r/Odd_directions

Part 1: I'm a Serial Killer. Hell Just Offered Me a Job.

Part 2: I Work for Hell's Retrieval Department. Apparently, I'm Already Underperforming.

Lucy was sitting at the motel's tiny table, a mug in one hand, watching me.

"We're leaving tonight."

I glanced at the clock.

6:00 A.M.

I hadn't slept. Not because I needed it.

Ever since I died, sleep had become optional. I didn't dream anymore. Closing my eyes was just darkness until I decided to open them again.

Usually, that was enough.

Not after last night.

I'd spent hours chasing the Spine Taker through the woods, fighting it, then dragging it back to Hell in chains. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the same thing: hundreds of faces staring at me, asking a single question.

Who am I?

By afternoon, I'd stopped pretending sleep was coming. I didn't need food anymore. Or water. Or even rest. But I stayed in bed anyway. Lying there with my eyes closed was the closest thing I had left to feeling human.

When I finally opened my eyes, the clock read 5:00 P.M.

Lucy hadn't moved. She was still sitting at the table reading a book, as though waiting eleven hours for someone to wake up was completely normal.

"About time," she said, setting the book aside. "I was beginning to think you'd decided to hibernate."

"Very funny."

"We leave in ten minutes."

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. My briefcase was already packed, and the dried mud had been cleaned from the leather.

"...You didn't have to do that."

"I know."

That was her entire explanation.

"...Thanks."

A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

"You're welcome."

I grabbed my jacket from the chair. It smelled clean.

"...You washed this too?"

"It had demon blood on it."

"So?"

"So I washed it."

I stared at her.

"...You're the Prime Minister of Hell."

"I am."

"And you did my laundry."

"You were occupied."

I wasn't sure which part of that conversation disturbed me more.

Ten minutes later, we climbed into a black sedan waiting beneath one of the motel's flickering lights. Lucy started the engine, and we pulled onto the highway.

"So," I asked, fastening my seatbelt, "what's the mission?"

"The angel has already killed three retrieval teams."

That immediately got my attention.

"But I found something interesting," she continued. "Every team attacked the angel first."

I frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"Angels are creatures defined by peace. Under Heaven's laws, they're forbidden from harming humans unless those humans attack first."

"So every team provoked it."

She nodded.

"They never gave it another choice."

I watched the city drift past outside my window.

"What if it refuses to come with us?"

"Then we'll have to force it."

She paused before adding quietly, "...Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

Something in her voice unsettled me. She didn't sound worried we'd fail to arrest the angel.

She sounded uncertain if we'd actually succeed. 

"Do we know which angel it is?"

"No."

"Seriously?"

Lucy shook her head. "No team survived long enough to identify it. Heaven also hasn't answered our requests."

"They're ignoring Hell?"

"There are only two possibilities. Either the angel no longer belongs to Heaven..." She glanced at me briefly. "...or they're choosing not to respond."

"On purpose?"

She didn't answer.

"I don't hurt innocent people," I said.

"I know."

"Then why are we trying to capture an angel that isn't slaughtering civilians?"

"Because one angel walking freely on Earth is enough to destabilize the balance between Heaven and Hell."

"So where is it?"

"An abandoned elementary school."

A navigation marker appeared on the dashboard.

Estimated Arrival: 3 Hours.

"Damn."

I leaned back in my seat, expecting a long drive.

The next thing I knew, Lucy was nudging my shoulder.

"We're here."

I blinked and looked outside.

The highway had vanished.

In its place stood an abandoned elementary school behind rusted fencing and waist-high weeds. The playground was barely visible beneath the overgrowth.

I frowned at the dashboard.

"...Twenty minutes?"

"The car belongs to Hell."

She said it so matter-of-factly that I didn't bother asking for an explanation.

The school looked like it had been abandoned for decades. Broken classroom windows reflected the fading sunlight, and a lone swing creaked lazily back and forth.

There wasn't any wind.

Neither of us moved.

For the first time since I'd met Lucy, she looked genuinely uneasy.

"I have a bad feeling about this."

I followed her gaze to the entrance.

The front doors were already standing open.

As if someone inside had been expecting us.

The moment we stepped across the threshold, every speaker in the building crackled to life. A calm, emotionless voice echoed through the empty halls.

"All agents wishing to speak with the angel may proceed to the fifth floor."

The voice fell silent for a moment.

"Good luck."

The speakers clicked off. I frowned.

"...Good luck?"

Lucy didn't answer.

"Isn't it just a matter of taking the stairs to the fifth floor?"

"It would be," she said quietly, "if reality still worked."

We reached the first stairwell, only to find that the staircase ended at a single hallway. There was no second flight, no way to continue upward. Instead, another staircase waited at the opposite end of the floor.

"So we have to cross every floor just to reach the next staircase?"

"Yes."

I stared at the building's layout.

"Who designed this place? This is the worst school I've ever seen."

Lucy glanced at the walls.

"They didn't."

"What?"

She rested a hand against the cold concrete.

"The building wasn't always like this. Angels distort reality simply by existing. Space bends around them. Hallways move. Rooms change places. Distances stop making sense."

"So..."

"This school is trying to become something else."

I looked down the endless corridor as the lights overhead buzzed weakly and the air carried a faint smell of sulfur. Lucy's expression had changed into something I hadn't seen before.

"The first floor."

I blinked.

"What?"

She pointed ahead.

The first floor was silent.

Not empty—silent.

The kind of silence that made every footstep feel like a mistake. Rows of rusted lockers stretched far beyond where they should have, vanishing into darkness that swallowed the ends of the hallway, while every classroom door hung open just enough to reveal nothing but blackness inside.

I counted my breathing.

One.

Two.

Three.

Something else breathed back.

Lucy raised a hand, silently telling me to stop.

"You hear it?" I whispered.

She nodded.

"Don't run."

The lights flickered.

When they came back, someone was standing at the far end of the corridor.

No.

Something.

From a distance she looked like a woman, but she was impossibly tall, her head nearly brushing the ceiling. Gray skin stretched tightly over unnaturally long limbs, and both arms extended straight out to either side, forming a grotesque cross that reached from wall to wall. Her elbows bent the wrong way, and her fingers scraped against the lockers with a metallic screech.

Then I noticed the uniform—a black tactical jacket just like Lucy's.

Across the chest was a faded patch:

HELL RETRIEVAL TEAM 1.

"...That was a person," I whispered.

Lucy never took her eyes off it. "Was."

The Long Lady's neck twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees until she was staring directly at us. Crack. Crack. Crack. Every joint in her body snapped into place.

Then she smiled.

She didn't run. She unfolded. Her arms slammed into the walls as she lurched forward, dragging herself down the hallway with horrifying speed while lockers crumpled inward beneath those impossibly long limbs.

"Move!" Lucy shouted.

We sprinted as metal screamed behind us. I looked over my shoulder.

Big mistake.

One of her hands stretched impossibly far, fingers lengthening like spider legs as they reached for my back.

Lucy fired once.

The infernal round punched through the creature's shoulder. Instead of blood, dozens of human mouths opened inside the wound. They all screamed at once.

The Long Lady collapsed, convulsing violently.

"Keep running!" Lucy shouted.

We reached the stairwell and slammed the door shut behind us. The screaming stopped so abruptly that the silence felt heavier than the noise had.

Lucy didn't even wait to catch her breath before climbing.

