u/Middle_Eye882

For obvious reasons, including job security, I can’t tell you my real name or what state park I work at, but what I can tell you is that the land we’re on has seen some shit. The site itself has native history dating all the way back to the early 13th century, a Spanish mission by the 16th, a fort that mysteriously burned down in the 18th century, and a milling industry that came to a screeching halt in the 1920s after several men from the site started disappearing. The area it’s settled in is a no-name town on the Eastern coast of the US, and its roots go back to the 1730s. 

The point is, its old and it’s seen a lot. From massacres to burnings, wars to local murders, blood has been spilled here more than a few times and continues to be. There are things here in this town that don’t make sense, and most of them seem to concentrate around my place of work.

I’d like to go ahead and say that despite that description, I love my job. I love history and I love teaching people about it. I used to be a teacher, and when I was younger I had hoped that profession would fulfill that itch. Safe to say, it didn’t. I quit after three years.  Middle schoolers suck and their parents are even worse. I was getting angry emails every other week about teaching topics that “weren’t appropriate” for their little Billy. I mean, God forbid I follow the state standards and teach a 13 year old about the horrors of slavery in the US. Meanwhile, little Billy is vaping in the bathroom during lunch and calling the special needs kids slurs. 

Compared to all of that, working outdoors in the heat and changing air filters is a vacation enough. I get to have conversations with people here who are actually interested in history and I even reenact out here for special events. It’s honestly a dream come true in that regard, but the occasional bumps in the night sometimes leave me questioning whether or not I have the nerve to work in this town. 

There have been small things here and there. Shapes in the corner of my vision, noises that could be owls but have the slightest uncanny element to them, that kind of stuff.  However, every once in a while, something dangerous or really messed up happens, and we’re all left scratching our heads. 

A recent tragedy in the township resulted in the loss of a good friend of mine and has left me with a desire to record it all. He always told me to “write a book or something”, and I guess this is the “something,” I can muster. 

This is for you, Lenny. I hope you’re better off, wherever you are, and safer than any of us in this quiet little town. I miss you.

It’s a big site with a lot of ground to cover and even more events, so I’ll start off small and try and work my way up from there.
Here’s one:

When I first started, I was cleaning the blacksmith display and went around the corner of the structure to get something. I distinctly remember hearing the sound of a hammer striking the anvil several times. I came back, ready to tell off the jackass teens who were more than likely screwing around, but found no one. There wasn’t time or room to hide before my arrival, but everything was empty nonetheless. The only thing I found was a piece of iron, struck flat on one end, and a small hammer resting on the anvil’s face. A hammer that I had put away in a locked tool box moments before. A box that, by all inspection, was still locked. I had the only key. I ended up blaming it on my heat-addled mind, and went about my day. I double checked with my co-worker at  the front desk of the welcome center and she firmly assured me that no one had come into the park yet, and that none of the other rangers were scheduled on site that day. 

Things got much weirder after that. 

My first full year in, we got a series of complaints, all stating that a “half-naked lunatic” was running around on the hiking trails, shouting and chasing travelers who were out alone. It happened on three separate occasions, and each time, we called the cops. It’s not the largest property in the world, but it’s large enough that it’s a pain in the ass to search. Every time the cops did a sweep, nothing turned up. The last time it happened, they took a boat up the river the site sat on, blaring sirens and using that stupid microphone speaker to try and spook something out of hiding along the river brush. Once again, they’d found nothing and finally lost their patience with us. 

“Look,’ the sheriff told us, “clearly you got some pranksters out here trying to make some spooky video or something for the ‘youtubes’.” (I swear to God that’s how he said it.) “Unless someone ends up bleeding or- God forbid- if you see something yourself, please refrain from calling us.”

My boss gave them a curt response and let them head out, but he pulled me aside not long after they left. 

“Have we had any reenactors out recently?” he asked. 

“Not that I’m aware,” I said. “Why?” 

My boss went quiet and replied with something I didn’t expect. “Read up on your local history and start doing some regular walks down the nature trails. Make sure your radio is on. Understood?” I nodded but I didn’t understand a word. If he sensed my confusion, I couldn’t tell. He only bit his lip and sighed. “Close off the paths to visitors, for the week. Still patrol, but make sure no one else goes out there.” He tucked his black hair into his ball cap. “I gotta call the Nation.” 

I don’t know if I was supposed to hear that part, but regardless, I knew it was some serious shit. The “Nation” he was referring to was the center for native affairs and tribal government. The indigenous people of the site were the ancestors of the modern Muscogee tribe, though they long predated them. My boss, Henry, was a member of the tribe, though contact and collaboration was difficult. Due to that son of a bitch Andrew Jackson, they and several other tribes had long since marched the trail of tears and resettled in Oklahoma. We get ambassadors and native historians from time to time who work with the site to promote and preserve the indigenous culture of the site, but I had no idea why on earth Henry would contact them about this. Henry wouldn’t elaborate either, but I really didn’t want to pry.

Then came the dead gator. 

A few days after that last incident with the man in the woods, a guest ran up to me screaming that something was wrong and I had to come quickly. I tried to calm them down, but they were near hysterical, saying:

“Sweet God they killed it! They killed a gator near the pond! They killed it!”

No matter what park you’re in- at least on the state level- this is a serious offense. A federal one, in fact, and one that could land you behind bars for a hot minute. All animals are protected from hunting and violence by law, so any intentional harming of a critter on state property is prosecuted. Sometimes we get cruel teenagers trying  to stomp a snake to death or we deal with some dumbass campers shooting at birds overhead. Satisfyingly, eight out of ten of those cases end up with a ride in a squad car. This case, however, ended up being much different. 

The gator was lying belly up on the side of the hill overlooking the pond, red blood oozing from the several cuts and slashes on its belly. What I could only assume was a sharpened stick was speared right down the poor things open mouth, shish-kebobing it. Its guts were spilling out of it and there were so many cuts, I couldn’t even attempt a definite count of the wounds. I radioed in for Henry and he called the police, but while I waited, I noticed something in the cuts. 

For some reason, little pieces of glittering stone were littered around the tissue in various places. They were very small, and thin, almost like slivers of glass. I tried to examine it more, but Henry pulled me away. We needed to wait for the cops and a DNR rep to respond before we could do anything about the body. He told me to close off the nearby walkway and redirect any nosy visitors. 

As I was walking away, though, I could’ve sworn I heard him say something to himself. 

“Just like they did it…” he muttered.

I didn’t get much out of him after the fact. To this day its still one of the most gruesome things I’ve ever seen happen to an animal. But, like all things, the grind of work makes even serious issues distant memories over time. 

At the end of that month, we’d thankfully gone a week and a half without any further incident, and programming proceeded as normal. One of my favorite parts of the job is reenacting and living history, and thankfully, to take my mind off all the craziness, we had a small event planned. We set up an encampment and portrayed the Spanish and French explorers who traveled and settled through the region. I was dressed up like a renaissance explorer and got to demonstrate how matchlock guns fired. It was honestly a great program besides what happened after. 

We were shutting down around four that day and I was walking my gear to my car when I saw a flash of movement in the treeline near a forking nature path. At first I thought my eyes were messing with me, but sure enough I was looking at the shape of a lean tall man running off into brush. I didn’t get a good look at him, but I radioed in that someone was still in the park and that I was investigating. Henry told me to wait, but curiosity had already taken hold of me. So off I went, carrying a 16th century replica gun, dressed like Shakespeare, and chasing down this elusive figure. 

I ran for what must have been only a few minutes, but when I finally stopped, dusk was settling in overhead. It finally dawned on me that in my excitement, I’d not only dropped my radio, but had forgotten a decent flashlight as well. I was alone in the growing darkness, chasing something that was most likely an owl flying low to the ground. All of it could be explained by tricks of the light and an overactive imagination, yet I followed it, and now stood in a thick patch of woods with no way to contact help. I did have my phone, so I thankfully wasn’t completely blind, but I had no signal. 

I used my tiny phone light to help me find the nearest path and I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew the paths all wound in a big circle, so regardless of direction, I was going to make it back to home base eventually, but it took only a few steps along the trail before my fear came back to me.

You learn a lot of things being out in nature, and one of them is only apparent when you lack it.

Nature is rarely completely silent. Even in the darkness, and even when no one’s around. Maybe it’s different in other places, but by then I knew my woods, and I knew the sounds of my park. Crickets, owls, rustling leaves, twigs snapping, cicadas droning… I heard none of them. 

It was like the woods were filled with something else, as if it were holding its breath, waiting patiently to exhale. It felt like something new was with me, and I couldn’t see it. Something felt like it was supposed to happen, but I had no idea what. Then, without prompting, my brain started to count as my whole body trembled.

One-one thousand…. Two-one thousand…. Three-one thousand….

Then it came.

Like a crack of thunder so loud it rings your ears, I was engulfed by the sound of high pitched whooping and screaming. Several voices, hundreds of them, echoed all around me and shook my whole body numb. I don’t think I’ve ever felt panic like that before, and I haven’t since. It was, without argument, the scaredest I’ve ever been.

All of the voices rose and rose like a million shrieking furies, undulating, angry, and vengeful. I hadn’t made it but two steps forward before a strong sharp pain struck my shoulder and sent me tumbling to the ground. My back hit the packed dirt of the trail and forced out any remaining air in my body. I was helpless. I pissed myself from the fear and pain, but realized the other wet feeling surrounding my body was blood. I still had my phone light and could barely raise it to my shoulder, but I saw clearly enough. A large deep gash cut through my clothes and flesh, gushing blood as easy as a water fountain. I closed my eyes and tried to pray but my mouth couldn’t stop chattering. All I could do was close my eyes as the noises grew louder. In the blurring vision of the ever growing night, I swear I saw someone standing before me, fuzzy and almost one with the darkness, but they too left me. I blacked out, terrified those cries would follow me into my dreams.

I woke up in the hospital with Henry sitting next to my bed. He was dressed in plain clothes and stood up as soon as my eyes opened. I asked him what happened. 

“We found you out on one of the trails, along with your walkie. Don’t worry we grabbed your phone too. It’s  dead, but I’ve got it on a charger-” 

I told him that wasn’t what I meant, and his demeanor changed. He gave me a look like a disappointed dad who just caught his son sneaking home late, but it quickly changed to guilt and pity. “When we found you, after I told you not to go into the fucking woods, you were in bad shape. You were bleeding from some wound in your shoulder but we couldn’t tell at the time what was causing it. That is until we got you here and the doc pulled this out of you…”

He took a plastic bag from his pocket  and dangled it in front of me. In it was a stone arrowhead, but not one of those traditional flint ones. This one gleamed like frosted glass and had a chip where the point should be. 

“Don’t worry,” Henry told me, “they got the other piece out, but I need that for something…” He shook his head. “Nevermind. The point is, this is yours now.”

“What?” I thought he was joking but he explained to me that the hospital was concerned it was some native artifact and didn’t want any hot press about destroying one, even in a surgery. People in the area were kind of nutty about that, but I still couldn’t believe it.

“It’s quartz,” he told me. “There’s not a ton of flint around here, so the early natives used quartz, though it’s a tad too soft to be as useful.” He tossed the bag on my lap and shoved his hands in his jacket pocket. “Oddly, there wasn’t a shaft attached to it. Doc said you must’ve fallen pretty hard for it to get lodged so deep. You’re lucky it was only a fleshwound.” He gave me a stern look and  emphasized. “Are you feeling any better since the fall?” 

He said that word with such a punch that I understood his meaning clearly. I nodded my head and he gave a small smile. He told me he’d see me at work when I was feeling better, and that I wouldn’t be doing any heavy lifting for a while. He was about to leave when I blurted out:

“Did… did you hear them too? When you… you found me?

His eyes went grave, as if I’d resurrected a forgotten terror, but he blinked it away. 

“No, I didn’t,” he said, pointing at me, “and neither did you.” 

He left and I was discharged from the hospital the next day. Besides managing the shock and stitching up the giant cut in my shoulder, there wasn’t much else to do for me. I told my shrink about the incident and he told me to up the dose for a bit on my anxiety meds. I was out for a full week from work before returning, and I used most of that time to relax and focus on hobbies. I sewed, played video games, and even found the energy to mow my lawn, but on the Sunday before I went back, I was cleaning the house and found a book I’d misplaced. It was the guidebook they’d given me when I started work. It laid out the full history of the site and, although I was supposed to read it back when I first started, I figured that a year later was better than never. 

I thought I knew most everything I needed to know about the site, but the book surprised me. It had several facts and dates I didn’t know, and it held my attention better than I expected. I was on my couch with it for an hour or two when I read a timeline entry that made me stop cold. 

The date I’d injured myself was in it. No exaggeration, the same day and month over four hundred years ago was in the book. I almost wrote it off as some crazy coincidence, but then my eyes fell on the description.

1597- Native uprising against the Spanish.

I stopped reading after that. 

I came back to work to discover Henry and a friend of his from the Muscogee Nation had gone on a hike down the same trail I was found on, and that no other incidents of the man or butchered reptiles had occurred. It’s stayed that way, but they aren’t the only weird thing out here. 

This town has a deep history, covered in blood. Assuming nobody from management discovers I’m typing this, I’ll update with more stories from the site, both my own and my colleagues. 

Wish me luck out here, and remember to stay safe in the woods. I wear that arrowhead as a necklace now, just as a reminder.

For obvious reasons, including job security, I can’t tell you my real name or what state park I work at, but what I can tell you is that the land we’re on has seen some shit. The site itself has native history dating all the way back to the early 13th century, a Spanish mission by the 16th, a fort that mysteriously burned down in the 18th century, and a milling industry that came to a screeching halt in the 1920s after several men from the site started disappearing. The area it’s settled in is a no-name town on the Eastern coast of the US, and its roots go back to the 1730s. 

The point is, its old and it’s seen a lot. From massacres to burnings, wars to local murders, blood has been spilled here more than a few times and continues to be. There are things here in this town that don’t make sense, and most of them seem to concentrate around my place of work.

I’d like to go ahead and say that despite that description, I love my job. I love history and I love teaching people about it. I used to be a teacher, and when I was younger I had hoped that profession would fulfill that itch. Safe to say, it didn’t. I quit after three years.  Middle schoolers suck and their parents are even worse. I was getting angry emails every other week about teaching topics that “weren’t appropriate” for their little Billy. I mean, God forbid I follow the state standards and teach a 13 year old about the horrors of slavery in the US. Meanwhile, little Billy is vaping in the bathroom during lunch and calling the special needs kids slurs. 

Compared to all of that, working outdoors in the heat and changing air filters is a vacation enough. I get to have conversations with people here who are actually interested in history and I even reenact out here for special events. It’s honestly a dream come true in that regard, but the occasional bumps in the night sometimes leave me questioning whether or not I have the nerve to work in this town. 

There have been small things here and there. Shapes in the corner of my vision, noises that could be owls but have the slightest uncanny element to them, that kind of stuff.  However, every once in a while, something dangerous or really messed up happens, and we’re all left scratching our heads. 

A recent tragedy in the township resulted in the loss of a good friend of mine and has left me with a desire to record it all. He always told me to “write a book or something”, and I guess this is the “something,” I can muster. 

This is for you, Lenny. I hope you’re better off, wherever you are, and safer than any of us in this quiet little town. I miss you.

It’s a big site with a lot of ground to cover and even more events, so I’ll start off small and try and work my way up from there.
Here’s one:

When I first started, I was cleaning the blacksmith display and went around the corner of the structure to get something. I distinctly remember hearing the sound of a hammer striking the anvil several times. I came back, ready to tell off the jackass teens who were more than likely screwing around, but found no one. There wasn’t time or room to hide before my arrival, but everything was empty nonetheless. The only thing I found was a piece of iron, struck flat on one end, and a small hammer resting on the anvil’s face. A hammer that I had put away in a locked tool box moments before. A box that, by all inspection, was still locked. I had the only key. I ended up blaming it on my heat-addled mind, and went about my day. I double checked with my co-worker at  the front desk of the welcome center and she firmly assured me that no one had come into the park yet, and that none of the other rangers were scheduled on site that day. 

Things got much weirder after that. 

My first full year in, we got a series of complaints, all stating that a “half-naked lunatic” was running around on the hiking trails, shouting and chasing travelers who were out alone. It happened on three separate occasions, and each time, we called the cops. It’s not the largest property in the world, but it’s large enough that it’s a pain in the ass to search. Every time the cops did a sweep, nothing turned up. The last time it happened, they took a boat up the river the site sat on, blaring sirens and using that stupid microphone speaker to try and spook something out of hiding along the river brush. Once again, they’d found nothing and finally lost their patience with us. 

“Look,’ the sheriff told us, “clearly you got some pranksters out here trying to make some spooky video or something for the ‘youtubes’.” (I swear to God that’s how he said it.) “Unless someone ends up bleeding or- God forbid- if you see something yourself, please refrain from calling us.”

My boss gave them a curt response and let them head out, but he pulled me aside not long after they left. 

“Have we had any reenactors out recently?” he asked. 

“Not that I’m aware,” I said. “Why?” 

My boss went quiet and replied with something I didn’t expect. “Read up on your local history and start doing some regular walks down the nature trails. Make sure your radio is on. Understood?” I nodded but I didn’t understand a word. If he sensed my confusion, I couldn’t tell. He only bit his lip and sighed. “Close off the paths to visitors, for the week. Still patrol, but make sure no one else goes out there.” He tucked his black hair into his ball cap. “I gotta call the Nation.” 

I don’t know if I was supposed to hear that part, but regardless, I knew it was some serious shit. The “Nation” he was referring to was the center for native affairs and tribal government. The indigenous people of the site were the ancestors of the modern Muscogee tribe, though they long predated them. My boss, Henry, was a member of the tribe, though contact and collaboration was difficult. Due to that son of a bitch Andrew Jackson, they and several other tribes had long since marched the trail of tears and resettled in Oklahoma. We get ambassadors and native historians from time to time who work with the site to promote and preserve the indigenous culture of the site, but I had no idea why on earth Henry would contact them about this. Henry wouldn’t elaborate either, but I really didn’t want to pry.

Then came the dead gator. 

A few days after that last incident with the man in the woods, a guest ran up to me screaming that something was wrong and I had to come quickly. I tried to calm them down, but they were near hysterical, saying:

“Sweet God they killed it! They killed a gator near the pond! They killed it!”

No matter what park you’re in- at least on the state level- this is a serious offense. A federal one, in fact, and one that could land you behind bars for a hot minute. All animals are protected from hunting and violence by law, so any intentional harming of a critter on state property is prosecuted. Sometimes we get cruel teenagers trying  to stomp a snake to death or we deal with some dumbass campers shooting at birds overhead. Satisfyingly, eight out of ten of those cases end up with a ride in a squad car. This case, however, ended up being much different. 

The gator was lying belly up on the side of the hill overlooking the pond, red blood oozing from the several cuts and slashes on its belly. What I could only assume was a sharpened stick was speared right down the poor things open mouth, shish-kebobing it. Its guts were spilling out of it and there were so many cuts, I couldn’t even attempt a definite count of the wounds. I radioed in for Henry and he called the police, but while I waited, I noticed something in the cuts. 

For some reason, little pieces of glittering stone were littered around the tissue in various places. They were very small, and thin, almost like slivers of glass. I tried to examine it more, but Henry pulled me away. We needed to wait for the cops and a DNR rep to respond before we could do anything about the body. He told me to close off the nearby walkway and redirect any nosy visitors. 

As I was walking away, though, I could’ve sworn I heard him say something to himself. 

“Just like they did it…” he muttered.

I didn’t get much out of him after the fact. To this day its still one of the most gruesome things I’ve ever seen happen to an animal. But, like all things, the grind of work makes even serious issues distant memories over time. 

At the end of that month, we’d thankfully gone a week and a half without any further incident, and programming proceeded as normal. One of my favorite parts of the job is reenacting and living history, and thankfully, to take my mind off all the craziness, we had a small event planned. We set up an encampment and portrayed the Spanish and French explorers who traveled and settled through the region. I was dressed up like a renaissance explorer and got to demonstrate how matchlock guns fired. It was honestly a great program besides what happened after. 

We were shutting down around four that day and I was walking my gear to my car when I saw a flash of movement in the treeline near a forking nature path. At first I thought my eyes were messing with me, but sure enough I was looking at the shape of a lean tall man running off into brush. I didn’t get a good look at him, but I radioed in that someone was still in the park and that I was investigating. Henry told me to wait, but curiosity had already taken hold of me. So off I went, carrying a 16th century replica gun, dressed like Shakespeare, and chasing down this elusive figure. 

I ran for what must have been only a few minutes, but when I finally stopped, dusk was settling in overhead. It finally dawned on me that in my excitement, I’d not only dropped my radio, but had forgotten a decent flashlight as well. I was alone in the growing darkness, chasing something that was most likely an owl flying low to the ground. All of it could be explained by tricks of the light and an overactive imagination, yet I followed it, and now stood in a thick patch of woods with no way to contact help. I did have my phone, so I thankfully wasn’t completely blind, but I had no signal. 

I used my tiny phone light to help me find the nearest path and I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew the paths all wound in a big circle, so regardless of direction, I was going to make it back to home base eventually, but it took only a few steps along the trail before my fear came back to me.

You learn a lot of things being out in nature, and one of them is only apparent when you lack it.

