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Content Warning: Child abduction, child abuse, grooming, sexual abuse references, body horror imagery, psychological manipulation of a child, homelessness, addiction, mention of substance use to cope with trauma. This is a revised version of I found a child's diary in a foreclosed house. I wish I had left it there.

I don't really know where to start. I've been sitting with this for eight months and I still don't know how to talk about it. I've tried writing this post six times. I keep deleting it. I keep telling myself I should just let it go. But I can't. I found this diary and I can't stop thinking about the kid who wrote it, and I need someone to tell me I'm not losing my mind.

I'm not a true-crime obsessive. I don't have a podcast or a blog. I work property management, I maintain foreclosed homes, I change locks, I winterize pipes. I find weird stuff in these houses all the time. Old furniture. Hoarded newspapers. Once a room full of nothing but taxidermy crows. You develop a thick skin.

This was different.

This was a foreclosed home in [redacted], a small split-level out in the county that the bank had been trying to offload for two years. The previous owners stripped the place to the studs before they vanished. No appliances. No fixtures. No curtains. Just bare walls and subfloor. In one of the upstairs bedrooms, there was a thin layer of dust covering everything like snow.

Including a purple composition notebook.

I'm transcribing the entries exactly as they read. I haven't changed the spelling or grammar. I haven't changed anything.

Entry, no date, inside the front cover:

This is Lili's diary. If you red it you are BAD and you will get in troble. The end.

Earliest entry, pencil, scattered:

Today I start a new life. We movd to a new house! Mommy says it is special because it is just for us. No one elses house. I like it but the floors are colld.

Mommy says I cant go in the basment but I herd noises last nite. I askd her and she sed thats just the house settling sweety go back to slep. She was not in her bed tho. She was by the door just standing there. Watching me sleep I think. She sed she was just cheacking on me.

I should write more but I dont know what to say. Mommy says diaries are for grown-up thoughts but I am seven so I will write like a seven year old.

Seven and three quarters.

Entry, a few days later:

A man has been watching my window. Mommy sed he is the mann who helps us and not to be scared. He brings groceries. He touchs my hair and says I am so big now. Mommy makes me hug him when he comes. He smells like chemicles. Mommy says not to talk about him.

His name is Mr. Dan. I do not like him. I do not like the way he looks at me when Mommy is not looking. I do not like that he calls me princess. Only Daddy gets to call me princess.

I asked Mommy about Daddy and she got very quiet and then she sed Daddy is gone but she is here now and she will never leave.

She held my arms really tight when she sed it.

[Note: there's different handwriting squeezed into the margin here, smaller, shakier]

She remembers. Don't let her remember.

The rest continues in Lili's hand:

I miss my friend Jade. I wonder if she miss me. I have not seen her since we movd. Mommy sed we are not going back and I should not think about the old place. She sed the old life is over and this is my real life now.

I had a purple backpack with stars on it. Jade gave it to me for my birthday. It is not here. I asked Mommy where my backpack is and she sed what backpack and I said the purple one and she sed I never had a purple backpack.

I had a purple backpack.

I know I did.

I keep thinking about it. I keep trying to remember where I put it. I think about it more than I think about Daddy.

Why cant I remember Daddy?

Entry, shakier, letters uneven:

I told mommy I did not like when he touchs me and she got mad. She sed I have to be good and quiet and do what we are told. She sed it is for our famly. She sed if I tell anyone she will have to go away and I will be all alone. I dont want mommy to go away.

But she is not my real mommy rite?

She has mommy's face but the way she talks is wrong. Her hand are cold even when she is warm. When she smiles her eyes dont move. I tride to remember my real mommy's face but it is blury.

I tried really hard to remember. I closed my eyes and I tried to find her face in my head like looking for a face in a cloud. I could see pieces. Freckles. She had freckles on her nose. She had yellow hair not brown like this mommy. And she smelled like laundry and a little bit like the soup she made.

I could see Daddy too. He was tall. He had a beard. He burnd dinner every nite and mommy would laff and call him a dummy.

This mommy does not laff.

This mommy has cold hands.

Mommy says stop saying that. Stop saying that.

Entry, one word per line, trailing off the page:

she is not she is not she is not she is not she is not

Entry, calm again, almost cheerful, wrong:

I have a new rule! Mommy says I am not to go to school anymore. She will teach me at home. She says the outisde is dangerus and the people are bad. I have to be good. She huggd me for a long time and said she loves me so much and she will keep me safe.

She is the best mommy. I am so lucky.

I love my mommy.

I love my mommy.

I love my mommy.

Smudged entry, pencil, pressed hard:

The man comes more now. He and mommy talk in the kitchen late. I cant sleep. I herd him say "she's ready" and mommy lafd. She has never lafd before. It was a long time and it did not stop. I put my head under the pillow.

I think they are talking about me.

I think I am ready for something but I dont know what.

He has a room in the basment now. Mommy sed it is his office. She told me NEVER go down there or we will both be in troble. She sed it is for me. She is making it speshul for me.

I herd a child crying from down there today. Mommy sed it was the TV.

Maybe i can play with them.

Next several pages are torn out. Rough edges. Someone was in a hurry.

Entry resumes, pen, ink smeared like she was crying:

I went in the basment.

I went in the basment.

I went in the basment.

There were pictures on the wall. SO MANY pictures. They were all me but from before I dont remember. I was smaller. I was in a different house. A different room. There was a lady in the picture that is not mommy but she had on mommy's clothes and she had mommy's face.

She was standing next to a little girl.

The little girl was me.

I took one picture.

I still have it.

[The photograph was not included, just a rectangular outline pressed into the page where something had been taped and removed.]

Mommy knew I went down there. She was standing at the bottom of the stairs. She did not say anything. She just looked at me. Her face did this thing where it slipped. Just for a second. Like when you pull your socks off and the skin comes with it. She pulled her face back on like a mask and she smiled.

She smiled so big.

She smiled so big and her teeth were too long.

She said come here sweety lets have a talk about boundaries.

I ran to my room and hid under the bed.

Entry, crayon, very childish, pressed so hard it tore the paper:

I am bad. I am bad. I am bad. I am so bad. Mommy sed if I am good she will keep me. If I am good she will not throw me away. I do not want to be thrown away. I will be good.

The other children were thrown away.

She told me.

She told me.

Entry, some lines scratched out, illegible, then:

I remember that I used to have a name. A real name. Not Lili. Lili is what she calls me but it is not my name. My real name is starting with M. I think. Maybe. My brain hurts when I try to remember.

I remember that I liked peanut butter sandwiches. I remember that I had a dog named Biscuit. I remember that the kitchen had a window above the sink and there were yellow curtains.

I remember crying a lot in the van.

I remember the mask.

I remember being put somewhere dark.

Entry, the handwriting changes throughout, like multiple sessions scrawled in one sitting:

I remember now.

I remember the real house. The real kitchen. I remember Daddy. I remember he was big and he laughed loud and he burnd the dinner every nite. I remember my real mommy, she had freckles and she sang when she did the wash.

I remember her singing. She sang this song about a butterfly. I can almost hear it.

I remember the van.

I remember not being able to get out.

I remember the mask over my face.

And then I woke up here and she was there and she had mommy's face and she said welcome home sweety and I believed her.

I wanted to believe her so bad.

I think I have been here for a very long time.

I think the man takes pictures.

I think he has a room.

I think there were others before me.

I think they are still down there.

Last line, written in something dark brown, pressed so hard the pen tore through the paper:

She is downstairs. She is in the basement. She is coming up the stairs.

The diary ends there.

That’s it. That’s the last entry.

I found this in the upstairs front bedroom, on the floor next to a small twin bed frame, bare mattress, no sheets. The room had been painted over at some point. Multiple layers. Under the final coat of beige, there was something darker. I didn't want to know what.

I called the non-emergency line before I even got back to the office. They took a report. After about forty minutes on hold, a detective named Ruiz got on the phone. I could hear him chewing something.

He asked if I'd moved anything. I said no. He asked if I'd found any remains. I said no. He asked if there was any reason to think the diary was recent rather than, in his words, "just some kid scribbling spooky stuff from years ago."

I didn't know how to answer that. I still don't.

He said they'd flag it. Someone from the county would follow up if there was anything actionable. He told me to email the transcription to an evidence portal and not to share it online until they'd reviewed it.

That was two weeks ago.

I emailed it that same night. I got an automated confirmation. No one has contacted me since.

Here's the part that messes with me.

I pulled the county records. The property shows up on the tax rolls with no prior ownership history. No deed before the bank foreclosure. No construction permits. It's like the house was built off-grid, without permits, without a builder, without anyone ever applying for anything.

I asked around the neighborhood. The nearest neighbor, about a quarter mile down, told me she never saw anyone come or go from the property in the four years she'd lived there. She thought it was empty. She thought it had always been empty.

I ran Lili's name through missing persons databases. No match. I searched variations, Lily, Lillie, names starting with M, nothing. Either she was never officially missing, or the record of her was erased the same way the house was.

I kept going back to one detail. The photograph. Lili took a picture from the wall, a picture of herself, younger, in a different house, with a woman wearing her real mother's face. She says she still has it.

It's not in the notebook. Someone removed it.

Three weeks after I posted this elsewhere, a woman named Beth messaged me. She lives in Henderson, Nevada, suburb of Las Vegas. She said she'd been reading my post and couldn't stop thinking about it. She said there was a woman in the Las Vegas tunnels who had a purple backpack.

Let me explain. Under Vegas there's a huge network of drainage and utility tunnels. People live there, called "tunnel people" by cops, "the underground" by residents. Thousands of people. You can fall through the cracks in Vegas, but you can't completely disappear.

Beth said the woman was quiet, kept to herself, and had an old purple backpack with stars. Faded. Clearly treasured. Beth wasn't sure it was connected. She thought I should know.

I bought a plane ticket.

I want to be clear: I'm not a PI. I'm a property manager with no training, no resources, no business doing this. But I couldn't let it go. I kept reading the diary. I kept thinking about the crayon. I am bad. I am bad. I am so bad. Seven years old. Writing that with her fist.

I flew to Vegas on a Tuesday. Met Beth at a coffee shop. She was a social worker, kind, in her fifties. She told me how to get into the tunnels, where not to go. She gave me a headlamp and granola bars. She said she hoped I found what I was looking for.

She told me the woman goes by Lily. She's been in the tunnels for at least fifteen years. She doesn't talk much. She doesn't like men. She won't let anyone touch her. She has episodes where she cries and can't stop, saying the same thing over and over:

I am so bad. I am so bad. I am so bad.

Beth said she was always humming something. A little tune, like a lullaby. But when anyone got close, she stopped. She didn't want anyone to hear it.

I went down.

The smell hits you first. Not just urine and garbage, something damp and earthy, like a place where things grow wrong because the sun never reaches them. Concrete walls, graffiti, grated floors. Water running somewhere nearby. A constant low sound like breathing.