"That won't hold it."

The second floor smelled rotten—not like decay, but wet meat. The hallway floor squished beneath our boots.

Then we heard crying.

Not one person.

Hundreds.

The sound echoed from around the corner.

Slowly, something stepped into view.

It was nearly twelve feet tall, not because it had grown, but because bodies had been fused together.

Dozens of torsos twisted into one towering pillar of flesh. Arms protruded in every direction, grabbing blindly through the air. Faces were embedded throughout its body, each frozen in absolute terror. Some begged. Some laughed. Some were still screaming.

Every face wore a HELL badge.

Every face belonged to someone who had come here before us.

"Oh..."

My stomach lurched.

"They're still alive."

Lucy didn't answer.

The body totem took one enormous step. The hallway shook. A dozen arms slammed into the walls, crushing concrete like paper.

Then every face looked at us simultaneously.

"Help us."

"Please."

"It hurts."

"Kill me."

"Don't leave us."

The voices overlapped until they became one deafening roar.

The creature charged.

Its dozens of arms reached forward like a tidal wave. One grabbed a locker and ripped it from the wall. Another punched straight through concrete. A third nearly caught my shoulder.

We ducked beneath a sweeping arm as it shattered the ceiling behind us. Chunks of concrete rained down.

"Stairs!" Lucy yelled.

The totem slammed both arms into the hallway. The impact split the floor behind us.

We threw ourselves through the stairwell door just before another arm punched through it, fingers clawing wildly for us.

By the time we reached the third floor, neither of us was speaking anymore.

The hallway was filled with students.

At least...

They looked like students.

Heads hung low. School uniforms. Backpacks.

Every one of them stood perfectly still, facing away from us.

I counted nearly fifty.

None of them moved.

"They aren't real..." I whispered.

Lucy slowly shook her head.

"No."

One of them turned.

Its jaw was gone. Its eyes were milky white.

Then another turned.

And another.

Every face was rotting. Every uniform had dried blood covering it. Every chest carried the insignia of a different retrieval team beneath torn clothing.

Not students.

Agents.

All of them.

Their mouths opened together.

Then they began walking toward us.

Slowly.

Hundreds of footsteps echoed through the hallway.

Then they started running.

The entire hallway erupted. Dozens of rotting agents charged at us, their boots pounding against the tile with enough force to shake the floor. Their bodies were broken, jaws hanging loose, bones jutting through torn uniforms, yet they moved with terrifying speed.

"The stairs!" Lucy shouted.

We sprinted.

Something cold wrapped around my ankle.

I hit the ground hard.

A decomposed agent had crawled out from beneath a row of lockers, its fingers digging into my leg with impossible strength. Half its face had been ripped away, revealing yellowed teeth beneath rotting flesh. The faded patch on its chest read RETRIEVAL TEAM 3.

Its mouth opened.

"Don't... leave..."

I drove my boot into its face. The skull caved in with a sickening crack, and its grip loosened just enough for me to scramble free.

Lucy spun, raising her revolver.

Three deafening shots echoed through the hallway.

Each blessed round punched through a zombie's forehead, reducing the creature to ash before it even hit the ground.

I emptied five rounds of my own into the horde, buying us a few precious seconds.

We dove through the stairwell door.

Lucy slammed it shut.

Something heavy crashed into the other side.

Then another.

The metal door bent inward with every impact.

We didn't wait to see if it would hold.

Halfway up the stairs, Lucy stumbled.

A violent cough escaped her lips.

Dark red blood splattered across the concrete steps.

I grabbed her before she could fall.

"What the hell is happening to you?"

She wiped the blood from her mouth like it was nothing.

"The blessed rounds."

Another cough escaped her.

"They're blessed by Heaven."

Realization hit me.

"And you're..."

She gave a weak smile.

"A demon."

"You've been shooting yourself with Heaven's power this entire time."

"They hurt," she admitted. She pushed herself upright. "But they hurt angels more."

I stared back down the staircase.

"Those things..."

"They were the retrieval teams."

Lucy nodded.

Every failed team. Every soul trapped here.

She turned and started climbing again.

"We need to keep moving."

I followed her up the stairs.

The fourth-floor door creaked open.

Darkness greeted us. Not ordinary darkness. This floor had no light at all. Outside, the sun was still setting.

Inside... night had already fallen.

Even our flashlights struggled. Their beams reached only a few feet before being swallowed whole. Every sound seemed muffled—our footsteps, our breathing, even the clicking of Lucy's revolver sounded distant.

"This isn't normal," I whispered.

"No," Lucy replied quietly.

We moved slowly, staying close enough that our shoulders almost touched. Then I saw someone standing at the end of the hallway.

"...Lucy."

"I see them."

As we approached, my heart stopped.

It was me.

Almost.

My face. My clothes. My height. But wrong.

Far too many eyes covered my face, blinking independently. Some were stitched into my cheeks. Others lined my neck. They all stared at me.

Beside it stood another figure.

Lucy.

Except her mouth stretched from ear to ear, packed with row after row of jagged teeth that clicked together like broken glass.

More figures stepped from the darkness. Dozens. Each one looked like us, each one twisted differently. Some had extra limbs. Others bent backward. Some had no skin at all.

They weren't monsters pretending to be us. They looked like versions of us that had been assembled from someone else's nightmares.

My double took a shaky step forward. Its countless eyes filled with tears.

When it spoke, it sounded exactly like my voice.

"Please..."

Another step.

"...Please kill me."

Behind it, Lucy's double smiled with hundreds of teeth.

Then every copy looked up in perfect unison.

And then we started running.

By the time we reached the stairwell landing, I was breathing harder than I should have been. I glanced back through the stairwell window.

The fourth floor was gone.

Not hidden.

Gone.

Beyond the glass wasn't another hallway anymore, but an endless stretch of pale sky filled with slow-moving clouds. For a split second, I thought I saw wings drifting somewhere inside them.

Then the view snapped back to cracked concrete.

"...Lucy."

"I know."

She didn't even look.

"The angel's presence is getting stronger," she said as we kept climbing. "Reality is starting to lose the argument."

"What does that mean?"

"It means this building is forgetting it's a building."

The stairwell groaned around us. A door we had just come through was suddenly twenty feet farther away. The steps beneath my boots shifted with a grinding sound, rearranging themselves as if the school was quietly rebuilding itself around us.

"We need to reach the fifth floor before there isn't a fifth floor anymore."

We ran.

The staircase groaned beneath our feet as the steps behind us began to crumble away, swallowed by an endless black void. Every landing we crossed stretched farther than the last, the distance warping as if the school itself was trying to keep us from reaching the top.

Just as the final flight started to collapse, Lucy slammed into the fifth-floor door and threw it open.

We stumbled through.

Silence.

The screaming was gone. The shaking stopped. The air was still.

After everything we'd fought through, the fifth floor felt impossibly... normal.

Rows of clean lockers lined the hallway. The fluorescent lights hummed softly overhead. Not a single drop of blood stained the floor.

It was the calm that bothered me most.

Then, somewhere down the hall—

A classroom door creaked open. Inside, it was late afternoon. Warm sunlight drifted through the windows, dust floating lazily in its glow. Outside the classroom, the hallway remained trapped in the dead of night. 

Someone stood alone beside the window.

For a moment, my mind refused to accept what my eyes were seeing.

A girl.

Red hair.

Freckles.

Hazel eyes.