Nature is rarely completely silent. Even in the darkness, and even when no one’s around. Maybe it’s different in other places, but by then I knew my woods, and I knew the sounds of my park. Crickets, owls, rustling leaves, twigs snapping, cicadas droning… I heard none of them. 

It was like the woods were filled with something else, as if it were holding its breath, waiting patiently to exhale. It felt like something new was with me, and I couldn’t see it. Something felt like it was supposed to happen, but I had no idea what. Then, without prompting, my brain started to count as my whole body trembled.

One-one thousand…. Two-one thousand…. Three-one thousand….

Then it came.

Like a crack of thunder so loud it rings your ears, I was engulfed by the sound of high pitched whooping and screaming. Several voices, hundreds of them, echoed all around me and shook my whole body numb. I don’t think I’ve ever felt panic like that before, and I haven’t since. It was, without argument, the scaredest I’ve ever been.

All of the voices rose and rose like a million shrieking furies, undulating, angry, and vengeful. I hadn’t made it but two steps forward before a strong sharp pain struck my shoulder and sent me tumbling to the ground. My back hit the packed dirt of the trail and forced out any remaining air in my body. I was helpless. I pissed myself from the fear and pain, but realized the other wet feeling surrounding my body was blood. I still had my phone light and could barely raise it to my shoulder, but I saw clearly enough. A large deep gash cut through my clothes and flesh, gushing blood as easy as a water fountain. I closed my eyes and tried to pray but my mouth couldn’t stop chattering. All I could do was close my eyes as the noises grew louder. In the blurring vision of the ever growing night, I swear I saw someone standing before me, fuzzy and almost one with the darkness, but they too left me. I blacked out, terrified those cries would follow me into my dreams.

I woke up in the hospital with Henry sitting next to my bed. He was dressed in plain clothes and stood up as soon as my eyes opened. I asked him what happened. 

“We found you out on one of the trails, along with your walkie. Don’t worry we grabbed your phone too. It’s  dead, but I’ve got it on a charger-” 

I told him that wasn’t what I meant, and his demeanor changed. He gave me a look like a disappointed dad who just caught his son sneaking home late, but it quickly changed to guilt and pity. “When we found you, after I told you not to go into the fucking woods, you were in bad shape. You were bleeding from some wound in your shoulder but we couldn’t tell at the time what was causing it. That is until we got you here and the doc pulled this out of you…”

He took a plastic bag from his pocket  and dangled it in front of me. In it was a stone arrowhead, but not one of those traditional flint ones. This one gleamed like frosted glass and had a chip where the point should be. 

“Don’t worry,” Henry told me, “they got the other piece out, but I need that for something…” He shook his head. “Nevermind. The point is, this is yours now.”

“What?” I thought he was joking but he explained to me that the hospital was concerned it was some native artifact and didn’t want any hot press about destroying one, even in a surgery. People in the area were kind of nutty about that, but I still couldn’t believe it.

“It’s quartz,” he told me. “There’s not a ton of flint around here, so the early natives used quartz, though it’s a tad too soft to be as useful.” He tossed the bag on my lap and shoved his hands in his jacket pocket. “Oddly, there wasn’t a shaft attached to it. Doc said you must’ve fallen pretty hard for it to get lodged so deep. You’re lucky it was only a fleshwound.” He gave me a stern look and  emphasized. “Are you feeling any better since the fall?” 

He said that word with such a punch that I understood his meaning clearly. I nodded my head and he gave a small smile. He told me he’d see me at work when I was feeling better, and that I wouldn’t be doing any heavy lifting for a while. He was about to leave when I blurted out:

“Did… did you hear them too? When you… you found me?

His eyes went grave, as if I’d resurrected a forgotten terror, but he blinked it away. 

“No, I didn’t,” he said, pointing at me, “and neither did you.” 

He left and I was discharged from the hospital the next day. Besides managing the shock and stitching up the giant cut in my shoulder, there wasn’t much else to do for me. I told my shrink about the incident and he told me to up the dose for a bit on my anxiety meds. I was out for a full week from work before returning, and I used most of that time to relax and focus on hobbies. I sewed, played video games, and even found the energy to mow my lawn, but on the Sunday before I went back, I was cleaning the house and found a book I’d misplaced. It was the guidebook they’d given me when I started work. It laid out the full history of the site and, although I was supposed to read it back when I first started, I figured that a year later was better than never. 

I thought I knew most everything I needed to know about the site, but the book surprised me. It had several facts and dates I didn’t know, and it held my attention better than I expected. I was on my couch with it for an hour or two when I read a timeline entry that made me stop cold. 

The date I’d injured myself was in it. No exaggeration, the same day and month over four hundred years ago was in the book. I almost wrote it off as some crazy coincidence, but then my eyes fell on the description.

1597- Native uprising against the Spanish.

I stopped reading after that. 

I came back to work to discover Henry and a friend of his from the Muscogee Nation had gone on a hike down the same trail I was found on, and that no other incidents of the man or butchered reptiles had occurred. It’s stayed that way, but they aren’t the only weird thing out here. 

This town has a deep history, covered in blood. Assuming nobody from management discovers I’m typing this, I’ll update with more stories from the site, both my own and my colleagues. 

Wish me luck out here, and remember to stay safe in the woods. I wear that arrowhead as a necklace now, just as a reminder.

This happened the summer I got my first pocket knife. I was 12 and had begged my folks to let me have a knife for as long as I could remember. As much as their previous refusals had bothered me, I still remember understanding their sentiments. Kids are dumb, and knives are sharp. It’s not exactly rocket science, and I knew they had my best interests at heart. However, I was an annoying little shit at that age, and I knew if I just didn’t act stupid and asked at the right moment, they’d get me one.

That classic kid manipulation resulted in my dad taking me to the nearest outdoor store and letting me choose out a blade. That Buck knife became a part of me and still rests on the desk next to me as I type this. It saved my life, and after twenty years of lying about the stains on its edge, I figure it’s time to come clean. My family is under the assumption that I fought off a wildcat in my younger years and that the scars on my arm are the consequence of that interaction. They don’t know how dumb I was back then. They don’t know about me or the true story about my buddy Daniel, that poor boy in the mine….

They don’t know about the pirate we met, nor the treasure he promised us all those years ago in the seaside town I grew up in. It’s for Daniel I’m writing this all. Wherever he is, I hope he can forgive me. I hope I can forgive myself. 

The pirate appeared to us while we were building a makeshift fort. I was whittling stakes out fallen branches while Dan dug a patch of dirt out of the earth. I can’t remember what our plan for the structure had been, but at the time, I guess it made sense. He was hard at work with a shovel he’d taken from his dad’s shed and was racing the daylight to get as much done before we had to head back home.

We were both prone to losing track of time, and both of our folks were keen on beating the tar out of us for staying out too late, so we treated the horizon as a timer. Two finger widths between the setting sun and the edge of our sight meant it was time to pack up. We were only half a width away from leaving when the pirate stepped into our clearing. 

He had a big beard, a striped shirt, boots, and baggy pants. He had a sword and several pistols on his bandolier, as well as an eyepatch and bandana nestled beneath a wide black hat. He grinned at us with a toothy smile and waved. 

“Ahoy, lads!” he bellowed, his voice gruff and full of zeal. I remember thinking that his voice and appearance were familiar to me, but I couldn’t place where from at the time. I held my knife a bit tighter as the man approached, but Daniel grew wide-eyed. Daniel was two years younger than I, and he hadn’t outgrown some of his childhood fascinations, one of those, of course, being pirates. He was ten years old. I didn’t and still don’t blame him for his actions, but that doesn’t change anything. He waved back naively and said, “Ahoy, captain!” 

I remember reaching for his hand and tucking my knife in my pocket. “Dude,” I told him, “We don’t know this guy.”

He looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Are you kidding me? It’s Captain Moody! Remember?” 

His name rang a faint bell, but nothing that stuck out to me. Daniel rolled his eyes and said, “He’s famous, Jack! He’s must be doing some kind of event!” I was flabbergasted at his response and was still lost as ever, but he spun back to the approaching pirate. As if on cue, the man replied:

“Aye, that be right!” He took a few rigid steps forward and posed with his hands on his hips. “I’m Captain Moody, and who might you be?”

Daniel readily told him both of our names as I checked the horizon again. We should’ve been heading back, but instead, the pirate had my friend’s undivided attention. No nudge or kick from me could snap him out of it, and before I could stop what happened next, the captain spoke over me.

“Lads,” he said, “there be treasure of mine buried in the hill up yonder. I’ve lost my crew and need help digging it back up. Might you be of some assistance to this old salt dog?”

I tried to pipe up and tell the man we really ought to head back, but Daniel beat me to speak. He promised our help and saluted the pirate without hesitation. I was close to leaving him there alone, but I fought against the urge. I couldn’t let him go off alone with some stranger, so I followed after him. 

The entire way, the man sang that old pirate song about a dead man’s chest and rum, and Dan joined him. I kept trying to catch his attention, hoping to silently convince him to run with me as fast as we could to my parents' house, but it was like he was hypnotized. He’d talked to me so many times in the past about hunting for treasure that I figured his boyhood dreams couldn’t be passed up. Even now, though, thinking about the look on his face and the gleam in his eye, I wonder if that’s all it had been. 

The pirate didn’t move right either. He staggered in a way that surpassed drunkenness. It was as if every limb except for his main joints didn’t work. His legs moved without any cooperation from his feet, and his fingers moved all at once instead of individually. The stripes of his shirt glistened oddly, too, as if something faintly shiny once lingered on them. Even his sword with its gleaming brass hilt seemed to flop and curve in its scabbard as if nothing was in it at all. I kept my distance from him, my hand on my knife. If he held any hostility toward me, I couldn’t tell, but I recall now that he never looked me in the face. He only ever locked eyes with Dan. 

As we made it around the hill, we found ourselves face-to-face with a red cliffside. It was a very old mine, from the looks of things. We had a few of those around town, all from an industry that failed in the 60s. It wasn’t abnormal, but it sure as hell didn’t feel right. There was nobody around at all, and the land, I could have sworn, was privately owned. I went to tug at Dan one last time, fully intent on just grabbing him and darting, but he wasn’t close to me; he was right next to the pirate. The pirate whose face was now a sickly grey, and whose clothing was starting to lose all color.

Daniel blinked several times, as if he’d just woken up from a dream, and asked simply:

“Where’s the treasure?”

The Captain grabbed his wrist, and Dan screamed in pain. In a gurgling, distorted voice, the pirate said, without moving his lips, “This way….”

He began to drag my friend into the hillside. The pirate moved through the clay like a slug squishing into the cracks between a brick wall. All the while, Dan screamed and tried to wrench his hand away. He begged for help and cried in pain, but it took several seconds before I could move. My friend was being pulled into a developing hole that was barely big enough to fit him, and all I could do was run and jump on them to hold the man back and cry for anyone to help us. I tried to grab the pirate by one grey, fleshy boot heel that was still dissolving into the cracks of the red clay, but only my pinky managed to graze it. That act of bravery cost me dearly. 

The thing’s flesh wasn’t just slimy, it was like superglue. It stretched and twisted like taffy at first, but it didn’t let go of me. My screams joined Dan’s muffled cries as clay shifted around us. The boot was now a long, thin tendril that spun my broken pinky around like a fishing lure. I couldn’t get it loose, and every moment I spent attached to it brought me an inch closer to a new opening in the clay. I flailed and tried everything I could to get loose, but in the end, only one thing came to mind.

I took my knife from my pocket and tried to stab the tendril, but the blade glanced off it like bone. I couldn’t hurt it in any meaningful way, and feared of my only tool getting caught on it’s sticky skin. I only had one option, and you all already know what that was. 

I stumbled away from the clay-filled mine with nine fingers and a bloody knife, crying and pissing myself as I ran away without my friend. By the time I’d freed myself, I hadn’t heard him for several minutes. It was dusk, and I was running like a madman to find someone. In the end, I ran into my parents. They’d come looking for me since I was so late, and I was only spared the reprimands when they saw the bloody stump of my finger and the distress on my face.

From there, the cops were called, and Daniel’s parents were left inconsolable. They hunted for ages, even digging up the collapsed mine I said he’d disappeared into. All they ever found was a shoe of his. No bones ever turned up, and no witnesses came forward with information on the abduction. 

They tried to get information out of me, but to no avail.  They couldn’t understand much of what I was saying, and a detective ended up interviewing us in the parking lot of a burger joint, trying to coax me with a milkshake. He wanted details on the man I’d seen that day, but I didn’t know what to tell him. A pirate appeared out of the woods and hypnotized my friend? How’d that make any sense? I ended up giving him a vague description of an average man, then left with my folks, having done nothing to help find my missing friend.

It was on the drive home after that interview when I saw the pirate again. He was plastered on a billboard, smiling and waving. A speech bubble with the word “Ahoy!” floated out of his mouth. 

“That’s him,” I told my parents, “That’s the guy we met.”

They looked at me, confused, and told me that I couldn’t be right, but I insisted. They explained to me that it simply couldn’t be him, and I challenged them.

“Why?” I asked them. 

My father turned around in his seat and looked at me with a gentle concern and said, “Jack, that’s the mascot from an old tourist trap. ‘Captain Moody’? We took you there once as a kid. It’s a small dinner-theatre chain. The guy who played the pirate on that billboard is an actor from the 70s. He died years ago.” 

I felt like I’d been hit in the gut. How did any of that make any sense? How could that thing know about something so niche and weird? Why a pirate? Why any of this?

My answer came when I was sitting on the couch one day, weeks after the tragedy. A commercial for “Captain Moody’s” came up, and that same horrid voice invited me to come to the nearest location and see a show “today!”

That old commercial that a tourist trap never retired triggered a memory of Dan crowding around our television, excited at the prospect of piracy.

“We should go sometime!” he’d tell me. “It’d be so cool!”

It was also at that moment that I looked out of the window adjacent to our TV. It peered into the back yard, and from the yard into vast woods around us. For a second, a split second, I could have sworn I saw a flash of gray whiff past my window. Whether it was real or imaginary, I understood the truth. 

That thing had been watching us the whole time. It knew exactly what to appear as to get Daniel. 

I’m older now, and I’m married with a kid. My parents are both dead, so my wife and her family think I lost my pinky to a wild animal when I was younger. I’ve never told them the truth and don’t know if I can. All I can do is watch after my family closely, and watch the woods and the mines even closer

This happened the summer I got my first pocket knife. I was 12 and had begged my folks to let me have a knife for as long as I could remember. As much as their previous refusals had bothered me, I still remember understanding their sentiments. Kids are dumb, and knives are sharp. It’s not exactly rocket science, and I knew they had my best interests at heart. However, I was an annoying little shit at that age, and I knew if I just didn’t act stupid and asked at the right moment, they’d get me one.

That classic kid manipulation resulted in my dad taking me to the nearest outdoor store and letting me choose out a blade. That Buck knife became a part of me and still rests on the desk next to me as I type this. It saved my life, and after twenty years of lying about the stains on its edge, I figure it’s time to come clean. My family is under the assumption that I fought off a wildcat in my younger years and that the scars on my arm are the consequence of that interaction. They don’t know how dumb I was back then. They don’t know about me or the true story about my buddy Daniel, that poor boy in the mine….

They don’t know about the pirate we met, nor the treasure he promised us all those years ago in the seaside town I grew up in. It’s for Daniel I’m writing this all. Wherever he is, I hope he can forgive me. I hope I can forgive myself. 

The pirate appeared to us while we were building a makeshift fort. I was whittling stakes out fallen branches while Dan dug a patch of dirt out of the earth. I can’t remember what our plan for the structure had been, but at the time, I guess it made sense. He was hard at work with a shovel he’d taken from his dad’s shed and was racing the daylight to get as much done before we had to head back home.

We were both prone to losing track of time, and both of our folks were keen on beating the tar out of us for staying out too late, so we treated the horizon as a timer. Two finger widths between the setting sun and the edge of our sight meant it was time to pack up. We were only half a width away from leaving when the pirate stepped into our clearing. 

He had a big beard, a striped shirt, boots, and baggy pants. He had a sword and several pistols on his bandolier, as well as an eyepatch and bandana nestled beneath a wide black hat. He grinned at us with a toothy smile and waved. 

“Ahoy, lads!” he bellowed, his voice gruff and full of zeal. I remember thinking that his voice and appearance were familiar to me, but I couldn’t place where from at the time. I held my knife a bit tighter as the man approached, but Daniel grew wide-eyed. Daniel was two years younger than I, and he hadn’t outgrown some of his childhood fascinations, one of those, of course, being pirates. He was ten years old. I didn’t and still don’t blame him for his actions, but that doesn’t change anything. He waved back naively and said, “Ahoy, captain!” 

I remember reaching for his hand and tucking my knife in my pocket. “Dude,” I told him, “We don’t know this guy.”

He looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Are you kidding me? It’s Captain Moody! Remember?” 

His name rang a faint bell, but nothing that stuck out to me. Daniel rolled his eyes and said, “He’s famous, Jack! He’s must be doing some kind of event!” I was flabbergasted at his response and was still lost as ever, but he spun back to the approaching pirate. As if on cue, the man replied:

“Aye, that be right!” He took a few rigid steps forward and posed with his hands on his hips. “I’m Captain Moody, and who might you be?”

Daniel readily told him both of our names as I checked the horizon again. We should’ve been heading back, but instead, the pirate had my friend’s undivided attention. No nudge or kick from me could snap him out of it, and before I could stop what happened next, the captain spoke over me.

“Lads,” he said, “there be treasure of mine buried in the hill up yonder. I’ve lost my crew and need help digging it back up. Might you be of some assistance to this old salt dog?”

I tried to pipe up and tell the man we really ought to head back, but Daniel beat me to speak. He promised our help and saluted the pirate without hesitation. I was close to leaving him there alone, but I fought against the urge. I couldn’t let him go off alone with some stranger, so I followed after him. 

The entire way, the man sang that old pirate song about a dead man’s chest and rum, and Dan joined him. I kept trying to catch his attention, hoping to silently convince him to run with me as fast as we could to my parents' house, but it was like he was hypnotized. He’d talked to me so many times in the past about hunting for treasure that I figured his boyhood dreams couldn’t be passed up. Even now, though, thinking about the look on his face and the gleam in his eye, I wonder if that’s all it had been. 

The pirate didn’t move right either. He staggered in a way that surpassed drunkenness. It was as if every limb except for his main joints didn’t work. His legs moved without any cooperation from his feet, and his fingers moved all at once instead of individually. The stripes of his shirt glistened oddly, too, as if something faintly shiny once lingered on them. Even his sword with its gleaming brass hilt seemed to flop and curve in its scabbard as if nothing was in it at all. I kept my distance from him, my hand on my knife. If he held any hostility toward me, I couldn’t tell, but I recall now that he never looked me in the face. He only ever locked eyes with Dan. 

As we made it around the hill, we found ourselves face-to-face with a red cliffside. It was a very old mine, from the looks of things. We had a few of those around town, all from an industry that failed in the 60s. It wasn’t abnormal, but it sure as hell didn’t feel right. There was nobody around at all, and the land, I could have sworn, was privately owned. I went to tug at Dan one last time, fully intent on just grabbing him and darting, but he wasn’t close to me; he was right next to the pirate. The pirate whose face was now a sickly grey, and whose clothing was starting to lose all color.

Daniel blinked several times, as if he’d just woken up from a dream, and asked simply:

“Where’s the treasure?”

The Captain grabbed his wrist, and Dan screamed in pain. In a gurgling, distorted voice, the pirate said, without moving his lips, “This way….”

He began to drag my friend into the hillside. The pirate moved through the clay like a slug squishing into the cracks between a brick wall. All the while, Dan screamed and tried to wrench his hand away. He begged for help and cried in pain, but it took several seconds before I could move. My friend was being pulled into a developing hole that was barely big enough to fit him, and all I could do was run and jump on them to hold the man back and cry for anyone to help us. I tried to grab the pirate by one grey, fleshy boot heel that was still dissolving into the cracks of the red clay, but only my pinky managed to graze it. That act of bravery cost me dearly. 

The thing’s flesh wasn’t just slimy, it was like superglue. It stretched and twisted like taffy at first, but it didn’t let go of me. My screams joined Dan’s muffled cries as clay shifted around us. The boot was now a long, thin tendril that spun my broken pinky around like a fishing lure. I couldn’t get it loose, and every moment I spent attached to it brought me an inch closer to a new opening in the clay. I flailed and tried everything I could to get loose, but in the end, only one thing came to mind.

I took my knife from my pocket and tried to stab the tendril, but the blade glanced off it like bone. I couldn’t hurt it in any meaningful way, and feared of my only tool getting caught on it’s sticky skin. I only had one option, and you all already know what that was. 

I stumbled away from the clay-filled mine with nine fingers and a bloody knife, crying and pissing myself as I ran away without my friend. By the time I’d freed myself, I hadn’t heard him for several minutes. It was dusk, and I was running like a madman to find someone. In the end, I ran into my parents. They’d come looking for me since I was so late, and I was only spared the reprimands when they saw the bloody stump of my finger and the distress on my face.

From there, the cops were called, and Daniel’s parents were left inconsolable. They hunted for ages, even digging up the collapsed mine I said he’d disappeared into. All they ever found was a shoe of his. No bones ever turned up, and no witnesses came forward with information on the abduction. 