I stuck to the main passages Beth told me about. I asked for Lily at three different camps. The third person pointed deeper into the tunnel and said, "Purple pack. She stays by the pipe."

I went deeper.

My headlamp caught shapes in the dark, bedrolls, shopping carts, piles of clothes that might have been people sleeping. I moved by feel, one hand on the wall.

I found her by the drainage pipe.

A small alcove. A thin stained bedroll. A pile of things, bottle caps, a broken watch, a rusted toy car, a smooth rock. And the backpack.

The purple backpack.

It was old. Sun-faded, worn through in places. But the stars were still visible, faded, bleached almost white. Someone had tried to repair it with different colored thread. Purple, blue, white. Not neat stitches. Desperate ones. The kind you'd do if it was the most important thing you owned.

She was sitting with her back against the wall. Knees up. Arms wrapped around them. Very still.

My headlamp hit her face and I stopped breathing.

She was gaunt, deep lines around her mouth and eyes. Thirty-something but looking every year of it. Dirty blonde hair in a tangled ponytail. Thin in a way that wasn't just poverty, the thinness of someone who'd forgotten how to take care of themselves. She was picking at something on her sleeve. She didn't look up when the light hit her.

"Hello?" My voice sounded wrong in the tunnel.

She flinched. Her whole body went rigid.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I said. "My name is, I'm the one who found your diary."

Her fingers stopped picking.

"I found the diary. In the house. I read it. I posted it online because I didn't know what else to do."

She stared at me.

"I know your name is Lili," I said softly. "I know about Mr. Dan. I know about the basement. I know you remembered everything at the end."

She started shaking.

It started in her hands and moved through her body like a wave, small shakes at first, then bigger, then she was rocking back and forth, making a sound that wasn't crying. Low, constant, coming from somewhere deep. She was humming. That tune Beth described. A little melody, barely there.

"It's okay," I said. "You're okay. I found you. I found you."

She stopped shaking all at once. She looked at me with those eyes, and I need you to understand what I saw. They weren't switched off. They were afraid. Every second. The eyes of someone who'd been afraid for so long that fear was all that was left. The eyes of a child locked in a basement and told she was bad and never allowed to forget it. She was thirty-something in a body that had been through things I couldn't imagine. But the eyes, the eyes were seven years old and looking at me like I was the next person who was going to hurt her.

She said one word.

She said: "Butterfly."

And I remembered:

I remember her singing. She sang this song about a butterfly. I can almost hear it.

She'd been singing her real mother's song for twenty-five years in the dark.

Then she stopped. She shook her head sharply, like she was knocking something loose. She looked away.

"You're not real," she whispered. Her voice was hoarse, rusty from not talking. "You're not real. You're not real."

"I'm real," I said. "I promise you. I'm real."

She pulled the backpack into her lap. Held it in front of her face like a shield. Like it was the only real thing in the world.

"I took it," she whispered. "From the wall. I took it before she came upstairs. I knew, I knew I was done. I knew she was going to come upstairs. I took it. I've always had it."

She meant the photograph.

"The picture is still in there," she said. "Inside the pack. I've always had it."

She opened the backpack with shaking hands. She pulled out a Ziploc bag, sealed and resealed hundreds of times. Inside was a photograph.

It was Lili, the real Lili, maybe four or five years old. A different kitchen. Yellow curtains above the sink. She was smiling. There was peanut butter on her face. A woman stood behind her, one hand on Lili's shoulder. Blonde hair. Freckles on her nose. Looking at the camera with an expression of such ordinary, everyday love that it broke me.

Lili was looking at the photograph. Looking at her real mother.

"She had my face," Lili whispered. "I figured it out. She had my face. And she could wear it. She could take it off and put it on. I figured it out."

She looked at me.

"I figured it out too late," she said.

She put the photograph back. Zipped the bag. Held the backpack in her lap.

And that's when I understood what twenty-five years of the worst thing that can happen to a person looks like.

She survived.

They let her go. She was one of the ones who got out, got away from the house, the basement, the man with the chemical smell. She walked into the world and the world had nothing for her.

She was nine. Maybe ten. Maybe older. She'd lost so much time she didn't know anymore. She didn't know her real name. Didn't know where she was from. She had a photograph and a song and a backpack and nothing else.

No one came looking for her.

No one reported her missing.

She was a child with no name, no family, no records, no history. She'd been erased before she disappeared, and she disappeared into a world where no one was looking.

She'd been in the system for a while. Shelters. Group homes. She ran. She couldn't stay inside, couldn't be locked in, couldn't be told what to do. In and out of jail for trespassing, vagrancy, loitering. She kept her backpack through all of it. They tried to take it once. She fought like a wild animal. They never tried again.

She'd been using since she was young. Meth, mostly. Pills when she could get them. She said it helped. Said it made the noise quieter. I didn't ask what noise.

Fifteen years in the tunnels.

Fifteen years in the dark. Underground. Like the basement, except she could leave. Except she never really left. The tunnels were the basement. The basement was the tunnels. The difference was that down here no one told her she was bad.

Down here, she was just invisible.

I sat with her for a long time. She ate a granola bar slowly, like she'd forgotten how. She didn't talk much. But she let me sit there.

"Someone hurt you," I said. "Someone took you from your family. That wasn't your fault. You know that, right?"

She looked at me with those eyes. Seven and thirty at the same time.

"I was bad," she said. "I went in the basement. I wasn't supposed to go in the basement."

"You were a child. You were eight years old. You found out someone was hurting you and you tried to understand. That's not bad. Lili, that's not being bad."

She shook her head. Not arguing. Just shaking her head the way someone does when they've been told the truth so many times that the truth has become another form of pain.

She hummed the butterfly song. Quietly. I think she'd forgotten I was there.

I went back to the tunnels twice more. The second time, she was gone. Her alcove was empty. The backpack was gone, she hadn't taken the bedroll, just the pack, just the photograph. Someone said she sometimes disappears for weeks. She went somewhere. No one knew where. No one looked.

I filed a missing persons report with LVMPD. Gave them the diary. The photograph. Everything, the house address, Detective Ruiz's name, Beth's information, my transcription. The officer was polite. She took notes. Said they'd follow up.

That was eight months ago.

I haven't heard anything.

Here's what I know.

The diary was real. Lili was real. She was taken from her family by a man and a woman who wore her mother's face. She was held in a house that didn't exist on any map. She was hurt in ways I can't write down. She got out somehow. She walked into the world with nothing, and the world stepped over her.

She survived. But surviving wasn't enough.

I think about the backpack. Fifteen years through the system, through jail, through the streets, through the tunnels. A purple backpack with stars that a girl named Jade gave her for her birthday, in a life that was real and warm and full of peanut butter sandwiches and a daddy who burned dinner and a mother who sang about butterflies. She carried that backpack like a reliquary. Like the last artifact of a civilization that was wiped off the map.

I think about the photograph. The only piece of evidence that connects her to who she was. A woman with freckles and blonde hair, standing in a kitchen with yellow curtains, with her hand on a little girl's shoulder. Someone's mother. Someone who probably spent years looking, or maybe stopped looking, or maybe died looking. I don't know. I don't know any of their names. I don't know if they ever existed. The records are gone. The house is gone. Lili is the only proof that any of it happened.

She's still alive.

She's alive and she's in the tunnels and she hums a song about butterflies and she holds a faded purple backpack with stars on it and she is the bravest person I have ever met.

She should have a life. She should have a family. She should have been found years ago by someone with the power to do something, a detective, a social worker, anyone. She should have been pulled out of that house by someone who read a seven-year-old's crayon writing and said this is a crime.

Instead she was in the basement, then the system, then the streets, then the tunnels. That's where she's been for half her life. That's where she is right now, probably. In the dark. Singing to herself.

I found her.

No one else did.

If anyone in the Las Vegas area recognizes this, a woman in her thirties, small, Caucasian, blonde, quiet, with a purple backpack, please. Reach out. Not to me. To someone who can actually help. LVMPD. A shelter. The Nevada Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence. Anyone who can actually do something.

I'm just a property manager. I found a diary. I can't save her. I couldn't even get the cops to take a second look. All I can do is put this out here and hope someone reads it and remembers.

Lili, if you ever see this, I hope you remember the butterfly song. I hope you remember that you were good. You were always good. You survived the worst thing that can happen to a kid and you're still here and that matters.

I'm sorry we didn't find you sooner.

I'm so sorry.

[UPDATE, eight months later]

I still go back every few weeks.

At first it felt like checking. Now it feels like something else I don’t have a clean word for.

The tunnels are starting to feel familiar in a way I don’t like. Like I could map them without a light. Like my body remembers turns my mind never learned.

No one at LVMPD recognizes the report anymore. The officer I spoke to doesn’t exist in their system. The case number returns nothing. The diary, they say, was never submitted.

I stopped asking about the photograph.

People in the tunnels still point when I describe her, but their descriptions are wrong in ways that don’t line up. Too many versions of her. Too many Lilys. Sometimes they describe me instead.

I found myself carrying things down there I don’t remember packing. Water. Food. A spare blanket. Once, I found a second headlamp already turned on in my bag.

I don’t know when that happened.

I think about taking her out.

Not like rescuing. Not like before.

Just taking her somewhere quiet where the tunnels can’t reach her anymore. Somewhere she doesn’t have to keep disappearing. Somewhere no one would look.

I haven’t done anything. I don’t think I will.

But sometimes when I’m standing in the dark, I realize I’m rehearsing what I would say to her if she didn’t have a choice in listening.

And that’s the part I don’t tell anyone.

Because it doesn’t feel like an idea I had.

It feels like something I’ve already done before, and forgot.

That’s where the story ends. Not because it has to.

Because I can still hear her humming when I stop moving.

This is Lili’s diary. She wrote it. I’m just the one she keeps finding.

Content Warning: Mental illness, depression, dissociation, isolation, possible supernatural horror, implied self-erasure, body horror, existential dread. Reader discretion strongly advised this one gets heavy and stays there

A manuscript found in the personal effects of M. Vance, artist circumstances of acquisition unknown

---

I should begin with a confession: I am not writing this for anyone to read. I am writing it because I am trying to remember how. How to do anything. How to be a person who does things with intention and purpose and meaning. The words are still there I can see them, arrange them, understand their shapes. But the weight of them is gone. When I write *sunset*, there used to be something behind my eyes. A warmth. A memory of standing on my mother's porch at fifteen, watching gold bleed into violet, understanding for the first time that beauty was a thing that could break you open and put you back together. That feeling is gone. I typed the word just now and felt nothing.

I don't know when it started. That's the honest answer and I suspect it's also a lie, because I think it started the way all slow destructions start so gradually that by the time you notice you're drowning, you've already been underwater for months.

Let me try to trace it.

