Frank,” I said, not looking away from the next one. “We’re getting close.”

“I know.”

“How many left.”

“Enough.”

“Not helpful.”

We reached the last few as the light thinned to almost nothing.

I nodded, wiping my hands for the millionth time even though it did nothing. One more stepped forward—or rather, leaned, just enough to meet me halfway.

“Can I help you, release those knots?” I said, voice steady despite everything.

It leaned in closer. The pressure wasn’t the same it wasn't just asking for help. I felt...loneliness.

“Frank,” I whispered, “this one is different.”

"Yep, Popo wants a hug."

The arms, or what looked like arms under the fabric, hovered inches from me...waiting.

I swallowed hard. “It won't kill me when I hug it right?”

“Probably....not.”

I closed my eyes for half a second, then opened them again.

“…fine.”

I stepped forward slowly and wrapped my arms around it. The cloth was soaked, cold, and far too mushy. For one awful second I stood there in the embrace of a ghost. The thing in my arms exhaled, a sound that felt like it passed through me instead of around me, and then it was no longer someone I was holding. Just cloth, empty. Something warm brushed past my cheek as it left. A kiss, I knew, I didn't have to be told or see it for myself. The sky darkened by degrees above us, the last thin stripe of daylight bleeding out behind the tree line. Shadows stretched long between the graves and these shadows were not pocong. By the time we reached what had to be the last dozen, my hands were shaking from exhaustion and the smell had rooted itself so deep into my nose I knew I’d taste it in my sleep for weeks.The freed spirits around us began retreating quickly now, drifting back toward their graves in urgent silence.The final spirit rose quietly from the cloth, turned toward frank, and gave the slightest nod before walking into the deepening dark between the graves. Then it was over. I stood there breathing hard through my mouth, hands on my knees, trying not to throw up directly onto somebody’s final resting place. The wind moved softly through the cemetery grass. Somewhere farther back, dirt settled with a low whispering sound as another spirit returned to its grave. I looked out across the rows of headstones, hours ago this place had looked crowded, now it looked tired. Ready to rest for as long as eternity allowed. A few loose scraps of white fabric shifted weakly across the ground in the breeze but nothing moved underneath them anymore. I swallowed against the taste still coating the back of my throat.

“So what happens now?”

Frank glanced toward the tree line where darkness had fully settled between the trunks.

“Now,” he said, “we leave.”

No argument from me there.

We started back toward the bay, boots sinking softly into damp earth. Halfway across the graveyard I looked back one last time.

For a second, I thought I saw completely human figures standing among the graves watching us go, waving goodbye in thanks. Then, from somewhere deep in the graveyard behind us...

THUD.

One hop.

We looked at each other.

“I am quitting,” I said immediately.

Frank locked up the shop door.

“See you tomorrow.”

​

This chapter is dedicated to my #1 reader on this platform Silveredfoxen. They helped me come up with the anomaly for this chapter and the way I introduced my mc's name! Thank you so much!!

I keep forks in the left slot, knives in the middle, spoons on the right. Not because I’m organized, but because once you live alone long enough, your habits harden into furniture. Tuesday morning, every fork in the drawer had been bent into circles.

Perfect little loops. I stood there in my socks staring down at them while my coffee maker hissed behind me.

I said, out loud, to the empty kitchen:

“Nope.”

Then I went to work.By lunch, I had convinced myself it was stress.After you watch tire goblins crawl out of eighteen-wheeler wheels and get dissolved with salted motor sludge, your brain starts protecting itself in weird ways. It labels things stress i nduced, exhaustion, lack of sleep, maybe carbon monoxide if it’s feeling fancy. So when I came home that night and found all the framed pictures in my apartment turned face-down, I labeled that stress too.

“Creative stress,” I muttered.

I flipped them back over one by one. My mother at the beach, me and my cousin at her sixteenth birthday, a photo of my dog, bit the last frame stopped me. It was one I didn’t own. It had black wood trim, oval shape, very old-fashioned. Inside was a faded portrait of a woman I had never seen before. The glass cracked under my hand when I picked it up. I slept with every light on that night.

Wednesday got worse. My shower was already running when I woke up. Water hit tile steadily behind the bathroom door. Steam crawled under the frame.

I stood in the hallway holding a baseball bat I had bought shortly after my first day at the auto shop. Can you blame me? I opened the door, the shower curtain was closed. I reached out with the bat and yanked the curtain open. Nothing inside but hanging from the shower rod beside it was a strand of pearls yellowed with age. I called Frank on my way to work and he answered like always.

“What.”

“There been something in my apartment since Friday.”

“Then charge it rent.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“It turned my shower on.”

“You pay utilities?”

“Yes.”

“Then sounds like they owe you money regardless.”

He hung up.

That man could make compassion feel theoretical.

The shop was slow that day. Frank spent most of the morning rebuilding a carburetor older than me while I rotated tires and tried not to think about pearls appearing in my bathroom. Around noon, Mrs. Alvarez came in for an inspection sticker. She is seventy year old lady, super sweet, drives a Buick the size of a studio apartment, and calls me handsome no matter how much grease I have on my face.I was printing paperwork when she leaned toward the counter.

“Your wife seems upset.”

I blinked. "My what?”

She nodded toward Bay Two but there was nobody there. Just my toolbox, an air compressor, and then,

a long white shape slipping slowly behind a lifted Honda. I stepped around the counter.

“Frank.”

He didn’t look up.

“If there is any other dangerous supernatural things I need to know about, I need you to tell me right now. All of them. ”

He glanced once toward Bay Two and sighed like a tired doctor hearing familiar symptoms.

“How long’s it been in the apartment?”

“Since Friday.”

He set down his wrench.

“Why didn’t you say Friday?”

“I did say, today.”

“You said today today.”

“What does that even mean?”

He was already walking past me. Mrs. Alvarez crossed herself, a reasonable response. Frank stopped in the middle of Bay Two and stared at empty space near my toolbox.

“You can’t stay here.”

Silence.

Then a socket rolled off the top drawer and hit the floor.Frank nodded once.

“Argument noted.”

I could feel something watching from somewhere just behind me. Every hair on my neck stood up.

“What are you talking to?”

“You.”

“No, the other thing.”

He looked irritated.

“Same answer.”

Then, from the far side of the bay, clear as day, a woman’s voice spoke softly into the room.

“Daniel.”

Everything stopped, the compressor cycled off, rain tapped the windows, even Frank looked mildly surprised. Mrs. Alvarez gasped loud enough to count as cardio. I turned slowly towards the both of them incredibly sharp with attitude clear in my voice.

“Nobody calls me that.”

The voice came again, closer this time.

“Daniel.”

Frank frowned at me.

“Who’s Daniel?”

I stared at him.

“Me.”

He stared back.

“Your name’s Daniel?”

“Yes.”

“Since when?”

“Since birth, Frank.”

“Huh.” He considered that. “Never came up.”

“I work here.”

“You answer to ‘hey.’”

There are moments in life where rage and fear arrive together and cancel each other out, this was one of many of them.

Something brushed past my shoulder cold and wet.

I spun. No one there. Then all four bay doors slammed shut at once hard enough to rattle the windows. Mrs. Alvarez screamed. The lights flickered and across the grease-smudged concrete floor, written in a trail of water that hadn’t been there before, were two words.

MARRY ME

Frank looked at the message, then at me.

“What’d you do?”

“Nothing!”

“Things don’t attach for nothing.”