They tried to get information out of me, but to no avail.  They couldn’t understand much of what I was saying, and a detective ended up interviewing us in the parking lot of a burger joint, trying to coax me with a milkshake. He wanted details on the man I’d seen that day, but I didn’t know what to tell him. A pirate appeared out of the woods and hypnotized my friend? How’d that make any sense? I ended up giving him a vague description of an average man, then left with my folks, having done nothing to help find my missing friend.

It was on the drive home after that interview when I saw the pirate again. He was plastered on a billboard, smiling and waving. A speech bubble with the word “Ahoy!” floated out of his mouth. 

“That’s him,” I told my parents, “That’s the guy we met.”

They looked at me, confused, and told me that I couldn’t be right, but I insisted. They explained to me that it simply couldn’t be him, and I challenged them.

“Why?” I asked them. 

My father turned around in his seat and looked at me with a gentle concern and said, “Jack, that’s the mascot from an old tourist trap. ‘Captain Moody’? We took you there once as a kid. It’s a small dinner-theatre chain. The guy who played the pirate on that billboard is an actor from the 70s. He died years ago.” 

I felt like I’d been hit in the gut. How did any of that make any sense? How could that thing know about something so niche and weird? Why a pirate? Why any of this?

My answer came when I was sitting on the couch one day, weeks after the tragedy. A commercial for “Captain Moody’s” came up, and that same horrid voice invited me to come to the nearest location and see a show “today!”

That old commercial that a tourist trap never retired triggered a memory of Dan crowding around our television, excited at the prospect of piracy.

“We should go sometime!” he’d tell me. “It’d be so cool!”

It was also at that moment that I looked out of the window adjacent to our TV. It peered into the back yard, and from the yard into vast woods around us. For a second, a split second, I could have sworn I saw a flash of gray whiff past my window. Whether it was real or imaginary, I understood the truth. 

That thing had been watching us the whole time. It knew exactly what to appear as to get Daniel. 

I’m older now, and I’m married with a kid. My parents are both dead, so my wife and her family think I lost my pinky to a wild animal when I was younger. I’ve never told them the truth and don’t know if I can. All I can do is watch after my family closely, and watch the woods and the mines even closer

I didn’t believe the ad when I saw it either. I thought it was a prank- something a family member set up to mess with their grandma, but no. It was legit. 

“PAY FOR PIES. $50 PER PIE FULLY EATEN.”

It requested that any interested party send a resume to a specific PO box in town and email the listed address to notify them of the drop-off. The ad was stapled to the front of the bulletin board at the edge of campus and didn’t have much in the way of showmanship. It had no fancy graphics or arrangements. It was all in Times New Roman, bolded, and very plain. I hadn’t seen it before that day, but even if it had been there, I doubt I would’ve paid it any mind. It was one of dozens of old event posters, club ads, and military recruitment posters. In a sea of infographics and colors, it was a lost piece of printer paper. However, to a starving college student, this was an offer too good to be true. 

I was strapped for cash and too ashamed to ask my folks for money, so I plucked the paper off the wall, sent in my resume, and emailed the listed address. It was AOL, if you can believe it, and within a day, I heard back from them. 

“Hello there!” it said. “Thank you for filling out the application. I’d like to see you in person for an interview as soon as you are able. When works best for you? “

I sent back my availability, set up a time, and before I knew it, I was traveling across town and down a quiet street to an unfamiliar address. The buildings where this person lived were small, but quaint in their own way. It wasn’t far from downtown, so everything had an old fifties feel to it, along with people in their fifties to match. It was a clean, quiet, and respectable neighborhood, and the place I pulled up to looked about as plain as a two-story house could be. It had a little thatched roof, a brick chimney, and a set of wooden stairs that led up to a red front door. The outside was painted a dry, sun-bleached yellow, and everything had an age to it only gained by existing in the elements for decades. 

I wasn’t the only person there, which I expected since I figured someone else would’ve looked into a fifty-dollar offer to eat some pies, but the vehicles I saw weren’t what I expected, nor were the people who walked out of the front door. 

As I slowly pulled up to the building and prepared to park, I saw a middle-aged man in clean business clothes rush professionally down the stairs and get into what looked to be a Road Runner. It was a surprising thing to see in a neighborhood like that, and way too nice a car to be anyone looking for a pie-tasting job, but as it pulled out of the driveway and revved down the street, my crappy little sedan took its place. I watched the car zoom down the street and out of sight before I mustered up enough courage to walk up to the front door. My nerves were interrupted on my way up the stairs as a soft, croaky voice said:
“Hello, dearie.”

Waiting for me at the top of the stairs was an elderly woman in a flowery dress and a cardigan. She had a slouch to her posture, but moved as spryly as a young hiker. She approached me with an outstretched hand and, instead of shaking it, squeezed it kindly. 

“You must be Jason,” she said with a smile. “It’s wonderful to meet you, dear. I’m Constance, but you can just call me Mrs. Connie.”

“It’s very Nice to meet you, ma’am,” I told her. She chuckled sweetly and put a hand on my face.

“You poor thing, you’re too thin! We’ll soon fix that. Come in, Honey. Come, come- do you like tea? Coffee? I can’t have it myself because of my heart-”

She continued like that for a bit over tea and coffee. 

The inside of her house felt like something out of a Hallmark card. Flowery wallpaper, yellowed with age, adorned the walls, and throughout the narrow halls were pictures and memorabilia from decades past. She had wooden frames that held old pictures of her family.

She asked me some questions in between the ramblings. Basic things like where I grew up, what I was studying in college, and whether I went to church. I told her I didn’t really attend church, and something in her demeanor changed. She clinked her ring finger against her mug as she pried.

“Do you believe in evil, Jason?” She said it so calmly that it took me aback. I didn’t really know what to say, so I covered my ass as best I could. 

“I mean, I suppose. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about evil. It’s just kinda…. I don’t know. It just is. I know it when I see it or hear about it, but-”

“What about sins?” she cut in again, a pleasant smile still on her lipstick-drawn mouth. “Do you believe in those?” 

“You're trying to get me to join the JWs, aren’t you?” I said, half joking. She laughed heartily at that and took a sip of her tea. 

“No, no, no, I’m not a JW,” she said, “But in my line of work it's typically an important factor when it comes to helping my clients.”

“What exactly do you do?” I asked. She looked off in thought for a long while before saying:

“I guess you could call me a counselor of sorts.”

“A counselor?” My mind went back to the yellow Road Runner and the man who’d driven it. “You’ve got some interesting clients then.”

I giggled at my own joke, but she only smiled and said: “Everyone has a guilty conscience about something, honey.” She added another sugar to her tea and stirred the glass meditatively. I don’t know why, but the clank of her spoon in the glass unnerved me. It was some untraceable feeling that lingered at the top of my spine and caused me to ever so slightly tremble. 

“Well, that’s a whole different conversation,” she said with a lilt. “You’re here for my other passion: feeding starving children such as yourself! Look at you, you’re rail thin! Come to the kitchen with me, and we’ll get this all sorted out. There’s one last part to the interview before I hire you…”

I followed behind her, half dazed from the lingering tingle in my back, but still hanging on her words. She was strange, to be sure, and I still didn’t understand the nature of my potential job, but I sat at the kitchen table nonetheless. It was a small room, and the table wasn’t any bigger than a nightstand, but it felt cozy. It honestly looked like something straight out of the 50s. The tablecloth was checkered white and red, and between a knife and fork sat a beautifully made pie with a golden crust. The scent of cherry wafted under my nose and made my mouth water. I hadn’t eaten anything that day.  

Connie pulled out a chair and basically shoved me into the chair. She poured me a glass of milk and patted me on the head like a kid. I would’ve been more weirded out if I hadn’t been so hungry and if she hadn’t been so elderly. 

“You get $50 for every pie you finish,” she told me. “When you’re done, you can just put the tin in the sink. I like to recycle those when I can.” 

My eyes were locked in on the pie. It was possibly the most perfect example of a pie I could think of. I know that’s weird, and I probably sound fat as hell, but sweet mercy… I started eating it immediately and with fewer manners than I was raised with. It was gone in less than five minutes, and the glass of milk went soon after. For the first time in a month, I finally felt full. It was a glorious feeling that I tried to bask in before falling into a sugar coma, but it was interrupted.

To the right of me, over maybe a yard and a half gap, was a door I hadn’t noticed before. It was white with missing chips running up and down its face. The handle was tarnished and nearly rusted from age. I asked Connie what it was, but she waved her hand and beckoned me away. 

“That’s just the basement, honey,” she told me. “There’s nothing down there but some cob webs and old boxes. Here, come lay down on the couch. You need some rest before you head on out. Here-” she shoved a fifty into my jacket pocket. “You earned that. Oh, here, dearie, lie down.”

I didn’t argue, and allowed her to lead me to the couch. I slept for a lot longer than I meant to. It was almost dark by the time I woke up. I was still full and wondered what on earth had made that pie so good. I’d had good pies before, but something about hers had made me near ravenous. I didn’t understand a bit of it, but I also didn't have the brain power to even try and tackle it. I saw a note on the coffee table. Scrawled across in the large letters of a woman losing her eyesight were the words:

“HAD TO RUN OUT. KEY UNDER MAT. PLEASE LOCK UP. COME BACK TOMORROW, AND WE’LL GIVE YOU ANOTHER. YOU DID SO GOOD! I LOVE A MAN WITH A HEALTHY APPETITE. YOU’RE HIRED!” 

I rubbed the large bill between my fingers and stared at the brilliant green numbers on its corners. It was too good to be true, but the money was real. Cherry lingered on my breath, and my stomach burbled with content. I got up to leave and almost walked straight out of the door, but something in the kitchen caught my eye. 

At the basement door, piled on the linoleum floor, were stacks of empty pie tins. They were dirty, covered in crumbs and fruit syrups, but noticeably fresh. I remembered the old lady saying she liked to reuse tins, so I figured that’s all it was. However, there was something else in one of the tins. Upon further investigation, there was one shiny, bright object nestled in the crumbs. I picked it up and wiped it off, but before I could get a good look at it, the front door opened. Connie called out. “You’re still here, Jason?”

“Yes, Ma’am!” I replied. “Sorry, I just woke up!” 

“Oh, it’s no worry at all, dear, “ she said, coming into the kitchen. “I figured you’d crash after that much sugar. I’ll need to make something more savory next- oh my goodness! I’m so sorry, I thought I cleaned those up!” She rushed past me and put the tins in the sink before I could see if anything else was in them. “I’m so sorry, but I’ll need to get these all cleaned before bed. Are you coming back tomorrow?”

I was hesitant, but still had the fifty in my fist. “Yes, Ma’am. I will, probably around three. My classes get out around then.”

She explained to me that she had occasional errands during the day, but she was going to leave a key under the mat for me. If I finished a pie when she wasn’t there, I’d just stack the tins on the counter, and when we’d eventually meet up, she’d pay me the full amount. I still didn’t and don’t understand why she was willing to pay for someone to eat her cooking, but I figured she was just lonely and didn’t have any actual grandkids to spoil. 

I felt a little bad taking the money, but I bid her goodnight all the same and shook on the arrangement. I was getting paid to eat. It was every college kid’s dream, and I got it. I was still riding the high of the whole agreement when I remembered the object from the pie tins. As I pulled up to my dorm complex and made my way inside, I finally got to inspect it. Imagine my confusion when I stared at a bright pink gel fingernail in the gleam of those sterile white building lights. White polkadots adorned its edges, almost disappearing with its sheen.

I almost dropped the damn thing and began chastising myself for being such a weirdo. I’d basically gone through an old woman’s trash and found one of her missing nails. It didn’t look like anything special, and I’d held onto it for whatever reason. As I ascended the stairs of my building and prepared myself for an overnighter for Chem midterms, by chance I glanced at the noticeboard and stopped in my tracks. 

There was an image of a girl, probably only a year or so older than me, smiling and throwing up a peace sign. On her fingers were the same shade of pink, lined with white polka dots. Below her smiling image, on this homemade poster, was the word “MISSING.” 

It said she’d disappeared about three weeks ago, and her family and friends were still trying to locate her.

I can’t tell if I’m overreacting or underreacting. On one hand, I don’t know if this is the exact same nail. Plenty of women probably had this pattern. I thought about asking Connie, but I really don’t want to jeopardize this gig by offending her. I mean, I’m still unsure what the implication of this is. It’s not like I ate a meat pie or anything, so there isn’t any Sweeney Todd shit going on, but still. What would I even tell the cops? I found a nail in a pie tin in a random woman’s house? 

As I’m typing out all of this, I started cross-searching this girl’s name online. I haven’t done a lick of Chem work, but I have found her Instagram. It was open to public viewing and had the same generic stuff you’d expect a regular college girl to have. Posts with friends making cute faces, funny pictures of her dog, all benign shit except for one. 

Five weeks ago, she made a post with some crappy inspirational quote about love and harmony, but that didn’t make me stop in my tracks. What made me tense and start to spin was what was in the photo with her. 

She was posing against a yellow Road Runner. 

I’ll try to update more if this develops any further. I’m open to any advice on how to handle this

I didn’t believe the ad when I saw it either. I thought it was a prank- something a family member set up to mess with their grandma, but no. It was legit. 

“PAY FOR PIES. $50 PER PIE FULLY EATEN.”

It requested that any interested party send a resume to a specific PO box in town and email the listed address to notify them of the drop-off. The ad was stapled to the front of the bulletin board at the edge of campus and didn’t have much in the way of showmanship. It had no fancy graphics or arrangements. It was all in Times New Roman, bolded, and very plain. I hadn’t seen it before that day, but even if it had been there, I doubt I would’ve paid it any mind. It was one of dozens of old event posters, club ads, and military recruitment posters. In a sea of infographics and colors, it was a lost piece of printer paper. However, to a starving college student, this was an offer too good to be true. 

I was strapped for cash and too ashamed to ask my folks for money, so I plucked the paper off the wall, sent in my resume, and emailed the listed address. It was AOL, if you can believe it, and within a day, I heard back from them. 

“Hello there!” it said. “Thank you for filling out the application. I’d like to see you in person for an interview as soon as you are able. When works best for you? “

I sent back my availability, set up a time, and before I knew it, I was traveling across town and down a quiet street to an unfamiliar address. The buildings where this person lived were small, but quaint in their own way. It wasn’t far from downtown, so everything had an old fifties feel to it, along with people in their fifties to match. It was a clean, quiet, and respectable neighborhood, and the place I pulled up to looked about as plain as a two-story house could be. It had a little thatched roof, a brick chimney, and a set of wooden stairs that led up to a red front door. The outside was painted a dry, sun-bleached yellow, and everything had an age to it only gained by existing in the elements for decades. 

I wasn’t the only person there, which I expected since I figured someone else would’ve looked into a fifty-dollar offer to eat some pies, but the vehicles I saw weren’t what I expected, nor were the people who walked out of the front door. 

As I slowly pulled up to the building and prepared to park, I saw a middle-aged man in clean business clothes rush professionally down the stairs and get into what looked to be a Road Runner. It was a surprising thing to see in a neighborhood like that, and way too nice a car to be anyone looking for a pie-tasting job, but as it pulled out of the driveway and revved down the street, my crappy little sedan took its place. I watched the car zoom down the street and out of sight before I mustered up enough courage to walk up to the front door. My nerves were interrupted on my way up the stairs as a soft, croaky voice said:
“Hello, dearie.”

Waiting for me at the top of the stairs was an elderly woman in a flowery dress and a cardigan. She had a slouch to her posture, but moved as spryly as a young hiker. She approached me with an outstretched hand and, instead of shaking it, squeezed it kindly. 

“You must be Jason,” she said with a smile. “It’s wonderful to meet you, dear. I’m Constance, but you can just call me Mrs. Connie.”

“It’s very Nice to meet you, ma’am,” I told her. She chuckled sweetly and put a hand on my face.

“You poor thing, you’re too thin! We’ll soon fix that. Come in, Honey. Come, come- do you like tea? Coffee? I can’t have it myself because of my heart-”

She continued like that for a bit over tea and coffee. 

The inside of her house felt like something out of a Hallmark card. Flowery wallpaper, yellowed with age, adorned the walls, and throughout the narrow halls were pictures and memorabilia from decades past. She had wooden frames that held old pictures of her family.

She asked me some questions in between the ramblings. Basic things like where I grew up, what I was studying in college, and whether I went to church. I told her I didn’t really attend church, and something in her demeanor changed. She clinked her ring finger against her mug as she pried.

“Do you believe in evil, Jason?” She said it so calmly that it took me aback. I didn’t really know what to say, so I covered my ass as best I could. 

“I mean, I suppose. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about evil. It’s just kinda…. I don’t know. It just is. I know it when I see it or hear about it, but-”

“What about sins?” she cut in again, a pleasant smile still on her lipstick-drawn mouth. “Do you believe in those?” 

“You're trying to get me to join the JWs, aren’t you?” I said, half joking. She laughed heartily at that and took a sip of her tea. 

“No, no, no, I’m not a JW,” she said, “But in my line of work it's typically an important factor when it comes to helping my clients.”

“What exactly do you do?” I asked. She looked off in thought for a long while before saying:

“I guess you could call me a counselor of sorts.”

“A counselor?” My mind went back to the yellow Road Runner and the man who’d driven it. “You’ve got some interesting clients then.”

I giggled at my own joke, but she only smiled and said: “Everyone has a guilty conscience about something, honey.” She added another sugar to her tea and stirred the glass meditatively. I don’t know why, but the clank of her spoon in the glass unnerved me. It was some untraceable feeling that lingered at the top of my spine and caused me to ever so slightly tremble. 

“Well, that’s a whole different conversation,” she said with a lilt. “You’re here for my other passion: feeding starving children such as yourself! Look at you, you’re rail thin! Come to the kitchen with me, and we’ll get this all sorted out. There’s one last part to the interview before I hire you…”

I followed behind her, half dazed from the lingering tingle in my back, but still hanging on her words. She was strange, to be sure, and I still didn’t understand the nature of my potential job, but I sat at the kitchen table nonetheless. It was a small room, and the table wasn’t any bigger than a nightstand, but it felt cozy. It honestly looked like something straight out of the 50s. The tablecloth was checkered white and red, and between a knife and fork sat a beautifully made pie with a golden crust. The scent of cherry wafted under my nose and made my mouth water. I hadn’t eaten anything that day.  

Connie pulled out a chair and basically shoved me into the chair. She poured me a glass of milk and patted me on the head like a kid. I would’ve been more weirded out if I hadn’t been so hungry and if she hadn’t been so elderly. 

“You get $50 for every pie you finish,” she told me. “When you’re done, you can just put the tin in the sink. I like to recycle those when I can.” 

My eyes were locked in on the pie. It was possibly the most perfect example of a pie I could think of. I know that’s weird, and I probably sound fat as hell, but sweet mercy… I started eating it immediately and with fewer manners than I was raised with. It was gone in less than five minutes, and the glass of milk went soon after. For the first time in a month, I finally felt full. It was a glorious feeling that I tried to bask in before falling into a sugar coma, but it was interrupted.

To the right of me, over maybe a yard and a half gap, was a door I hadn’t noticed before. It was white with missing chips running up and down its face. The handle was tarnished and nearly rusted from age. I asked Connie what it was, but she waved her hand and beckoned me away. 

“That’s just the basement, honey,” she told me. “There’s nothing down there but some cob webs and old boxes. Here, come lay down on the couch. You need some rest before you head on out. Here-” she shoved a fifty into my jacket pocket. “You earned that. Oh, here, dearie, lie down.”

I didn’t argue, and allowed her to lead me to the couch. I slept for a lot longer than I meant to. It was almost dark by the time I woke up. I was still full and wondered what on earth had made that pie so good. I’d had good pies before, but something about hers had made me near ravenous. I didn’t understand a bit of it, but I also didn't have the brain power to even try and tackle it. I saw a note on the coffee table. Scrawled across in the large letters of a woman losing her eyesight were the words:

“HAD TO RUN OUT. KEY UNDER MAT. PLEASE LOCK UP. COME BACK TOMORROW, AND WE’LL GIVE YOU ANOTHER. YOU DID SO GOOD! I LOVE A MAN WITH A HEALTHY APPETITE. YOU’RE HIRED!” 

I rubbed the large bill between my fingers and stared at the brilliant green numbers on its corners. It was too good to be true, but the money was real. Cherry lingered on my breath, and my stomach burbled with content. I got up to leave and almost walked straight out of the door, but something in the kitchen caught my eye. 

At the basement door, piled on the linoleum floor, were stacks of empty pie tins. They were dirty, covered in crumbs and fruit syrups, but noticeably fresh. I remembered the old lady saying she liked to reuse tins, so I figured that’s all it was. However, there was something else in one of the tins. Upon further investigation, there was one shiny, bright object nestled in the crumbs. I picked it up and wiped it off, but before I could get a good look at it, the front door opened. Connie called out. “You’re still here, Jason?”

“Yes, Ma’am!” I replied. “Sorry, I just woke up!” 

“Oh, it’s no worry at all, dear, “ she said, coming into the kitchen. “I figured you’d crash after that much sugar. I’ll need to make something more savory next- oh my goodness! I’m so sorry, I thought I cleaned those up!” She rushed past me and put the tins in the sink before I could see if anything else was in them. “I’m so sorry, but I’ll need to get these all cleaned before bed. Are you coming back tomorrow?”