She couldn't have been older than sixteen.

White feathers drifted lazily through the silent classroom.

Eight enormous wings rested behind her, each one so vast they should have torn through the walls, yet reality simply bent around them. Smaller wings blossomed from her shoulders, elbows, wrists, even the backs of her hands, as though Heaven itself had forgotten how many she was meant to have.

She looked...

Beautiful.

Then I noticed the scars.

Thin silver rings circled both wrists.

Another encircled her neck.

Two more rested above her knees.

Perfect.

Unbroken.

Not scars left by wounds...

But by absence.

The exact places...

The Florida River Monster had torn her apart.

My lungs forgot how to breathe.

The reason I'd spent years hunting monsters.

The reason Hell had found me worthy of becoming one of its agents.

The reason I'd crossed lines no human being should ever cross.

Was standing only a few feet away.

Looking at me.

The world dissolved into a dull ringing as my fingers went numb. The revolver slipped from my hand, crashing against the classroom floor with a deafening clang.

She didn't flinch at the sound.

She simply turned toward me.

Then...

She smiled.

Not the serene smile I'd imagined angels wore.

Not some divine expression beyond human understanding. 

Just... Her smile.

The one that used to make me laugh when we skipped class together. 

The one I'd spent years trying to remember.

The one she'd worn on the walk to school that morning.

Before she was taken from me.

"...Hey, Sister."

I hadn't even opened the first box in my new place before I heard a knock on the door. As I looked through the peephole, I could see an older man, his hair tied back in a ponytail, his graying mustache ruffling a bit under his breath. It was my landlord, Henderson. I wasn't sure if it was his first name or last name.

As I opened the door, he said, "Hey, new tenant. How are you doing? Getting settled in?"

I nodded. "Yeah, just, you know, unpacking my stuff."

I had managed to find a decent place in my price range in a relatively trendy neighborhood full of people my own age, a small apartment block with maybe six units total. I just happened to email him on the right day to get a quick response; before I knew it, I had paid my first month, last month, and a security deposit, and started packing up to make the move.

"Good to hear. Listen, I was going over some stuff."

Great, I thought. Typical landlord, waiting for me to bring the last box in before telling me something is wrong with the apartment. I just hoped it was something small, and not the air conditioner, because that would suck with how hot and thick the air felt.

"It's just the paperwork, you see," he continued. "One last page you forgot to initial."

He reached into his pocket, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper. I looked it over and felt a strange sense of familiarity. When he had first passed the lease agreement over to me, he had just handed me a loose stack of about five papers, not stapled or held together in any way. At the time, I thought this specific page had been a joke that accidentally fell into the pile.

Because the contents were ridiculous as I read them again.

>1. The vents are old and sometimes rattle. You do not hear voices in them.

>

>2. Henderson does not have a brother. If anyone claims to be his brother, notify Henderson immediately.

>

>3. Absolutely no returns of deposits.

"Sorry, I thought this was like a joke of some kind," I said plainly.

"No, it's part of our standard paperwork."

"Do people really think they hear voices from the vents?"

"It happened a long time ago," Henderson said. "One of our old tenants kept calling me up and saying someone was talking to her from the vents, so I added it just sort of as a warning for new residents."

"Alright. Kind of weird, but okay."

"Do you need a pen?" Henderson asked, reaching into his other pocket and pulling out a black ballpoint pen. He clicked it and handed it to me.

As I placed the crumpled paper on a box, preparing to sign, I asked, "Thanks... so, you don't have a brother?"

"Nope."

I read over the line about it one more time. "So, does someone try to pretend to be your brother?"

"It's a strange tale," Henderson replied. "Another thing that happened once, but I don't want to bog you down with sordid tales from years ago."

I was sort of glad that he didn't want to relive his past; it was starting to get dark outside.

"Alright," I replied, putting my initials on each line and doing a quick scribble at the bottom before handing the paper back to him.

"Thank you. Well, I guess it's time to start tying them on. I don't live too far from here," Henderson said. "I missed beer thirty earlier, so I've got to make up for it. But if you have any issues, just let me know, in the morning, of course."

He gave a quick wave and walked to the front door. I did the polite thing and escorted him out, watching from the landing as he climbed into an older pickup truck and drove off.

Turning back inside, I opened the first box, the one with all my books, and began pulling them out, stacking them neatly on the floor. It was hard to find deals in the city, especially in neighborhoods that catered to young professionals like myself. So even if Henderson was a bit of an oddball, I could live with it.

As I moved on to the next box, I heard a loud, rhythmic sound. It was like someone keeping a steady beat on a tom drum. I started exploring the apartment to trace the noise, treading through the small living room and being mindful of the boxes scattered around me. I headed into the tiny kitchen, which featured an oven and just enough counter space for a microwave. Just because I was a young professional didn't mean I could afford the luxury of abundant counter space, or a newer fridge, for that matter, I thought as I opened the dated refrigerator and looked inside.

The noise wasn't coming from here.

I walked into my modest bedroom. My full-size mattress took up most of the space, but I could still hear the sound coming from somewhere else. I checked the closet like a child looking for a monster. The steady, rhythmic beat kept going as I walked into the final room: the bathroom.

It contained just a toilet, a sink, and a small shower. The noise was loudest here. As I searched the space, I realized the absolute last thing I wanted to deal with on move-in night was plumbing.

But as I finished checking all the piping, I turned and saw the vent above the doorway. That was where the noise was coming from. Henderson had called it a "rattle," though I felt our definitions differed significantly judging by the sound coming from it.

There wasn't much I could do about it now. I walked back into the living room and started to open up more boxes, slowly pulling things out and trying to mentally map out where everything would go. As soon as I left the bathroom, the sound ended. If the noise was only temporary, I figured maybe it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

The sound of a car pulling up broke the temporary quiet of my apartment. A moment later, I heard car doors open, followed by the sound of footsteps, chatter, and laughing. The group seemed to stop right in front of my door, noticing the light spilling out from my window.

I heard a female voice say, "Looks like we got another new neighbor."

"For now. The girl who lived here before didn't stay long," a male voice replied. "I feel like she just left in the middle of the night."

I heard the two laugh as their footsteps faded into the distance, followed by the sound of a door shutting. I hoped they were just exceptionally loud and my walls weren't actually that thin.

I tried to continue unpacking, but then the noise from the bathroom vent started up again, that same rhythmic thumping. I felt myself losing patience with the whole situation. Marching back into the bathroom, I reached up to try to close the vent, but it was just high enough that I couldn't get a proper grasp on it.

I ended up hopping around and struggling for a moment before I finally forced it shut. I took a heavy breath, only to be greeted by a loud thud at my front door.

Had I been too loud while jumping around like a fool to close it?

Another heavy thud echoed out. This one was more aggressive.

"Hello?" I called out.

There was one more heavy thud, but this one was slow and deliberate. I heard the sound of a hand sliding down the wood after hitting it. I walked over to the entryway and looked through the peephole.

Whoever had knocked wasn't standing right in front of my door; instead, they were almost six or seven feet away. It was dark outside, and they were far enough from the dim outdoor light of my apartment that details were obscured, but I could make out two things: they had unkempt hair, and they were completely naked. Even in the darkness, I could tell the person was older. Their body was covered in wrinkles and sagging skin.

I froze, not knowing what to do. I thought about just leaving it alone, but then I saw an unnatural twitch, their body contorted violently while standing out there in the distance. I stepped back and immediately grabbed my phone.