“I literally go to work and then go straight home.”

“That’s not a defense.”

“I am also gay, if that helps somehow.”

Frank’s expression did not change.

“Oh, thats surprising, but no, it does not.”

Mrs. Alvarez slowly backed toward the waiting room.

"Does she know your gay? Is that why your wife is mad?"

Me and Frank both shot her a look.

“I can come back another day.”

“You should,” I said immediately.

Frank grabbed my keys off the hook.

“Where are we going?”

“Your apartment.”

“Why?”

“To see how bad it is.”

“How bad do you think it is?”

He jingled the keys once.

"Well whatever it is came from here, followed you home, then followed you back here so... pretty bad."

Frank sat in the passenger seat holding a thermos between his knees like we were headed to a routine service call.

“You really didn’t know my name?”

“You never asked mine.”

“I know yours is Frank.”

“It ain’t.”

I looked over.

“What?”

He stared ahead through the rain.

“Drive.”

We pulled into my complex just after three.

My apartment was on the second floor. From the parking lot I could already see my curtains moving through the window. The windows were closed.

“Great,” I said. “Wind ghost.”

Frank got out.

“That’s not wind.”

“How can you tell?”

“Oh, I don't know Danny, maybe its the clear as day apparition of your wife in the window but what do i know.”

"First, don't call me that. Second, I think if the government knew how much shit you know, you would have died by suicide with 4 bullets in the back of your head a long time ago."

We climbed the stairs and wouldnt you believe it, my front door was unlocked.

Frank pushed the door open and stepped aside.

“After you, Danny.”

The living room was destroyed. My couch cushions had been slit open and their stuffing dragged across the room in long white trails like someone had tried to make snow angels out of spite. Every lamp had been knocked over except one, which had been placed in the center of the room facing the hallway like an interrogation light.

“Wow,” Frank said behind me.

I turned.

He stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, calmly taking it all in.

“Pretty pissed off wife.”

“Whatever it is, it's not my wife.”

“Whatever it is, it's commited.”

We moved into the kitchen. Every cabinet door hung open. My plates had been smashed in a neat circle on the floor, forks were stabbed upright into the drywall, all of them bent into loops first, on the fridge, written in ketchup, were the words:

ANSWER ME

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Im gay. Answer enough?"

Frank opened my freezer, took out a bag of peas, and tossed it to me.

“What is this for?”

“You look overwhelmed.”

“I would understand throwing me a beer or bottle of vodka but..peas?"

He shrugged.

"For when your wife kicks you in the balls.”

I stood there holding frozen vegetables in the wreckage of my own kitchen, seriously considering manslaughter and offering his soul up to this thing to marry instead.

We checked the bedroom next. My mattress had been flipped upright against the wall, all of my clothes were gone from the closet and in their place hung a single white garment bag.

Frank looked at it.

“Nope.”

I gave him a nod in agreement.

He turned to leave.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“You wanna unzip it?”

“No.”

“Then that’s it.”

I followed him immediately. As we stepped back into the hallway, something slammed inside the bedroom hard enough to shake the frame.Then came three slow knocks from the other side of the door.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Frank kept walking and I finally found something I admired him by. We were halfway down the stairs when my apartment began playing organ music loud enough to echo through the whole block. An old woman opened her door across the hall, listened for two seconds, then closed it again.The drive back to the shop was quiet except for windshield wipers and my own ongoing collapse.When we turned into the lot, the bay doors were open, the lights were on, and a priest stood in the center of the garage.

He was a tall man in black clerical clothes, hands folded, smiling the way taxidermy smiles. I had never seen him before, if I did I would have definitely remembered. I wanted to reverse immediately.

Frank sighed like a man whose package had arrived damaged.

"Oh. Church finally sent somebody.”

“Sent somebody?”

"Yep. Him and his other fathers or...brothers...whatever they're called, were what we were hiding from in the bunker that night."

I turned so fast I nearly pulled something.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The church people.”

“You mean to tell me we spent that whole night locked in a concrete room because of priests?”

“Priest-adjacent.”

The priest raised one hand in greeting.

His wrist bent way too far.

“Good afternoon, Daniel.”

I gripped the dashboard.

“Why does everyone know my name but you FRANK?”

Frank shrugged.

“I don’t ask personal questions.”

“I work for you.”

“You work near me.”

The priest took a few steps forward but his shoes made no sound on gravel. Rain fell behind him in silver sheets.

“I do apologize for the domestic disturbance,” he said pleasantly. “The bride is emotional.”

“I am not going to ask what that means.”

“It means,” Frank said, killing the engine, “you got proposed to.”

“I absolutely did not.”

The priest’s smile widened another inch.

“Oh, but you did.”

He reached into his coat and produced a cream-colored envelope sealed with red wax.

He held it out toward me, I did not take it, Frank did.

He opened it, read it silently, then handed it over to me. It was heavy card stock, with gold trim, and some fancy lettering.

THE HOLY UNION OF

DANIEL JAMES CARTER

AND THE BELOVED LADY OF COUNTY ROAD SIX

MIDNIGHT TONIGHT

ST. BARTHOLOMEW CHURCH

PUNCTUALITY APPRECIATED

At the bottom, in dripping red ink:

RSVP: YES

“I did not write that.”

“No,” said the priest. “She did.”

Something hit the roof of the shop above us.

Then another.

Then another.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap tap tap.

I looked up slowly and the priest smiled even wider, allowing some hundred tiny red and black tinted teeth that reached all the way to his temples, to be clear in view.

“She’s on her way.”

Frank got out of the truck.

Finally.

Some urgency.

He jerked his head toward the bay.

“Inside. Now.”

I scrambled out after him.

The priest stepped aside courteously as we passed.

“Formal attire preferred,” he called.

Frank hit the button and the bay doors began rolling down.Outside, something white moved across the roofline in the rain. Fast.

I pointed upward.

“What is that?”

Frank was already walking toward the back room.

“Your fiancée.”

The bay doors were halfway down when whatever was on the roof began moving faster. Long rapid bursts that crossed twenty feet of sheet metal in a second, then stopped directly above us. I stood frozen in the middle of the shop, staring upward while rainwater dripped beneath the closing door.

“Frank.”

He kept walking.

“Frank.”

No response.

“FRANK!!!"

“You yellin’ ain't going to make me answer you!” he called back.

The priest remained outside in the narrowing gap beneath the door, hands folded, smiling patiently like a man waiting for a dinner reservation.

“Midnight sharp,” he said.

Then the bay door slammed the rest of the way shut, hard enough to shake the walls. Every light in the garage flickered. Something had landed on top of my car with a metallic crunch.

I physically flinched.

“That was my car!”

“Used to be,” Frank said.

I ran to the front windows overlooking the lot.

Rain blurred everything into streaks, but I could still see her. She stood on the roof of my sedan in a soaked white dress, veil hanging over her face, barefoot and motionless. Then slowly, she bent at the waist until her head was upside down and looking directly at me through the glass.

I stumbled backward so hard I hit a tire rack.She lifted one pale hand and pressed it to the windshield.

The glass frosted instantly beneath her palm. I made a noise I’m not proud of. Frank emerged from the hallway carrying a duffel bag, a flashlight, and what looked disturbingly like bolt cutters wrapped in rosary beads.

“We got about eight hours.”

“For what?”

“To stop your wedding.”

“I cannot stress enough how much I don’t want there to be a sentence like that in my life.”