I was hesitant, but still had the fifty in my fist. “Yes, Ma’am. I will, probably around three. My classes get out around then.”

She explained to me that she had occasional errands during the day, but she was going to leave a key under the mat for me. If I finished a pie when she wasn’t there, I’d just stack the tins on the counter, and when we’d eventually meet up, she’d pay me the full amount. I still didn’t and don’t understand why she was willing to pay for someone to eat her cooking, but I figured she was just lonely and didn’t have any actual grandkids to spoil. 

I felt a little bad taking the money, but I bid her goodnight all the same and shook on the arrangement. I was getting paid to eat. It was every college kid’s dream, and I got it. I was still riding the high of the whole agreement when I remembered the object from the pie tins. As I pulled up to my dorm complex and made my way inside, I finally got to inspect it. Imagine my confusion when I stared at a bright pink gel fingernail in the gleam of those sterile white building lights. White polkadots adorned its edges, almost disappearing with its sheen.

I almost dropped the damn thing and began chastising myself for being such a weirdo. I’d basically gone through an old woman’s trash and found one of her missing nails. It didn’t look like anything special, and I’d held onto it for whatever reason. As I ascended the stairs of my building and prepared myself for an overnighter for Chem midterms, by chance I glanced at the noticeboard and stopped in my tracks. 

There was an image of a girl, probably only a year or so older than me, smiling and throwing up a peace sign. On her fingers were the same shade of pink, lined with white polka dots. Below her smiling image, on this homemade poster, was the word “MISSING.” 

It said she’d disappeared about three weeks ago, and her family and friends were still trying to locate her.

I can’t tell if I’m overreacting or underreacting. On one hand, I don’t know if this is the exact same nail. Plenty of women probably had this pattern. I thought about asking Connie, but I really don’t want to jeopardize this gig by offending her. I mean, I’m still unsure what the implication of this is. It’s not like I ate a meat pie or anything, so there isn’t any Sweeney Todd shit going on, but still. What would I even tell the cops? I found a nail in a pie tin in a random woman’s house? 

As I’m typing out all of this, I started cross-searching this girl’s name online. I haven’t done a lick of Chem work, but I have found her Instagram. It was open to public viewing and had the same generic stuff you’d expect a regular college girl to have. Posts with friends making cute faces, funny pictures of her dog, all benign shit except for one. 

Five weeks ago, she made a post with some crappy inspirational quote about love and harmony, but that didn’t make me stop in my tracks. What made me tense and start to spin was what was in the photo with her. 

She was posing against a yellow Road Runner. 

I’ll try to update more if this develops any further. I’m open to any advice on how to handle this

I didn’t believe the ad when I saw it either. I thought it was a prank- something a family member set up to mess with their grandma, but no. It was legit. 

“PAY FOR PIES. $50 PER PIE FULLY EATEN.”

It requested that any interested party send a resume to a specific PO box in town and email the listed address to notify them of the drop-off. The ad was stapled to the front of the bulletin board at the edge of campus and didn’t have much in the way of showmanship. It had no fancy graphics or arrangements. It was all in Times New Roman, bolded, and very plain. I hadn’t seen it before that day, but even if it had been there, I doubt I would’ve paid it any mind. It was one of dozens of old event posters, club ads, and military recruitment posters. In a sea of infographics and colors, it was a lost piece of printer paper. However, to a starving college student, this was an offer too good to be true. 

I was strapped for cash and too ashamed to ask my folks for money, so I plucked the paper off the wall, sent in my resume, and emailed the listed address. It was AOL, if you can believe it, and within a day, I heard back from them. 

“Hello there!” it said. “Thank you for filling out the application. I’d like to see you in person for an interview as soon as you are able. When works best for you? “

I sent back my availability, set up a time, and before I knew it, I was traveling across town and down a quiet street to an unfamiliar address. The buildings where this person lived were small, but quaint in their own way. It wasn’t far from downtown, so everything had an old fifties feel to it, along with people in their fifties to match. It was a clean, quiet, and respectable neighborhood, and the place I pulled up to looked about as plain as a two-story house could be. It had a little thatched roof, a brick chimney, and a set of wooden stairs that led up to a red front door. The outside was painted a dry, sun-bleached yellow, and everything had an age to it only gained by existing in the elements for decades. 

I wasn’t the only person there, which I expected since I figured someone else would’ve looked into a fifty-dollar offer to eat some pies, but the vehicles I saw weren’t what I expected, nor were the people who walked out of the front door. 

As I slowly pulled up to the building and prepared to park, I saw a middle-aged man in clean business clothes rush professionally down the stairs and get into what looked to be a Road Runner. It was a surprising thing to see in a neighborhood like that, and way too nice a car to be anyone looking for a pie-tasting job, but as it pulled out of the driveway and revved down the street, my crappy little sedan took its place. I watched the car zoom down the street and out of sight before I mustered up enough courage to walk up to the front door. My nerves were interrupted on my way up the stairs as a soft, croaky voice said:
“Hello, dearie.”

Waiting for me at the top of the stairs was an elderly woman in a flowery dress and a cardigan. She had a slouch to her posture, but moved as spryly as a young hiker. She approached me with an outstretched hand and, instead of shaking it, squeezed it kindly. 

“You must be Jason,” she said with a smile. “It’s wonderful to meet you, dear. I’m Constance, but you can just call me Mrs. Connie.”

“It’s very Nice to meet you, ma’am,” I told her. She chuckled sweetly and put a hand on my face.

“You poor thing, you’re too thin! We’ll soon fix that. Come in, Honey. Come, come- do you like tea? Coffee? I can’t have it myself because of my heart-”

She continued like that for a bit over tea and coffee. 

The inside of her house felt like something out of a Hallmark card. Flowery wallpaper, yellowed with age, adorned the walls, and throughout the narrow halls were pictures and memorabilia from decades past. She had wooden frames that held old pictures of her family.

She asked me some questions in between the ramblings. Basic things like where I grew up, what I was studying in college, and whether I went to church. I told her I didn’t really attend church, and something in her demeanor changed. She clinked her ring finger against her mug as she pried.

“Do you believe in evil, Jason?” She said it so calmly that it took me aback. I didn’t really know what to say, so I covered my ass as best I could. 

“I mean, I suppose. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about evil. It’s just kinda…. I don’t know. It just is. I know it when I see it or hear about it, but-”

“What about sins?” she cut in again, a pleasant smile still on her lipstick-drawn mouth. “Do you believe in those?” 

“You're trying to get me to join the JWs, aren’t you?” I said, half joking. She laughed heartily at that and took a sip of her tea. 

“No, no, no, I’m not a JW,” she said, “But in my line of work it's typically an important factor when it comes to helping my clients.”

“What exactly do you do?” I asked. She looked off in thought for a long while before saying:

“I guess you could call me a counselor of sorts.”

“A counselor?” My mind went back to the yellow Road Runner and the man who’d driven it. “You’ve got some interesting clients then.”

I giggled at my own joke, but she only smiled and said: “Everyone has a guilty conscience about something, honey.” She added another sugar to her tea and stirred the glass meditatively. I don’t know why, but the clank of her spoon in the glass unnerved me. It was some untraceable feeling that lingered at the top of my spine and caused me to ever so slightly tremble. 

“Well, that’s a whole different conversation,” she said with a lilt. “You’re here for my other passion: feeding starving children such as yourself! Look at you, you’re rail thin! Come to the kitchen with me, and we’ll get this all sorted out. There’s one last part to the interview before I hire you…”

I followed behind her, half dazed from the lingering tingle in my back, but still hanging on her words. She was strange, to be sure, and I still didn’t understand the nature of my potential job, but I sat at the kitchen table nonetheless. It was a small room, and the table wasn’t any bigger than a nightstand, but it felt cozy. It honestly looked like something straight out of the 50s. The tablecloth was checkered white and red, and between a knife and fork sat a beautifully made pie with a golden crust. The scent of cherry wafted under my nose and made my mouth water. I hadn’t eaten anything that day.  

Connie pulled out a chair and basically shoved me into the chair. She poured me a glass of milk and patted me on the head like a kid. I would’ve been more weirded out if I hadn’t been so hungry and if she hadn’t been so elderly. 

“You get $50 for every pie you finish,” she told me. “When you’re done, you can just put the tin in the sink. I like to recycle those when I can.” 

My eyes were locked in on the pie. It was possibly the most perfect example of a pie I could think of. I know that’s weird, and I probably sound fat as hell, but sweet mercy… I started eating it immediately and with fewer manners than I was raised with. It was gone in less than five minutes, and the glass of milk went soon after. For the first time in a month, I finally felt full. It was a glorious feeling that I tried to bask in before falling into a sugar coma, but it was interrupted.

To the right of me, over maybe a yard and a half gap, was a door I hadn’t noticed before. It was white with missing chips running up and down its face. The handle was tarnished and nearly rusted from age. I asked Connie what it was, but she waved her hand and beckoned me away. 

“That’s just the basement, honey,” she told me. “There’s nothing down there but some cob webs and old boxes. Here, come lay down on the couch. You need some rest before you head on out. Here-” she shoved a fifty into my jacket pocket. “You earned that. Oh, here, dearie, lie down.”

I didn’t argue, and allowed her to lead me to the couch. I slept for a lot longer than I meant to. It was almost dark by the time I woke up. I was still full and wondered what on earth had made that pie so good. I’d had good pies before, but something about hers had made me near ravenous. I didn’t understand a bit of it, but I also didn't have the brain power to even try and tackle it. I saw a note on the coffee table. Scrawled across in the large letters of a woman losing her eyesight were the words:

“HAD TO RUN OUT. KEY UNDER MAT. PLEASE LOCK UP. COME BACK TOMORROW, AND WE’LL GIVE YOU ANOTHER. YOU DID SO GOOD! I LOVE A MAN WITH A HEALTHY APPETITE. YOU’RE HIRED!” 

I rubbed the large bill between my fingers and stared at the brilliant green numbers on its corners. It was too good to be true, but the money was real. Cherry lingered on my breath, and my stomach burbled with content. I got up to leave and almost walked straight out of the door, but something in the kitchen caught my eye. 

At the basement door, piled on the linoleum floor, were stacks of empty pie tins. They were dirty, covered in crumbs and fruit syrups, but noticeably fresh. I remembered the old lady saying she liked to reuse tins, so I figured that’s all it was. However, there was something else in one of the tins. Upon further investigation, there was one shiny, bright object nestled in the crumbs. I picked it up and wiped it off, but before I could get a good look at it, the front door opened. Connie called out. “You’re still here, Jason?”

“Yes, Ma’am!” I replied. “Sorry, I just woke up!” 

“Oh, it’s no worry at all, dear, “ she said, coming into the kitchen. “I figured you’d crash after that much sugar. I’ll need to make something more savory next- oh my goodness! I’m so sorry, I thought I cleaned those up!” She rushed past me and put the tins in the sink before I could see if anything else was in them. “I’m so sorry, but I’ll need to get these all cleaned before bed. Are you coming back tomorrow?”

I was hesitant, but still had the fifty in my fist. “Yes, Ma’am. I will, probably around three. My classes get out around then.”

She explained to me that she had occasional errands during the day, but she was going to leave a key under the mat for me. If I finished a pie when she wasn’t there, I’d just stack the tins on the counter, and when we’d eventually meet up, she’d pay me the full amount. I still didn’t and don’t understand why she was willing to pay for someone to eat her cooking, but I figured she was just lonely and didn’t have any actual grandkids to spoil. 

I felt a little bad taking the money, but I bid her goodnight all the same and shook on the arrangement. I was getting paid to eat. It was every college kid’s dream, and I got it. I was still riding the high of the whole agreement when I remembered the object from the pie tins. As I pulled up to my dorm complex and made my way inside, I finally got to inspect it. Imagine my confusion when I stared at a bright pink gel fingernail in the gleam of those sterile white building lights. White polkadots adorned its edges, almost disappearing with its sheen.

I almost dropped the damn thing and began chastising myself for being such a weirdo. I’d basically gone through an old woman’s trash and found one of her missing nails. It didn’t look like anything special, and I’d held onto it for whatever reason. As I ascended the stairs of my building and prepared myself for an overnighter for Chem midterms, by chance I glanced at the noticeboard and stopped in my tracks. 

There was an image of a girl, probably only a year or so older than me, smiling and throwing up a peace sign. On her fingers were the same shade of pink, lined with white polka dots. Below her smiling image, on this homemade poster, was the word “MISSING.” 

It said she’d disappeared about three weeks ago, and her family and friends were still trying to locate her.

I can’t tell if I’m overreacting or underreacting. On one hand, I don’t know if this is the exact same nail. Plenty of women probably had this pattern. I thought about asking Connie, but I really don’t want to jeopardize this gig by offending her. I mean, I’m still unsure what the implication of this is. It’s not like I ate a meat pie or anything, so there isn’t any Sweeney Todd shit going on, but still. What would I even tell the cops? I found a nail in a pie tin in a random woman’s house? 

As I’m typing out all of this, I started cross-searching this girl’s name online. I haven’t done a lick of Chem work, but I have found her Instagram. It was open to public viewing and had the same generic stuff you’d expect a regular college girl to have. Posts with friends making cute faces, funny pictures of her dog, all benign shit except for one. 

Five weeks ago, she made a post with some crappy inspirational quote about love and harmony, but that didn’t make me stop in my tracks. What made me tense and start to spin was what was in the photo with her. 

She was posing against a yellow Road Runner. 

I’ll try to update more if this develops any further. I’m open to any advice on how to handle this

The Waffle House in this town didn’t seem quite right to him. Maybe it was the cook with the extra finger. Maybe the waitress. She kept appearing out of nowhere to pour him coffee thicker than tar. The machine behind the counter was caked with the stuff. He didn’t know how he was drinking it. Or how he was on his fifth cup.

He was waiting for a hashbrown. Onions, Ham, Cheese. Smothered, Chunked, Covered.

Comfort food. He needed comfort food right now.

His eyes kept shooting back to the parking lot, where his Corolla was staring at him through the rain. There wasn’t a single light in the street behind it. There was nobody to see the blood streak on his bumper. He finished his sixth cup.

The cook whacked at something on the griddle, bringing down his spatula with a savage chop. The man’s eyes shot back to his car.

Chop! Chop! Chop!

The cleaver he’d used was in the trunk, next to her head and feet.

SCRRRAAPE.

Hauling the pieces onto the tarp had been hell.

Ding!

How long had he been driving now? Was he still in Georgia?

“Here ye go, darlin’,” the waitress said as the plate clunked against the table. He thought of the body as he stared at it. Smothered. Covered. Chunked.

He almost puked as steam rose from the grease that was pooling like blood on the dish.

“Thanks,” he said, not touching his fork.

“Anythin’ else?” she asked.

“No,” he snapped. “Thanks.”

Then a cold finger raised his chin, and he saw her face. Blood was seeping from the line of her sliced neck. Her chest was a canyon of red.

“You sure?” she asked.

(The following account was found inside an antique desk from an estate sale in Georgia. I’ve done my best to transcribe it here, but please bear in mind I’ve censored and softened some of the harsher language for modern readers.)

July 8th, 1761,

Here, find enclosed and entrusted to the Almighty, the last letter of Alfred P. Hakeswell, Captain of the “Thunderer,” slaver in the employ of the East India Company, now forfeited of that title forevermore.  I pray that, as a wicked man nearing the end of his life, I may find salvation if there is indeed any to be found, and if not, to resign myself to the rightful damnation I am due. I pray this last testament serve as some final confession of my sins before the slinking form I dread comes rapping on my door. 

I condess the awful sin of slaver for the better part of 15 years, serving at sea as one of the premier dealers in the flesh of men. I surveyed many like cattle, sorting them through the degrees of quality that many a planter sought in a man. Upon the auction block, I’d make many a man dance to a silent jig as farmer kings watched on with critique. I’ve watched corpulent bellies wrapped in silk jiggle with laughter as hemp and linen spun and stomped like motley. I remember one old man from South Carolina better than the rest. He had me pry open the mouth of a slave to take stock of his teeth. “I’ll need a new set in time,” he told me. The eyes of the poor unfortunate I sold that day were a lifeless grey; his soul long since dead, abandoned on the shores of distant Africa. 

I sold him for 20 pounds along with a boy who had to be wrenched from his mother. I still hear his cries in the night, and his mother’s tears stain my memory. 

These sins I’ve committed, along with countless others, continue to stalk me like revenants. The thousands of black faces that stare at me from the darkness of my eyelids are the least punishment I deserve for my actions. It is with this guilt that I will make known in ink the events which changed me, body and soul, and which drive me to sit with a loaded pistol on my desk. 

I start with the pale man of the Caribbean Isles, who boarded my vessel some six months past, and whose countenance I’ve yet to forget. 

In Jamaica, we’d stopped to restock supplies and unload our recent cargo of slaves into the port. It was a meagre sum compared to many previous shipments, but still profitable as far as the East India Company was concerned. I settled out payments and wages, then enjoyed a night on the town in the company of loose women and strong drink. After time spent in the lustful embrace of an Irish lass, I retreated to a pub, loud and raucous in spirit, and livened myself with Bumbo and gin. In my debauchery, I let the numb comfort of apathy set in before my liquored stupor was interrupted by a man in fine clothes. 

Before me, dressed in a matching silk coat and breeches, was a man of substantial height. He had skin like china and a black wig that preened above a massive set of shoulders. His clean-shaven face was rouged, and his teeth glistened a greasy yellow akin to the gild of his sword hilt. Something in the man immediately disturbed me, but I couldn’t place it. He was like a girl’s doll given life, but with features too perfect to be made by even the craftsmen of the East. 

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing Captain Hakeswell?” says he, in a voice so soft, I almost mistook it for a woman’s. Even still, I heard him well. Despite the noise of the tavern, his words still echoed like a harbour bell. 

I says to him, “Whether a pleasure or not, I do not know, but I do be captain Hakeswell.”

“Then it is a pleasure,” he replied with a bow. He took off the black tricorn he wore atop his perfect wig and curtsied prettier than a maid at court. “I have been seeking a man of your kind for a long while.” 

The gentleman drew and took a seat as easily as a nun in church, paying no mind to the filth of the pub and its denizens. He withdrew a small clay pipe from his waistcoat pocket and began to fill it with a tobacco pouch of similar origin. He silently gestured across the room, and a small man in dark clothes scurried over with ember tongs. He carried a piece of charcoal from the hearth and with it lit his master’s pipe. He was as pale as a ghost and had skin as slimy and grey as a catfish, and disappeared with the same uncanny quietness he’d appeared with. I could not find him again in the bustle of sinful bodies. 

I broke the silence through the clouds of his grey smoke. “Forgive my asking, sirrah,” I says, “but what would a gent like you want with a salt dog like me?” 

He smiled through a puff of smoke and told me, “ Josiah MacCready of the East India Company recommended you to me,” he said. “He was quoted as saying you are ‘a man for odd trades and odd company.” 

I laughed and took a swig of my drink. “That depends on how odd the trade and how odd the company.” 

The gentleman looked pensive, but amused. He snapped his fingers and out came the same little man with a roll of paper. The gentleman did not break his smiling gaze.

“My name is Jeremiah Blackwood,” says he, “and I am in need of a vessel and crew who will transport myself and my belongings to a destination of my choosing.”

“And what destination is it that you’re so keen on seeing?” He smiled at me and spoke to me of the islands of Nassau.

“There’s business I have on one isle, but few know of it,” he says. “I am in need of a good captain, but not a good man.” 

“I am your man then,” I replied, “iffin the price matches the job.” 

With a wolfish look in his eye, he began to speak of a city of treasure that rested in the heart of the island's jungle. The city, he explained,  was larger than that of any other in creation. I scoffed at the notion, saying such a city would be well known and not hidden in that maze of sand and palms. His look was sardonic as he elaborated.

“The greatest treasures that humankind can comprehend do not compare to what lies in the dregs of that place. Solomon’s temple is a vagrant’s shed in the mind of those who’ve seen its beauty. I only require a willing crew that won’t pester me with questions.”

He unrolled the paper, revealing a map of the Caribbean, but more rigid and with lines and notations unfamiliar to me. The language of its script was unfamiliar to me, and looked something akin to the tongue of the Arabs, but not as concise. It was an enigma to me, and after 15 years at sea, it invigorated my blood with a trembling curiosity that I hadn’t felt since my days as a bosun. With a long white finger, Mr Blackwood pointed at a lone isle in the middle of a cluster of land. 

“Here is where it lies,” says he, “and here you shall make your fortune.” I took stock of the plot of land and told him unimpressively that it was unmarked. He giggled as he rolled the map back up and told me, “Just because it’s unmarked, doesn’t mean nothing is there.”

It’s upon my very soul I swear this: the isle he spoke of should have remained unknown, for as it is now known to me, I can do naught but tremble at the memory of its visage and the inconceivable architecture upon which it was built. Moreso, it is my dearest regret that I offered the man my hand and services for the sheer promise of gold. I still remember the clammy touch of his skin, cool as ice and lingering as death. I gave my word to transport Blackwood and his property across the ocean, and in doing so, traded the lives of my crew for a lie. 