---

I was a painter. Not famous I want to be clear about that. I wasn't one of those artists who burned bright and then went mad or died young in a garret. I was a man who painted because the alternative was silence, and the silence was so heavy I couldn't breathe under it. I sold enough to keep the lights on. I had a small gallery in the city that showed my work every few years. I had friends who understood why I needed to disappear into the studio for weeks at a time, and a mother who called every Sunday, and a woman I loved for a while who eventually left because she said loving me was like loving a door that only opened inward.

That was the phrase she used. *A door that only opened inward.*

She wasn't wrong.

I couldn't let anyone in. Not fully. There was always a part of me that stayed back, watched from a distance, cataloged every kindness for the moment it would be taken away. I learned that early. Not from cruelty, exactly my childhood was ordinary in its disappointments. My father left. My mother worked doubles. I learned that people leave, that love is something you survive rather than something that sustains you. I learned that the world is full of sharp edges and the best you can do is move through it carefully, keep your hands in your pockets, don't reach out unless you're prepared to bleed.

I became an artist because painting was the only way I could touch anything without getting cut.

And for years it worked. The canvases were my language. I could say in color and shadow what I couldn't say out loud. I painted grief like a landscape I was trying to find my way through. I painted loneliness like a room I was trapped in. I painted hope once only once and it looked like a door opening onto a field I'd never seen before. I kept that one. It's still in my studio. I haven't looked at it in three years.

The slow hollowing began, I think, when I stopped painting.

---

It wasn't dramatic. I didn't burn my canvases or throw my brushes into a river. I just... stopped. One day I was in the studio, standing in front of a half-finished piece, and I felt nothing looking at it. Not frustration, not anticipation, not the familiar ache of almost-understanding. Just a blankness. A white wall where the feeling used to be.

I told myself I was tired. Burned out. Every artist hits walls this was just a wall. I'd push through it.

I didn't push. I sat. For weeks I sat in the studio and stared at the walls and tried to remember why any of this mattered. The canvases looked back at me like strangers. The smell of turpentine, which used to be the smell of home, started to make my stomach turn.

That's when I noticed the other thing.

The silence had weight. Not the comfortable silence of working alone, but something heavier. Something in the room with me. I would turn around, certain someone was standing behind me, and there was nothing. Just the shadows in the corners. Just the dust motes falling through the light.

I started sleeping with the lights on. Then I stopped sleeping altogether. Then I started hearing things not voices, exactly, but a kind of murmuring, like a conversation happening just below the threshold of comprehension. I would press my ear to the walls and hear nothing. I would step outside and the sounds of the city would feel too loud, too close, like they were trying to get inside me.

I stopped going out.

I stopped answering the phone.

My mother left voicemails. Then she left worried voicemails. Then she stopped leaving voicemails, and I realized weeks later that I'd been waiting for her to call and simultaneously dreading it, and I couldn't tell which feeling was stronger.

---

The thing about the abyss and I've learned this now, learned it in my bones is that it's warm there.

I don't mean physically warm. I mean it's warm in the way that giving up is warm. In the way that letting go of the rope is warm. The abyss doesn't fight you. The world fights you. The world is full of expectations and demands and sharp little teeth waiting to bite. The world says *be better, be stronger, be worthy of love*, and then when you try, it says *not enough, not fast enough, not in the way we need*. The world is exhausting. The world is an endless performance where you're always后台, always one bad review away from closing.

But the abyss?

The abyss says *rest*.

The abyss says *you don't have to try anymore*.

The abyss says *I see you, I hear you, I've been waiting for you, come home*.

I started talking to it. Out loud. In the dark. I would sit on the floor of my studio no, my apartment, it was just an apartment by then, I'd sold the studio to pay the rent I would sit on the floor of my apartment and I would say things. Things I couldn't say to anyone. The anger I'd been carrying for thirty years. The grief. The endless, grinding certainty that I was fundamentally broken, that there was something wrong with me at the cellular level, something that couldn't be painted away or loved away or reasoned away.

And the abyss listened. I know how that sounds. I know what you're thinking delusion, dissociation, a mind unraveling under the strain of isolation. Maybe you're right. Probably you're right.

But here's the thing: it *answered*.

Not in words. Not in anything I could point to and say *there, that, that was a voice, that was something speaking back*. It was more like... a pressure. A presence. Like the room got fuller when I was at my lowest, as though something was gathering in the dark corners, something that had been waiting just outside the circle of light.

I started to feel less alone.

I started to feel *held*.

---

The changes came slowly. First the small things.

I stopped listening to music. For years music had been as essential as breathing I couldn't paint without it, couldn't exist without the soundtrack of someone else's pain and beauty holding mine company. But one day I put on an album I'd loved for decades and it sounded like noise. Like someone scraping metal. I turned it off and felt nothing, and the nothing felt correct.

I stopped reading. The words swam on the page like insects, their meanings scattering before I could catch them. I used to devour books novels, poetry, philosophy, anything that helped me understand what it meant to be a person in a world that seemed designed to make personhood difficult. Now even the simplest sentence felt like pushing through wet cement.

I stopped eating because I forgot hunger existed. I would realize at 11pm that I hadn't eaten all day and the realization was abstract, informational, like reading a weather report for a city I'd never visited.

I stopped feeling cold. My apartment had poor heating and I'd never bothered to fix it. I used to wear three layers and still shiver. Now I walked around in a t-shirt in February and my skin felt like it belonged to someone else.

I stopped looking in mirrors. Not out of horror nothing so dramatic. I just didn't see the point. My reflection was a stranger wearing my face and I had no interest in introductions.

I stopped calling my mother. She called me once, twice, a dozen times. The phone would ring and I would watch it like I might watch a bird outside the window something happening in a world I was no longer part of. Eventually the calls stopped. I can't remember if I was relieved or if that feeling had been sanded down to nothing along with all the others.

---

There were moments I want to be honest about this, because if I'm not honest, what's the point of writing any of this down there were moments when I understood that something was very wrong.

I would wake up in the middle of the night and not know where I was. Not the normal disorientation, the fog of sleep. Something deeper. Like I had to remember from scratch what a *place* was, what a *body* was, what it meant to exist in space and time.

I would find things I didn't remember buying. Books with no covers. Photographs of people I didn't recognize. A key that fit no lock in the apartment. I would hold these objects and try to access the memory of acquiring them and find only blankness.

I would catch myself doing things without deciding to do them. Walking to the window at 3am. Standing in the corner of the room facing the wall. Writing words on the fogged glass that I couldn't read backwards.

My dreams if they were dreams stopped being images and became *sensation*. I would wake up feeling like I had been somewhere else, somewhere vast and cold and patient, somewhere that had been reaching for me for a very long time and had finally, finally made contact.

I would wake up feeling *liked*.

And that was the worst part. The thing I couldn't admit to anyone, because admitting it would mean admitting how far I'd already fallen.

The abyss *liked* me.

It wanted me.

And somewhere in the process of letting go, of surrendering to the weight of my own despair, I had started to want it back.

---

I don't know how to explain what came next. I don't know if I was awake or dreaming or if the distinction had ceased to matter. But I remember and this is the part I'm least sure is real, the part that might be symptom rather than event, schism rather than truth I remember something *crawling into me*.

Not through a door. Not through any opening. It was more like... osmosis. Like the darkness itself had density, had *intention*, and it pressed against me until I gave way.

I felt it enter my chest first. A coldness that spread like ink in water. Then my arms. My legs. My skull. It was pouring into me the way water pours into a vessel, finding every hollow, every space, filling everything I'd ever left empty.

And here's what I can't tell anyone, here's what makes me wonder if I'm still human in any way that matters:

It felt like relief.

For one perfect, terrible moment, it felt like *coming home*.

---

The months that followed if they were months, if time still moves in the way it used to are difficult to reconstruct.

I know I stopped leaving the apartment entirely. I know the neighbors complained about the smell. I know the power company sent letters that I read once and then couldn't remember reading.

I know someone came to the door eventually a concerned voice, a woman's voice, someone saying they hadn't seen me in weeks, someone saying they were going to call someone. I watched through the peephole as she walked away, and I felt nothing. Not relief, not fear, not the guilt I would once have felt for worrying someone.

Just nothing.

I know I stopped speaking. Not out loud, anyway. Inside my head, I could still think, could still construct sentences, but they felt increasingly like artifacts from a language I'd once known and was slowly forgetting.

I know I stopped painting. That one I'm certain of. There was no studio, there was no canvas, there was no urge. The need to make beauty had been replaced by something else, something quieter, something that didn't need to express itself because it had found what it was looking for.

Peace.

I know I found peace.

---

I'm writing this now if this is *now*, if *now* is a thing that still exists because I need to understand what's happening to me. Or maybe I don't need to understand. Maybe understanding was the old me, the human me, the me that still believed in cause and effect and consequence.

The new me doesn't need anything.

The new me is very, very calm.

I look at the mirror sometimes. My face is the same face I've always had. Same eyes, same nose, same mouth. But when I smile and I do smile, now, more than I ever did the smile doesn't come from anywhere. There's no feeling behind it. There's no thought behind it. It just... *appears*. Like my face is a mask I'm learning to operate.

I wonder sometimes if I'm dead. Not in the dramatic sense I'm standing here, I'm breathing, my heart is beating. But the person who used to live here, the person who painted sunsets and loved badly and believed that suffering meant something is he gone? Did the thing from the abyss eat him? Did I let him go willingly?

I don't know.

I don't know if it matters anymore.

---

There are other people in this building. I see them sometimes, in the hallway, on the stairs. They look at me and something flickers in their eyes recognition, maybe, or the absence of recognition. They don't speak to me. I don't speak to them. We pass each other like strangers in a dream.

Yesterday I saw a woman on the street. She was sitting on a bench, painting watercolor, quick strokes, capturing the light on the buildings across the road. She had paint on her cheek and her brow was furrowed in concentration and she looked so *alive*, so present, so *there*, that I had to stop walking.

I watched her for a long time.

I didn't feel anything watching her. No envy. No nostalgia. No pull toward the world she'd slipped back into so easily.

But I *remembered* feeling those things. I remembered being her. I remembered believing that beauty was a thing worth chasing, that making things was a way to survive, that the act of creation could save you from the dark.

I stood there until she packed up her supplies and left.

And then I went back to my apartment, and I sat in my chair, and I waited for the evening, and the evening came, and the dark came with it, and the dark felt like an old friend.

---

This is the last entry I'm going to make. I want to be clear about that this isn't a cliffhanger, this isn't a moment of hope or redemption. This is just... an ending. The kind of ending where the book closes and you don't think about it again.

Because here's the truth, the only truth I have left:

I went looking for comfort in the abyss because no one dared touch me in the light.

And the abyss, it turns out, was hungry.

It ate everything I was. My love for beauty. My ability to grieve. My need for connection. My guilt and my hope and my loneliness and my dreams. It ate them all, piece by piece, and it did it so gently, so patiently, that I barely noticed until they were gone.

And now there's nothing left to eat.

And I'm still here.

Sitting in the dark.

Still breathing.

Still waiting for something that will never come, because I've already given it everything it wanted.