He dropped the bag on the counter and began unpacking items one by one:

A small iron cross

Rock salt

Motor oil

A nail gun

Candles

A bottle labeled DO NOT SHAKE in black marker.

I pointed at the nail gun.

“Why do you own a holy nail gun?”

“It ain’t holy yet.”

He handed me a roll of duct tape.

“What is this for?”

“Your mouth if you keep asking slow questions.”

Outside, the bride was now dragging one fingernail down the hood of my car in long screeching lines.

I winced. Frank spread a yellowed blueprint across the service counter. It was the church, hand-drawn.

It clearly labled every inch, the basement, bell tower, side entrances, and something labeled old crypt / maybe flooded.

I stared at him.

“You have plans to the haunted church next door?”

“I have plans to most buildings in town.”

“Why?”

“In case.”

“In case of what?”

He looked up at me like I was slow.

“This.”

Fair.

He tapped the paper.

“Church was built in 1884. Burned once. Flooded twice. Priest went missing in 1962.”

“The one outside?”

“Different priest.”

“Right of course, I bet I could guess what happened to the last one. ”

He pointed again.

“Bride was supposed to marry some farm boy named Thomas on County Road Six. He never showed.”

“So she died of embarrassment?”

“She hanged herself in the bell tower.”

I went quiet. Outside, the figure on my car stopped moving but even through the rain, I could hear her softly humming Here Comes The Bride.

Frank noticed too.

“Don’t pity it.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were about to.”

“I was about to pity me.”

The lights dimmed all at once.

Then the old churchs bells began to ring loud and unforgiving. The sound rolled through the bays from nowhere and everywhere. The priest was standing in the waiting room inside. Nobody had opened the door.

He smiled and gave a small apologetic shrug.

“You left before I could explain the dowry.”

I backed into Frank, he quickly shrugged me off with a slap. The priest stepped forward. Water dripped from his sleeves but never touched the floor.

“The bride wishes only a simple ceremony,” he said. “Vows. Exchange of rings. Lifelong devotion. As for the dowry we-"

“I’d rather eat broken glass.”

“She is willing to compromise.”

“How generous.”

The priest’s head twitched ninety degrees with a wet crack. He smiled again, more of those disgusting teeth exposing themselves.Thick, ropey saliva spilled from between them, dark and maroon, running down his chin and staining his white collar in slow, branchy lines.

“She says if you resist, she’ll start with your fingernails. Quite an escalation from your apartment siruation. Don't you think?”

Frank zipped the duffel shut.

“Well,” he said.

“Well what?”

“We’re going to church.”

I stared at him.

The priest beamed and quickly squelched his mouth back to a somewhat passing normal grin.

“Wonderful.”

Frank pulled a small jar from his pocket and hurled it at the man’s chest.

The jar shattered.

Black liquid exploded across the cassock. The priest screamed in a voice that sounded like brakes failing and burst into a swarm of black moths that slammed themselves against the waiting room windows.

Frank shouldered the duffel bag.

“Move.”

Outside, the bride was gone. My car looked like it had lost a fight with a tiger.

I stopped beside it.

“She keyed my hood.”

Frank tossed me a tire iron.

“Well she sure wants your attention.”

“What is this for?”

He looked across the road at the towering black silhouette of St. Bartholomew Church.

“Incase she tries to eat you on alter.”

“I hate you,” I said honestly.

“Yep,” Frank replied, already walking toward the truck.

Behind us, the shop lights flickered again. Just once.

Then, the church doors exploded open with a screeching I can only describe as the sounds of hell, followed by a cloud of thick black smoke.

Frank stopped mid-step. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t look back. Just said, quieter than ever before—

“Yeah. That’s new.”

Frank then headed towards the church and walked right in. I followed because staying outside felt like an option not much better. The moment I crossed the threshold, the temperature dropped. Like warmth had been removed as a concept. Inside, the church was already full. Rows of people sat perfectly still in the pews. Heads down. Hands folded. Faces hidden in shadow like they had been waiting so long they forgot what they were waiting for.

“Okay,” I whispered. “That’s scarier than I expected.”

Frank turned just slightly.

“Don’t look them in the eyes,” he said.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” I snapped, staring directly at them.

Because I had already looked and now I couldn’t stop. Their faces weren’t right. Not injured. Not decomposed. Just… unfinished. Like someone had started drawing people and lost interest halfway through the features.

The bride’s voice came from the aisle.

“Daniel.”

I backed up immediately.

Then she stepped into view, white dress dragging across stone, veil shifting like it had its own breathing pattern. And when she tilted her head toward me I could see the black mark around her neck pulsing faintly.

Frank moved sideways, placing himself between us without looking away from the altar.

“That’s her anchor point,” he said under his breath.

“What does that mean?”

“It means she gets you there, you are donezo.”

The church doors slammed shut behind us. Every candle in the room flared at once. The pew figures rose like origamis coming undone.

Frank exhaled sharply through his nose.

“Alright,” he said.

Then reached into the duffel bag.

He pulled out a small iron cross wrapped in wire and salt-stained cloth. Then he looked at me.

“Stay behind me.”

“That’s your plan?”

“It’s a starting point.”

The bride took another step.

"RUN!"

Frank grabbed my wrist and we booked it across the church. He stopped me right before the alter steps than he ran straight to it.

He rose the cross high above his head and drove it deep into the altar wood with his palm.

The entire church flinched, not the ghouls but the building. Then Frank reached into his duffel bag again. Rock salt. He scattered it in a wide circle around the altar steps, steady and practiced, like he’d done it a hundred times, and by now im pretty sure he has. The bride stopped walking down the aisle when the salt hit the ground.

Her voice went quieter.

“…Frank.”

So she knew him too. Great. Frank didn’t look at her.

Motor oil came next. He poured it straight into the salt without hesitation. Then the nail gun came out.

That part made me move back instinctively. Frank racked it once. The bride took a step forward again, and this time the salt on the ground reacted—hissing softly. The pew figures all leaned forward at once.

The bride lifted her veil slightly. Just enough for me to see her mouth. It wasn’t smiling, it looked uncertain. Like she was remembering something she wasn’t supposed to forget.

“You promised,” she said.

My stomach dropped again.

"Frank, she's talking to you. YOU promised what??"

Frank spoke without looking at her or me.

“I didn’t.”

The bride tilted her head.

“You did,” she insisted, but less confident now.

The air in the church tightened and the candles bent inward again. The iron cross on the altar started to vibrate and Frank raised the nail gun. And for the first time, his voice wasn’t sarcastic. It was flat.

"I think I want to keep this one around. I'll let you take the next guy."

I blinked.

Once.

Twice.

“I think I had a stroke,” I said out loud, because that felt medically plausible.

“YOU WHAT?!” I snapped, stepping forward. “Frank, I am just throwing this out here but—YOU were supposed to be the one on this altar weren’t you? Instead you’re out here trading people like it’s a damn rota-"

“Yep,” he said immediately.

I stopped.

“…what?”

“Basically,” Frank said, still calm, still watching the bride, “but I wasn’t the guy that made her a piñata.”

Silence hit the church harder than sound previously.

Even the pew figures didn’t move. Frank continued.

“I came after that.”

My mouth opened, then closed again.

That did not help anything.

“Did you move my car to face the graveyard that day?,” I asked.

“No,” Frank agreed. “The shop did that on its own. I didn't initiate this...this time."

The bride shifted slightly.