We sailed from Jamaica the next day, and in our departure, we now carried two strangers and several barrels sealed tight with wax and pitch. I asked Blackwood what it was be in those barrels, but he only flashed his horrid grin and fiddled with his cravat. 

“Delicacies,” he said, smoothing his hair. “Delicacies most rare and sought after by the people of our destination.” 

“Fruits?” I asked him. 

“Of sorts.” He then took his footing upon the gangplank and strode from the decrepit docks of Jamaica and into the embrace of the Thunderer. He was, I dare say, the only one I’d ever seen so eager to board a ship so rife with the stench of death. We had no cargo of slaves as we left port, and yet the ship seemed to stir and shift as if a weight had been thrust aboard it. Jeremiah Blackwood paid no mind to it. He smoothed his clothes and puffed his ruffles as the sails were sprung into action. It wasn’t until we were a league out from land that I realized that same little man in dark clothes was also aboard. His eyes now, in the clear light, were even more round and bulbous. Like small onions, yellow and glassy, they rolled around and seldom blinked as a fat pinkish lower lip smoked a pipe between an underbite. What little black hair he had flopped in the wind like seaweed.  I asked after him once Mr. Blackwood and I were alone in my cabin with a bottle of rum between us. It was odd that even as the heat of liquor filled my cheeks and dulled my senses, Blackwood never once grew rosy. He drank cordially as the cabin and lantern swayed with us.

“Mr. Potsgill,” he told me, “my man and companion over the course of these many years. I’ve known him since I was a boy, and he’s always been a reliable one for the work I require.” 

“What is it exactly you do?” asked I. He took another pensive sip of rum and took out a deck of cards. He began to deal a game of whist before continuing.

“I am a merchant, simple and true,” he told me. “I’m a procurer of things that are hard to come by, and that is all I will say on that matter.”

“Very well,” I says, playing a hand, “keep your business then.” Another card. “How comes you to know of the place we’re sailing?” 

“I was born there,” says he. His words struck me like a foul blow. 

“Born there?” I nearly spat my drink. “You claim to be from this isle of gold and treasures?”

“Indeed.”

“And why, then, would one leave a place of such riches?” 

It was then that I saw him frown for the first time, and with it grew a chill on my skin. 

“Gold is worth little to a people who use it for cobblestones.”

He said nothing else to me for the rest of the game. I simply drank and tried to ignore the weight of his words and what foreboding eyes they brought with them.

We were five days out when my first mate brought a concern to me.

“Captain,” says Jensen, “there are queer things happening with this new company of yours.” I asked him to elaborate, and he told me, “Mr. Blackwood's man is more than an odd fellow. The lads think him near mad. Benjamin and John saw him take a salted fish from the kitchen and begin to eat without cooking it!” 

I tried to ease his worries, but he persisted. “There are other things too, Captain. One of the cabin boys claims he saw the fellow stripping naked as a jaybird and jumping overboard. The boy almost cried aloud to save him, but claims he was stopped by the sight of him hauling his way back up the other side of the ship! The crew thinks the boy is lying, but there’s something to the man that ain’t right, sir. He’s not to be trusted.”

I thanked him for his concern and spoke kindly to him, but did not act as I should have. A proper captain would have pried more, but that man wasn’t I. I was a wretched man with a mind for wealth and dreams of a city so laden with treasure that they used it for waste. I was a fool, and was proven so. 

More days brought more rumors. Some of the men claimed that the barrels were full of coins and that our guests were smuggling stolen treasure to the Spanish. Others spoke of odd noises in the night, and of shapes that were always just far enough away in the waves to not be clear. The most concerning one made my own hairs stand on end. There was a claim made to me that Mr. Blackwood was seen at the stern of the ship one evening, holding up a small totem to the winds. None could say what exactly it was, but claimed it was similar in shape to that of a long-armed man. They said he sliced his finger with a knife and threw it into the waters behind us. I saw none of this, but all of the men felt witchcraft and misfortune had boarded in the shadow of those men. 

It was when Mr. Potsgill killed an albatross and began to eat it raw on the deck that a crewman drew a pistol from his belt and threatened to shoot him for lunatic. Mr. Blackwood weighed in on these matters by delivering a fierce strike of his massive fist. The crewman was on the deck before any other could move. We stood aghast as the pale man cracked his knuckles, removed his hat, and bowed to me. 

“Meat is meat, Captain Hakeswell,” he said. “Meat ought not be wasted.”

Not a man could stomach a response as the small man scarfed his meal before us, his eyes as cold as a shark’s and unfeeling as an animal. Of all the numerous times I’d seen that look aboard that damned ship of mine, I still believe his gaze to be the most spine-chilling of all. 

I said nothing more to the crew of the incident until land was sighted. 

Mr. Blackwood was the man who picked the crew to transport his barrels to the city, and he was to lead in the vanguard as we advanced into the wilderness. I relinquished my right as leader of the men for the time we’d be onshore, praying that our strange guest wouldn’t guide us wrong. He only took two barrels with him. I told him that there were more than enough boats and men to carry the whole cargo out, but he rejected my offer. 

“There will be plenty of time to retrieve the rest later. For now, let us make haste to the city. They no doubt expect our arrival.” Again that smile, and again my foolishness had shackled me to my fate. It’s as real to me now as the dying candle of this dark room in which I now write. I damned my crew that day. God help me, I damned them.

 We set out in the boats and made our way to shore with the cargo in tow. Once on land, the six of us- that being myself, Blackwood, Potsgill, and two of the crewmen- began to roll the barrels down an alarmingly maintained sandy path. I tried to ask if this was the road to the city, but Blackwood did not answer. He only pulled at his cravat and gestured onward. We trudged along through the jungle until one of my men said softly to me: “Do you find it odd, captain, we’ve heard narry a beast or bird?” 

I had no response and became increasingly aware of the horrid silence of the place. So many plants and foliage, but nothing to inhabit them. I shuddered as we marched. 

In a clearing of the jungle, we were presented with a wide lake, round as a plate, and yet as still as a statue. The men gasped at its sight, and I marveled with confusion at the spectacle. The sandy path wound in an almost perfect circle around the water, but not a wall nor brick was in sight. 

“We’ve arrived,” said Blackwood, removing his hat. I turned to him aghast. 

“Arrived?” I bellowed. “What is here besides this pond? You dare lead me astray on such an errand? Damn your bloods, sir! By Christ’s wounds, you shall repay me for this voyage!” 

He laughed at me the same way a father laughs at a young child. He removed his coat and shoes before gesturing me to the water’s edge. 

“Astray,” he laughed. “That is not what you’ll say as you gaze into the deep.” 

A tingle ran down my spine as he undressed himself, and I placed a hand on one of my pistols. He gestured again and smiled. 

“Look inside, and understand,” said he. 

Now I sit, repentant as Judas, that I did. 

I crept to the water’s edge and beheld a sight so clear it still traces the corners of my mind with a startling clarity. There, fathoms deep in the water, were the sloops and geometry of grand buildings and houses beyond my comprehension. The spiraling shapes, like shells and scales, that covered the immense deep made my eyes water in confusion. Glimmering gold and stones and things of colors that I cannot even describe shone through the water like candles in a mirror. Worst of all, amongst them I beheld the shapes of moving things, things almost human, but too serpentine and fluid. Scales and gold and spirals and eyes! Thousands of white, pupilless eyes staring back at me from the deep. I cried in fear and stumbled back from the edge.

“What in God’s name?” I said. “Sweet Christ deliver me! What is this hell?”

My panic was interrupted by two pistol shots. I turned to see Mr. Potsgill lowering the barrels of two firelocks as my men fell to the sand with blood-filled mouths and frightened eyes. I tried to draw my pistol and fire back at him, but the small fellow paid me no mind. He, like his master, started to undress. My gun misfired, and I dropped it in despair.

“That place,” came the voice of Blackwood, “is our home. I thank you for delivering us and our goods in one piece.”

I spun to see him now, standing only in his long, ruffled shirt and wig. His china-white skin gleamed in the tropical sun, and he breathed like a man taking in the smell of fresh washings. He wiped off his painted eyebrows and pulled off his wig to reveal a completely bald head. The man grinned at me with those large, yellow teeth and began to undo his collar. As he stripped to nothing, I beheld several slits in his sides, running up his body to a patch of white scales around his neck. His nails appeared sharper as he bent down to my level and gestured to the still waters beside us. 

“As promised,” said he, “a land of gold and treasures beyond your comprehension. It waits for you, captain, if only you embrace it. Y’ha-gntuhn waits for you.”

I can’t quite remember when I started running, but in a blur, I saw things out of a shattered nightmare. The sight of Mr. Potsgill, naked and fish-like, pulling the bodies of my men into the water, Mr. Blackwood’s screeching laugh as he rolled his barrels in after them, and the ferocious and whispering waves I fought to row back to my ship all scrambled any sense I had. 

I was only a half league from the “Thunderer” when I began shouting like mad, for my crew. I could see commotion on the deck and heard the commands known to every able seaman, but it was clear none of my men could hear me. They were screaming themselves as a giant white arm snaked its way out of the sea and wrapped its long, jagged fingers with too many joints around the girth of the vessel. It cracked as it was forced under the black waves, sending me and my boat flopping into the great unknown wine-dark ocean. I only managed to live because I held fast to a barrel that collided into me during the horror. It was the one piece of cargo Mr. Blackwood never got back, and I clung to it for dear life as I was set adrift in the Caribbean. 

I cannot say whether I was adrift for hours or days, but it was upon the rocky shore of some small isle that I found refuge. As I came to, scraped and bleeding from my misfortunes, I bore witness to a final horror. 

The barrel had split, and from its confines had spilled out every manner of organ and appendage belonging to man. Arms and feet, heads and eyes, intestines, lungs, all were placed on display along the grey sand beach.

 “Delicacies,” Mr. Blackwood had called them. “Delicacies most rare…”

Upon my rescue by a friendly merchant vessel, I was unable to speak for days. Doctors examined me, officers pried for my story, but I was left a jittering mess. I was let out onto the streets of some English port and forced to make my own way. They never mentioned once the names of the men I’d transported, nor asked of the cargo they carried in those accursed barrels. I stay awake sometimes, wondering how real it was. The city, its denizens, and the man who dealt in the flesh of mankind for their luxury… 

I was made aware of my hypocrisy. I know now, I am no different than that creature. I am as monstrous as that man and his city. I am a worm among worms, thinking better of myself for no reason, oblivious to the fisherman who stalks the world around us, looking for bait. Meat is meat, and flesh is flesh.

Christ, forgive me.  Forgive me. Forgive me.

(The following account was found inside an antique desk from an estate sale in Georgia. I’ve done my best to transcribe it here, but please bear in mind I’ve censored and softened some of the harsher language for modern readers.)

July 8th, 1761,

Here, find enclosed and entrusted to the Almighty, the last letter of Alfred P. Hakeswell, Captain of the “Thunderer,” slaver in the employ of the East India Company, now forfeited of that title forevermore.  I pray that, as a wicked man nearing the end of his life, I may find salvation if there is indeed any to be found, and if not, to resign myself to the rightful damnation I am due. I pray this last testament serve as some final confession of my sins before the slinking form I dread comes rapping on my door. 

I condess the awful sin of slaver for the better part of 15 years, serving at sea as one of the premier dealers in the flesh of men. I surveyed many like cattle, sorting them through the degrees of quality that many a planter sought in a man. Upon the auction block, I’d make many a man dance to a silent jig as farmer kings watched on with critique. I’ve watched corpulent bellies wrapped in silk jiggle with laughter as hemp and linen spun and stomped like motley. I remember one old man from South Carolina better than the rest. He had me pry open the mouth of a slave to take stock of his teeth. “I’ll need a new set in time,” he told me. The eyes of the poor unfortunate I sold that day were a lifeless grey; his soul long since dead, abandoned on the shores of distant Africa. 

I sold him for 20 pounds along with a boy who had to be wrenched from his mother. I still hear his cries in the night, and his mother’s tears stain my memory. 

These sins I’ve committed, along with countless others, continue to stalk me like revenants. The thousands of black faces that stare at me from the darkness of my eyelids are the least punishment I deserve for my actions. It is with this guilt that I will make known in ink the events which changed me, body and soul, and which drive me to sit with a loaded pistol on my desk. 

I start with the pale man of the Caribbean Isles, who boarded my vessel some six months past, and whose countenance I’ve yet to forget. 

In Jamaica, we’d stopped to restock supplies and unload our recent cargo of slaves into the port. It was a meagre sum compared to many previous shipments, but still profitable as far as the East India Company was concerned. I settled out payments and wages, then enjoyed a night on the town in the company of loose women and strong drink. After time spent in the lustful embrace of an Irish lass, I retreated to a pub, loud and raucous in spirit, and livened myself with Bumbo and gin. In my debauchery, I let the numb comfort of apathy set in before my liquored stupor was interrupted by a man in fine clothes. 

Before me, dressed in a matching silk coat and breeches, was a man of substantial height. He had skin like china and a black wig that preened above a massive set of shoulders. His clean-shaven face was rouged, and his teeth glistened a greasy yellow akin to the gild of his sword hilt. Something in the man immediately disturbed me, but I couldn’t place it. He was like a girl’s doll given life, but with features too perfect to be made by even the craftsmen of the East. 

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing Captain Hakeswell?” says he, in a voice so soft, I almost mistook it for a woman’s. Even still, I heard him well. Despite the noise of the tavern, his words still echoed like a harbour bell. 

I says to him, “Whether a pleasure or not, I do not know, but I do be captain Hakeswell.”

“Then it is a pleasure,” he replied with a bow. He took off the black tricorn he wore atop his perfect wig and curtsied prettier than a maid at court. “I have been seeking a man of your kind for a long while.” 

The gentleman drew and took a seat as easily as a nun in church, paying no mind to the filth of the pub and its denizens. He withdrew a small clay pipe from his waistcoat pocket and began to fill it with a tobacco pouch of similar origin. He silently gestured across the room, and a small man in dark clothes scurried over with ember tongs. He carried a piece of charcoal from the hearth and with it lit his master’s pipe. He was as pale as a ghost and had skin as slimy and grey as a catfish, and disappeared with the same uncanny quietness he’d appeared with. I could not find him again in the bustle of sinful bodies. 

I broke the silence through the clouds of his grey smoke. “Forgive my asking, sirrah,” I says, “but what would a gent like you want with a salt dog like me?” 

He smiled through a puff of smoke and told me, “ Josiah MacCready of the East India Company recommended you to me,” he said. “He was quoted as saying you are ‘a man for odd trades and odd company.” 

I laughed and took a swig of my drink. “That depends on how odd the trade and how odd the company.” 

The gentleman looked pensive, but amused. He snapped his fingers and out came the same little man with a roll of paper. The gentleman did not break his smiling gaze.

“My name is Jeremiah Blackwood,” says he, “and I am in need of a vessel and crew who will transport myself and my belongings to a destination of my choosing.”

“And what destination is it that you’re so keen on seeing?” He smiled at me and spoke to me of the islands of Nassau.

“There’s business I have on one isle, but few know of it,” he says. “I am in need of a good captain, but not a good man.” 

“I am your man then,” I replied, “iffin the price matches the job.” 

With a wolfish look in his eye, he began to speak of a city of treasure that rested in the heart of the island's jungle. The city, he explained,  was larger than that of any other in creation. I scoffed at the notion, saying such a city would be well known and not hidden in that maze of sand and palms. His look was sardonic as he elaborated.

“The greatest treasures that humankind can comprehend do not compare to what lies in the dregs of that place. Solomon’s temple is a vagrant’s shed in the mind of those who’ve seen its beauty. I only require a willing crew that won’t pester me with questions.”

He unrolled the paper, revealing a map of the Caribbean, but more rigid and with lines and notations unfamiliar to me. The language of its script was unfamiliar to me, and looked something akin to the tongue of the Arabs, but not as concise. It was an enigma to me, and after 15 years at sea, it invigorated my blood with a trembling curiosity that I hadn’t felt since my days as a bosun. With a long white finger, Mr Blackwood pointed at a lone isle in the middle of a cluster of land. 

“Here is where it lies,” says he, “and here you shall make your fortune.” I took stock of the plot of land and told him unimpressively that it was unmarked. He giggled as he rolled the map back up and told me, “Just because it’s unmarked, doesn’t mean nothing is there.”

It’s upon my very soul I swear this: the isle he spoke of should have remained unknown, for as it is now known to me, I can do naught but tremble at the memory of its visage and the inconceivable architecture upon which it was built. Moreso, it is my dearest regret that I offered the man my hand and services for the sheer promise of gold. I still remember the clammy touch of his skin, cool as ice and lingering as death. I gave my word to transport Blackwood and his property across the ocean, and in doing so, traded the lives of my crew for a lie. 

We sailed from Jamaica the next day, and in our departure, we now carried two strangers and several barrels sealed tight with wax and pitch. I asked Blackwood what it was be in those barrels, but he only flashed his horrid grin and fiddled with his cravat. 

“Delicacies,” he said, smoothing his hair. “Delicacies most rare and sought after by the people of our destination.” 

“Fruits?” I asked him. 

“Of sorts.” He then took his footing upon the gangplank and strode from the decrepit docks of Jamaica and into the embrace of the Thunderer. He was, I dare say, the only one I’d ever seen so eager to board a ship so rife with the stench of death. We had no cargo of slaves as we left port, and yet the ship seemed to stir and shift as if a weight had been thrust aboard it. Jeremiah Blackwood paid no mind to it. He smoothed his clothes and puffed his ruffles as the sails were sprung into action. It wasn’t until we were a league out from land that I realized that same little man in dark clothes was also aboard. His eyes now, in the clear light, were even more round and bulbous. Like small onions, yellow and glassy, they rolled around and seldom blinked as a fat pinkish lower lip smoked a pipe between an underbite. What little black hair he had flopped in the wind like seaweed.  I asked after him once Mr. Blackwood and I were alone in my cabin with a bottle of rum between us. It was odd that even as the heat of liquor filled my cheeks and dulled my senses, Blackwood never once grew rosy. He drank cordially as the cabin and lantern swayed with us.

“Mr. Potsgill,” he told me, “my man and companion over the course of these many years. I’ve known him since I was a boy, and he’s always been a reliable one for the work I require.” 

“What is it exactly you do?” asked I. He took another pensive sip of rum and took out a deck of cards. He began to deal a game of whist before continuing.

“I am a merchant, simple and true,” he told me. “I’m a procurer of things that are hard to come by, and that is all I will say on that matter.”

“Very well,” I says, playing a hand, “keep your business then.” Another card. “How comes you to know of the place we’re sailing?” 

“I was born there,” says he. His words struck me like a foul blow. 

“Born there?” I nearly spat my drink. “You claim to be from this isle of gold and treasures?”

“Indeed.”

“And why, then, would one leave a place of such riches?” 

It was then that I saw him frown for the first time, and with it grew a chill on my skin. 

“Gold is worth little to a people who use it for cobblestones.”

He said nothing else to me for the rest of the game. I simply drank and tried to ignore the weight of his words and what foreboding eyes they brought with them.

We were five days out when my first mate brought a concern to me.

“Captain,” says Jensen, “there are queer things happening with this new company of yours.” I asked him to elaborate, and he told me, “Mr. Blackwood's man is more than an odd fellow. The lads think him near mad. Benjamin and John saw him take a salted fish from the kitchen and begin to eat without cooking it!” 

I tried to ease his worries, but he persisted. “There are other things too, Captain. One of the cabin boys claims he saw the fellow stripping naked as a jaybird and jumping overboard. The boy almost cried aloud to save him, but claims he was stopped by the sight of him hauling his way back up the other side of the ship! The crew thinks the boy is lying, but there’s something to the man that ain’t right, sir. He’s not to be trusted.”

I thanked him for his concern and spoke kindly to him, but did not act as I should have. A proper captain would have pried more, but that man wasn’t I. I was a wretched man with a mind for wealth and dreams of a city so laden with treasure that they used it for waste. I was a fool, and was proven so. 

More days brought more rumors. Some of the men claimed that the barrels were full of coins and that our guests were smuggling stolen treasure to the Spanish. Others spoke of odd noises in the night, and of shapes that were always just far enough away in the waves to not be clear. The most concerning one made my own hairs stand on end. There was a claim made to me that Mr. Blackwood was seen at the stern of the ship one evening, holding up a small totem to the winds. None could say what exactly it was, but claimed it was similar in shape to that of a long-armed man. They said he sliced his finger with a knife and threw it into the waters behind us. I saw none of this, but all of the men felt witchcraft and misfortune had boarded in the shadow of those men. 

It was when Mr. Potsgill killed an albatross and began to eat it raw on the deck that a crewman drew a pistol from his belt and threatened to shoot him for lunatic. Mr. Blackwood weighed in on these matters by delivering a fierce strike of his massive fist. The crewman was on the deck before any other could move. We stood aghast as the pale man cracked his knuckles, removed his hat, and bowed to me. 

“Meat is meat, Captain Hakeswell,” he said. “Meat ought not be wasted.”

Not a man could stomach a response as the small man scarfed his meal before us, his eyes as cold as a shark’s and unfeeling as an animal. Of all the numerous times I’d seen that look aboard that damned ship of mine, I still believe his gaze to be the most spine-chilling of all. 