Another thud echoed through the wood, followed by a muffled, raspy voice. "Please... let me in."

I forced myself to look through the peephole again. This time, I saw a gray mustache ruffling under the unruly hair. The man looked exactly like Henderson.

"Um... why?" I asked, my voice shaking.

He pressed his mouth directly against the keyhole, revealing dark, stained, and cracked teeth. "Because my brother put something in there that I need."

"The landlord says he doesn't have a brother," I replied, my stomach in a knot.

"He does," the voice hissed. "And he makes him live in a maintenance closet."

"Why would he do that?"

"Why does he hide what he has in your apartment is what you should be asking," the thing replied, pressing its mouth even more against the peephole.

"What does he have in my apartment?"

"Let me in and I will show you," he growled.

"That's not happening," I said. "Go away or I will call the police."

"I will be gone before they get here. Now let me in," he demanded.

"Back to the maintenance closet?" I countered. "Couldn't I just tell them you're there?"

"I am the only one who can stop it, and stop what will happen to you."

I stepped away from the peephole and scrolled through my phone to find Henderson's number. "I am calling your 'brother' right now!" I shouted toward the wood.

There was only silence from the other side of the door. After a few agonizing rings, Henderson answered. "Hello?"

"Hey... so, I don't really know how to explain this," I stammered, "but there's a naked guy outside my door claiming to be your brother."

"I don't see how that would be possible," Henderson replied, his voice heavy. "But I can't help you right now."

"So I should call the police?"

"No, no, they wouldn't be able to help you," he urged. "Do you have anything made of actual iron in your home?"

"What? Why?" I blurted out. "I am just going to call the police."

"Listen, I am going to be honest with you," Henderson replied. "I am a little drunk right now, but I sober up fast and I can help. But I need your help first."

"Yeah, I don't think I am going to do that. I think I am just going to call the cops."

"Six months. Free rent."

"Say that again?" I asked, entirely thrown off. Did he just offer me free rent? In 2026, a deal like that was completely unheard of. "Did you say free rent for six months?"

"I did. And to sweeten the deal, I won't raise your rent by twenty percent when you renew your lease."

In this economy, it didn't take long to make up my mind. "So, what do I have to do?"

"I need you to buy me some time to make a pot of coffee and drive back there," Henderson said. "If you could lure him back to the maintenance closet, that would be great."

"Um, how do I do that?"

"Find something made of iron and threaten him with it," Henderson replied. "I will be there as soon as I can."

He hung up, leaving me to figure out if I even owned anything made of actual iron. Then, another heavy thud rattled the door.

I pressed my eye to the peephole again. This time, he was pressed right up against the other side. Sticking his own eye into the glass revealed a hollowed-out, bloodshot stare.

"He will eventually get you too," the thing rasped, "even though you aren't the normal type."

Normal type?

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Usually, the spell is used on women," he replied. "Like the last few tenants."

"Alright, this is just crazy," I muttered, backing up a step. "Weird lease agreements, twin brothers, and now magic."

"He's not my brother. He just says that when I try to save the poor souls he rents to," he hissed. "And I bet he told you to hit me with iron, too. It doesn't matter what you hit me with, it hurts the same either way. But iron, iron really hurts him."

The figure stepped away from the door, melting back into the shadows of the walkway.

I put the chain lock on my door and cracked it slightly, poking my face out. "So then what is the Henderson who was here earlier?"

"I don't know what he exactly is." The figure turned his head. "But that unit you are in right now? It's where he does all of his weird magic crap."

"Here we go again..." I muttered.

"He's had about four tenants in this unit over the last eighteen months," the creature continued. "They've all done the exact same thing you are doing right now, talking to me. But they all end up the same. Hollowed husks that he eats. At this point, half of them don't even fully unpack before he does it."

"He eats them?"

He gave an unnatural nod, his head twitching violently as he did it. "He does it not for the meat, but for the soul. All the proof is in your unit."

He took a step forward. "Are you going to let me in or not?"

We just stared at each other, a naked man in the humid night, and a guy who had just been hoping to unpack his things, looking out at him from a crack in the door.

He took another step forward, his head cocking toward his shoulder with an odd, involuntary jerk.

"What if you are just making all of this up?" I asked.

"Why would I do that?"

"I don't know. What if you're just some sort of tweaker?" I grunted. "Like, you twitch all the time."

"It's because of his magic," he insisted. "Every time he has to cast the spell, he takes a little piece of me with him."

"Or you're a drug addict with a real far-out story. One that happens to line up real nice with a guy who wants free rent."

Something shifted in his face at that, like I'd finally said the one thing he couldn't argue with.

"You think I chose this?" he said, quieter now. "You think I like standing out here naked, begging some kid half my age to believe me?"

After another violent twitch of his neck, he charged.

I fell backward as his hand smashed through the crack in the door, reaching inside my apartment. His fingers slammed wildly against the wood and its frame as he shrieked, "I am trying to help, you goddamn fool! I am trying to save your life!"

That's when a truck skidded into the parking lot, the exact same one I had seen Henderson drive off in earlier.

"Let me in! We can stop him together!" he shrieked.

Fuck this, I thought to myself, scrambling backward across the floor to reach my phone.

But before I could grab it, I heard the one sound I absolutely didn't want to hear: the sharp snap of my door's chain lock breaking. The links clattered loudly onto the floor. He burst through the doorway, throwing his weight onto me and grabbing me tightly by the collar of my shirt.

"Why won't you let me save you?!" he screamed at the top of his lungs.

"How did you escape that maintenance closet?" Henderson growled.

He lunged forward and clamped his hands around my attacker's neck, tossing him off me as if he were nothing more than a ragdoll. The naked man crashed heavily against the half-unpacked boxes, sending a stack of my books flying across the floor.

I scrambled away, seeing my phone on the floor and trying to grab it, but Henderson noticed this and grabbed it away. "What are you doing?" I cried out.

"I can't have you calling the cops," Henderson directed, his voice tense.

My head started to swirl as I stood up, looking down at the naked old man lying among my books and belongings. He looked stunned, coughing and struggling to push himself up from the floor.

"See? He needs me close... what more proof do you need?" the man coughed out.

"Shut up!" Henderson screamed.

"What does he mean?" I interjected, looking between the two of them. "Why can't we call the cops?"

"Because he can't take my blood anymore," the naked man replied from his hands and knees.

Before he could say another word, Henderson delivered a bone-cracking kick straight to his ribs.

"I told you to shut up!" Henderson roared.

"What is he talking about?" I shouted out.

"The answer is in the vents," he pleaded. "It's all in there, vials of my blood and the deed to this property, from before they took it over."

"What is he talking about, Henderson?!" I shouted, backing away toward the kitchen.

"Why hasn't anyone come to investigate?" the old man gasped, clutching his bruised ribs. "Why hasn't anyone called the cops?"

I froze. He was right. We had caused a violent commotion, yet not a single neighbor had opened a door. There was no shouting, no pounding on the walls. It was as if the neighbors expected this, or worse, as if they knew better than to interfere.

"What is he talking about?" I repeated, my voice barely a whisper.

"Don't listen to him," Henderson said, his voice dropping an octave, losing all its neighborly warmth. "He's not well."

"Then why do you keep him in a maintenance closet instead of getting him help?"