---

Manuscript ends here. No other materials were found in the personal effects of M. Vance. Attempts to locate next of kin were unsuccessful. The apartment was found empty at the time of collection. No body was recovered.

I found this typed and printed, no author attribution, tucked inside a book at a estate sale. I don't know why I'm posting it. I don't know if anyone will read it or believe it or care. I just know I've been sleeping with the lights on ever since, and I can't stop thinking about the woman on the bench, and I can't stop wondering if there's a version of me that walked into that dark and never walked back out.

Content Warning: Mentions of Sexual abuse, child endangerment, grooming behavior, implied harm, body horror, psychological manipulation.

I work property management. This was found in a foreclosed home in [redacted], stripped to the studs after the bank took it back. No next of kin listed. Police ran the name in the entries through missing persons databases no match. No reports filed under that name anywhere in the state. I'm posting this because someone might recognize something, or someone. If this crosses a line, mods, I'll remove it. But I can't be the only one who read this and felt sick.

The diary itself is a purple composition notebook, the kind you'd buy for school. Handwritten. Some pages are stuck together from what looks like water damage. I'm transcribing the legible entries as faithfully as I can I haven't changed the spelling or grammar. This is exactly how it reads.

Entry, no date, front cover inside.

This is Lili's diary. If you red it you are BAD and you will get in troble. The end.

Earliest entry, scattered, written in pencil.

Today I start a new life. We movd to a new house! Mommy says it is special because it is just for us. No one elses house. I like it but the floors are colld.

Mommy says I cant go in the basment but I herd noises last nite. I askd her and she sed thats just the house settling sweety go back to slep. She was not in her bed tho. She was by the door just standing there. Watching me sleep I think. She sed she was just cheacking on me.

Entry, a few days later.

A man has been watching my window. Mommy sed he is the mann who helps us" and not to be scared. He brings groceries. He touchs my hair and says I am so big now. Mommy makes me hug him when he comes. He smells like chemicles. Mommy says not to talk about him.

Entry, different handwriting appears for a single line in the margin.

She remembers. Don't let her remember.

The rest continues in Lili's hand.

Entry, the handwriting is shakier, letters uneven.

I told mommy I did not like when he touchs me and she got mad. She sed I have to be good and quiet and do what we are told. She sed it is for our famly. She sed if I tell anyone she will have to go away and I will be all alone. I dont want mommy to go away.

But she is not my real mommy rite?

She has mommy's face but the way she talks is wrong. Her hand are cold even when she is warm. When she smiles her eyes dont move. I tride to remember my real mommy's face but it is blury.

Mommy says stop saying that. Stop saying that.

Entry, one word per line, then trailing off the page.

she is not she is not she is not she is not

Entry, calm again, almost cheerful, wrong.

I have a new rule! Mommy says I am not to go to school anymore. She will teach me at home. She says the outisde is dangerus and the people are bad. I have to be good. She huggd me for a long time and said she loves me so much and she will keep me safe.

I love my mommy.

I love my mommy.

I love my mommy.

Smudged entry, pencil, pressed hard.

The man comes more now. He and mommy talk in the kitchen late. I cant sleep. I herd him say "she's ready" and mommy lafd. She has never lafd before. It was a long time and it did not stop. I put my head under the pillow.

He has a room in the basment now. Mommy sed it is his office. She told me NEVER go down there or we will both be in troble. She sed it is for me. She is making it speshul for me.

I herd a child crying from down there today. Mommy sed it was the TV.

Maybe i can play with them.

Next several pages are torn out.

Entry resumes, pen now, ink smeared like the writer was crying.

I went in the basment.

I went in the basment.

I went in the basment.

There were pictures on the wall. SO MANY pictures. They were all me but from before I dont remember. I was smaller. I was in a different house. A different room. There was a lady in the picture that is not mommy but she had on mommy's close and she had mommy's face.

I took one picture.

I still have it.

The photograph was not included in the notebook, only a rectangular outline pressed into the page where something had been taped and then removed.

Mommy knew I went down there. She was standing at the bottem of the stairs. She did not say anything. She just looked at me. Her face did this thing where it slipped. Just for a second. Like when you pull your socks off and the skin comes with it. She pulled her face back on like a mask and she smilled.

She smilled so big.

She smilled so big and her teeth were too long.

She said come here sweety lets have a talk about boundries.

I ran to my room and hid under the bed.

Entry, the handwriting has regressed, very childish, crayon pressed hard.

I am bad. I am bad. I am bad. I am so bad. Mommy sed if I am good she will keep me. If I am good she will not throw me away. I do not want to be thrown away. I will be good.

The other children were thrown away.

She told me.

She told me.

Entry, final page, the handwriting is different throughout, like multiple sessions were scrawled in one sitting.

I remember now.

I remember the real house. The real kitchen. I remember Daddy. I remember he was big and he laughed loud and he burnd the dinnner every nite. I remember my real mommy she had freckles and she sang when she did the wash.

I remember the van.

I remember not being able to get out.

I remember the mask over my face.

And then I woke up here and she was there and she had mommy's face and she said welcome home sweety and I believed her.

I wanted to believe her so bad.

I think I have been here for a very long time.

I think the man takes pictures.

I think he has a room.

I think there were others before me.

I think they are still down there.

Last line, written in something dark brown, pressed so hard the pen tore through the paper

She is downstairs. She is in the basement. She is coming up the stairs.

The diary ends there. That's the last entry. I want to be clear, I found this as-is. I called the non-emergency line when I got back to the office and they took a report. Detective seemed more annoyed than anything. Said they'd flag it. Haven't heard back in two weeks.

If anyone has any idea what I'm looking at here, I don't know what to do with this. There was no child found in the home. No remains. The bank has no records of who owned the property before the foreclosure. It's like the house itself just appeared on the county rolls with no history.

--------------------------------------------

THE END.

What is a moment that made you go WTF?

There’s a lot of debate about who is the worst character in these stories, but the narrator of The spire stands out as uniquely malicious. Here is why:

He is a master of self-delusion. True guilt focuses entirely on the devastation caused to the victim. The narrator’s guilt, however, is just self-centered shame. He spends the entire story using the supernatural elements the curse, the bells, the Spire as a shield to displace his own agency. By framing his abuse of Alina as a tragic, inevitable consequence of his love or curse, he isn't seeking forgiveness, he’s rewriting history to protect his own ego.

He uses his narrative to gaslight the victim. When a predator tries to convince others (and themselves) that they aren't actually a monster, they aren't just escaping accountability they are attacking the survivor's reality. Having seen similar patterns in real-world predator accounts, it’s clear this is a deliberate tactic. He forces the reader to focus on his internal struggle, effectively telling us that his discomfort matters more than the trauma he inflicted on Alina.

Characters like Jimmy or Bear are horrific, but the narrator of the spire is the worst because he refuses to acknowledge the reality of his own evil. He would rather distort the truth and leave a survivor to carry the weight of his re-written narrative than face the simple, ugly fact of what he actually did.

Content Warnings: Cannibalism (survival based), graphic descriptions of starvation and decomposition, psychological horror, child death, war atrocities, moral ambiguity, emotional distress.

Hope you enjoy and as always i look forward to the feedback!

*A story of the Hunger Winter, 1944–1945, Netherlands*

---

## PART ONE: THE FARM

### From the diary of Thomas Hendriksen, age fifteen

**October 14th, 1944**

The farm is cold but the walls still stand. Oma and Opa died a week before the war came, thank God. They didn't have to see what the war did to us. Father says it's better this way. Mother cries sometimes when she thinks I can't hear but I can always hear. Father was taken in February, at the very beginning. They said he was a traitor but Father would never was a hero, a true hero, part of the underground, moving people to safety. Mother doesn't believe it but I do. I always believed in Father.

Sister is seven. She hides well. That's good she needs to hide well now. The SS came last week looking for children to relocate to the East. We told them she was sick, that she had the scarlet fever. They didn't come back. She's in the root cellar during the day and she only whispers because we're playing the hiding game. She loves the hiding game.

We have flour. Opa hid it before he died. And there are turnips in the garden, the last of them. Mother says we can make it to spring if we're careful.

Mother has been going out more. She says she's looking for food but I see the way she dresses when she leaves. I see the gold hair, the way she combs it. I see the uniformed man who watches from the end of the street. Father would never forgive her but Father isn't here.

Father will come back. I know he will.

---

**November 3rd, 1944**

Sister says she's hungry but I tell her to stay quiet. The hiding game isn't fun if you make noise. She gets scared when I'm not there. I have to go out now, into the village, to trade the silver fork Oma left for bread. It's not much but it keeps us alive.

The woman at the market said there is no more bread. She said the trains have stopped. She said people are eating their furniture, their leather boots, anything. She said the Germans are taking everything for the army. She said we might not make it.

But we will. We have to. Father will come back and everything will be like before.

Sister is getting thinner. I gave her my share of the turnip soup but she says she isn't hungry anymore, that her stomach hurts. I told her to drink water. Water is important. I read that somewhere.

---

**November 28th, 1944**

Cold now. The canals have frozen. People walk across them in the night to get to the farms outside the cities, looking for food. The Germans shoot some of them. The Germans shoot everyone now.

Mother didn't come back last night.

I waited by the window but she never came. Sister asked me where she was and I told her she was looking for food, that she'd be back in the morning. But it's been two days now. Three?

I go out in the day because Sister can't leave the hiding place. She would be seen. The SS officer would take her.

Wait. I don't know that. I don't know any SS officer. I made him up. I made him up because it's easier for Sister if there's someone to be scared of, someone to hide from. A game needs a villain.

Mother is coming back. She has to come back.

---

**December 12th, 1944**

Sister hasn't moved in two days. I bring her water and she drinks a little but her eyes are different now, like she's looking at something I can't see. I told her the hiding game is almost over. I told her we're winning. I told her Father is coming home.

She smiled. She hasn't smiled in weeks.

The smell in the root cellar is bad. I told her it's the turnips, that they've gone bad, that we need to throw them out. But I can't throw them out because then there will be nothing to eat and Sister needs to eat. Sister needs to get strong again.

I have to go to the village. I'll be back before dark.

---

**December 19th, 1944**

The turnips are finished.

I've eaten the leather from Opa's old chair. I've eaten the wallpaper paste. I've drunk water until my stomach hurts and then drank more.

Sister is sleeping a lot now. That's good. Sleeping means she's not hungry.

The smell is worse.

---

**December 24th, 1944**

[page is stained, handwriting increasingly unsteady]

I found something in the garden this morning. Under the snow. A dead crow. It's frozen solid but I put it by the stove and when it thawed I pulled the meat from the bones. I roasted it over the fire. It didn't taste like anything. It didn't taste like chicken or pork or anything. It just tasted like hunger finally being quiet.

Sister needs to eat too. But she won't wake up. I try to wake her but she won't.

The smell is coming from everywhere now.