I said nothing more to the crew of the incident until land was sighted. 

Mr. Blackwood was the man who picked the crew to transport his barrels to the city, and he was to lead in the vanguard as we advanced into the wilderness. I relinquished my right as leader of the men for the time we’d be onshore, praying that our strange guest wouldn’t guide us wrong. He only took two barrels with him. I told him that there were more than enough boats and men to carry the whole cargo out, but he rejected my offer. 

“There will be plenty of time to retrieve the rest later. For now, let us make haste to the city. They no doubt expect our arrival.” Again that smile, and again my foolishness had shackled me to my fate. It’s as real to me now as the dying candle of this dark room in which I now write. I damned my crew that day. God help me, I damned them.

 We set out in the boats and made our way to shore with the cargo in tow. Once on land, the six of us- that being myself, Blackwood, Potsgill, and two of the crewmen- began to roll the barrels down an alarmingly maintained sandy path. I tried to ask if this was the road to the city, but Blackwood did not answer. He only pulled at his cravat and gestured onward. We trudged along through the jungle until one of my men said softly to me: “Do you find it odd, captain, we’ve heard narry a beast or bird?” 

I had no response and became increasingly aware of the horrid silence of the place. So many plants and foliage, but nothing to inhabit them. I shuddered as we marched. 

In a clearing of the jungle, we were presented with a wide lake, round as a plate, and yet as still as a statue. The men gasped at its sight, and I marveled with confusion at the spectacle. The sandy path wound in an almost perfect circle around the water, but not a wall nor brick was in sight. 

“We’ve arrived,” said Blackwood, removing his hat. I turned to him aghast. 

“Arrived?” I bellowed. “What is here besides this pond? You dare lead me astray on such an errand? Damn your bloods, sir! By Christ’s wounds, you shall repay me for this voyage!” 

He laughed at me the same way a father laughs at a young child. He removed his coat and shoes before gesturing me to the water’s edge. 

“Astray,” he laughed. “That is not what you’ll say as you gaze into the deep.” 

A tingle ran down my spine as he undressed himself, and I placed a hand on one of my pistols. He gestured again and smiled. 

“Look inside, and understand,” said he. 

Now I sit, repentant as Judas, that I did. 

I crept to the water’s edge and beheld a sight so clear it still traces the corners of my mind with a startling clarity. There, fathoms deep in the water, were the sloops and geometry of grand buildings and houses beyond my comprehension. The spiraling shapes, like shells and scales, that covered the immense deep made my eyes water in confusion. Glimmering gold and stones and things of colors that I cannot even describe shone through the water like candles in a mirror. Worst of all, amongst them I beheld the shapes of moving things, things almost human, but too serpentine and fluid. Scales and gold and spirals and eyes! Thousands of white, pupilless eyes staring back at me from the deep. I cried in fear and stumbled back from the edge.

“What in God’s name?” I said. “Sweet Christ deliver me! What is this hell?”

My panic was interrupted by two pistol shots. I turned to see Mr. Potsgill lowering the barrels of two firelocks as my men fell to the sand with blood-filled mouths and frightened eyes. I tried to draw my pistol and fire back at him, but the small fellow paid me no mind. He, like his master, started to undress. My gun misfired, and I dropped it in despair.

“That place,” came the voice of Blackwood, “is our home. I thank you for delivering us and our goods in one piece.”

I spun to see him now, standing only in his long, ruffled shirt and wig. His china-white skin gleamed in the tropical sun, and he breathed like a man taking in the smell of fresh washings. He wiped off his painted eyebrows and pulled off his wig to reveal a completely bald head. The man grinned at me with those large, yellow teeth and began to undo his collar. As he stripped to nothing, I beheld several slits in his sides, running up his body to a patch of white scales around his neck. His nails appeared sharper as he bent down to my level and gestured to the still waters beside us. 

“As promised,” said he, “a land of gold and treasures beyond your comprehension. It waits for you, captain, if only you embrace it. Y’ha-gntuhn waits for you.”

I can’t quite remember when I started running, but in a blur, I saw things out of a shattered nightmare. The sight of Mr. Potsgill, naked and fish-like, pulling the bodies of my men into the water, Mr. Blackwood’s screeching laugh as he rolled his barrels in after them, and the ferocious and whispering waves I fought to row back to my ship all scrambled any sense I had. 

I was only a half league from the “Thunderer” when I began shouting like mad, for my crew. I could see commotion on the deck and heard the commands known to every able seaman, but it was clear none of my men could hear me. They were screaming themselves as a giant white arm snaked its way out of the sea and wrapped its long, jagged fingers with too many joints around the girth of the vessel. It cracked as it was forced under the black waves, sending me and my boat flopping into the great unknown wine-dark ocean. I only managed to live because I held fast to a barrel that collided into me during the horror. It was the one piece of cargo Mr. Blackwood never got back, and I clung to it for dear life as I was set adrift in the Caribbean. 

I cannot say whether I was adrift for hours or days, but it was upon the rocky shore of some small isle that I found refuge. As I came to, scraped and bleeding from my misfortunes, I bore witness to a final horror. 

The barrel had split, and from its confines had spilled out every manner of organ and appendage belonging to man. Arms and feet, heads and eyes, intestines, lungs, all were placed on display along the grey sand beach.

 “Delicacies,” Mr. Blackwood had called them. “Delicacies most rare…”

Upon my rescue by a friendly merchant vessel, I was unable to speak for days. Doctors examined me, officers pried for my story, but I was left a jittering mess. I was let out onto the streets of some English port and forced to make my own way. They never mentioned once the names of the men I’d transported, nor asked of the cargo they carried in those accursed barrels. I stay awake sometimes, wondering how real it was. The city, its denizens, and the man who dealt in the flesh of mankind for their luxury… 

I was made aware of my hypocrisy. I know now, I am no different than that creature. I am as monstrous as that man and his city. I am a worm among worms, thinking better of myself for no reason, oblivious to the fisherman who stalks the world around us, looking for bait. Meat is meat, and flesh is flesh.

Christ, forgive me.  Forgive me. Forgive me.

(The following account was found inside an antique desk from an estate sale in Georgia. I’ve done my best to transcribe it here, but please bear in mind I’ve censored and softened some of the harsher language for modern readers.)

July 8th, 1761,

Here, find enclosed and entrusted to the Almighty, the last letter of Alfred P. Hakeswell, Captain of the “Thunderer,” slaver in the employ of the East India Company, now forfeited of that title forevermore.  I pray that, as a wicked man nearing the end of his life, I may find salvation if there is indeed any to be found, and if not, to resign myself to the rightful damnation I am due. I pray this last testament serve as some final confession of my sins before the slinking form I dread comes rapping on my door. 

I condess the awful sin of slaver for the better part of 15 years, serving at sea as one of the premier dealers in the flesh of men. I surveyed many like cattle, sorting them through the degrees of quality that many a planter sought in a man. Upon the auction block, I’d make many a man dance to a silent jig as farmer kings watched on with critique. I’ve watched corpulent bellies wrapped in silk jiggle with laughter as hemp and linen spun and stomped like motley. I remember one old man from South Carolina better than the rest. He had me pry open the mouth of a slave to take stock of his teeth. “I’ll need a new set in time,” he told me. The eyes of the poor unfortunate I sold that day were a lifeless grey; his soul long since dead, abandoned on the shores of distant Africa. 

I sold him for 20 pounds along with a boy who had to be wrenched from his mother. I still hear his cries in the night, and his mother’s tears stain my memory. 

These sins I’ve committed, along with countless others, continue to stalk me like revenants. The thousands of black faces that stare at me from the darkness of my eyelids are the least punishment I deserve for my actions. It is with this guilt that I will make known in ink the events which changed me, body and soul, and which drive me to sit with a loaded pistol on my desk. 

I start with the pale man of the Caribbean Isles, who boarded my vessel some six months past, and whose countenance I’ve yet to forget. 

In Jamaica, we’d stopped to restock supplies and unload our recent cargo of slaves into the port. It was a meagre sum compared to many previous shipments, but still profitable as far as the East India Company was concerned. I settled out payments and wages, then enjoyed a night on the town in the company of loose women and strong drink. After time spent in the lustful embrace of an Irish lass, I retreated to a pub, loud and raucous in spirit, and livened myself with Bumbo and gin. In my debauchery, I let the numb comfort of apathy set in before my liquored stupor was interrupted by a man in fine clothes. 

Before me, dressed in a matching silk coat and breeches, was a man of substantial height. He had skin like china and a black wig that preened above a massive set of shoulders. His clean-shaven face was rouged, and his teeth glistened a greasy yellow akin to the gild of his sword hilt. Something in the man immediately disturbed me, but I couldn’t place it. He was like a girl’s doll given life, but with features too perfect to be made by even the craftsmen of the East. 

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing Captain Hakeswell?” says he, in a voice so soft, I almost mistook it for a woman’s. Even still, I heard him well. Despite the noise of the tavern, his words still echoed like a harbour bell. 

I says to him, “Whether a pleasure or not, I do not know, but I do be captain Hakeswell.”

“Then it is a pleasure,” he replied with a bow. He took off the black tricorn he wore atop his perfect wig and curtsied prettier than a maid at court. “I have been seeking a man of your kind for a long while.” 

The gentleman drew and took a seat as easily as a nun in church, paying no mind to the filth of the pub and its denizens. He withdrew a small clay pipe from his waistcoat pocket and began to fill it with a tobacco pouch of similar origin. He silently gestured across the room, and a small man in dark clothes scurried over with ember tongs. He carried a piece of charcoal from the hearth and with it lit his master’s pipe. He was as pale as a ghost and had skin as slimy and grey as a catfish, and disappeared with the same uncanny quietness he’d appeared with. I could not find him again in the bustle of sinful bodies. 

I broke the silence through the clouds of his grey smoke. “Forgive my asking, sirrah,” I says, “but what would a gent like you want with a salt dog like me?” 

He smiled through a puff of smoke and told me, “ Josiah MacCready of the East India Company recommended you to me,” he said. “He was quoted as saying you are ‘a man for odd trades and odd company.” 

I laughed and took a swig of my drink. “That depends on how odd the trade and how odd the company.” 

The gentleman looked pensive, but amused. He snapped his fingers and out came the same little man with a roll of paper. The gentleman did not break his smiling gaze.

“My name is Jeremiah Blackwood,” says he, “and I am in need of a vessel and crew who will transport myself and my belongings to a destination of my choosing.”

“And what destination is it that you’re so keen on seeing?” He smiled at me and spoke to me of the islands of Nassau.

“There’s business I have on one isle, but few know of it,” he says. “I am in need of a good captain, but not a good man.” 

“I am your man then,” I replied, “iffin the price matches the job.” 

With a wolfish look in his eye, he began to speak of a city of treasure that rested in the heart of the island's jungle. The city, he explained,  was larger than that of any other in creation. I scoffed at the notion, saying such a city would be well known and not hidden in that maze of sand and palms. His look was sardonic as he elaborated.

“The greatest treasures that humankind can comprehend do not compare to what lies in the dregs of that place. Solomon’s temple is a vagrant’s shed in the mind of those who’ve seen its beauty. I only require a willing crew that won’t pester me with questions.”

He unrolled the paper, revealing a map of the Caribbean, but more rigid and with lines and notations unfamiliar to me. The language of its script was unfamiliar to me, and looked something akin to the tongue of the Arabs, but not as concise. It was an enigma to me, and after 15 years at sea, it invigorated my blood with a trembling curiosity that I hadn’t felt since my days as a bosun. With a long white finger, Mr Blackwood pointed at a lone isle in the middle of a cluster of land. 

“Here is where it lies,” says he, “and here you shall make your fortune.” I took stock of the plot of land and told him unimpressively that it was unmarked. He giggled as he rolled the map back up and told me, “Just because it’s unmarked, doesn’t mean nothing is there.”

It’s upon my very soul I swear this: the isle he spoke of should have remained unknown, for as it is now known to me, I can do naught but tremble at the memory of its visage and the inconceivable architecture upon which it was built. Moreso, it is my dearest regret that I offered the man my hand and services for the sheer promise of gold. I still remember the clammy touch of his skin, cool as ice and lingering as death. I gave my word to transport Blackwood and his property across the ocean, and in doing so, traded the lives of my crew for a lie. 

We sailed from Jamaica the next day, and in our departure, we now carried two strangers and several barrels sealed tight with wax and pitch. I asked Blackwood what it was be in those barrels, but he only flashed his horrid grin and fiddled with his cravat. 

“Delicacies,” he said, smoothing his hair. “Delicacies most rare and sought after by the people of our destination.” 

“Fruits?” I asked him. 

“Of sorts.” He then took his footing upon the gangplank and strode from the decrepit docks of Jamaica and into the embrace of the Thunderer. He was, I dare say, the only one I’d ever seen so eager to board a ship so rife with the stench of death. We had no cargo of slaves as we left port, and yet the ship seemed to stir and shift as if a weight had been thrust aboard it. Jeremiah Blackwood paid no mind to it. He smoothed his clothes and puffed his ruffles as the sails were sprung into action. It wasn’t until we were a league out from land that I realized that same little man in dark clothes was also aboard. His eyes now, in the clear light, were even more round and bulbous. Like small onions, yellow and glassy, they rolled around and seldom blinked as a fat pinkish lower lip smoked a pipe between an underbite. What little black hair he had flopped in the wind like seaweed.  I asked after him once Mr. Blackwood and I were alone in my cabin with a bottle of rum between us. It was odd that even as the heat of liquor filled my cheeks and dulled my senses, Blackwood never once grew rosy. He drank cordially as the cabin and lantern swayed with us.

“Mr. Potsgill,” he told me, “my man and companion over the course of these many years. I’ve known him since I was a boy, and he’s always been a reliable one for the work I require.” 

“What is it exactly you do?” asked I. He took another pensive sip of rum and took out a deck of cards. He began to deal a game of whist before continuing.

“I am a merchant, simple and true,” he told me. “I’m a procurer of things that are hard to come by, and that is all I will say on that matter.”

“Very well,” I says, playing a hand, “keep your business then.” Another card. “How comes you to know of the place we’re sailing?” 

“I was born there,” says he. His words struck me like a foul blow. 

“Born there?” I nearly spat my drink. “You claim to be from this isle of gold and treasures?”

“Indeed.”

“And why, then, would one leave a place of such riches?” 

It was then that I saw him frown for the first time, and with it grew a chill on my skin. 

“Gold is worth little to a people who use it for cobblestones.”

He said nothing else to me for the rest of the game. I simply drank and tried to ignore the weight of his words and what foreboding eyes they brought with them.

We were five days out when my first mate brought a concern to me.

“Captain,” says Jensen, “there are queer things happening with this new company of yours.” I asked him to elaborate, and he told me, “Mr. Blackwood's man is more than an odd fellow. The lads think him near mad. Benjamin and John saw him take a salted fish from the kitchen and begin to eat without cooking it!” 

I tried to ease his worries, but he persisted. “There are other things too, Captain. One of the cabin boys claims he saw the fellow stripping naked as a jaybird and jumping overboard. The boy almost cried aloud to save him, but claims he was stopped by the sight of him hauling his way back up the other side of the ship! The crew thinks the boy is lying, but there’s something to the man that ain’t right, sir. He’s not to be trusted.”

I thanked him for his concern and spoke kindly to him, but did not act as I should have. A proper captain would have pried more, but that man wasn’t I. I was a wretched man with a mind for wealth and dreams of a city so laden with treasure that they used it for waste. I was a fool, and was proven so. 

More days brought more rumors. Some of the men claimed that the barrels were full of coins and that our guests were smuggling stolen treasure to the Spanish. Others spoke of odd noises in the night, and of shapes that were always just far enough away in the waves to not be clear. The most concerning one made my own hairs stand on end. There was a claim made to me that Mr. Blackwood was seen at the stern of the ship one evening, holding up a small totem to the winds. None could say what exactly it was, but claimed it was similar in shape to that of a long-armed man. They said he sliced his finger with a knife and threw it into the waters behind us. I saw none of this, but all of the men felt witchcraft and misfortune had boarded in the shadow of those men. 

It was when Mr. Potsgill killed an albatross and began to eat it raw on the deck that a crewman drew a pistol from his belt and threatened to shoot him for lunatic. Mr. Blackwood weighed in on these matters by delivering a fierce strike of his massive fist. The crewman was on the deck before any other could move. We stood aghast as the pale man cracked his knuckles, removed his hat, and bowed to me. 

“Meat is meat, Captain Hakeswell,” he said. “Meat ought not be wasted.”

Not a man could stomach a response as the small man scarfed his meal before us, his eyes as cold as a shark’s and unfeeling as an animal. Of all the numerous times I’d seen that look aboard that damned ship of mine, I still believe his gaze to be the most spine-chilling of all. 

I said nothing more to the crew of the incident until land was sighted. 

Mr. Blackwood was the man who picked the crew to transport his barrels to the city, and he was to lead in the vanguard as we advanced into the wilderness. I relinquished my right as leader of the men for the time we’d be onshore, praying that our strange guest wouldn’t guide us wrong. He only took two barrels with him. I told him that there were more than enough boats and men to carry the whole cargo out, but he rejected my offer. 

“There will be plenty of time to retrieve the rest later. For now, let us make haste to the city. They no doubt expect our arrival.” Again that smile, and again my foolishness had shackled me to my fate. It’s as real to me now as the dying candle of this dark room in which I now write. I damned my crew that day. God help me, I damned them.

 We set out in the boats and made our way to shore with the cargo in tow. Once on land, the six of us- that being myself, Blackwood, Potsgill, and two of the crewmen- began to roll the barrels down an alarmingly maintained sandy path. I tried to ask if this was the road to the city, but Blackwood did not answer. He only pulled at his cravat and gestured onward. We trudged along through the jungle until one of my men said softly to me: “Do you find it odd, captain, we’ve heard narry a beast or bird?” 

I had no response and became increasingly aware of the horrid silence of the place. So many plants and foliage, but nothing to inhabit them. I shuddered as we marched. 

In a clearing of the jungle, we were presented with a wide lake, round as a plate, and yet as still as a statue. The men gasped at its sight, and I marveled with confusion at the spectacle. The sandy path wound in an almost perfect circle around the water, but not a wall nor brick was in sight. 

“We’ve arrived,” said Blackwood, removing his hat. I turned to him aghast. 

“Arrived?” I bellowed. “What is here besides this pond? You dare lead me astray on such an errand? Damn your bloods, sir! By Christ’s wounds, you shall repay me for this voyage!” 

He laughed at me the same way a father laughs at a young child. He removed his coat and shoes before gesturing me to the water’s edge. 

“Astray,” he laughed. “That is not what you’ll say as you gaze into the deep.” 

A tingle ran down my spine as he undressed himself, and I placed a hand on one of my pistols. He gestured again and smiled. 

“Look inside, and understand,” said he. 

Now I sit, repentant as Judas, that I did. 

I crept to the water’s edge and beheld a sight so clear it still traces the corners of my mind with a startling clarity. There, fathoms deep in the water, were the sloops and geometry of grand buildings and houses beyond my comprehension. The spiraling shapes, like shells and scales, that covered the immense deep made my eyes water in confusion. Glimmering gold and stones and things of colors that I cannot even describe shone through the water like candles in a mirror. Worst of all, amongst them I beheld the shapes of moving things, things almost human, but too serpentine and fluid. Scales and gold and spirals and eyes! Thousands of white, pupilless eyes staring back at me from the deep. I cried in fear and stumbled back from the edge.

“What in God’s name?” I said. “Sweet Christ deliver me! What is this hell?”

My panic was interrupted by two pistol shots. I turned to see Mr. Potsgill lowering the barrels of two firelocks as my men fell to the sand with blood-filled mouths and frightened eyes. I tried to draw my pistol and fire back at him, but the small fellow paid me no mind. He, like his master, started to undress. My gun misfired, and I dropped it in despair.

“That place,” came the voice of Blackwood, “is our home. I thank you for delivering us and our goods in one piece.”

I spun to see him now, standing only in his long, ruffled shirt and wig. His china-white skin gleamed in the tropical sun, and he breathed like a man taking in the smell of fresh washings. He wiped off his painted eyebrows and pulled off his wig to reveal a completely bald head. The man grinned at me with those large, yellow teeth and began to undo his collar. As he stripped to nothing, I beheld several slits in his sides, running up his body to a patch of white scales around his neck. His nails appeared sharper as he bent down to my level and gestured to the still waters beside us. 

“As promised,” said he, “a land of gold and treasures beyond your comprehension. It waits for you, captain, if only you embrace it. Y’ha-gntuhn waits for you.”

I can’t quite remember when I started running, but in a blur, I saw things out of a shattered nightmare. The sight of Mr. Potsgill, naked and fish-like, pulling the bodies of my men into the water, Mr. Blackwood’s screeching laugh as he rolled his barrels in after them, and the ferocious and whispering waves I fought to row back to my ship all scrambled any sense I had. 

I was only a half league from the “Thunderer” when I began shouting like mad, for my crew. I could see commotion on the deck and heard the commands known to every able seaman, but it was clear none of my men could hear me. They were screaming themselves as a giant white arm snaked its way out of the sea and wrapped its long, jagged fingers with too many joints around the girth of the vessel. It cracked as it was forced under the black waves, sending me and my boat flopping into the great unknown wine-dark ocean. I only managed to live because I held fast to a barrel that collided into me during the horror. It was the one piece of cargo Mr. Blackwood never got back, and I clung to it for dear life as I was set adrift in the Caribbean. 