Henderson turned to me. The shift was absolute, the way he stood, the coldness in his eyes. "Because he's right. I do need him alive. And he's right about the other thing, too. No one is calling the police because, as he said... we took this over."

"He's going to kill you..." the old man wheezed from the floor.

I felt a massive lump form in my throat. "So... are you going to kill me?"

"That depends, honestly," the thing wearing Henderson's face replied, entirely casual now. "Help me drag him back to his cage in the maintenance closet, and the same deal stands. Free rent for six months, and absolutely no increase when it's time to sign your next lease."

"But you won't kill me?" I pressed, trying to find my footing.

He shook his head smoothly. "You will simply be a human living among the fae. And I will move my feeding room to another empty unit."

Suddenly, it all started to make sense. No human landlord would ever offer a deal that good, especially in 2026. Once again, it didn't take me long to decide.

I just nodded along, grabbed a pair of ankles, and started helping him drag the real Henderson out of the apartment.

My name is Teddy. I’m a deputy with the Mourner’s Crossing Sheriff’s Department, and Billy is my son. He’s ten. His best friend is Oliver Hallgarten. Most days they come as a pair. Billy gets close when something is sitting heavy in his head. Oliver holds things with both hands when he wants you to see what’s inside before he lets go.

They have a notebook they call the Cryptid Club. It’s full of rules they made up, drawings, sightings, things they half-believe, things they want to believe, and things I wish they had never noticed at all. Most of the time it’s harmless. Lately it hasn’t been.

Twenty minutes ago, another line showed up in that notebook. It wasn’t there before. Whatever is writing on those pages, it isn’t the boys. This needed to go somewhere before I touch the thing again.

Two nights ago, after dinner, Billy and Oliver came into the kitchen and set the notebook on the table between us. Billy was pressed right up against Oliver’s side. Oliver had the notebook flat between his hands like it might change its mind before anyone saw it.

Billy said they had seen a shape near the old maintenance shed at the edge of the park. Right away, he told me they didn’t go closer, which meant he knew the first question coming. Oliver said the air near the shed door felt wrong, like a room that had been shut up too long. Billy nodded before Oliver finished. He kept his shoulder against Oliver’s the whole time.

They didn’t cross the threshold. They wrote it down and came home. That’s one of their rules.

The pages looked normal while they stood there watching me. Billy’s writing was all lowercase, nearly no punctuation. Oliver’s was cleaner and tighter, with periods where they belonged. I told them Walter could look at it in the morning. Until then, they needed to stay close to the house. Neither of them argued.

Oliver stayed over because Simon and Rosemary were out late. Once the boys went upstairs, I put the notebook in the locked drawer in the kitchen, the one where we keep papers we don’t want them finding. Before bed, I opened the drawer one more time because leaving it alone was apparently beyond me. Same pages. Nothing new.

Yesterday morning, I took the notebook to Walter.

He didn’t tell me it was nothing. He read the shed entry twice, then read the rules around it. The same questions came out of him that had already come out of me. Did they touch the door. Did either of them hear anything. Did they smell anything. Did Billy say Sweet Jane had followed them home. Then he closed the notebook and said he’d drive out to the shed after his shift.

That was all. No speech. No sheriff voice. Just that quiet way he gets when he has stopped talking about a thing and started dealing with it. He told me to keep the boys in the yard or inside. Fine by me. There was no chance they were getting out of my sight.

When I got home, the notebook went back in the drawer. Before dinner, the pages still looked the same. I locked the drawer, made dinner, checked it again after. Nothing changed. That should have helped. It didn’t.

Last night around eleven, I opened the drawer again because sleep wasn’t happening. A drawing had appeared on the page after the shed entries. It showed the maintenance shed from above, like someone had been looking down from the roof or the trees. Two small figures stood in front of the door. One had Billy written next to it in Oliver’s handwriting. The other had Ollie. That drawing had not been there before dinner.

Upstairs, Oliver was awake in the guest room with a book open on his lap. He looked at my face and closed it before a word got said. When I asked if he had drawn the shed from above, he said no. He doesn’t like heights. They hadn’t gone that close anyway. Then he said, very carefully, “That wasn’t in there when we showed you.”

He didn’t look away from me.

I put the notebook back into the drawer. Sleep still didn’t come. Around two in the morning, the kitchen was dark and I had the drawer open again. A new line sat under the drawing. It was lowercase, almost like Billy’s handwriting, but not quite. The words looked like they were pretending to belong to him.

It said:

sheriff salty coconuts said no last time and he got shot for us so we are listening this time but the room behind the door is listening too

The drawer stayed open for a while after that. So did my mouth, probably.

Sheriff Salty Coconuts is Billy’s name for Walter Doyle, our sheriff. It started because of a Sea Salt Coconut Labubu Billy had, and Walter let it stick. The part about him getting shot is not a joke. A while back, Walter put himself between Billy, Oliver, and a gun. He was hit badly enough that nobody in this house talks about it lightly.

A little while later, Billy woke up from a nightmare. He came into the hall in his pajamas, breathing hard and trying not to make noise. He kept his mouth shut like making noise would make it worse. He said Sweet Jane was humming, but she sounded scared, like she was standing between the beds and the hallway trying to keep something from coming through.

The first thing out of my mouth was that it was just a dream. He was ten years old and shaking in my hallway, and one normal sentence was all there was to hand him before the rest of it had to be admitted.

Oliver came to Billy’s doorway and stopped there. He didn’t come in. He just stood where Billy could see him, making sure his friend was all right without stepping into the middle of it. Billy drank the water with both hands around the glass. Once he was back in bed, Oliver stayed in the doorway until Billy fell asleep again, then went back to the guest room without a word.

This morning, before the boys came downstairs, the notebook had another new page. One of their rules had been copied onto it, the one about not chasing glowing eyes. Someone had drawn a single line through it. Underneath, in that same almost-Billy handwriting, it said:

we should have knocked on the door instead of running home like babies

That is not Billy. That is not Oliver. Their rules all go the other way. Notice something. Write it down. Tell an adult. Don’t follow anything with glowing eyes. Don’t open doors in places you were warned about. Don’t knock just because something wants to be invited.

I took pictures of every page and sent them to Walter and Simon. I didn’t call Rosemary separately because I didn’t want to say any of it out loud while the boys were upstairs.

Twenty minutes ago, I opened the drawer again. One more line had appeared under the crossed-out rule.

he won’t be fast enough if you keep looking at the wrong door

I read it twice before I understood I had been standing there with the drawer open, staring at the page like the rest of the house didn’t exist. The kitchen door to the mudroom was shut. It had been shut all day. I knew that because I had checked it three times, once after breakfast, once after lunch, and once after I sent the pictures to Walter.

Upstairs, one of the bedroom doors clicked softly in its frame.

I closed the drawer without taking my eyes off the hallway. The lock had to wait. First came the listening. Nothing moved. No footsteps. No floorboards. No boys whispering when they were supposed to be reading. Then Billy called from upstairs, very quietly, “Dad?”

I locked the drawer. Upstairs came next.

Nobody here knows what’s writing in the notebook. Maybe it was already at the shed. Maybe the boys got its attention because they noticed it and came home like they were supposed to. Walter is out there right now with two other deputies. Billy and Oliver are upstairs. Every door in sight is shut.

The notebook should be burning already. That’s the truth.