---

**December 27th, 1944**

[water damage, pages stuck together]

I had to do something. I couldn't let her starve. The hiding game was so good but the game is over now, isn't it? The game is over and I won because I didn't let them take her. I kept her safe. I kept her hidden. Even when she wouldn't wake up, even when she got so cold, I kept her wrapped in blankets and I talked to her and I told her stories about Father coming home.

She doesn't need the blankets anymore.

The smell

I found

I had to

---

**[several pages are torn out]**

---

**January 8th, 1945**

The crows came back. There are always crows now. They're circling the farm. They know something is here for them.

I don't go to the village anymore. I don't leave the house. If I leave, who will take care of Sister? Who will make sure the hiding game stays secret?

I found a way to make the smell stop. I had to be very careful. I had to use the knife from the kitchen. Opa's knife. The one he used to kill pigs with every fall.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You were just a little girl. You were just my sister. You were so scared of the dark and you liked to count stars and you always wanted me to carry you when your feet hurt.

You don't hurt anymore.

I'm keeping you warm.

---

**February 2nd, 1945**

The Americans are coming. I hear the guns in the distance. Father was righthelp is coming. The hiding game is almost over.

I haven't left the farm in weeks. I can't. Sister needs me here. If I leave, someone will find her. Someone will take her away.

The Germans are gone. There are no more patrols. The village is empty except for the dead.

I'm not dead. I'm surviving. I learned how to survive.

Sister is surviving too. She just... needs help moving now. She can't move on her own anymore. Her legs don't work. Her arms don't work. Her eyes don't work but I pretend they do. I pretend a lot of things now.

I'm good at pretending.

---

## PART TWO: THE AMERICANS

---

### Report of Sergeant William Hartley, 106th Infantry Division

*[recovered from field records, 1945]*

---

We found the farm on February 15th, 1945. The place was a tombsnow and silence and the smell of something rotten underneath it all. I knew what that smell was. We'd found enough of them by then. Mass graves, execution sites, bodies left where they fell.

The Dutch resistance man who'd guided us said no one had lived here for months. Said the old couple died before the war, their son was taken, his wife ran off with some Kraut, left the kids. Said he didn't know where the kids went.

But there was smoke coming from the chimney.

We found him in the kitchen. Sitting by the stove. Just a boy, God, just a childfifteen, sixteen at most. Bones sticking through his clothes like wire. Eyes too big for his face. He looked at us like we were ghosts.

He said: *Are you the Americans? Are you here to help us win?*

He said: *My sister is hiding. Don't make noise. She gets scared.*

He said: *Mother is coming back. She was just looking for food.*

He smiled. It was the worst thing I've ever seen.

There was no sister.

---

### Statement of Chaplain John Marsh, 106th Infantry Division

*[transcribed from memory, March 1945]*

---

Sergeant Hartley brought me to the farmhouse. He was shaking. The boy was sitting at the table, talking to the empty chair across from him, explaining that dinner would be ready soon, that we had to wait, that his sister was shy around strangers.

I knew what we would find in the root cellar. I'd seen enough death by then. I thought I'd be ready.

I wasn't.

There was a body. What was left of a body. The legs and arms had been... removed. Carefully, methodically, like someone who didn't want to waste anything. The torso was still there. The smell was

I've never smelled anything like it.

The boy was singing. A children's song. He was singing it to the empty chair and smiling and rocking back and forth and he said: *She's sleeping now. She sleeps a lot. But she gets hungry when she wakes up. I have to make sure there's food for when she wakes up.*

The thing in the cellar had been dead for weeks. Months. It was February. The nights were still freezing. In a way that had kept it... preserved. Kept it.

Sergeant Hartley asked me what we should do. The boy was still singing. The boy was still smiling.

I told him the truth. I told him what I believed in that moment.

I said: *Let him die.*

I said: *Nothing good can come of taking him out of this. He's gone. Whatever was Thomas Hendriksen, whatever was left of that boy, it's been gone for months. What's left is just... survival. Just the animal need to keep breathing. He doesn't know anymore. He can't know anymore. If we take him to a hospital, to a psychiatric ward, he'll spend the rest of his life trying to understand what he did. The guilt will destroy him. The memory will be worse than death.*

I said: *Let him have this. Let him have the last mercy. Let him die in his delusion where his sister is sleeping and his mother is coming home and his father is a hero. Let him die happy.*

Sergeant Hartley looked at me. He looked at the boy. He looked at the thing in the cellar.

He said: *Okay.*

He said: *Okay.*

---

### Final entry, Sergeant William Hartley

*[personal diary, recovered posthumously]*

---

I walked out of that farmhouse on February 15th, 1945.

I left the boy there. I left the chair empty at the table and the singing that made my teeth ache and the thing in the cellar that the boy called his sister.

The chaplain was right. I knew he was right. There was nothing left to save. The boy was already gone.

We moved on. We kept fighting. We liberated more towns, more camps, more of the horror the Germans had buried in their wake. I saw things I can't unsee, things that should have broken me, things that should have made that farmhouse just another drop in the ocean.

But it didn't.

The others broke and healed. They screamed and stopped screaming. They drank and prayed and found their way back to something like living. But I

I can't eat.

I try. The war is over now, officially, technically. We're in a displaced persons camp in Belgium, waiting for transport home. There's food. Real food, not canned rations, not the garbage we ate for months. Real bread. Real meat. Vegetables. Butter.

I can't swallow it.

Every time I put food in my mouth I taste that farmhouse. I smell that cellar. I see the boy rocking back and forth, singing his little sister's favorite song, explaining that she just needed to sleep, that she would wake up hungry.

He fed her to himself to keep her alive.

And I think: *What's the difference?* What's the difference between that boy and me? Between that boy and every soldier who ever called it survival, called it necessity, called it war?

We all eat what's in front of us. We all try not to think about where it came from.

The chaplain said we should let the boy die because the truth would destroy him. The truth of what he'd done.

But the chaplain is wrong. The truth doesn't destroy us. The truth is the only thing that can save us. What's destroying me is the lie. The lie that I'm different from that boy. The lie that I survived because I was stronger, better, more human.

I survived because I was lucky. Because the circumstances were different. Because someone else was the monster instead of me.

I walk through the camp at night when the others are sleeping. I watch the refugees who have nothing, who lost everything, who sit by the fence waiting for word of the family members who will never come back. I watch the children who survived the camps, those skeletal ghosts who flinch at every loud noise and won't look at meat.

And I think: *I could have been him.*

I could have been Thomas Hendriksen.

I could have been sitting in a farmhouse in the Netherlands, singing to the empty chair, keeping my sister warm through the winter the only way I knew how.

The boy is probably dead now. The chaplain was right about that too. Even if we hadn't left him, even if we'd tried to save him, he wouldn't have survived the spring. The weather was turning. People would come. They would find him. They would see what he'd done.

And then what? What mercy is there in that? What kindness?

The chaplain wanted to give him a peaceful death. A death in his delusion, with his sister sleeping, his mother coming home.

But that's not mercy. That's just a different kind of cruelty.

Mercy would have been the bullet. Mercy would have been ending it before he had to wake up and remember.

I dream about him sometimes. In the dreams he's still sitting at that table, still singing, still waiting for someone to come home. And I sit across from him, at the empty chair, and I say: *Your sister is dead. Your mother is gone. Your father was taken to a camp and killed. There's no hiding game. There's no winning. There's just this. Just this room. Just this hunger that never ends.*

He never listens. He just keeps singing.

And I keep sitting there, starving, with a feast in front of me that I can't touch.

---

### [Final page, found with Hartley body]

---

*March 3rd, 1945*

*I'm going back.*

*I have to know if he's still there.*

*I have to know if there's anything left.*

*I have to*

---

*[page ends]*

---

**Sergeant William Hartley was found deceased on March 5th, 1945, in an abandoned farmhouse outside of Groningen. Official cause of death: malnutrition. The body of a young male was found in the root cellar. Identification was not possible due to the condition of the remains. Local authorities buried both bodies in the same grave.**

**No further investigation was conducted.**

---

*THE END*

---

*Author's note: The Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944-1945 killed approximately 20,000 people. This story is a work of fiction, but the horror it depicts was not unfamiliar to those who survived that winter. If you or someone you know is struggling with the themes in this story, please reach out for support.*

### [Final page, found with Hartley body]

---

*March 3rd, 1945*

*I'm going back.*

*I have to know if he's still there.*

*I have to know if there's anything left.*

*I have to.*

---

*[page ends]*

---

**Sergeant William Hartley was found deceased on March 5th, 1945, in an abandoned farmhouse outside of Groningen. Official cause of death: malnutrition. The body of a young male was found in the root cellar. Identification was not possible due to the condition of the remains. Local authorities buried both bodies in the same grave.**

**No further investigation was conducted.**

The Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944-1945 killed approximately 20,000 people. This story is a work of fiction, but the horror it depicts was not unfamiliar to those who survived that winter. If you or someone you know is struggling with the themes in this story, please reach out for support.

---

## RECOVERED PERSONAL EFFECT

**Source:** Henry Beaumont, 78, Pig Farmer

**Location:** Rural Catron County, NM

**Recovered by:** FBI Evidence Response Team, October 2001

**Note:** Beaumont died November 1998. This journal was found in his barn, buried under loose hay in a tobacco tin.

---

**October 12, 1991**

*[Handwriting shaky, inconsistent. Some words crossed out. Others repeated.]*

The man came back today. The man with the hat. He walked across my field like he owned it. I called out to him but he didn't answer. He never answers.

I think I told him to leave. I think I said something. My head gets foggy after.

Eleanor would have known what to do. Eleanor always knew.

Eleanor's been gone three years now. Sometimes I still set a plate for her at dinner. Then I remember. Then I don't remember what I remembered.

---

**October 15, 1991**

They were digging again. In the back field. By the old windmill.

I could hear the machines. Or I dreamed I heard the machines. What's the difference anymore?

I walked out there this morning and there were holes. Three holes. They filled them back in but the dirt was darker. New dirt. The grass didn't grow where they dug.

I should call someone. Who would I call? The sheriff is young. He doesn't listen to old men.

The man with the hat was standing at the edge of the field. Watching. He waved at me. I waved back.

I don't know why I waved.

---

**October 28, 1991**

Eleanor came to see me last night. She stood by the bed and she said my name. She said "Henry, you have to remember."

I said "Remember what, Eleanor?"

She said "The children."

I woke up and I was crying. I don't remember why.

---

**November 3, 1991**

The smell.

The whole property smells like something burning. Not wood. Something else. Something wet and wrong.

I called the sheriff. I think I called the sheriff. He came out and he walked around and he said "I don't smell anything, Mr. Beaumont."

I could smell it the whole time he was here. He couldn't smell it at all.

Maybe I imagined it.

---

**November 19, 1991**

The man was here again. He came to the door this time. He never comes to the door.

He was polite. He called me Mr. Beaumont. He said he was sorry for my loss. He said Eleanor was a good woman.

I asked him what he was doing on my land.