I cannot say whether I was adrift for hours or days, but it was upon the rocky shore of some small isle that I found refuge. As I came to, scraped and bleeding from my misfortunes, I bore witness to a final horror. 

The barrel had split, and from its confines had spilled out every manner of organ and appendage belonging to man. Arms and feet, heads and eyes, intestines, lungs, all were placed on display along the grey sand beach.

 “Delicacies,” Mr. Blackwood had called them. “Delicacies most rare…”

Upon my rescue by a friendly merchant vessel, I was unable to speak for days. Doctors examined me, officers pried for my story, but I was left a jittering mess. I was let out onto the streets of some English port and forced to make my own way. They never mentioned once the names of the men I’d transported, nor asked of the cargo they carried in those accursed barrels. I stay awake sometimes, wondering how real it was. The city, its denizens, and the man who dealt in the flesh of mankind for their luxury… 

I was made aware of my hypocrisy. I know now, I am no different than that creature. I am as monstrous as that man and his city. I am a worm among worms, thinking better of myself for no reason, oblivious to the fisherman who stalks the world around us, looking for bait. Meat is meat, and flesh is flesh.

Christ, forgive me.  Forgive me. Forgive me.

Weird stuff was already happening in my town before I found this diary. Last week, the neighborhood pets began going missing, and everyone blamed a mountain lion. There’d been a drought and wildfires, so people assumed it was causing some trickle-up famine for the wildlife. That all changed today when a cougar showed up dead next to the highway. It was drained of blood and fluids, but the most concerning thing was what it was covered in. 

The local sheriff called it some kind of kudzu species, but he was clueless. This vine, plant, or whatever the hell it is, was covered in thorns. The leaves and vines were near black, and the thorns themselves were bone white. 

As you know, I’m a reporter, so I start doing what I do best and go try to research what the source of all this is. Dead end after dead end led me to look back in the local archives. I am convinced that something like this has happened before, but it’s only led me to more questions. I found an obituary for a botanist from the 1930s, stating the basics you’d expect, but catching my eye with one small detail:

He was from our hometown.

I tried to find a specific cause of death, but all of the records and notes from the coroner were scrubbed. I bring this to the sheriff, who, in turn, gets me access to the evidence storage. I suspect he really only did this to keep me from snooping on anything actually important and ongoing, but I didn’t care. I was free to search and dodge brown recluses so long as I didn’t tell anyone I was down there. It was technically illegal, but in a town like ours, nobody cared enough to enforce it. I was given the key and told to lock up when I was done. 

Gotta love small-town justice.

There weren’t any files on the man’s death, nor any photos, though for the 30s that was to be expected. There was only one thing bearing the botanist's name and case number, but it all fit into a paper envelope. Besides a few yellow papers scrawled with sparse legal writings, there was a small book in brown leather. It was still intact and was just what I’d been hoping for. 

I’m going to start transcribing his words into these posts for posterity’s sake, and after reading the first few entries, this seems like the best place to start sharing my research as well as the last account of this botanist. Let’s hope the cops don’t notice the missing book. 

Hell. Let’s hope I don’t end up like that poor cat. 

-
 
August 22:

Doctor Weber takes care to keep himself hidden from public life. It’s been three days since we passed Raleigh, and I fear it will be another day still before we make it out of the Blue Ridge and into the Piedmont. Professor Maxwell tells me that patience is a virtue and that before we know it, we’ll be nestled comfortably back home in Virginia, richer than Midas and more revered than Solomon. I dare not point out that half the reason it’s taken us so long to make it down south is that he insisted on driving us down, missing the turn in Spartansburg, and leading us down a mountain path instead of the coastline I was so excited to see.   
  
I mustn't be so critical of my mentor, however. Such an accomplished scientist would rarely take his assistant to an almost literal goldmine of discovery. He hasn’t told me much of this Professor Weber. Only whatever he has developed in his greenhouse could change the course of not only our lives but the lives of every starving American living in Hoovervilles and working long weeks for the sake of a quarter. 

I believe he lost a poor relative to starvation sometime last year, though I do not know the conditions surrounding it. I do recall his melancholic state and how often bourbon glasses surrounded his desk. I often heard him muttering a name over and over in his liquor dreams, though male or female, I have no clue. 

What I do know is that the man I sit next to now is not that man. Here, in this truck, his blue eyes transfixed on the road, I see a man of firm resolve. The beard he’s grown in the last few months makes him look like a prospector shoved into a suit. His bowtie is scrappy, as is his mood. He hasn’t even stopped to ask what I’m writing, but has occasionally gone off on winding stories of how he and his family traveled through these hills often when he was a young boy. He alludes to having a sibling of some sort but drops them from the conversation as soon as they’re brought up.   
  
I read once that a Spanish explorer traversed this area in search of gold and glory. He died somewhere in the South, I believe. However, I am certain that if his spirit lives on, it is in the heart of my dear mentor.   
  
  
  
The road grows bumpy, and it’s becoming harder to write. Will resume on smoother ground.   
  
  
  
12 pm- or thereabouts: 
  
The oddest people live in this region. Though not unkind, they are certainly a peculiar bunch. We have stopped off at a roadside gas station and drugstore, and a small barbecue hut within walking distance of the place has given me a picnic table to pen my remaining thoughts. After I ate, one of the waitresses- I believe that’s what she is at least- approached me and asked where I was heading. I told her that I was a botanist and that my mentor and I were traveling on business. I was able to point out the professor to her from my seat. He was leaning against the truck, smoking a cigar, and apparently in his own conversation with a clean-shaven man in overalls. Judging by their points and gestures, it was most likely for directions.   
  
She gave him an odd look, then wiped her hand on her apron. She was older than both of us by the look of her, with curly white hair tucked neatly under a paper cap. Her clothes had the occasional grease stain, and her makeup was smudged from what I could only imagine was the heat of a kitchen, and yet she stared at us both as if we were tramps in a department store.   
  
“Where you folks headin’ again?” she asked.   
  
“I forget the name exactly,” I told her, “but I believe its name is something like ‘Portley’ or a place near there.”  
  
Her expression changed from confused disdain to wide-eyed concern. She almost dropped her ticket book as she spun around and took a seat next to me.   
  
“Listen here, son,” she told me, “Iffin it is Portley you’re going, I suggest you and your professor fella turn right on around and go back to wherever it was you come.”  
  
I protested, saying we’d already traveled all this way, and followed by asking what it was that had her so scared. She shook her head and said:  
  
“They ain't right up there. They just ain’t. Every once in a while, one of their ilk comes through on the way to Augusta or Athens or someplace like that, but every time they do, there’s trouble.”  
  
She went on to mutter something about the way they move or talk, but she shook herself and coughed. When she stopped, she pulled out something from her pocket and placed it on the table near my paper plate.

“My family was one of the last catholic families in this region before they got tired of driving an hour to the nearest church every Sunday and converted to Baptists. Iffin you’re headin’ that way, you’ll want this.”

The object was a cheap rosary that was missing more than a few beads and bore a metal cross long since smudged from bright bronze to dull gold. It was brighter around the base, meaning someone had once committed regularly to holding it and praying the creed with it, making their mount cavalry out of a fist and bent knees. It was clearly a family heirloom, and one I tried to refuse, but the woman would have none of it.  
  
“Take it, by God, and by God may it either serve you or convince you to go back. The devil walks the earth, boy, and in Georgia, his home is Portley. Anything or anyone there is not worth your soul.”  
  
I wanted to ask her more, but before I knew it, she was gone, and the door to the hut was slammed shut. The sliding order door was closed immediately after, and I was left alone at my picnic bench, surrounded by the goliath pines and oaks that spread out like an ocean around me. I find myself thumbing through the beads remaining on the rosary, reliving a bit of my childhood and more than likely disappointing my poor, late mother as I stumble through them. I cannot help but think of the waitress’s words as I write.   
  
This cross reminds me of the rosary Marie once had.  
  
The professor approaches.   
  
  
  
Addendum:
  
It seems my mentor was able to secure directions, and we are now back in the car heading towards Portley. I haven’t mentioned anything to him about the rosary or the things the waitress said. However, I have noticed something concerning as we stumble into the growing dusk. There is now an old black bible seated between us. When I asked the professor where he’d gotten it, he laughed.   
  
“It’s the damnedest thing, John,” he said. “The gas station owner gave me directions, then ran back inside to grab this. He shoved it on me and refused to take it back. Superstitious bunch down here.”  
  
I faked a laugh, and he didn’t seem to notice. All is quiet now, but the closer we draw to the doctor’s house and the life-changing development he’s made in his reclusive home, I’m nervous.   
  
Must sleep it off.   
  
  
  
7:25 PM 
  
I am stirred awake by the roughness of the road. There is a pain in my neck from the angle I placed my head, and my vision is hazy. \~\~I am filled with-\~\~  
  
I am tired.   
  
The professor is still awake but is not up for conversation- that's why I’m writing in my journal for the fourth time in a day. What he has said is that Portley is within the next ten miles, according to the directions the gas station owner gave us. I look forward to a bed, all concerns aside, and pray the doctor has food waiting for us. 

I have a pain in my throat now that makes me cough regularly. The professor isn’t noticeably bothered by this and has only said, “allergies,” in response to my racket. The pain and the coughing make me think of Marie. Her condition and loss still haunt me, it seems. Her, my mother… I fear I have a curse on me that causes women to die.

I cannot wait to have tea or coffee. Anything hot to make this go down and to shove those ideas out of my mind.   
  
I see a road sign coming up on our right.  
  
Finally,   
  
  
  
August 23- close to 5 AM:  
  
I have much to write despite it being so early. I’m struggling to rationalize and place all of the events from the latter half of my journey with what logically makes sense, so I think this is the best way to lay it all out.   
  
I find myself holding the rosary in my other hand while I write, but I can’t say solidly as to why.   
  
I’ll start with our entry.  
  
When we made it into town, I started to find myself disillusioned with the fears the waitress and gas station owner had so thoroughly tried to instill in me. The buildings were sparse, and the main road of the town was lined with very few stores. There were occasional houses and one or two plots that looked like small farms, but nothing overtly stood out. 

There were not many people out, most likely due to the time of night, but there were some. A group of men in their suspenders and work shirts huddled around a tiny storefront, resting on metal chairs and smoking their pipes and cigarettes. I could smell the cheap tobacco from the truck, and I still find its odor on my cardigan. 

From what I was told, I half expected them to throw bottles or rocks as we rode through the street. I expected a gun or knife to greet our tires or at least angry screams. None of that happened. They did the opposite. They waved at us.   
  
As I write that, I fear I underplay the effect it had on me. When I say they waved at us, I mean they waved at us. Every single one of them. Five men were in that group in total, and as soon as we passed by, every single one raised their (right?) hand, waved, and smiled.   
  
The professor waved back at them, but I could tell from his grip on the steering wheel that this bothered him, too.   
  
We passed by a woman walking in a very rigid fashion, almost painfully erect in her posture, and she did the same. Same hand. Broad smile.   
  
It was when passing what looked like the county sheriff’s office that we were greeted by a dark-haired man in a tan deputy's uniform. He too waved and smiled, but lowered them as he stepped down from his perch on the sidewalk and approached the curb. The professor slowed the car down and- albeit reluctantly- rolled the window down.   
  
Taking the man in, I was shocked by how smooth his skin was and by how energetic he looked on what I could only assume was the tail-end of a long shift. I had an idea as to how his voice would sound this far down South, and almost jokingly wondered to myself if we’d even be able to understand him.   
  
Imagine how red my cheeks became as he spoke not only without an accent but almost impossibly proper English. I couldn’t begin to place a speech pattern. I still can’t, though the voice is still fresh in my mind.  
  
“Hello there,” he said. “Where are you from?”  
  
The professor explained that we were heading to the residence of Doctor Andre Weber, and if he had any directions. He didn’t drop his smile as he said:  
  
“Oh yes! Doctor Andre. He is indeed a very good doctor. He will no doubt expect you. You cannot keep him waiting.” 

There was an awkward pause before the professor asked again where his residence was, reading the address from our telegram that had invited us there in the first place.  I expected to hear another tight response, but was more startled when the deputy shot his hand up and gestured down a right turn. He did not say any other direction besides this. The professor thanked him, prompting a, “It is my pleasure! Please enjoy your time in Portley!” but nothing else. 

His hand did not drop as he did this. 

We drove away, and as we did, I noticed the deputy staring at us from the side-view mirror. He dropped his arm almost mechanically and turned sharply on his heels before walking away. He did so in the same fashion as the woman we’d seen before. 

“Friendly people,” Professor Maxwell said.

 I remember laughing, but not for the humor of it all. Another detail I noticed, just as the main road faded from view, was that the back sides of the buildings- though their fronts were pristine- were covered in thick blankets of ivy and Kudzu.  I do not know what to make of this, nor why it bothers me so much. I will write more about this later if my mind can make sense of it.

We spent another twenty minutes driving through the growing dark as cedar and oak trees loomed over us with long branches that reminded me of fingers. Each one bent unnaturally and scraped against the roof of the truck. The road didn’t grow sturdier either, and at one point it was so rough I was convinced that we were going to pop a tire on some sharp rock or another. I would have worried about deer or other passing animals as well if I weren’t so dazed from the jostling and neck pain I wrote of earlier. 

Winding road after winding road went on until finally, like some specter rising from the grave, the silhouette of a manor house came into view. In a large clearing where the land merged into a grand winding hill, the sharp treeline was conquered by the rising point of a roof. The amber lights of lit windows came into view, and before I could process the magnitude of this large two-story house that sat strangely out of place in the middle of the Georgia woods, we were already parking in the driveway. 

“Finally!” Maxwell said, putting the truck in park. “I thought for sure we’d miss it.”

“Are you sure this is it?” I asked him. I know that sounds like a stupid question in retrospect, but I believe it was brought about by the unease that had settled into my system from the encounters we had in the town. I also still can’t shake the feeling of decay and overgrowth that lingers in the whole house. In the dark, I could see no discernible thing wrong with its face. However, the sides of the building were overrun with blossoming vines and ivy that outstretched to the wood paneling from the trellises. There was a wild look to it all, and even now as I write, I notice the fingers of Kudzu scratching at the base of my windowsill. 

I digress. 

We traversed the dry staircase that led to the front door and went to ring the bell, but the door swung open. I almost jumped, but was immediately disarmed when a small man in a tweed suit greeted us. 

He had a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and wore a slightly crooked and brightly colored bowtie. He sported a thick mustache that put my own to shame and, despite having very recessed pale temples, a thick mane of curly white hair that brushed his shoulders and collar. I expected a staunch and reserved greeting in that similar painful voice the deputy had given us back in town, but to my pleasant alarm, he was downright jovial.

“It must be Professor Maxwell I see before me!” he exclaimed, clasping my mentor's hand and shaking it vigorously. “I have eagerly awaited your arrival, and now here you are! A blessing from… from… Well let's not dive into that. It is too late in the evening to discuss theology. I am Herr Weber-” I was still taking in his charming German accent when he turned to me and looked me up and down. He reminded me of a curious crow as he cocked his head to the side and mused to himself. 

“And who might this be?” he asked, though more to himself than anyone else.

“Johnathan,” I said, reaching out a hand. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

He stared at my hand for a beat, only moving his eyes and his face devoid of a smile. For a moment, I was worried I had done something to offend him in some way. I jumped when his straight face burst into a wide laughing grin, and he took my hand. His flesh was almost alarmingly rigid and cold, but his personality was anything but. 

“Herr Johnathan. The pleasure of acquaintance is all mine. For when I thought I’d only be receiving one guest to this lonesome hill, I’ve been blessed with two! It’s practically a party!”

“Forgive me for the surprise guest, Dr. Weber,” said the professor. “The journey was simply too long to make by myself, and I was concerned for my safety. That and- if I may be so bold as to say in a company such as this- John is a dear friend despite my advantage in years. I trust him as I do my own family.”

For a moment, I thought he almost said brother. 

“There is no apology needed. I agree, the distance is great, but I believe your time here will be worth it. I trust you’ve read my letter?” 

My mentor nodded gravely, and his tone seemed to grow tense as he leaned in to speak. “The claims you make are great, and I am desperate. Can you please-”

It was then I embarrassingly let out a wet, hacking cough that resulted in something flying from my mouth. It landed on the floorboards of the front porch, and my cheeks grew red. 

“I’m so sorry-” I told them. “I picked something up on the road, it seems. I cannot begin to-”

“Hush, my boy!” The doctor took me by the shoulder and had me open my mouth. He examined the back of my throat and said, “As I suspected! An allergy attack. The pollen here is extreme on most days. Oh, your poor throat must be writhing!” He pointed a finger back to the professor and wagged it at him. “We will discuss further over supper, Maxwell. Believe me when I say that not only are my claims true, but they are greater than you can even imagine. In the meantime, I’ve prepared a stew that I think our young friend will find most agreeable. Please, gentlemen. Inside!”

From there, we were led inside the house. I can speak with certainty, now that it is daylight, but at the time, I was perplexed with the house. Its interior was Victorian, with old gilded foil flaking off the molding. There were glass display cases showing knives, pieces of pottery, and papers so old, I thought a mere glance could turn them to dust. The ceiling was high in the main hall, and I saw an open drawing room off to the side with lovely quilted armchairs. The walls were lined with books, which set my mind spinning with excitement. There was also a strange towering device made of glass and metal in the center of the table, but I did not recognize what it was. 

“This way, gentlemen,” he said, leading us to a door on the left. “I have much to discuss with you, and plenty of food for you to eat. Please!” 

As we entered the dining room, he gestured us to a set of chairs nestled into a fine mahogany table. In the center of its face, resting on a linen runner, there was a large silver dome covering a platter. From a china cabinet behind us, he nabbed another plate and bowl, along with an extra spoon. He sat them down in front of me with care.

“Gentlemen,” he said, gripping the top of the dome. “I give you a stew that will change your lives forever.” The professor laughed, but the doctor did not. I suppressed a cough, but Weber did not seem to notice as he turned to my mentor with a voracious eye. I half expected a reprimand, but instead: “What ails you, Professor Maxwell?” The professor looked confused by the issue. “I say, what ails you? What causes you pain?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Dr. Weber.”

“It is a simple enough question,” he said, brushing his mustache with a stubby hand. “Our young friend here, at the present, suffers from pains in the throat with no ready medicine for his condition. Therefore, I ask you, what is it that ails you?”

“Nothing in particular, sir.” At that, he flashed me a look of concern and amusement, almost as if he’d been stopped in the street by a crazed beggar. 

“We are all afflicted,” said the doctor. “Whether we admit it or not.”

“But I have no wounds!” 

There was a long stare between the two of them. The only movement in the room was the flickering of the candelabras and the trembling of a vase of tulips. Then, with an almost sinister flare, the doctor smiled. “Not all afflictions can be seen, and not all pains are wounds. Think of this as you eat, Herr Maxwell.”

He removed the cover and revealed a large bowl of amber stew, full of carrots, corn, potatoes, and meat, which I believe was beef. He used a small ladle and filled our bowls, then exited the room briefly, leaving us alone with our food. Up close, it looked odd to me. Oil floated in the broth, and the vegetables looked as if they’d been submerged for a long while. It looked almost mushy when looking at it for too long. I looked up to see the professor's reaction, but to my alarm, he was staring at the bowl, wide-eyed and troubled. 

Dr. Weber appeared with a  bottle of red wine and exclaimed, “Multipulciano!” He had already uncorked the bottle and was generously filling our glasses as we sat. “I fell in love with this wine while studying in Italy. I bought enough to last a lifetime- though I hope I outlive the wine!” He laughed heartily, but by himself. Once he sat down, he gestured for us to eat, and reluctantly, we did. 

I am astonished at how nervous I was at the time. I was merely eating soup, and yet I recall my hand trembling as I raised the spoon to my lips. Those first few seconds of taste were nonexistent as I slurped down the broth, but my senses were reawakened as I took in a flavor that reminded me of a soup from my childhood. My mother made a soup that tasted exactly like this, down to the spices she’d thrown in sometimes at random, but always tasted lovely. 

There was no doubt, despite my odd circumstances. This was my mother’s stew. How that could be, I had no idea, but it was. The only odd thing I found was that it was devoid of salt. For moments, I would think that there was a hint somewhere, but for some reason, I could tell there wasn’t. I looked up to ask the professor, expecting to interrupt his meal, but he was actually watching us. His bowl was as full as his smile, and he raised his eyebrows in delight as I asked him for a salt shaker. 

“Apologies,” he said, raising both hands in surrender, “but I’m afraid I don’t keep salt in the house. Sodium doesn’t like me, you understand.”  

I almost commented on how odd that was, and turned to see my professor's reaction, but he wasn’t listening. Instead, he was crying softly, his bearded face inches from the bowl. I saw a tear roll down his nose and drop into the soup.

“Professor Maxwell,” I asked, “are you okay?” 

“Of course he is,” answered the Doctor as he leaned back in his carved chair. “He’s simply healing. Aren’t you, sir?” He looked up with a red face of astonishment. His wet cheeks were wiped by the sleeve of his jacket, and his smile was like that of a terminally ill man being told he was cured. 