So is this: opening that drawer again in the dark feels wrong. Carrying the notebook through the house feels wrong. Letting the boys see smoke outside and come to the window feels wrong. Finding out that burning it is the same as knocking feels worse.

Morning. Outside. Daylight. Walter back.

That’s when it burns.

If something in this town is watching the smallest people who notice it, other people should know what happened when two ten-year-olds followed their own rules and came straight home instead of trying to be brave about it.

Right now the notebook is in the locked drawer. Billy and Oliver are upstairs. The house feels heavier than it did two days ago. Every door I can see is shut. That’s all I know for sure.

My mom's funeral finally ended.

The last relatives left just before sunset, and by midnight the house had become unbearably quiet.

It wasn't a normal quiet; it was the kind of heavy silence that settles over a home after someone dies.

She’d been gone for three days. I was nineteen, sitting alone in my bedroom, staring at my phone and trying to numb my brain.

Then I smelled it—warm walnut and honey pastries. My breath caught in my throat as the scent drifted through the crack beneath my bedroom door.

It made no sense. Mom used to bake them every winter, and the smell was so specific, so distinct, that for a second I actually thought she was downstairs in the kitchen.

The scent grew stronger until I could almost hear the walnuts crackling in the pan and her faint humming.

My eyes filled with tears, and before I knew it, I was opening my door and stepping out into the dark hallway.

That's when I saw my dad putting on his heavy coat.

He's an ER doctor, and the hospital had just called him in for an emergency.

He looked absolutely exhausted, dead on his feet.

For a second, I wanted to beg him to stay, but instead, he just kissed the top of my head and whispered, "Keep an eye on your brother."

Then he left. A few moments later, his car pulled out of the driveway and disappeared into the night, leaving the house feeling even emptier.

I walked to my twin brother's room and pushed the door open.

He was fast asleep, his phone resting on the nightstand, playing one of those rain-and-forest tracks he always used to drown out the silence.

I quietly closed the door. Then I froze. My parents' bedroom door was cracked open just a few inches.

In the dark, I thought I saw someone standing there, perfectly still, watching me. I couldn't see a face or a body, and I couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman, but someone was in there.

I knew it.

My throat went completely dry.

I reached for the hallway switch and flicked it, flooding the space with light. Nothing. The doorway was empty.

I stood there for a few seconds before forcing my feet to move, eventually pushing the door open to walk into my parents' room.

Everything looked normal—the bed, the dresser, the family photos on the wall.

To clear my head, I opened my mom's closet.

The smell of her perfume was still heavy on her clothes, and that completely broke me.

I buried my face in her dresses and just started crying.

I don't know how long I stood there, a minute or maybe ten, until my elbow hit something solid in the back corner. I pulled back and found a leather box hidden behind a row of coats.

It was locked. Normally, I wouldn't have messed with it, but I'd spent part of my teenage years being a very different person than the daughter my parents thought they knew.

I grabbed a metal hairpin from my hair, and three minutes later, the lock clicked open.

The moment I lifted the lid, a chill hit the room.

Inside was a heavily damaged statue, its features so worn away by time that I couldn't even tell what it was supposed to be, which somehow made it worse.

Next to it were two baby binkies , an old photo of my brother and me as infants, and underneath everything else, an unlabeled VHS tape.

No writing, nothing.

I carried it downstairs to the old TV in the living room.

The tape hissed as I pushed it in, and static filled the screen before the image flickered on.

It was my mom holding the camera, walking through our house at night, quietly humming to herself.

She sounded happy and normal. The camera moved down the hallway until she reached her bedroom and pushed the door open.

My dad was fast asleep. Mom walked up to him, gently kissed his forehead, and whispered, "Sleep well, my dear husband." She watched him for a few seconds before leaving the room.

The camera turned back to the hallway, moving toward the nursery.

Inside the dark room, there was a single large crib where my twin brother and I slept side by side.

Mom sat down right next to it, pointing the camera down at our faces. Her free hand reached into the frame, gently pulling up the blanket.

"My little angels," she whispered.

"You are so beautiful."

She watched us for a few seconds.

Then she started singing:

Sleep now, the evening's here, and shadows fill the room,

Pan walks softly by your bed beneath the silver moon.

The night whispers sweet to a mother's desire٫

While Pan plays his pipe by a flickering fire.

Little ones, don't be afraid, his tall horn watches tight,

Pan's crimson eye guards your dreams until the morning light,

Sleep now, for the wind has come to steal the candle's bright.

She stopped singing and stroked my cheek.

Then she looked past the lens. "Thank you, Pan."

A strange wave of unease crept over me, leaving me wondering who Pan even was.

The tape went dead silent.

A few seconds passed, and then a hand reached out from the shadow behind the crib. It was huge, covered in dark hair, and completely wrong.

Its fingers slowly brushed across my brother's hand.

I knocked my chair over jumping to my feet.

I lunged at the TV and slammed the power button. The screen went black.

Total silence.

I stood there breathing hard, staring at my reflection in the dark glass.

Someone was standing a few feet behind me.

It was my mom.

She was just standing there in her old house dress, hands folded, smiling.

It was the same soft smile she used to give me whenever I woke up from a nightmare as a kid.

Then her smile stretched wider.

And for the first time in my life.

I wished I hadn't seen her.

My girlfriend has always been a creative type. When we first started talking, it seemed like the conversation would always shift towards either sketching, drawing, or painting.

I found it admirable. I loved that she had something that meant so much to her. Something she could be passionate about. The more time went on, the more that passion grew.

It wasn’t until we started dating that she felt comfortable enough to show me her work, though. I love her more than anything in the world, but good lord, I hate to say it… she was not good.

Her shades were off. Her lines were crooked. Her portraits bordered on stick figures.

Of course, I didn’t want to let on exactly what I thought of what she was showing me, but I can only pretend so much.

That’s the thing, though, any time I offered her advice, she’d just get so defensive. She was just so convinced that she was gonna be “the next big thing” in the art world.

I wanted her to succeed. Of course I wanted her to succeed. But in order to do that, she just had to listen to me. I’m not an artist myself, but even as just an everyday Joe Shmoe, I could still see where she was falling short.

I’d nudge her. Critique her in the nicest possible way I could muster. And it only led to her becoming more closed off with her work.

Unfortunately, the more closed off she became with her work, the more closed off she became in general. It was like her main talking point. And here I was, feeling like an asshole for taking that away from her.

I tried apologizing to her and explaining that I was just trying to help her, but she’d just keep that same blank expression on her face.

“I’ll try to get better for you.”

That’s all she’d tell me.

I wanted to believe her, but it seemed like she wasn’t even trying anymore. I never saw her sketching. I never saw her drawing. I never saw her painting.

It created this friction in our relationship that made every situation feel tense. We didn’t even argue. We’d just try and converse awkwardly before we both went back to our phones.

At the peak of her withdrawal, that’s when she started taking classes. She didn’t seem excited about it. She didn’t seem eager to be better. She seemed like she was doing it out of spite. Like she was defeated but ready to prove me wrong.

She’d be gone 3 days a week from 5 PM to 10 PM, and after about a month of this, she started bringing home her work.

She never showed it to me.

I’d just find colorful canvases hanging up around the house. In the kitchen. In the living room. Hell, even the bathroom had a few.

She had definitely been improving. Her lines were straighter. Her shades were more on point. Her paintings wowed me rather than making me force out a fake smile or a “that’s so good, honey!”