He smiled. He has too many teeth. I don't remember noticing that before.

He said "I live here now. I've always lived here. You just forgot."

I told him to leave.

He left. But he didn't leave. I could feel him. Out in the field. Watching. Waiting.

---

**December 2, 1991**

I saw the children.

There were children out by the windmill. I counted them. Fourteen. They were standing in a circle.

I went out to tell them to get off my property. I got all the way to the windmill and there was no one there.

Just holes. Three holes. Fresh dirt.

I think I've seen those holes before. I think I've seen them many times.

---

**December 25, 1991**

Christmas.

Eleanor and I used to have ham. Big Christmas ham with cloves. She made the glaze herself. Pineapple and brown sugar. I can almost taste it.

I made ham today. I forgot to put the cloves in. I forgot what cloves were for a moment. Then I remembered.

The man with the hat came by. He brought a gift. A small box wrapped in brown paper.

I didn't open it. I threw it in the pig trough.

The pigs wouldn't touch it.

---

**January 8, 1992**

I lost a pig. One of the sows. She was big, she was healthy, and she just vanished.

I found her in the field. By the windmill. She was empty. Just skin and bones. Like something drained her out from the inside.

I buried her. I don't remember burying her but my hands were dirty and there was a hole in the ground so I must have.

The man with the hat was standing at the tree line. He waved at me.

I didn't wave back this time.

---

**February 14, 1992**

Valentine's Day.

Eleanor would have wanted flowers. I don't know how to garden anymore. I forget what to plant when.

The man came to the door. He brought flowers. Yellow flowers. I don't know what kind.

He said "These are for Eleanor."

I said "Eleanor's dead."

He said "I know. That's why these are for her."

He put the flowers on the porch. He left.

I threw them in the pig trough. The pigs still wouldn't touch them.

---

**March 3, 1992**

My birthday. I'm 69. Or 70. Or 71.

The man with the hat came to wish me happy birthday. He brought a cake. Chocolate. My favorite.

I asked him how he knew it was my birthday.

He said "I know everything, Henry. That's why I came."

I asked him what he wanted.

He said "I want you to forget. I want you to forget everything you've seen. I want you to forget the digging and the children and the holes and the smell. I want you to forget that I'm here. I want you to forget that you ever saw me."

I said "I don't remember seeing you."

He smiled. Too many teeth.

"Good," he said. "That's a good start."

---

**March 4, 1992**

*[Single line, written once, not crossed out]*

I don't remember seeing him.

---

**November 1993**

*[Undated entries become sparse, handwriting deteriorates significantly]*

something is wrong

the field

the field is wrong

theres something under the field

i can feel it

like a heartbeat

under the dirt

i told eleanor and she said

she said

i dont remember what she said

eleanor is

eleanor is

---

**June 1994**

the man came back

no

the man never left

hes always been here

ive always known

why did i forget

why do i keep forgetting

---

**August 1994**

*[Final entry handwriting barely legible]*

theyre digging again

the children are back

i can hear them singing

but there are no children here

theres no one here

just me

and the man

and the pigs

the pigs know

the pigs know whats under the field

i can see it in their eyes

they look at me like

like

like they remember something i forgot

im going to lie down now

im going to lie down

im going to

---

**[End of journal]**

---

## SUPPLEMENTAL FBI ANALYSIS

**Date:** October 18, 2001

**Author:** SA T. Brennan, Badge #3301

Henry Beaumont died in November 1998. Cause of death listed as natural causes heart failure, complicated by advanced Alzheimer's disease. He lived alone on his property for the final years of his life. Neighbors reported he was "kind but confused."

The property was purchased by a shell company in 1993. The company C. Calaveras Holdings LLC is the same entity linked to the Catron County parcel discussed in earlier case documentation.

In October 2001, during the investigation of the Saskatchewan compound, ground-penetrating radar was used on the Beaumont property. The radar revealed subsurface anomalies consistent with buried structures at least three, located in the field near the old windmill.

Excavation was not conducted at the time. The property remains under federal seal.

Henry Beaumont never knew what was under his field. His journal suggests he sensed it. His dementia may have been a mercy he could not fully remember what he was seeing.

Or perhaps he saw more than he could process, and his mind broke under the weight of it.

---

**NOTE:** The flowers mentioned in the journal yellow flowers, brought on Valentine's Day were recovered from the pig trough in 2001. Forensic analysis identified them as **Amaranthus caudatus**, also known as "love-lies-bleeding." The plant has historically been associated with death and funerary rites in certain pre-Columbian cultures.

The flowers were still fresh.

They had been dead for nine years.

*"I want you to forget that you ever saw me."*

*The Judge, recorded by Henry Beaumont, March 3, 1992*

CONTENT WARNING ! CONTAINS: Child-abuse, Descriptions of rape and assault,

---

FBI PHOENIX FIELD OFFICE

CASE FILE: FLOCK-99 / DAROGA

Classification: Active — Federal — Eyes Only Lead Agent: SAC M. Whitfield, Badge #4481 Opened: October 1995 Status: Ongoing — 29 Years

---

SITUATION REPORT — JULY 2024

Prepared by: SAIC D. Reyes, Badge #2290 Distribution: Internal / DoJ / INTERPOL / FBI Legal Attaché Offices

---

PART ONE: THE DAUGHTER

Interview — Melissa Vance, 19 Location: Transitional Housing Facility, Phoenix AZ Conducting: SA A. Patel, Badge #5502 / SAIC D. Reyes Date: June 18, 2024

---

Melissa Vance agreed to speak under the understanding that nothing would be used against her criminally. She is not currently a suspect. She is a witness.

Key Excerpts:

---

SAIC REYES: Can you tell us about your father's involvement with the organization?

MELISSA: You mean the Judge.

SAIC REYES: Is that what he called himself?

MELISSA: That's what my dad called him. Everyone did. I only met him once.

SAIC REYES: Can you describe that meeting?

MELISSA: (pause) I was I was really bad by then. Like, shooting up in my dad's garage bad. He didn't know what to do with me. So he brought me to this man.

SAIC REYES: Where?

MELISSA: Some restaurant. Denny's, I think. It was it was so normal. That's what messed me up. I expected something dark. Underground. But it was just a Denny's. Fluorescent lights. Coffee that tasted like burnt rubber.

SAIC REYES: What did the Judge look like?

MELISSA: Old. Old but I don't know how to say this like he was playing old. Like he was wearing oldness the way someone wears a suit. He had one of those big hats. Cowboy hat. In a Denny's in Scottsdale. I remember thinking he looked like a tourist.

SAIC REYES: What happened at the meeting?

MELISSA: He looked at me. Just looked. For a long time. I remember thinking his eyes weren't they weren't human. They were like the eyes of something that had been looking at people for a very long time. Like he'd learned everything there was to learn about human beings and he was just tired of it.

SAIC REYES: Did he speak to you?

MELISSA: He said I'll never forget it he said, "Your father loves you. That is the worst thing about you."

SAIC REYES: What did that mean?

MELISSA: I didn't understand then. I think I do now. He said because I was already owned by my father he couldn't take me. He said he could only take what wasn't already claimed. And my father had claimed me. In all the wrong ways.

SAIC REYES: What happened after that?

MELISSA: He told my dad to take me home. He said he couldn't help me. He said the only thing that could help me was time. He said I would either get better or I wouldn't, but it wouldn't be because of him.

SAIC REYES: Did he seem.... angry?.... Disappointed?

MELISSA: (long pause) No. That's the thing. He seemed sad. I think. Like he was sorry. Like he actually wished he could help me but whatever he is whatever he does he can only take. He can't give.

SAIC REYES: Do you believe that?

MELISSA: I didn't then. I was so angry. I thought he was rejecting me. I thought he was just another person who looked at me and decided I wasn't worth saving.

But I got clean two years later. On my own. And I keep thinking about that meeting. I keep thinking about his eyes.

I think he was telling the truth. I think he genuinely couldn't help me. Not because he didn't want to. Because of what he is.

SAIC REYES: And what is he?

MELISSA: (shrugs) I don't know. But I know what he does. He takes. That's all he does. He takes and takes and takes until there's nothing left.

---

SAIC NOTE:

Melissa Vance showed no signs of deception. Her account is consistent with Harold Vance's journal entries regarding the same meeting. She was forthcoming and appeared to be processing the events with clarity.

She made one final statement before we concluded:

"My dad was a bad man. He did terrible things. But I think I think the worst thing about him was that he thought he loved me. He loved me in the same way the Judge loved those children. He loved me like I belonged to him. Like he could take pieces of me whenever he wanted.

Maybe that's why the Judge couldn't help me. Because I was already broken by someone who thought they were saving me.

I don't know.

I just know I'm still here. And a lot of them aren't."

---

PART TWO: THE HOMELESS TEEN

Interview — "Dylan" (name changed), Age 17 Location: Covenant House, New York NY Conducting: SA K. O'Brien, Badge #7721 Date: June 22, 2024 Note: Dylan is currently in custody on unrelated charges. He agreed to speak in exchange for cooperation credit.

---

SAIC REYES: You said you met the Judge. Can you describe the circumstances?

DYLAN: I was living in the train tunnels. Port Authority. You know how it is. You learn who the real predators are down there. I thought I was one of them. I wasn't.

SAIC REYES: How did you meet him?

DYLAN: He found me. I don't know how. I was I was doing something. Something bad. I don't want to talk about it except

(pause)

DYLAN: I hurt a kid. A kid with special needs. From my group home. I hurt him really bad. I ran. I ran and I couldn't stop running. I couldn't stop being the thing I was in that moment.

SAIC REYES: And the Judge found you?

DYLAN: He just appeared. Like he'd been waiting. He sat down next to me and he didn't say anything for a long time. He just sat with me. Like he was waiting for me to be ready.

Then he said: "You want to stop being this person."

I said yeah.

He said: "I can help with that."

SAIC REYES: What did he offer you?

DYLAN: He said he could make me empty. He said he could take whatever was broken inside me and just remove it. He said I'd feel nothing. He said nothing would hurt anymore.

I said yes.

SAIC REYES: Did he —

DYLAN: He made an arrangement with me. He said it would take time. He said there were steps. He said I had to I don't remember all of it. He talked for a long time. I remember thinking his voice was like like honey mixed with something else. Something cold.

SAIC REYES: Did anything happen? Physically?

DYLAN: He touched me. His hand was on my back. Right at the base of my spine. And I felt I felt something there. Like a seam. Like something was underneath my skin that I hadn't known about.

SAIC REYES: A seam?

DYLAN: Like a zipper. Like there was a zipper at my lower back.

SAIC REYES: Did he open it?

DYLAN: No. He stopped. He took his hand away. He was quiet for a long time. Then he said

(pause)

DYLAN: He said: "You did something bad to a child."

I said yeah.

He said: "That's why I can't take you. You're not empty because of pain. You're empty because of what you did. And what you did you have to answer for that yourself."

I didn't understand.