That small uncertainty was still there now—like she couldn’t decide if she was supposed to be furious or just… lost.

“You did,” she said slowly to me. “You did it.”

“I didn’t,” I said immediately. “I never park toward the graveyard. That’s one of Franks biggest rules.”

Frank muttered without looking away from the altar.

“He’s telling the truth.”

“Memory is not required for participation,” she said.

Frank tilted his head slightly.

"Maybe, but it doesn't matter anymore. I know how to contain you now.”

She grinned slightly.

"Even if you do manage that, the rest of us will still be around."

Frank nodded in agreement.

"Yes, but none of them require us to marry them. Bye now little lady."

The bride’s veil lifted slightly on its own.

“…you don’t understand what you’re declining,” she said.

Frank lifted the nail gun a fraction higher.

“I understand just fine.”

The iron cross on the altar screamed.

The bride took another step back. Then another.

And for the first time, I saw her face fully. She wasn't monstrous. She looked exhausted. Like she had been standing in one place for far too long. The white of her dress spread upward into her skin, erasing color inch by inch. The veil stopped fluttering, the folds in her ruffles stopped shifting, even the air around her seemed to lose interest in her presence. Within seconds she had turned into a beautiful marble statue. And slowly, painfully normality started to stitch itself over the building. The warped shadows dissapaited into the wooden pews and the pressure in the air loosened.

"Let’s go.”

I stared at him.

“That’s your plan? Just leave the haunted wedding church situation on ‘to be continued’?”

Frank shrugged.

“Pretty much.”

Author note: I thought I posted this twice so I deleted it but I actually only posted it once on here and then another page I frequent so hopefully it doesnt get taken down ahahaha sorry yall!!

After Frank locked me in that back room, I learned something nobody tells you about surviving weird things.You still have to go to work afterward.

The world doesn’t pause because you spent a night in a concrete closet listening to something breathe on the other side of twelve locks. Rent still wants paying, laundry still piles up, your coffee still gets cold if you forget about it while staring suspiciously at the hallway.

That Friday morning, I was in my kitchen pouring cereal when my can of Dr Pepper launched itself clean off the counter and exploded across the floor.

Not rolled, not tipped, launched.

I froze with the milk in my hand.

The can spun once near the fridge, fizzing angrily like it was pissed off at whatever knocked it off.

I looked toward the apartment door.

“Absolutely not,” I said to no one.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Either I had brought something home from work, or my apartment had finally developed the same personality disorder as the shop. Neither option improved my morning.

By the time I had changed shirts and wiped soda off the cabinets, the local news was blaring from the tv in my living room. A red warning banner crawled across the screen.

TORNADO WARNING IN EFFECT

The meteorologist stood in front of a radar map wearing the expression people use when they are trying to panic professionally. A rotating cell was moving straight toward town, a big one. I picked up my phone and called Frank, he answered on the second ring.

“What.”

“There’s a tornado warning.”

A pause.

“And?”

“And I work in a building made mostly of old grudges and loose bolts.”

Another pause.

“Get here.”

“Frank, there is an actual tornado coming.”

“There are actual customers coming too.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“We got the utility closet if it gets bad.”

I stood there in wet socks, staring at where my dr.pepper became the next Usian Bolt.

“You mean the bunker?”

“It’s a closet.”

“It has enough locks to survive a coup.”

“It’s multi-use.”

“Frank—”

He hung up.

I looked back at the tv where a bright red cone now covered half the county. I looked at the clock, then at my bills stacked on the counter. That is why, fifteen minutes later, I found myself driving directly into a tornado for eighteen dollars an hour. The sky had turned the color of old bruises by the time I reached the shop, wind pushed at the car in nervous little bursts, and the trees along the road bent as if trying to point me back home. Somewhere behind the clouds, thunder rolled low and constant.

The church across from the lot stood dark against the sky, steeple cutting into the storm like it had challenged worse things before. Frank was outside when I pulled in, drinking coffee beneath the awning like severe weather was everybody's problem but his.

“You made it,” he said.

“You owe me hazard pay.”

“I pay you regularly. Hazard is implied.”

Inside, the shop smelled like oil, wet pavement, and the pirates of the carribean ride at disney. Don't ask me why, I don't know, it just did. Business was dead for the first hour, which made sense because sane people were sheltering with loved ones instead of getting oil changes in apocalypse weather.

It was around 2:30 when an eighteen-wheeler pulled into the lot.You heard it before you saw it, the low diesel growl rolling up the road until a long-nosed rig in faded blue came around the bend dragging a trailer streaked with road grime and dead bugs. It eased into the lot, the air brakes hissed as it settled beside the service bay

The driver climbed down slowly, one heavy boot at a time. He was a broad man in his late fifties, maybe older, with sun-beaten skin, a gray beard thick enough to hide supper in, and forearms that looked carved out of old wood. His trucker cap had dark sweat rings layered into it like tree growth. Before he even reached the ground, he pointed toward the trailer tires.

“You fill air here?”

“Depends,” I said. “You paying in money or whatever goods you got inside that truck?”

He didn’t smile.

“All eight trailer tires are low.”

I glanced down the line and saw he wasn’t wrong. Every tire had a slight bulge at the base.

“Alright,” I said. “Pull forward another foot.”

He remained where he was and studied me for a second.

“Ain’t gonna hold.”

That stopped me halfway to the hose reel.

“Then you’ve got leaks.”

“No,” he said. “I’ve got route trouble.”

I sighed internally so hard I nearly became religious.

I grabbed the hose anyway.

The first tire took air normally. Pressure rose clean, valve stem held, no hiss, no visible damage. I moved to the second, then the third, then the fourth. By the time I circled back to recheck the first one, it had already softened again, the sidewall drooping toward the gravel like it was exhausted.

I crouched and listened, but I heard nothing.

No escaping air, no puncture whistle, no bead leak.I filled it again, then checked the second. It was also low.I straightened slowly and looked at the driver.

“You got some kind of prank camera hidden on this thing?”

He spat into the gravel and shook his head.

“Told you. Ain’t gonna hold.”

I went another round, this time with soapy water, checking stems, rims, sidewalls, anything that might explain what I was seeing. The bubbles stayed still. The tires did not. Every one I touched seemed to lose pressure the moment I turned my back. By the third pass, I was hot, annoyed, and ready to insult somebody professionally.

“You need new tires,” I said. “All around. Internal damage, bad seals, dry rot, cursed by poor maintenance, pick one.”

“I ain’t buying eight tires.”

“Then your company can.”

“They won’t cover it.”

“Why not?”

He folded his arms and looked past me toward the road leading by the church.

“Because this is the fourth time this year, and every time it happens I’m routed through this town.”

He stepped closer and lowered his voice like we were discussing tax fraud.

“Starts around county line. First you hear tapping under the trailer. Then the pressure warnings come on. By the time I roll in here, they’re near flat.”

I was already preparing a response full of skepticism when Frank came outside. He took one look at the tires, one look at the driver, and then looked at me the way a teacher looks at a student who ignored obvious instructions.

“You refill them three times?”

“Yes.”

“You hear knocking?”

The trucker answered for me.

“I did. Soon as I hit county line. Kept pace with me for near twenty miles.”

“Well,” I said, “good news. Both of you are insane.”

Frank ignored that entirely.

“Get the metal bucket from the back room.”

“Ew, no.”

“Now.”