At first, she was bringing home paintings of landscapes. Mountain ranges. Ocean horizons. Forests.

Then it turned into infrastructure. Castles. Mansions. Shacks and sheds.

Then it was people. The most detailed portraits she had ever produced. Her mom. Her dad. Her teacher from class.

I wish that’s where it would’ve stopped. She had proved me wrong. She had convinced me. She had nothing else to prove. But it didn’t stop there. She couldn’t have just been happy with the progress she had made.

I came home from work one day to find the first painting she had done of me personally. It had been hung up along with the dozens of other random paintings in our living room. I saw it and immediately became sick to my stomach.

It was me just… disassembled. My head was in one part of the canvas. My legs and arms sprawled out across the painting, with the most gruesome depictions of gore I had ever seen her produce.

I heard her humming to herself in our bedroom.
I approached her carefully as she sketched wildly in her sketchbook.

“Honey,” I whispered. “Why did you do that painting of me?”

Continuing to hum without even looking up from her sketchbook, she responded, “Eh, just how I was feeling today,” as she continued scribbling on her page.

In the weeks that followed, more and more pieces began to pop up around the house. Each one depicting different versions of my death.

She never seemed angry or agitated. She just seemed distant. Distant but at peace, and that’s the part that hurts me.

She seemed to have this obsession with dismemberment. In every piece, I was dismembered in some way or another. Held together by wires. Forced to be a scarecrow. One showed me to be ornaments strewn about a Christmas tree.
At this point, there’s at least a dozen of them. But that’s not the part that concerns me.

What concerns me is that I’ve been waking up with outlines drawn around the circumference of my legs and arms. My neck and torso. Like she’s figuring out a design.

She always denies any involvement whenever I question her, but who else could it be? Does she think that I’ll believe I’m just doing this to myself?
I don’t know what to do.

I just wanted her to be the artist I knew she could be.

I picked her up outside a hotel.

I already knew she’d been thrown out.

The clerk stands in the doorway, arms folded, a phone to his ear.

She looks exhausted, dark shadows under her eyes, but she’s wearing a smile that’s already resigned. Fifteen or sixteen, around my age. Ready to give up.

She’s wearing a summer dress and sandals, and I can tell she hasn’t had a shower in weeks.

Her dress sticks to her, thick brown curls glued over her eyes, and a blooming red sunburn stains her skin. I wonder how long she's been hiding in the hotel.

Teenagers are public enemy number one, so it's not surprising the clerk’s beady eyes follow her to the passenger side of my beaten up bug.

“Hi!” She grins, relief bleeding from her tone that's almost a sob.

She jumps into my truck. “I'm Cinna.” She introduces herself with a fake name. Cinna is her favorite character in her favorite book tucked at the bottom of her pack. Her real name is Addison Hart.

16 years old.

She escaped a nullification camp with six dollars, a stolen iPhone 17, and a Polaroid camera.

She apologizes for her lack of hygiene with a laugh, and I smile and blast the AC.

“Don't worry about it,” I tell her, gesturing to my shorts and t-shirt combo I've been wearing since I found a lake off route 46.

Since then, it's just been hoping for rain, and sneaking into motel bathrooms.

Addison, sorry, Cinna, twists in her seat and asks me point blank:

“Dude,” she laughs, but she's blushing, embarrassed, already shifting uncomfortably. “Do you have any pads?”

I'm kinda surprised her life on the run hasn't significantly fucked with her cycle.

I haven't had a period since I was sixteen.

But I smile, nod, and gesture to my glove compartment. “I have tons.” I laugh when she snatches one up, her smile widening.

“I pick up a lot of kids,” I tell her. “I've lost count how many times I've been asked, so I raided a hotel bathroom.”

Addison squeaks excitedly, and leans back in her seat, squeezing the pads to her chest like a newborn baby. “You are an angel!” Then she blinks. Surprised. “Wait!”

Her eyes widen, and she sticks her head out of the window. “A beaten up red truck, and a teen driver!” She gasps. “Are you her?”

“That's what I've been reduced to?” I say. “Her?”

Addie grins. I catch her snatching up a cereal bar and stuffing it in her mouth. She doesn't even chew.

“You're the one who takes kids to a safe-haven,” she says through a mouthful, spitting crumbs everywhere. “I heard about you from a guy who was…” she drifts off, her smile fading, crawling from her face. “Anyway.” Addie demolishes the cereal bar in a single bite. “He said you're like, I dunno, a Gen Z Katniss.”

“I'm just a transporter.”

I tap the steering wheel, fiddling with the radio. Taylor Swift sputters through the static, and we both groan.

Addison pulls a face, and I know exactly what she's going to say. “I can't believe she sold out,” she whispers. “I fucking hate that stupid message she tacks onto the end of her songs.” Addison mimics the radio. “If any of my fans are out there, just know you're loved, and coming home will keep you all safe!”

“She was forced to, you know,” I remind her, as an ex-swifty who burned all of my albums. “They threatened her family.”

“I don't care." Addison grumbles. We’re both avoiding the elephant in the room.

It's comfortable, better, to talk about issues that don't matter instead of issues that do. “They're all the same.”

“So, where are you headed?” I ask.

Addison smiles, throwing her feet up on the dash. “The safe-haven! You can take me, right?” Her eyes widened. “Wait, do I need an ID? My mom burned all my shit before she sent me to—”

“No ID.” I say before she goes off on another tangent. She reminds me of Asa, my ADHD riddled bestie. Asa’s parents shot him in the head when he was asleep. “You're fine. I'll just drop you off.”

“Yay!” Addie cranks up the radio.

Oasis. She sticks her head out the window and screams the lyrics.

I can't help singing along loudly, slamming my hands on the wheel.

It's just us, the long, dusty dead road, and a band none of us have cared about until now. “This was my mom’s favorite song!” Addie yells, laughing. Her hair whips my face. “I said, maaaaybeeeeeee!”

After absolutely destroying our voice-boxes singing to every classic, she leans back in her seat.

“Sooo.” She says, playfully kicking me. “What kinda kids have you picked up?”

I have to think about that.

There's been a lot.

“There was one kid called Elliot,” I began. “Total asshole. He could, like, do this,” I mimic Elliot’s power, snapping my fingers. “Literally like a human firecracker.”

I'm pretty sure Elliot’s blood still stains her seat.

It's okay, though. She won't see it. His body is still in the back.

Addie laughs. “Was he at least HOT?”

“Ew!” I giggle. “No. Not my type.” I sigh, stretching.

“Then there was Aris. She reminded me of a princess.” I smile at the thought of her lying in a ditch, just off route 46. “Her power was x-ray vision. She was cute.”

“Where are they now?” Addie asks.

“Exactly where I'm taking you.”

“Sounds fun!” Addie kicks her feet. “Do you wanna guess what my power is?”

She's so innocent, so fucking stupid. I almost feel bad for what I'm going to do.

I can't wait until I carve it from her skull.

I take the powerful ones for myself, and deliver the rest to our great president.

“Shoot.” I laugh. “Can't be worse than Elliot The Firecracker.”

Addie's smile widens. “Telepathy, babe.”

I drove out on a Wednesday morning with the lawyer's folder on the seat beside me. The signal dropped before I left the highway. Claire had offered to come with me, but I told her it was just paperwork and a walk-through. She said to call if it turned into more than that.