He said: "I can only take what belongs to suffering. What belongs to innocence broken by the world. You broke yourself. You chose that. I cannot help you."

SAIC REYES: What happened after that?

DYLAN: He left. He just stood up and walked away. He didn't look back. I never saw him again.

I turned myself in two days later. I don't know why. I just I felt like I had to. Like it was the only thing I could do that was still mine.

SAIC REYES: The zipper. Are you sure about that?

DYLAN: I'm sure. I can still feel it sometimes. Right here. (touches lower back) Like there's something under my skin that never got opened.

---

SAIC NOTE:

Dylan's account is concerning for several reasons. The "zipper" description is consistent with — or perhaps an elaboration of reports from the Saskatchewan compound regarding the machine found in Tunnel 7-C. The concept of a physical seam or opening at the base of the spine appears in multiple witness statements.

Additionally, Dylan's account suggests the Judge distinguishes between victims of suffering and perpetrators of it. He "could not take" Dylan because Dylan had caused harm rather than received it.

This raises questions about the selection criteria for the organization's victims. Are they chosen because they are already damaged? Already empty? And if so — by whom?

---

PART THREE: NEW YORK SIGHTING

Source: FBI New York Field Office Surveillance Review Date: June 8, 2024 Location: Manhattan, Financial District Waldorf Astoria / Surrounding Blocks

---

A routine surveillance review of a corruption case flagged an incidental capture of an individual matching the general description of Judge Calaveras or an associate.

Surveillance Details:

The individual was observed exiting the Waldorf Astoria at approximately 1430 hours on June 8, 2024. He was accompanied by four men, all of whom have since been identified as executives from various financial institutions.

Physical Description:

• Male, estimated age 60-75
• Tall, slim build
• Black three-piece suit, white dress shirt, no tie
• Black wide-brimmed cowboy hat — distinctly out of place in Manhattan
• Moved with what surveillance described as "unnaturally smooth gait" — "like a snake moving through grass"

Behavioral Notes:

The four businessmen appeared visibly uncomfortable in the individual's presence. Surveillance footage shows them shifting their weight, avoiding eye contact, and maintaining physical distance despite the individual repeatedly stepping close to speak with them.

One agent's notes describe the businessmen as "looking like kids caught by a teacher."

The individual was aware of surveillance cameras. Multiple angles show him consistently positioning himself to avoid facial capture while moving through crowds. His movements are described as "deliberate" and "practiced" — "like a dance."

He was not captured on any camera clearly enough for positive identification.

The four businessmen have been interviewed. All declined to answer questions. Their attorneys have asserted Fifth Amendment rights.

---

PART FOUR: INTERNATIONAL REPORTS

Distribution: This section contains information received from foreign law enforcement partners. Classification varies by source.

---

MOROCCO — Ministry of Interior Report (Translated) Received via: FBI Legal Attaché, Rabat Date: May 14, 2024

In March 2024, local authorities in the Souss-Massa region responded to reports of unusual construction activity in a small village approximately 40 kilometers southeast of Tiznit.

Villagers had built a structure referred to locally as "the Tower of Silence" consistent with Zoroastrian death practices, though this region has no Zoroastrian population.

The tower is approximately 40 feet tall, constructed of local stone. It contains no internal structure it is a hollow column open at the top.

Within the tower, authorities found clay jars arranged in concentric circles, rising from the base to the top of the structure. Each jar contains the remains of a child. The children range in age from approximately 4 to 14 years.

The jars are held by their parents. The parents are skeletons. The parents are holding the jars.

The parents' bones show no signs of violence. They appear to have simply — stopped. As if they chose to lie down with their children and never got up.

Estimated remains: 127 individuals.

---

Hermit Document Recovered and Translated Source: Local hermit living in hills approximately 3 kilometers from the village Recovered by: Moroccan authorities, March 2024 Translated by: FBI Linguistic Services, May 2024

The hermit, an elderly man with no known affiliation to any religious or governmental organization, kept written records of observations made over a period of approximately eighteen months.

Excerpts:

> "The strangers came in the summer. They wore long robes. They spoke to the village elders in a language I did not recognize. The elders were frightened. Then they were not frightened. Then they were grateful. > > I watched them build the tower. I watched them bring the children. The children came willingly. Their parents came willingly. No one ran. No one screamed. > > On the final night, I climbed close enough to see the man at the center. He was old. He wore a hat like a farmer. But his eyes — his eyes were the eyes of something that had never been born. > > He was singing. The villagers were singing. The song had no words I could understand. But I felt it in my chest. I felt it pulling at something inside me. > > I ran. I do not know how far I ran. I do not know how long I ran. > > When I stopped, the sun was rising. I walked back to the village. > > They were all in the tower. They were all holding each other. They were all quiet. > > The man was gone."

---

Additional Reports Summary

Similar structures have been reported in:

• Guatemala (October 2023) Three children recovered from a tower near Lake Atitlán. Parents not located.
• Romania* (January 2024) Unverified report of a "tower of bones" in the Carpathian Mountains. Investigation ongoing.
• Philippines (March 2024) Construction permit filed for a "meditation tower" in a rural province. Permit approved. Construction status unknown.
• United States No structures reported. However, see: Catron County, NM (2023-2024) small structure on isolated parcel. Purpose unknown. No construction permits on file.

---

PART FIVE: MEDIA SUPPRESSION REQUEST

Source: DoJ Office of Public Affairs / FBI Office of Congressional and Public Affairs Date: June 30, 2024

At the direction of the Deputy Attorney General, media suppression has been requested for the following elements:

1. The Morocco tower incident classified as ongoing foreign investigation. No public statements.
2. The New York sighting classified as incidental surveillance. No public statements.
3. The "zipper" description provided by Dylan classified as unverified witness statement. No public statements.
4. Any reference to the organization's selection criteria classified as operational security concern.

Rationale:

Releasing this information would alert the organization to the scope and nature of the investigation. It would also in the words of the DAG "create public panic without providing actionable protection."

The organization operates by appearing normal. The Rockwell neighborhoods. The businessmen who look uncomfortable but say nothing. The structures that look like ordinary buildings.

Making the organization famous is the same as making it invisible.

---

OPEN QUESTIONS

1. Is the Judge one person or a title? The 29-year timeline suggests either extraordinary longevity or a succession model. Dylan's account suggests a physical characteristic (the zipper) that would be difficult to pass on. But the organization's methodology has remained consistent for three decades.

2. What is the "zipper"? Multiple witnesses describe something at the base of the spine a seam, an opening, a place where the body is not closed. Is this a surgical modification? A birth defect exploited by the organization? Or something else?

3. Why the businessmen? The New York sighting suggests the organization has connections to the financial sector. Are these followers? Accomplices? Victims?

4. What is the selection criteria? The Rockwell neighborhoods. The children flagged by CPS. Dylan rejected because he was a perpetrator rather than a victim. Is the organization specifically targeting damaged children? And if so why?

5. What is the sixty day cycle? Every sixty days, someone disappears. Is this a ritual requirement? A logistics constraint? Or something else entirely?

---

AGENT OBSERVATION SAIC D. REYES

I've been on this case for eleven years. I've read every file. I've interviewed every witness. I've walked through every crime scene.

I used to think we were investigating a criminal organization.

Now I'm not sure.

I think we're investigating something that has been here longer than the country. Longer than the language. Something that learned to wear human faces and human words like costumes, and it moves through the world and it takes what it needs and no one notices because it looks so goddamn normal.

The Rockwell neighborhoods. The businessmen who look uncomfortable. The old man in the cowboy hat who dances through crowds.

It's all costume. It's all performance.

And underneath the performance there's something that builds towers and fills them with children and calls it mercy.

I don't know how to stop it.

I don't know if it can be stopped.

But I'm going to keep looking. Because if I stop, then it wins.

And I don't want to live in a world where it wins.

---

REPORT SUBMITTED BY:

SAIC D. Reyes Badge #2290 FBI Phoenix Field Office June 30, 2024, 2317 hours

---

CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET // LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE // COMPARTMENTED

DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTED TO: DoJ / FBIHQ / Legal Attaché Network / Selected Foreign Partners

NEXT REVIEW: August 2024 DISAPPEARANCE WINDOW: August 14-16 predicted

---

"He was singing. The villagers were singing. The song had no words I could understand. But I felt it in my chest. I felt it pulling at something inside me."

— Hermit account, Morocco, March 2024

---

I've never really written anything before (not counting work emails lol), but I've been reading a lot lately Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and Stephen King's The Colorado Kid which led me down a rabbit hole to Borrasca which absolutely wrecked me.

Is this concept compelling? Does the police report + diary format work? I'm trying to build dread through restraint? Really just looking for honest feedback.

Thanks 🙏 and hope you enjoy! 😄

INCIDENT REPORT — CASE #1995-0847

DATE OF REPORT: November 3, 1995 REPORTING OFFICER: Sgt. R. Quintana, Badge #1142 LOCATION: 14-Mile Road, Daroga County, NM (approx. coordinates 34.2014° N, 107.8531° W) CLASSIFICATION: Mass Fatality / Unknown Cause

INCIDENT SUMMARY

On or about 0830 hours, November 3, 1995, Deputy M. Salazar responded to a report of a strong chemical odor emanating from an abandoned gas station at the intersection of 14-Mile Road and State Route 109. The caller identified himself only. No contact information was obtained. The caller did not provide a name.

Upon arrival, Deputy Salazar observed seventeen (17) plastic gasoline jugs arranged in a semicircle approximately six feet from the front entrance of the structure. The jugs were of standard five-gallon capacity, manufactured by unbranded supplier, commonly available at hardware and automotive supply stores within Daroga County and surrounding areas.

The jugs were sealed. The contents were liquid. The liquid was not gasoline.

EVIDENCE COLLECTED

1. 1.Jug #1 through #17 Five-gallon plastic jugs, white, standard consumer grade. Each sealed with screw-top lid. No labeling. No markings. No fingerprints recoverable due to surface contamination.
2. 2.Contents Liquid substance, dark brown to black in color, viscous consistency. Total volume estimated at 80-85 gallons. Substance consistent with human blood following plasma extraction. (See forensic analysis report, Attachment F-7.)
3. 3.Human Remains Particulate matter recovered from jug interiors via filtration. Tissue fragments, bone fragments, hair samples. DNA analysis pending. Dental records requested from fourteen (14) families in Daroga County who reported missing persons between 1987 and 1995.
4. 4.Note Single handwritten note, torn from spiral-bound notebook, found tucked beneath jug #8. Text reads: "THE JUDGE RECOGNIZES WHAT IS HIS."