There are arguments worth having and arguments that end with Frank silently outlasting you, so five minutes later I was carrying the dented steel bucket into the lot while muttering creative insults under my breath. Frank had assembled ingredients on the ground beside the truck like a deeply troubling cooking show. Rock salt, used motor oil, fireplace ash, and a jar filled with something dark and granular I did not ask about because I was trying to grow as a person.

He poured everything together and stirred it with a breaker bar. The smell was astonishingly hostile.

“That is disgusting.”

“It’s effective.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he said. “You don’t.”

He handed me a wide paintbrush.

“No.”

“Coat the sidewalls.”

“I am not detailing tires with cursed pudding.”

“You want to go home early and skip the tornado?”

The tornado had passed hours ago, he knew that, but I did like the sound of going home early before that stupid bell had a chance to ring and attach something else to me to bring home. So, I took the forbidden paintbrush in hand. The driver had already removed his hat and was standing respectfully off to the side like this was a recognized roadside service in some circles.So there I was, crouched in gravel, painting foul black paste onto commercial truck tires while two grown men watched with complete sincerity.When I finished the last one, Frank tapped my shoulder letting me know to step back.

“Now we wait.”

“For what?”

The nearest tire answered before he could.

Tap.

A sharp little knock came from inside the rubber.

I stared at the tire, then at Frank, then back at the tire, because sometimes your eyes like to double-check whether your life has become embarrassing or not.

“Tell me that was the rim settling.”

Frank folded his arms.

“Yea...ahahahaha...nope.”

Another tap came from a different wheel farther down the trailer. Then another answered from the opposite side. Within seconds the entire rig was alive with it, sharp little knocks traveling around the tires in uneven rhythm, as if something small and impatient was moving from one to the next.

The trucker scratched the side of his head.

“Yup,” he said quietly. “That’s them.”

“That’s what?” I asked.

Frank didn’t look at me.

“Tire knockers.”

“Creative name.”

The rubber on the nearest tire bulged outward, then a second bulge appeared beside it, then a third, each one about the size of a fist, pushing from the inside .

The first.. I dont know...thing??? Tore through the sidewall with a wet ripping sound.

I wish I could tell you it looked fake or silly like a leprechaun or something to soften the moment but it did not. It was about the size of a raccoon, built wrong from every angle. Its limbs were long and hinged strangely, elbows bending where elbows should never be. Its skin was slick black rubber stretched over a narrow ribbed frame. The head was small, eyeless, and smooth except for a mouth that opened vertically down the center. It climbed free holding a tiny iron hammer.

“Nope,” I said immediately.

Then the rest came.

They burst from the tires one after another, dropping into the gravel in twitching little swarms. Some skittered on all fours. Some stood upright for a second before folding back down. Every one of them carried some kind of tool—mallets, pry bars, short lengths of chain.The lot filled with the sound of metal tapping metal.

Ping.

Ping.

Ping.

The trucker backed away so fast he nearly tripped over his own boots. Frank grabbed the bucket from my hand and flung the remaining mixture across the nearest cluster. The reaction was instant. The things shrieked, a high steam-kettle sound that went straight through me, and their bodies began to sag inward like overheated tar. They collapsed into bubbling heaps of black sludge that smoked where it touched the gravel.

“Why was THAT not step one?” I yelled.

“Because step one was proving you wrong.”

He threw another splash.

More shrieking. More melting.

One of the things lunged toward me, hammer raised over its head like it meant to unionize my kneecaps. I reacted with the only tool in reach and smacked it midair with the paintbrush. It bursted like rotten fruit.

Black slime sprayed across my whole face. I stood there in stunned silence.

Frank nodded once.

“Good swing.”

“I hate this job.”

The remaining knockers tried to scramble beneath the trailer, but Frank moved faster than a man his age had any right to move. Salt and sludge flew in practiced arcs. Wherever it landed, the things folded into themselves and liquefied. Within a minute, it was over. The parking lot looked like someone had emptied several trash bags full of roofing tar and ground beef across the concrete. The trailer tires, now torn and ragged where things had clawed their way out, slowly began to reinflate on their own with long wheezing breaths.

One by one.

Perfectly round.

Perfectly full.

I pointed at them.

“No.”

Frank wiped his hands on a rag.

“Yes.”

“That is not how tires work.”

“Neither do you most days, but here we are.”

The trucker stared at the restored wheels, then at Frank.

“I owe you."

“You do,” Frank said, naming a number high enough to make even me respect him.

The driver paid cash without blinking.

Before climbing back into the cab, he looked down at me, still holding the filthy paintbrush.

“Word of advice,” he said. “If you hear tapping on your own car tonight, don’t check it out until you have Frank with you.”

Then he drove off.

I watched the truck disappear down the road.

Slowly, I turned to Frank.

“What happens if they get in our tires?”

Frank handed me a push broom.

“You tell me tomorrow.”

He nodded toward the sludge.

“Clean it up before it dries.”

After Frank locked me in that back room, I learned something nobody tells you about surviving weird things.You still have to go to work afterward.

The world doesn’t pause because you spent a night in a concrete closet listening to something breathe on the other side of twelve locks. Rent still wants paying, laundry still piles up, your coffee still gets cold if you forget about it while staring suspiciously at the hallway.

That Friday morning, I was in my kitchen pouring cereal when my can of Dr Pepper launched itself clean off the counter and exploded across the floor.

Not rolled, not tipped, launched.

I froze with the milk in my hand.

The can spun once near the fridge, fizzing angrily like it was pissed off at whatever knocked it off.

I looked toward the apartment door.

“Absolutely not,” I said to no one.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Either I had brought something home from work, or my apartment had finally developed the same personality disorder as the shop. Neither option improved my morning.

By the time I had changed shirts and wiped soda off the cabinets, the local news was blaring from the tv in my living room. A red warning banner crawled across the screen.

TORNADO WARNING IN EFFECT

The meteorologist stood in front of a radar map wearing the expression people use when they are trying to panic professionally. A rotating cell was moving straight toward town, a big one. I picked up my phone and called Frank, he answered on the second ring.

“What.”

“There’s a tornado warning.”

A pause.

“And?”

“And I work in a building made mostly of old grudges and loose bolts.”

Another pause.

“Get here.”

“Frank, there is an actual tornado coming.”

“There are actual customers coming too.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“We got the utility closet if it gets bad.”

I stood there in wet socks, staring at where my dr.pepper became the next Usian Bolt.

“You mean the bunker?”

“It’s a closet.”

“It has enough locks to survive a coup.”

“It’s multi-use.”

“Frank—”

He hung up.

I looked back at the tv where a bright red cone now covered half the county. I looked at the clock,

then at my bills stacked on the counter. That is why, fifteen minutes later, I found myself driving directly into a tornado for eighteen dollars an hour. The sky had turned the color of old bruises by the time I reached the shop, wind pushed at the car in nervous little bursts, and the trees along the road bent as if trying to point me back home. Somewhere behind the clouds, thunder rolled low and constant.

The church across from the lot stood dark against the sky, steeple cutting into the storm like it had challenged worse things before. Frank was outside when I pulled in, drinking coffee beneath the awning like severe weather was everybody's problem but his.

“You made it,” he said.

“You owe me hazard pay.”

“I pay you regularly. Hazard is implied.”

Inside, the shop smelled like oil, wet pavement, and the pirates of the carribean ride at disney. Don't ask me why, I don't know, it just did. Business was dead for the first hour, which made sense because sane people were sheltering with loved ones instead of getting oil changes in apocalypse weather.