“I don’t understand,” he said. “What is this doing to me?”

“I’d like to know the same!” I interjected, “This stew tastes… I mean it’s just like the one-”

“How is your throat, my young friend?” 

It was then that I realized my throat was no longer in pain. I inhaled an incredulous breath and was shocked at the clarity of my throat. I couldn’t even muster a response before the Doctor interrupted again. 

“I imagine your neck must feel better, too.” 

He was right about that as well. Any pains and aches from travel I had held had vanished from my body. I was relaxed, somehow, and my muscles were invigorated. As I write this now, I find myself wondering:

Did I ever mention the pain in my neck?

If I did, I would have forgotten it. For now, I’ll chalk up Weber’s comment to nothing more than observation. Still….

Without elaborating, the doctor stood to his feet and said, “My friends, please finish eating. I have a surprise in the drawing room for when you finish, but for now, eat. Eat, and be healed! There is still much to discuss before bed.”

And with that, he left us, and we were left alone. I stared at my bowl for a second, trying to rationalize the flavors I tasted with what I saw, but was unsuccessful. I looked at Maxwell to find some kindred spirit, but it was useless. He was already pouring himself another bowl.

-

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this, but I will update once I can get the next few entries transcribed. I got a message from my boss while I was writing the last part, and he told me I need to hurry up and get to the office. There’s been another animal found wrapped in those thorns, and he wants an article for tomorrow's issue. 

I don’t know if this man is connected to the thorns or not, but I feel uneasy. It feels like something is paying attention to me, though what or to what extent, I don’t know.

I’ll try my best to get to the bottom of this.

Wish me luck. 

The house appeared one day, though I can’t say when. It wasn’t like it was built overnight, or like it was hidden in the crook of a forgotten bend of street. It was as if it had always been there. It was old and overgrown with dark vines and leaves that crusted its brick frame. I remember it feeling off from the moment I turned down my street. It didn’t replace anything or end up wedged in a space that already existed. My street was longer than usual, with a more pronounced bend. There were more trees, and the house was nestled among them like a rock in tall grass.

As you can probably guess from the title, it was right up my alley. I love exploring forgotten places and have ever since I was in high school. You see some freaky shit in this hobby, and the adrenaline rush you feel when you’re in the dark cavity of some abandoned building cannot be understated. I’ve seen missile silos from the Cold War, plantation houses in the middle of nowhere, and found a damp room in a hospital littered with the limbs and appendages of dolls from every corner of the uncanny valley.

You experience a fair deal of risk, too. I’ve never been arrested, but some buddies of mine have, and the fines almost put them on the streets. That being said, legal troubles are the safer things to manage when roving around haunts like mine. Homeless squatters have threatened to cut me for encroaching, and I once got chased by a pack of stray dogs for getting too close to some pups. Out of all of them, though, the worst by far are traps.

Teenage shit-heads and sadistic wackos love leaving booby traps in places. Typically, it’s nothing too sophisticated, but the danger and malice that go into them stay with you. The one trap I still remember to this day was a simple tripwire someone placed over a set of stairs leading down into a basement. It was the smallest string of a guitar, stretched ankle high over the top step. I cut it down with my pocket knife and ventured in to see if anyone’s remains were at its base. All I found was a dry, dark splotch on the floor near the bottom step.

What I’m trying to say is, I’ve been through some messed-up scenarios that most people would probably see a shrink for, and that many more would call me insane for enjoying the thrill of. Thing was, I couldn’t help myself. I loved the thrill. I loved the rush of the unknown and the adrenaline pumping through my veins. I hadn’t found a place that was too isolated or too sketchy for me to explore until I found that house. I haven’t been the same since I got out of it, and it’s only with a bottle of liquid courage I can find the strength to type this out. I’ll do my best.

I questioned everyone in my neighborhood, but nobody knew a thing about it. They didn’t even think it was strange. They’d simply tell me they hadn’t noticed it and that it must’ve been unearthed from some recent construction work. I didn’t buy that for a second, but when it came down to brass tax I didn’t really have an idea what I was theorizing. They were being rational. A normal person would see a house like that and come up with an explanation that blamed their own senses. I couldn’t do that. Against every sane thought, I knew that the house hadn’t always been there, nor the woods around it. 

The woods weren’t some mystery, technically. The neighborhood had trees and brush all over it, but this patch was still odd. It was as if someone cut a piece of paper in two, then connected the pieces with a different piece of paper. That’s probably a shit analogy, but the point is, it was like the land was spliced in. The grass in that spot was slightly different in hue, and the bark on the trees was ever so coarser than the others around them. It was like Photoshop but IRL. I tried taking a photo with my phone, but none of the differences I noticed with my eye were visible on camera.

I got creative and started asking the city for blueprints of my area. Sure enough, there it’d be on the maps. I tried satellite imaging as well, and every timestamp I checked showed the same image. It had always been there, and I had no memory of it. 

Once I’d scrounged up everything I could find- which wasn’t much, besides the address and the name of the dude who last lived there (Frank or something)- I grabbed my bug-out bag, some flashlights, food, and boots, then headed for the house. Thankfully, my street had little to no foot traffic or police presence, so getting charged with breaking-and-entering was the last thing on my mind. I made it to the house without being seen and by dusk was standing at the precipice of its decrepit splendor.

The vines looked almost black in the dying light, and the little barbs that ran along their spines stood almost bone white. I’d never seen a plant like that before, but I wasn’t and won't ever be a plant-ologist- or whatever the term is- so I pushed on. A stale breeze kissed my cheeks as I stepped up to the front door and tried the doorknob. I didn’t know why then, but the hairs on my neck stood up. I blamed the excitement of the situation at first, but I know now what I should’ve admitted then. 

I felt like I was being watched. Something, somewhere, had eyes on me that I couldn’t see. I should’ve turned back, run away, and never looked down that street again, but I didn’t. I turned the doorknob and went inside, like an insect willingly flying into a spiderweb. I didn’t even question why a house like that would be unlocked. I just went inside, and I’m still dealing with the consequences.

The house was not at all what I expected. It was dirty and overgrown with those same black vines, but it didn’t look like a standard empty home. There was furniture, for one. An old, dirty couch sat in a living room down the hall from a dining room populated with chairs and a large wooden table. A set of stairs covered in those same black vines led into a second-level cloaked in shadow, and the faint silhouette of a sink down the hall led me to believe a kitchen was in the back, facing the yard. There was a television, covered in grime and dust, and even a coffee table with paperbacks and magazines stacked haphazardly on its surface. 

This immediately struck me as strange. Most abandoned places weren’t furnished like this. When people leave, they take their stuff- especially if it's a TV or couch. The books weren’t anything special, but they were still personal belongings. I went to the kitchen and, sure enough, there were dishes still in the sink. Those same vines covered the backyard window like a web and made the trees look like a wall of dark bark. I turned on my flashlight, but it didn’t help illuminate anything out the window. The back door was locked, so I looped around and continued back to the stairs. I listened to my heart beat the entire way. 

It was like someone had left the place in a hurry. They hadn’t taken anything with them. The table and chairs of the dining room looked nice, and all of the dishes in the room’s china hutch were pristine behind graying glass. I kept my hand near the knife on my belt as I climbed the staircase and into the narrow halls above.

There were only three rooms on the second level. There was a coat closet, complete with some men’s jackets long since gobbled to hell by moths, a bathroom that felt half the size of that closet, and then a master bedroom. There was still a bed with sheets and pillows, a dresser, a mirror, and a window covered in - you guessed it- vines. It was now dark, and my flashlight was my only source of light. I searched through the dressers and found clothes, completely folded and undisturbed. I was starting to get more and more freaked out, and wondered if this house truly was abandoned when my light fell upon a picture frame on the desk.

In the photo was a man, probably in his early thirties, smiling with his arm around a blonde woman. She was leaning into him, placing a tender hand against his chest, showing off a ring. They seemed happy, at first glance.

However, the longer I stared at them, trying to picture them living and going about their lives in that house, the more uneasy I felt. Something was wrong with them, despite the smiles and loving stances they held, and it flickered in my brain like an optical illusion. I told myself it was a trick of the light- a glare or scratch on the frame, but I couldn’t unsee it.

For a split second, I swear it looked like the woman had no face.

I heard a loud and long creek that was probably the house against the wind, but it still sent me rushing down the stairs and back out into the main level. I was starting to panic and was about to rush out the door, but something stopped me. 

Off to the right of the stairs, cloaked by the growing shadows of dusk, was another door. That alone didn’t make me freeze, and my instincts of self-preservation definitely hadn’t disappeared by that point, but another sensation overruled my desires.

This door, a door I hadn’t seen before, that I was sure wasn’t there when I walked in, sat slightly ajar, cracked as if in a wicked smile. It was darker than black, and as I slowly raised my light, I beheld more and more of those black, thorny vines creeping from its maw. I should have left. I should have gone to the front door and run home before whoever or whatever the hell lived there showed up. 

I didn’t, though. I’m too curious for my own good, and I paid for it. The hell I live in now was paid for with the creak of a door hinge. 

I looked into the entryway and discovered another set of stairs that led further down into the house. They weren’t ugly basement stairs either. They were identical to the set I’d come from. Old hardwood that used to have a varnish finish, with a fine wall railing along one side of the wall. 

I know I’m mentioning them a lot, but I cannot stress enough how seriously heavy and thick these vine patches were. Down the steps, it looked like they grew thicker, the leaves bigger, and the thorns…. I wish I had understood how serious those things were. Instead of turning back, I took out a small machete I kept in my bag and proceeded downward into the dark. My hands trembled as I went.

In the basement, or what I assumed was the basement, I found a scene straight out of Jumanji. The entire room was nothing but kudzu, ferns, and those vines. They encrusted everything, leaving only the silhouettes of furniture. An armchair, a table, a counter, etc. However, in the middle of the room was a mass I couldn’t identify. I walked over to it and began to pick at it with my machete. I gave it a kick, and in the process of doing so, got a thorn stuck in my boot. It didn’t stab me, but that thing was fucking huge. I once got stuck by a cactus while scoping out a Cold War government facility in Arizona, and that thing was easily as sharp as a pin. This thorn was the size of a fucking toothpick. It looked more like bone than plant and took a good bit of elbow grease to wrench from my foot. I was lucky I didn’t get stuck, but I wasn’t lucky enough to have common sense. 

I started hacking through the brush and kicking away what clumps I could with my boot. I was half convinced I was unearthing nothing but decrepit vegetation, but then my machete struck something solid. I focused my flashlight, expecting a rock or some other random item, but I wasn’t that lucky.

I screamed and almost stumbled to the ground. I’m glad I remembered to mind the thorns, or my injuries would have been much worse. I stood with trembling legs as my breathing became sporadic. I’d dropped the flashlight, leaving only a slice of white to fill the room around me. I thought about making for the stairs, but I was petrified. I’d never been so scared in my life. The closest thing I could even compare it to was when I’d crawled out of a crash my senior year, the sole survivor of a drunk driver. The shock had rendered me speechless for two hours before the cops finally managed to get me to stutter out a statement. This fear was different. It was a seed that’d lodged itself in my stomach and grown into a desire to never sleep again. 

Through all of my theories about who had or did live in that house, about where they’d gone or when they were coming back, I’d neglected a serious and terrifying possibility. As I stared into the shadows of a face with sunken, grey cheeks and hollow eyes sprouting with black leaves, the answer became clear. 

He never left. 

In some ways, I think I didn’t either.

I need another drink. I’ll update when my hands can stop shaking.

The house appeared one day, though I can’t say when. It wasn’t like it was built overnight, or like it was hidden in the crook of a forgotten bend of street. It was as if it had always been there. It was old and overgrown with dark vines and leaves that crusted its brick frame. I remember it feeling off from the moment I turned down my street. It didn’t replace anything or end up wedged in a space that already existed. My street was longer than usual, with a more pronounced bend. There were more trees, and the house was nestled among them like a rock in tall grass.

As you can probably guess from the title, it was right up my alley. I love exploring forgotten places and have ever since I was in high school. You see some freaky shit in this hobby, and the adrenaline rush you feel when you’re in the dark cavity of some abandoned building cannot be understated. I’ve seen missile silos from the Cold War, plantation houses in the middle of nowhere, and found a damp room in a hospital littered with the limbs and appendages of dolls from every corner of the uncanny valley.

You experience a fair deal of risk, too. I’ve never been arrested, but some buddies of mine have, and the fines almost put them on the streets. That being said, legal troubles are the safer things to manage when roving around haunts like mine. Homeless squatters have threatened to cut me for encroaching, and I once got chased by a pack of stray dogs for getting too close to some pups. Out of all of them, though, the worst by far are traps.

Teenage shit-heads and sadistic wackos love leaving booby traps in places. Typically, it’s nothing too sophisticated, but the danger and malice that go into them stay with you. The one trap I still remember to this day was a simple tripwire someone placed over a set of stairs leading down into a basement. It was the smallest string of a guitar, stretched ankle high over the top step. I cut it down with my pocket knife and ventured in to see if anyone’s remains were at its base. All I found was a dry, dark splotch on the floor near the bottom step.

What I’m trying to say is, I’ve been through some messed-up scenarios that most people would probably see a shrink for, and that many more would call me insane for enjoying the thrill of. Thing was, I couldn’t help myself. I loved the thrill. I loved the rush of the unknown and the adrenaline pumping through my veins. I hadn’t found a place that was too isolated or too sketchy for me to explore until I found that house. I haven’t been the same since I got out of it, and it’s only with a bottle of liquid courage I can find the strength to type this out. I’ll do my best.

I questioned everyone in my neighborhood, but nobody knew a thing about it. They didn’t even think it was strange. They’d simply tell me they hadn’t noticed it and that it must’ve been unearthed from some recent construction work. I didn’t buy that for a second, but when it came down to brass tax I didn’t really have an idea what I was theorizing. They were being rational. A normal person would see a house like that and come up with an explanation that blamed their own senses. I couldn’t do that. Against every sane thought, I knew that the house hadn’t always been there, nor the woods around it. 

The woods weren’t some mystery, technically. The neighborhood had trees and brush all over it, but this patch was still odd. It was as if someone cut a piece of paper in two, then connected the pieces with a different piece of paper. That’s probably a shit analogy, but the point is, it was like the land was spliced in. The grass in that spot was slightly different in hue, and the bark on the trees was ever so coarser than the others around them. It was like Photoshop but IRL. I tried taking a photo with my phone, but none of the differences I noticed with my eye were visible on camera.

I got creative and started asking the city for blueprints of my area. Sure enough, there it’d be on the maps. I tried satellite imaging as well, and every timestamp I checked showed the same image. It had always been there, and I had no memory of it. 

Once I’d scrounged up everything I could find- which wasn’t much, besides the address and the name of the dude who last lived there (Frank or something)- I grabbed my bug-out bag, some flashlights, food, and boots, then headed for the house. Thankfully, my street had little to no foot traffic or police presence, so getting charged with breaking-and-entering was the last thing on my mind. I made it to the house without being seen and by dusk was standing at the precipice of its decrepit splendor.

The vines looked almost black in the dying light, and the little barbs that ran along their spines stood almost bone white. I’d never seen a plant like that before, but I wasn’t and won't ever be a plant-ologist- or whatever the term is- so I pushed on. A stale breeze kissed my cheeks as I stepped up to the front door and tried the doorknob. I didn’t know why then, but the hairs on my neck stood up. I blamed the excitement of the situation at first, but I know now what I should’ve admitted then. 

I felt like I was being watched. Something, somewhere, had eyes on me that I couldn’t see. I should’ve turned back, run away, and never looked down that street again, but I didn’t. I turned the doorknob and went inside, like an insect willingly flying into a spiderweb. I didn’t even question why a house like that would be unlocked. I just went inside, and I’m still dealing with the consequences.

The house was not at all what I expected. It was dirty and overgrown with those same black vines, but it didn’t look like a standard empty home. There was furniture, for one. An old, dirty couch sat in a living room down the hall from a dining room populated with chairs and a large wooden table. A set of stairs covered in those same black vines led into a second-level cloaked in shadow, and the faint silhouette of a sink down the hall led me to believe a kitchen was in the back, facing the yard. There was a television, covered in grime and dust, and even a coffee table with paperbacks and magazines stacked haphazardly on its surface. 

This immediately struck me as strange. Most abandoned places weren’t furnished like this. When people leave, they take their stuff- especially if it's a TV or couch. The books weren’t anything special, but they were still personal belongings. I went to the kitchen and, sure enough, there were dishes still in the sink. Those same vines covered the backyard window like a web and made the trees look like a wall of dark bark. I turned on my flashlight, but it didn’t help illuminate anything out the window. The back door was locked, so I looped around and continued back to the stairs. I listened to my heart beat the entire way. 

It was like someone had left the place in a hurry. They hadn’t taken anything with them. The table and chairs of the dining room looked nice, and all of the dishes in the room’s china hutch were pristine behind graying glass. I kept my hand near the knife on my belt as I climbed the staircase and into the narrow halls above.

There were only three rooms on the second level. There was a coat closet, complete with some men’s jackets long since gobbled to hell by moths, a bathroom that felt half the size of that closet, and then a master bedroom. There was still a bed with sheets and pillows, a dresser, a mirror, and a window covered in - you guessed it- vines. It was now dark, and my flashlight was my only source of light. I searched through the dressers and found clothes, completely folded and undisturbed. I was starting to get more and more freaked out, and wondered if this house truly was abandoned when my light fell upon a picture frame on the desk.

In the photo was a man, probably in his early thirties, smiling with his arm around a blonde woman. She was leaning into him, placing a tender hand against his chest, showing off a ring. They seemed happy, at first glance.

However, the longer I stared at them, trying to picture them living and going about their lives in that house, the more uneasy I felt. Something was wrong with them, despite the smiles and loving stances they held, and it flickered in my brain like an optical illusion. I told myself it was a trick of the light- a glare or scratch on the frame, but I couldn’t unsee it.

For a split second, I swear it looked like the woman had no face.

I heard a loud and long creek that was probably the house against the wind, but it still sent me rushing down the stairs and back out into the main level. I was starting to panic and was about to rush out the door, but something stopped me. 

Off to the right of the stairs, cloaked by the growing shadows of dusk, was another door. That alone didn’t make me freeze, and my instincts of self-preservation definitely hadn’t disappeared by that point, but another sensation overruled my desires.

This door, a door I hadn’t seen before, that I was sure wasn’t there when I walked in, sat slightly ajar, cracked as if in a wicked smile. It was darker than black, and as I slowly raised my light, I beheld more and more of those black, thorny vines creeping from its maw. I should have left. I should have gone to the front door and run home before whoever or whatever the hell lived there showed up. 

I didn’t, though. I’m too curious for my own good, and I paid for it. The hell I live in now was paid for with the creak of a door hinge. 

I looked into the entryway and discovered another set of stairs that led further down into the house. They weren’t ugly basement stairs either. They were identical to the set I’d come from. Old hardwood that used to have a varnish finish, with a fine wall railing along one side of the wall. 

I know I’m mentioning them a lot, but I cannot stress enough how seriously heavy and thick these vine patches were. Down the steps, it looked like they grew thicker, the leaves bigger, and the thorns…. I wish I had understood how serious those things were. Instead of turning back, I took out a small machete I kept in my bag and proceeded downward into the dark. My hands trembled as I went.

In the basement, or what I assumed was the basement, I found a scene straight out of Jumanji. The entire room was nothing but kudzu, ferns, and those vines. They encrusted everything, leaving only the silhouettes of furniture. An armchair, a table, a counter, etc. However, in the middle of the room was a mass I couldn’t identify. I walked over to it and began to pick at it with my machete. I gave it a kick, and in the process of doing so, got a thorn stuck in my boot. It didn’t stab me, but that thing was fucking huge. I once got stuck by a cactus while scoping out a Cold War government facility in Arizona, and that thing was easily as sharp as a pin. This thorn was the size of a fucking toothpick. It looked more like bone than plant and took a good bit of elbow grease to wrench from my foot. I was lucky I didn’t get stuck, but I wasn’t lucky enough to have common sense. 

I started hacking through the brush and kicking away what clumps I could with my boot. I was half convinced I was unearthing nothing but decrepit vegetation, but then my machete struck something solid. I focused my flashlight, expecting a rock or some other random item, but I wasn’t that lucky.

I screamed and almost stumbled to the ground. I’m glad I remembered to mind the thorns, or my injuries would have been much worse. I stood with trembling legs as my breathing became sporadic. I’d dropped the flashlight, leaving only a slice of white to fill the room around me. I thought about making for the stairs, but I was petrified. I’d never been so scared in my life. The closest thing I could even compare it to was when I’d crawled out of a crash my senior year, the sole survivor of a drunk driver. The shock had rendered me speechless for two hours before the cops finally managed to get me to stutter out a statement. This fear was different. It was a seed that’d lodged itself in my stomach and grown into a desire to never sleep again. 

Through all of my theories about who had or did live in that house, about where they’d gone or when they were coming back, I’d neglected a serious and terrifying possibility. As I stared into the shadows of a face with sunken, grey cheeks and hollow eyes sprouting with black leaves, the answer became clear. 

He never left. 

In some ways, I think I didn’t either.

I need another drink. I’ll update when my hands can stop shaking.