IDENTIFICATION OF DECEDENTS

To date, the following individuals have been tentatively identified through dental comparison and DNA analysis of recovered tissue:

Jug :	Name	Age at Disappearance	Date Reported Missing
1	Rosa Mendez	14	June 1994
2	Teresa Solis	15	July 1994
3	Lisa Anne Crow	13	August 1994
4	Cynthia Nguyen	14	May 1995
5	Maria Elena Vásquez	16	June 1995
6	Unknown Male, Age 30-40	—	—
7	Unknown Male, Age 40-50	—	—
8-17	Unknown / Analysis Pending	—	—

WITNESS STATEMENTS

Witness A (identity protected, minor at time of incident): Stated that between 1987 and 1992, a group of adults operating under the name "Flock of the Valley" held gatherings at a compound approximately 30 miles east of Daroga. Witness stated that children from the town were invited to attend. Witness declined to provide further details regarding activities at said gatherings. Witness displayed signs of psychological distress during interview. Referral made to County Mental Health Services.

Witness B (Elena Vásquez, parent of deceded #5): Stated that her daughter was "taken" by individuals associated with the Flock of the Valley. Stated that she reported the disappearance to the Daroga County Sheriff's Office in June 1995. Deputy records show no report was filed. Witness was informed that an internal review would be conducted. No further action taken at this time.

Witness C (M. Baca, resident of Mira Street, Daroga): Declined to provide statement. Stated only: "I was never really here." Departed interview location. Current whereabouts unknown.

SUSPECT INFORMATION

Primary Suspect: Individual known locally as "Judge Calaveras." Male, approximate age 60-70, height unknown, weight unknown, hair unknown, eyes unknown. Physical description unavailable. No photograph on file. Last confirmed sighting in Daroga County: 1992. Current whereabouts unknown. Outstanding warrant requested for seventeen (17) counts of First Degree Murder. Status: FUGITIVE.

Note: On November 4, 1995, a fire was reported at coordinates approximately 30 miles east of Daroga, in the basin area. Fire department responded. Structure was total loss. No remains recovered from the scene. Accelerant confirmed. Investigation ongoing.

EVIDENCE LOG / CHAIN OF CUSTODY

All items logged and secured at Daroga County Sheriff's Office evidence locker. Chain of custody documented per Departmental Policy 4.7.

OUTSTANDING ISSUES

1. 1.Identity of jugs #8 through #17 unknown. Families of additional missing persons contacted. Response pending.
2. 2.Identity of unknown male decedents #6 and #7 unknown. Age range suggests these individuals may not be local. National missing persons database search initiated.
3. 3.Note found beneath jug #8 handwriting analysis pending. No suspects identified for comparison.
4. 4.Source of plasma removal unknown. Process would require specialized equipment. No such equipment recovered from scene or from the burned compound.
5. 5.Caller who reported the odor has not been identified. No follow-up contact attempted. Case status: UNSOLVED.

CASE STATUS

OPEN ACTIVE INVESTIGATION

Detective supervision requested. State Bureau of Investigation notified. FBI contacted regarding potential interstate criminal activity. Response: REJECTED.

REPORT SUBMITTED BY:

Sgt. R. Quintana Badge #1142 Daroga County Sheriff's Office November 3, 1995, 2247 hours

CLASSIFICATION: LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE NOT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE

CASE FILE RETAINED: 50 years per State Records Retention Policy

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ATTACHMENT D-3: RECOVERED PERSONAL EFFECTS

Source: Storage unit #47, Daroga Self-Storage, 901 Industrial Blvd, Daroga, NM Owner of Unit: R. Calaveras (lease expired September 1995, contents abandoned) Date Collected: November 6, 1995 Collecting Officer: Det. L. Romero, Badge #0893

Items Recovered:

• Spiral-bound notebook, blue cover, approximately 60 pages, handwritten
• Pencil fragments (2)
• One (1) photograph, Polaroid, depicting unknown children at unknown location (filed as Evidence #D-3-4)

Note: Notebook identified via handwriting analysis as belonging to Lisa Anne Crow (decedent #3). Pages 1-12 and 47-58 missing. Remaining pages submitted for analysis. Photocopy attached below.

TRANSCRIPTION OF NOTEBOOK CONTENTS

(Original spelling and grammar preserved.)

June 14, 1994

Mom says I cant go to Stacy's sleepover because my grades. I hate it here. I hate this town. I hate that everythings the same. Stacy says theres nothing here and shes right. Theres nothing. Just the desert and the dust and the people who stay because theyre too scared to leave.

I want to leave.

June 19, 1994

The man came to school today. He talked to us in the gym. He had a voice like when you talk and you can feel it in your chest. He said he knows what its like to feel stuck. He said he knows what its like to want to be somewhere else. He said he can show us somewhere else.

His name is Judge Calaveras. He says hes a judge but not like a regular judge. Hes a judge of the heart. He asked who felt stuck. A lot of hands went up. I didnt raise mine but he looked at me anyway. He looked right at me.

June 21, 1994

The Judge is having a gathering. Out past the basin. He says its for kids who feel like nobody understands them. He says the desert is the only place that tells the truth. He says the sky out there is so big it can hold everything youre scared to feel.

Im going. I told Mom Im staying at Stacys. Stacys covering for me. She thinks its a party. I didnt tell her what kind.

June 22, 1994

We drove out there in the back of a van. There were fourteen of us. Kids from school. Some I knew and some I didnt. The Judge drove. He didnt say much. Just let us look out the windows.

The compound is out past where anything should be. Theres buildings made of metal and wood. Theres a fire pit in the middle. Theres the smell of something burning but not wood.

The Judge said were special. He said we were chosen. He said the people back in town dont understand what its like to feel so much that you want to crawl out of your own skin. He said he understands. He said he feels it too.

I believed him. I dont know why. I just believed him.

June 24, 1994

We stayed the night. Slept in the big building on cots. The Judge didnt sleep. He walked around outside and we watched him through the windows. He stood in the firelight for hours. He never moved. He just stood there looking at the flames.

One of the older kids said hes not human. Said hes something older than human. I asked what that meant and she just shook her head.

June 25, 1994

The Judge asked us to sit with him. In a circle around the fire. He said he wanted to show us something. He said it was a secret. He said once we knew the secret wed never feel stuck again.

He told us to close our eyes.

I closed my eyes.

I dont know how long I had them closed. When I opened them the fire was lower and the other kids were crying. The Judge was standing in the center of the circle. He was holding something. I dont know what it was. I dont want to know what it was.

He saw me looking. He smiled.

Now you know, he said.

June 28, 1994

I went back. I didnt want to but I had to. I had to understand.

The Judge was waiting for me. He said he knew Id come back. He said I was different from the others. He said I could see what the others couldnt.

He put his hand on my shoulder. His hand was cold. Colder than anything.

You feel it dont you, he said. The wanting. The wanting to be clean. To be empty. To have all the parts of you that hurt taken out.

I nodded. I couldnt talk.

I can do that for you, he said. I can take it all away. Youll never feel stuck again. Youll never feel anything again. Thats a gift. Thats the only real gift.

He smiled again. That smile like something underneath.

But not yet, he said. Not yet. First you have to bring me the others. First you have to show me who else is ready to be clean.

July 2, 1994

I brought Teresa. She was asking questions. She was starting to talk to her mom. I couldnt let her talk to her mom.

The Judge was happy. He put his hand on my head and said I was doing well. He said I was almost ready.

I dont know what almost ready means. I dont know if I want to know.

July 15, 1994

Cynthia came. I brought her like I brought Teresa.

The Judge says I should start thinking about my family. He says theyre part of what makes me stuck. He says when Im clean I wont need them anymore.

I think about my mom. I think about how mad shell be when I dont come home.

I think about how she wont be mad for long.

July 23, 1994

I dont want to do this anymore.

I told the Judge. I said I dont want to bring anyone else. I said I want to go home.

He didnt get mad. He just looked at me. He looked at me like he was looking through me.

You cant go home, he said. You know that. You crossed over. The moment you closed your eyes you crossed over and you cant come back. But thats ok. Thats a good thing. Coming back is for people who still have something inside them worth saving. You dont have that anymore. None of us do. And thats beautiful.

I started to cry. He wiped my face with his thumb. His thumb was cold.

Tommorow, he said. Tommorow is your day. Youre ready now. You finally understand. You understand that the only way to stop feeling stuck is to stop being anything at all. You understand that emptiness is the answer.

He smiled.

Tomorrow I will take what is mine.

July 24, 1994

I can hear them outside. The other kids. Theyre singing something. I dont know the words.

The Judge came in. He brought me a glass of water. He said I should drink. He said its important to stay hydrated.

He sat on the edge of the cot next to me. He put his hand on my arm. His hand is always so cold.

Are you scared, he asked.

I said yes.

Good, he said. Fear is the last thing. The very last thing before the emptiness. Fear means youre close. Fear means youre almost there.

He stood up. He walked to the door.

Tonight, he said. Tonight I will take what is mine. And what is mine is everything. Every feeling you ever had. Every thought. Every fear. Every dream. I will take it all and I will make it beautiful. I will make it into something that cant be hurt. Something that cant be lost. Something that will last forever.

He turned back. He smiled.

And when I am done you will be perfect. You will be empty and you will be clean and you will understand that I did this because I love you. I love all of you. I love you so much I want to unmake you. I want to take you apart and put you back together as something that cant suffer.

He left.

I can hear them outside. The singing has stopped.

Something is burning. The same smell from before.

I can hear footsteps outside the door.

[PAGE ENDS]

[REMAINING PAGES MISSING]

END TRANSCRIPTION ATTACHMENT D-3

ADDENDUM

Date: November 8, 1995 Author: Det. L. Romero, Badge #0893 Re: Interview with Jane Crow (mother of decedent #3)

Ms. Crow was shown the transcription of her daughter's notebook. She did not speak for approximately eleven minutes. When she did speak, she stated only:

"She came home one night in June. I was asleep. She stood in the doorway of my room and she just stood there. I opened my eyes and she was looking at me. She said nothing. She just looked at me. Then she left. She went back out. I should have stopped her. I should have gotten up. I should have stopped her."

Ms. Crow was offered victim services. She declined. She asked if her daughter's remains had been recovered. She was informed that only tissue fragments remained. She asked where the tissue fragments were being stored. She was informed that cremated remains would be returned to the family upon conclusion of the investigation.

She asked if the fragments were in pain.

She was informed that fragments could not experience pain.

She said she wasn't sure that was true.

Neither am i.

CASE STATUS: OPEN ACTIVE INVESTIGATION

NOTE: The Polaroid photograph (Evidence #D-3-4) depicts fourteen children standing in front of the compound's main building. Lisa Anne Crow is visible in the photograph, positioned at the far right edge of the group. She is not smiling. She is not looking at the camera. She is looking directly at the person holding the camera.

The person holding the camera is not visible in the frame.

The photograph is dated in the bottom right corner. The date reads: JULY 24, 1994.

The day before Lisa Anne Crow was reported missing.

CLASSIFICATION: LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE NOT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE

Would the sub be interested in short trade clips/GIFs + journal notes?

Idea is to show executions along with the reasoning, plan, and outcomes including failed trades.

Most of us trade solo, so could be useful to see real setups and thought processes.

Worth sharing or n0?