It was around 2:30 when an eighteen-wheeler pulled into the lot.You heard it before you saw it, the low diesel growl rolling up the road until a long-nosed rig in faded blue came around the bend dragging a trailer streaked with road grime and dead bugs. It eased into the lot, the air brakes hissed as it settled beside the service bay

The driver climbed down slowly, one heavy boot at a time. He was a broad man in his late fifties, maybe older, with sun-beaten skin, a gray beard thick enough to hide supper in, and forearms that looked carved out of old wood. His trucker cap had dark sweat rings layered into it like tree growth. Before he even reached the ground, he pointed toward the trailer tires.

“You fill air here?”

“Depends,” I said. “You paying in money or whatever goods you got inside that truck?”

He didn’t smile.

“All eight trailer tires are low.”

I glanced down the line and saw he wasn’t wrong. Every tire had a slight bulge at the base.

“Alright,” I said. “Pull forward another foot.”

He remained where he was and studied me for a second.

“Ain’t gonna hold.”

That stopped me halfway to the hose reel.

“Then you’ve got leaks.”

“No,” he said. “I’ve got route trouble.”

I sighed internally so hard I nearly became religious.

I grabbed the hose anyway.

The first tire took air normally. Pressure rose clean, valve stem held, no hiss, no visible damage. I moved to the second, then the third, then the fourth. By the time I circled back to recheck the first one, it had already softened again, the sidewall drooping toward the gravel like it was exhausted.

I crouched and listened, but I heard nothing.

No escaping air, no puncture whistle, no bead leak.I filled it again, then checked the second. It was also low.I straightened slowly and looked at the driver.

“You got some kind of prank camera hidden on this thing?”

He spat into the gravel and shook his head.

“Told you. Ain’t gonna hold.”

I went another round, this time with soapy water, checking stems, rims, sidewalls, anything that might explain what I was seeing. The bubbles stayed still. The tires did not. Every one I touched seemed to lose pressure the moment I turned my back. By the third pass, I was hot, annoyed, and ready to insult somebody professionally.

“You need new tires,” I said. “All around. Internal damage, bad seals, dry rot, cursed by poor maintenance, pick one.”

“I ain’t buying eight tires.”

“Then your company can.”

“They won’t cover it.”

“Why not?”

He folded his arms and looked past me toward the road leading by the church.

“Because this is the fourth time this year, and every time it happens I’m routed through this town.”

He stepped closer and lowered his voice like we were discussing tax fraud.

“Starts around county line. First you hear tapping under the trailer. Then the pressure warnings come on. By the time I roll in here, they’re near flat.”

I was already preparing a response full of skepticism when Frank came outside. He took one look at the tires, one look at the driver, and then looked at me the way a teacher looks at a student who ignored obvious instructions.

“You refill them three times?”

“Yes.”

“You hear knocking?”

The trucker answered for me.

“I did. Soon as I hit county line. Kept pace with me for near twenty miles.”

“Well,” I said, “good news. Both of you are insane.”

Frank ignored that entirely.

“Get the metal bucket from the back room.”

“Ew, no.”

“Now.”

There are arguments worth having and arguments that end with Frank silently outlasting you, so five minutes later I was carrying the dented steel bucket into the lot while muttering creative insults under my breath. Frank had assembled ingredients on the ground beside the truck like a deeply troubling cooking show. Rock salt, used motor oil, fireplace ash, and a jar filled with something dark and granular I did not ask about because I was trying to grow as a person.

He poured everything together and stirred it with a breaker bar. The smell was astonishingly hostile.

“That is disgusting.”

“It’s effective.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he said. “You don’t.”

He handed me a wide paintbrush.

“No.”

“Coat the sidewalls.”

“I am not detailing tires with cursed pudding.”

“You want to go home early and skip the tornado?”

The tornado had passed hours ago, he knew that, but I did like the sound of going home early before that stupid bell had a chance to ring and attach something else to me to bring home. So, I took the forbidden paintbrush in hand. The driver had already removed his hat and was standing respectfully off to the side like this was a recognized roadside service in some circles.So there I was, crouched in gravel, painting foul black paste onto commercial truck tires while two grown men watched with complete sincerity.When I finished the last one, Frank tapped my shoulder letting me know to step back.

“Now we wait.”

“For what?”

The nearest tire answered before he could.

Tap.

A sharp little knock came from inside the rubber.

After Frank locked me in that back room, I learned something nobody tells you about surviving weird things.You still have to go to work afterward.

The world doesn’t pause because you spent a night in a concrete closet listening to something breathe on the other side of twelve locks. Rent still wants paying, laundry still piles up, your coffee still gets cold if you forget about it while staring suspiciously at the hallway.

That Friday morning, I was in my kitchen pouring cereal when my can of Dr Pepper launched itself clean off the counter and exploded across the floor.

Not rolled, not tipped, launched.

I froze with the milk in my hand.

The can spun once near the fridge, fizzing angrily like it was pissed off at whatever knocked it off.

I looked toward the apartment door.

“Absolutely not,” I said to no one.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Either I had brought something home from work, or my apartment had finally developed the same personality disorder as the shop. Neither option improved my morning.

By the time I had changed shirts and wiped soda off the cabinets, the local news was blaring from the tv in my living room. A red warning banner crawled across the screen.

TORNADO WARNING IN EFFECT

The meteorologist stood in front of a radar map wearing the expression people use when they are trying to panic professionally. A rotating cell was moving straight toward town, a big one. I picked up my phone and called Frank, he answered on the second ring.

“What.”

“There’s a tornado warning.”

A pause.

“And?”

“And I work in a building made mostly of old grudges and loose bolts.”

Another pause.

“Get here.”

“Frank, there is an actual tornado coming.”

“There are actual customers coming too.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“We got the utility closet if it gets bad.”

I stood there in wet socks, staring at where my dr.pepper became the next Usian Bolt.

“You mean the bunker?”

“It’s a closet.”

“It has enough locks to survive a coup.”

“It’s multi-use.”

“Frank—”

He hung up.

I looked back at the tv where a bright red cone now covered half the county. I looked at the clock,

then at my bills stacked on the counter. That is why, fifteen minutes later, I found myself driving directly into a tornado for eighteen dollars an hour. The sky had turned the color of old bruises by the time I reached the shop, wind pushed at the car in nervous little bursts, and the trees along the road bent as if trying to point me back home. Somewhere behind the clouds, thunder rolled low and constant.

The church across from the lot stood dark against the sky, steeple cutting into the storm like it had challenged worse things before. Frank was outside when I pulled in, drinking coffee beneath the awning like severe weather was everybody's problem but his.

“You made it,” he said.

“You owe me hazard pay.”

“I pay you regularly. Hazard is implied.”

Inside, the shop smelled like oil, wet pavement, and the pirates of the carribean ride at disney. Don't ask me why, I don't know, it just did. Business was dead for the first hour, which made sense because sane people were sheltering with loved ones instead of getting oil changes in apocalypse weather.

It was around 2:30 when an eighteen-wheeler pulled into the lot.You heard it before you saw it, the low diesel growl rolling up the road until a long-nosed rig in faded blue came around the bend dragging a trailer streaked with road grime and dead bugs. It eased into the lot, the air brakes hissed as it settled beside the service bay

The driver climbed down slowly, one heavy boot at a time. He was a broad man in his late fifties, maybe older, with sun-beaten skin, a gray beard thick enough to hide supper in, and forearms that looked carved out of old wood. His trucker cap had dark sweat rings layered into it like tree growth. Before he even reached the ground, he pointed toward the trailer tires.

“Frank here? I need my tires worked on."

“Depends,” I said. “You paying in money or whatever goods you got inside that truck?”

He didn’t smile.

“All eight trailer tires are low. Frank usually fixes them up. You must be new”

I glanced down the line and saw he wasn’t wrong. Every tire had a slight bulge at the base.

“He is here, but since i'm here i'm sure he will tell me to handle it myself anyway. Go ahead and pull forward another foot.”

He remained where he was and studied me for a second.

“Ain’t gonna hold.”

That stopped me halfway to the hose reel.

“Then you’ve got leaks.”

“No,” he said. “I’ve got route trouble.”

I sighed internally so hard I nearly became religious.

I grabbed the hose anyway.

The first tire took air normally. Pressure rose clean, valve stem held, no hiss, no visible damage. I moved to the second, then the third, then the fourth. By the time I circled back to recheck the first one, it had already softened again, the sidewall drooping toward the gravel like it was exhausted.

I crouched and listened, but I heard nothing.

No escaping air, no puncture whistle, no bead leak.I filled it again, then checked the second. It was also low.I straightened slowly and looked at the driver.

“You got some kind of prank camera hidden on this thing?”

He spat into the gravel and shook his head.

“Told you. Ain’t gonna hold.”

I went another round, this time with soapy water, checking stems, rims, sidewalls, anything that might explain what I was seeing. The bubbles stayed still. The tires did not. Every one I touched seemed to lose pressure the moment I turned my back. By the third pass, I was hot, annoyed, and ready to insult somebody professionally.

“You need new tires,” I said. “All around. Internal damage, bad seals, dry rot, cursed by poor maintenance, pick one.”

“I ain’t buying eight tires.”

“Then your company can.”

“They won’t cover it.”

“Why not?”

He folded his arms and looked past me toward the road leading by the church.

“Because this is the fourth time this year, and every time it happens I’m routed through this town.”

He stepped closer and lowered his voice like we were discussing tax fraud.

“Starts around county line. First you hear tapping under the trailer. Then the pressure warnings come on. By the time I roll in here, they’re near flat.”

I was already preparing a response full of skepticism when Frank came outside. He took one look at the tires, one look at the driver, and then looked at me the way a teacher looks at a student who ignored obvious instructions.

“Hey there Ben," Frank exhaled giving a little nod towards the trucker then turning to me. "Sharpie sniffer, did you refill them three times?”

“Yes.”

“You hear knocking?”

The trucker answered for me.

“I did. Soon as I hit county line. Kept pace with me for near twenty miles.”

“Well,” I said, “good news. Both of you are insane.”

Frank ignored that entirely.

“Get the metal bucket from the back room.”

“Ew, no.”

“Now.”

There are arguments worth having and arguments that end with Frank silently outlasting you, so five minutes later I was carrying the dented steel bucket into the lot while muttering creative insults under my breath. Frank had assembled ingredients on the ground beside the truck like a deeply troubling cooking show. Rock salt, used motor oil, fireplace ash, and a jar filled with something dark and granular I did not ask about because I was trying to grow as a person.

He poured everything together and stirred it with a breaker bar. The smell was astonishingly hostile.

“That is disgusting.”

“It’s effective.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he said. “You don’t.”

He handed me a wide paintbrush.

“No.”

“Coat the sidewalls.”

“I am not detailing tires with cursed pudding.”

“You want to go home early and skip the tornado?”

The tornado had passed hours ago, he knew that, but I did like the sound of going home early before that stupid bell had a chance to ring and attach something else to me to bring home. So, I took the forbidden paintbrush in hand. The driver had already removed his hat and was standing respectfully off to the side like this was a recognized roadside service in some circles.So there I was, crouched in gravel, painting foul black paste onto commercial truck tires while two grown men watched with complete sincerity.When I finished the last one, Frank tapped my shoulder letting me know to step back.

“Now we wait.”

“For what?”

The nearest tire answered before he could.

Tap.

A sharp little knock came from inside the rubber.

I stared at the tire, thenn at Frank, then back at the tire, because sometimes your eyes like to double-check whether your life has become embarrassing or not.

“Tell me that was the rim settling.”

Frank folded his arms.

“Yea...ahahahaha...nope.”

Another tap came from a different wheel farther down the trailer. Then another answered from the opposite side. Within seconds the entire rig was alive with it, sharp little knocks traveling around the tires in uneven rhythm, as if something small and impatient was moving from one to the next.

The trucker scratched the side of his head.

“Yup,” he said quietly. “That’s them.”

“That’s what?” I asked.

Frank didn’t look at me.

“Tire knockers.”

“Creative name.”

The rubber on the nearest tire bulged outward, then a second bulge appeared beside it, then a third, each one about the size of a fist, pushing from the inside .

The first.. I dont know...thing??? Tore through the sidewall with a wet ripping sound.

I wish I could tell you it looked fake or silly like a leprechaun or something to soften the moment but it did not. It was about the size of a raccoon, built wrong from every angle. Its limbs were long and hinged strangely, elbows bending where elbows should never be. Its skin was slick black rubber stretched over a narrow ribbed frame. The head was small, eyeless, and smooth except for a mouth that opened vertically down the center. It climbed free holding a tiny iron hammer.

“Nope,” I said immediately.

Then the rest came.

They burst from the tires one after another, dropping into the gravel in twitching little swarms. Some skittered on all fours. Some stood upright for a second before folding back down. Every one of them carried some kind of tool—mallets, pry bars, short lengths of chain.The lot filled with the sound of metal tapping metal.

Ping.

Ping.

Ping.

The trucker backed away so fast he nearly tripped over his own boots. Frank grabbed the bucket from my hand and flung the remaining mixture across the nearest cluster. The reaction was instant. The things shrieked, a high steam-kettle sound that went straight through me, and their bodies began to sag inward like overheated tar. They collapsed into bubbling heaps of black sludge that smoked where it touched the gravel.

“Why was THAT not step one?” I yelled.

“Because step one was proving you wrong.”

He threw another splash.

More shrieking. More melting.

One of the things lunged toward me, hammer raised over its head like it meant to unionize my kneecaps. I reacted with the only tool in reach and smacked it midair with the paintbrush. It bursted like rotten fruit.

Black slime sprayed across my whole face. I stood there in stunned silence.

Frank nodded once.

“Good swing.”

“I hate this job.”

The remaining knockers tried to scramble beneath the trailer, but Frank moved faster than a man his age had any right to move. Salt and sludge flew in practiced arcs. Wherever it landed, the things folded into themselves and liquefied. Within a minute, it was over. The parking lot looked like someone had emptied several trash bags full of roofing tar and ground beef across the concrete. The trailer tires, now torn and ragged where things had clawed their way out, slowly began to reinflate on their own with long wheezing breaths.

One by one.

Perfectly round.

Perfectly full.

I pointed at them.

“No.”

Frank wiped his hands on a rag.

“Yes.”

“That is not how tires work.”

“Neither do you most days, but here we are.”

The trucker stared at the restored wheels, then at Frank.

“I owe you."

“You do,” Frank said, naming a number high enough to make even me respect him.

The driver paid cash without blinking.

Before climbing back into the cab, he looked down at me, still holding the filthy paintbrush.

“Word of advice,” he said. “If you hear tapping on your own car tonight, don’t check it out until you have Frank with you.”

Then he drove off.

I watched the truck disappear down the road.

Slowly, I turned to Frank.

“What happens if they get in our tires?”

Frank handed me a push broom.

“You tell me tomorrow.”

He nodded toward the sludge.

“Clean it up before it dries.”

The week after Frank locked me in that back room, life resumed with an attitude that felt almost insulting.

Customers complained about prices instead of supernatural trespassing, engines failed for honest reasons, oil leaked, belts snapped, and batteries died. By Wednesday, the only nuisance worth mentioning came from a couple of teenagers that had come through laughing so hard they could barely explain themselves, claiming something was wrong with their cars; when I leaned in to check, two of their friends popped up from the backseat smeared in fake blood, making a joke out of the same local stories they’d clearly heard their whole lives and were still young enough to think they're impossible to be true.

If not for the sore spot in my memory every time I passed the parts room, I could have convinced myself none of last weeks supernaturalcapades didn't happen. Frank tried to help with that. He behaved exactly the same as always. Same black coffee, same unreadable expression, same habit of answering direct questions like they were personal attacks.

I asked once.

“So that bunker back there—”

“Storage.”

“It had a bunk bed.”

“Multi-use.”

“It had enough locks to secure a prison transport.”

He glanced up from the brake caliper in his hand.

“You ask too many questions.”

That was the end of that.

By Friday, the weather had turned gray and windless with thick fog suffocating the air. Even the church across the road looked less like a building and more like a memory of one.

Business was dead, I was reorganizing sockets I knew were already organized when I heard tires crunch slowly over gravel. I peeked out of the bay door from around the corner and saw a refurbished station wagon rolling into the lot. It had a long body with metallic green paint, wood paneling, and some chrome detailing. It parked neatly beside our tire pump and shut off.

No one got out. I waited a moment, then another.

Frank, who had been filling out invoices, did not look up.

“You seeing this?” I asked.

“I see it.”

“You planning to help?”

“No.”

Yea..I didn't think so. Classic Frank.That answer irritated me enough to walk outside with my best skip and a jump. I could see Frank shaking his head side to side in annoyance in my peripheral, if he thinks he can out annoy me two can play at that game.

The air had that damp stickiness that comes before rain but it never actually rains, I absolutely hate it, It makes me want to shower immediately. I approached the driver’s side window and tapped once.

Nothing.

The glass was slightly tinted, but I could make out some shapes inside. I saw the front bench seat, a rosary hanging on the mirror, and some newspapers stacked in the passenger footwell, but no driver. Of course...of fucking course there isnt a driver...why would there be? I stepped back and looked through the windshield, no one. I circled to the rear passenger door and that,s when I heard a child humming.

Soft and tuneless, coming from inside the car.

I froze with one hand half-raised, the humming stopped immediately. I stood there long enough to hear my own pulse in my ears.Then, from the shop doorway behind me:

“Leave it.”

Frank’s voice carried no urgency, which somehow made it more urgent.

I turned. “There’s a child in there.”

“No,” he said. “There isn’t.”

The rear window fogged from the inside, slowly,

as if something had just breathed onto the glass.

My feet moved backward before my brain approved it. Across the fogged pane, a small handprint appeared, five child-sized fingers pressed from within. I don’t mind admitting I swore loudly. If there is anything that scares me it is children. Don't get me wrong they are cute and all but anything to do with children and scary anything are a absolute no from me.

Frank was beside me before I realized he’d moved.

He grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me two full steps toward the bay.

“Inside.”

“What the hell is that?”

“A mistake if you keep standing there.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting right now.”

The handprint remained on the fogged glass.

Then a second one appeared beside it but it was smaller. The fingers were thinner, longer than they should have been for a child’s hand. They pressed carefully, almost politely, as if whoever was inside didn’t want to damage the window.My skin tightened.The rear passenger door latch clicked.

Once.Then again.The handle lowered halfway and returned like it was testing it. I backed up another step. Frank did not, he stood between me and the station wagon with the same expression he wore when reading tax forms. The rear door opened three inches, a little girl stood on the other side.

She couldn’t have been older than ten. Curly golden hair hung to her shoulders, damp like she’d just danced in the rain. She wore a pale dress that might once have been white, frilly laced socks, and black shoes with one buckle undone. At first glance, she looked ordinary enough that my brain tried to settle.

Then she raised her face fully, her eyes were black.

Not dark brown, not shadowed, black. From corner to corner, glossy and depthless like wet stones.

Every instinct in me recoiled so hard it felt physical.

“Absolutely not,” I said out loud.

The girl smiled faintly, as if I’d complimented her.

“Sir,” she said, voice soft and perfect. “May I use your phone?”

“Nope.”

Frank shot me a look.

The girl tilted her head.

“I need to call my mother.”

“You can call her from hell,” I said.

Frank exhaled through his nose. “Stop talking.”

The girl ignored him completely. Her attention never left me.

“Please,” she said. “I’ve been waiting a long time.”

Something moved in the far side of the backseat behind her. Another child, a boy this time, maybe twelve, sitting unnaturally still with his hands folded in his lap. Blonde hair, freckles, same black eyes fixed on me without blinking.

“You got two of them?” I said. “Fantastic.”

Frank took one slow step closer to me.

That was when I understood we were already in danger, again.

“You do not invite them,” he said quietly. “You do not offer help. You do not answer questions you don’t have to.”

The girl’s smile widened by a fraction.

“We’re cold.”

“It is eighty degrees,” I muttered.

“We’re lost.”

“You’re in a car.”

“We’re scared.”

“That makes three of us.”

Frank grabbed my arm hard enough to shut me up.

The boy in the backseat leaned forward for the first time. His mouth opened slightly, revealing teeth that looked too small and too numerous.

“We only need permission,” he said.

The station wagon’s engine started on its own.

I nearly folded over on myself, then the radio crackled to life through static.

Children laughing.

Dozens of them.

Layered over each other.

The little girl stepped one shoe onto the gravel.

Frank raised his voice for the first time since I’d known him.

“Back in the car.”

She froze.

The fog around the lot seemed to lean inward.

“You are not welcome here,” Frank said.

The words changed something in the air.

The girl’s expression flattened into something much older than disappointment.

“We were invited before,” she said.

Frank’s jaw tightened.

“Not by me.”

She slowly turned her head toward the church across the road then back to us.

“That’s true.”

Before I could ask what that meant, both children moved at once, not ran, not lunged.

They were simply suddenly seated inside the wagon again, doors shut, faces visible through the glass.

The horn gave one cheerful beep. Then the car reversed by itself, tires crunching softly over gravel, turned in a clean circle, and drove toward the graveyard entrance without anyone behind the wheel.

We watched it disappear into the fog.

I waited a full ten seconds before speaking.

“What the fuck was that?”

Frank rubbed a hand over his face.

“Kids,” he said.

“Frank.”

“Black-eyed children, if you need a label.”

“You say that like raccoons got into the trash.”

He looked at me.

“I say it like you almost invited two of them inside because you can’t stop being sarcastic.”

I pointed toward the road where the wagon had vanished.

“They had a car.”

“They borrow what gets them close.”

I stared at him, then towards the church, then back at him.

“You said they’d been invited before.”

Frank bent to pick up the invoice clipboard he’d dropped earlier.

“I did.”

“By who?”

He glanced across the road at the fog swallowing the church steeple.

“That,” he said, “is why we close before dark.”