The house sat back from the road where the gravel gave out. The trees had closed in on both sides over the years. The roof sagged in the middle. I parked where the weeds started and sat with the engine off for a minute. This was what I got for being the only one left who could sign the forms.

Inside, the air was still and cold. It smelled like the stove had been out for weeks. I left the front door open for light and walked through the first floor. An old coat hung by the back door, the hem crusted white with salt. A stack of old calendars sat on the counter. Each one had the same date circled, year after year. I didn't know what it meant yet.

I found the will folder on the kitchen table. I opened it and read it standing up.

The house and the plot behind it went to me. Paul had left it that way. I read the paragraph twice. I had figured it would go to the state or get sold off. Paul and I hadn't spoken in any real way since I moved to the city. My mother hadn't spoken to him in longer than that. Claire had kept up with him more than either of us. Ray had lived down the road from Paul for years. Claire said he still checked on the place now and then, but I hadn't called him before I came.

Before I went to bed I checked the shed. Two heavy burlap sacks sat in the corner, one split at the seam. Coarse gray-white salt had spilled across the dirt floor. A shovel leaned against the wall, the handle worn smooth where Paul's hands had held it. Salt had worked its way into the cracks of the porch boards outside. A path was worn in the grass from the back door to the plot.

That night I slept in the downstairs room. The sheets still smelled like the cedar chest my mother used to keep in the hallway when we were kids. Sometime after midnight I woke to a sound behind the house. Not knocking. Not footsteps. More like something being dragged over gravel. It stopped when I sat up. In the morning, there was a thin line of gray salt caught under the back door.

After that, I made more coffee and walked out to the plot.

The flat stone was at the back. Most of the other stones were low and mossed. I stood at the foot of it and looked at the blank space where a name used to be. The will had come with a short note in Paul's handwriting. It told me what to do with the plot. One grave in particular needed salting. Use the coarse salt from the shed. Walk it three times against the sun. Say the words. Do it the day the land changes hands. It ended with the same line twice: It won't hold otherwise.

I did it wrong the first time.

I told myself salt was salt, and that Paul had probably kept the coarse stuff because it was cheaper by the sack. I used table salt from the kitchen because it was closer. I unfolded the note and held it against my thigh while I walked. The paper kept trying to fold in the wind.

"Salt of hearth and salt of bread," I said.

I poured a thin line from the blue canister, careful at first.

"Keep the bounds about this dead. What was foul, be drawn away. What lies buried, buried stay."

By the second turn I was walking faster. The salt came out in clumps and gaps. I had to shake the canister hard to get the last of it loose.

"No spite rise, and no harm roam. Clay hold fast, and take thine own."

The paper snapped against my hand. I looked away from the grave long enough to catch it.

"Rest below and do no harm," I said, because it sounded close enough.

The salt stayed where I had put it for a while. Then the wind moved across the grass and took some of it with it.

At dusk the gap on the west side was still there. The grass inside the circle had been pressed down from underneath, as if something heavy had rolled once in its sleep. By full dark the gap was wider. A single wet, dirty handprint showed on the back porch railing. I wiped it off with a dish towel. The towel came away gritty and brown. Ten minutes later, the print was back. The second one was higher. The third was on the kitchen glass. I stood there with the skillet in my hand and watched the window fog around it from the outside.

I tried Claire first. The call failed before it rang. I typed a message anyway, then another, then three more while the handprint dried on the glass. None of them sent. I tried Ray next because he was the only person nearby who might know what Paul had left me with. That one failed too. I left the phone on the counter and picked up the skillet.

The dead man came through the window slow.

The glass spiderwebbed first under his palm. Then it gave. Cold air and the smell of wet earth came in with him. I swung the cast-iron skillet. It hit his arm and kept going. He didn't make a sound. He just kept climbing through, one leg over the sill, then the other. I hit him again across the side of the head. The skillet rang. His head jerked, but he straightened and kept coming. I backed down the hallway. He followed. Not fast. Just steady, like he had all night.

I ended up at the old fence with the skillet still in my hand. The man from the grave stopped a few feet away. I tried the rhyme again. I even drove a rusted iron rod into his chest. It went in. He looked down at it, pulled it out, and dropped it in the grass. Then he took the skillet out of my hand the same way. He looked down at his right hand. The skin around the third finger was darker than the rest, a narrow band of old rot where something had been. He touched it once with his thumb, then turned away from me and started back toward the house.

I went back to the house because there was nowhere else to go.

He went through the house before he left. I heard drawers open and shut in the front room, slow and wet, one after another. When the front door scraped open again, I stayed where I was until the house went quiet.

I tried Claire again after that. My hands were shaking enough that I had to correct every other word. I told her something had come out of the grave. I told her it had come through the kitchen window. I told her I had hit it with the skillet and it had not stopped. None of those messages sent either.

Later, after he was gone, I found the rest of Paul's letters in the metal box in the desk. The ring was wrapped in a handkerchief beneath the letters. It was too large for Paul's hand. The cloth had been folded and refolded until the creases had gone soft. Under the handkerchief was a photograph of Paul with a man I didn't know, both of them younger than I had ever seen Paul look. Paul had folded the picture once, but not through either face. Beneath the photograph was a funeral card, folded once down the middle. Thomas Hale. 1969-1998. Someone had written the dates in blue ink because the printed card had left them blank.

One letter was older than the others, the paper yellow at the edges.

The letter began:

They found out about us in the winter of '98. Thomas was already sick, but they didn't care. They said one of us had to go and it wasn't going to be me. I buried him under the flat stone because that was the only place they would let him stay. I took the ring off his finger before they closed the grave because he asked me to keep it. I should have put it in with him. That's why he won't stay quiet. I've been salting the grave every year since. Ray knows. If anything happens to me, someone has to keep doing it.

I read it twice. Then I folded it and put it back with the photograph and the other note.

His name was Thomas Hale.

Thomas Hale was waiting by the back door when I came out with the ring. I held it on my palm because I did not want to touch his hand. He looked at it for a long time before he took it. The ring slid over the dark band on his finger and stopped where it had been missing. Then he turned and walked toward the grave.

I went out after him and salted the grave the right way this time. I used the coarse salt from the shed. I made sure the circle was unbroken. I took the first handful and let it fall thick across the west side, where I had left the gap before.

"Salt of hearth and salt of bread," I said.

The grains struck the grass and stayed there.

I walked against the sun, slow this time, watching the line close behind my boots.

"Keep the bounds about this dead."

I poured heavier where the grass had been pressed flat.

"What was foul, be drawn away."

The salt line closed behind my boots.

"What lies buried, buried stay."

Thomas Hale looked down at his hand, where the ring had gone back.

"No spite rise, and no harm roam."

I made the last turn around the stone.

"Clay hold fast, and take thine own."

The wind moved once through the trees and then went still.

"Rest below till Judgment come."

Thomas Hale looked down at the stone, then lowered himself beside it. By the time the last word left my mouth, he was gone.

The salt stayed where I had put it. No new drag marks appeared. The earth around the stone looked settled again. I walked back to the house. The front door was still open from when he had left. I shut it and turned the broken lock anyway, then sat at the kitchen table with Paul's box in front of me.

The house stayed quiet. No scraping on the walls. No pressure on the doors. Just the wind through the broken kitchen window and the sound of my own breathing. Thomas Hale was back in the ground. The circle held.

I was still sitting there when I heard a truck on the gravel outside. Ray's truck pulled in and parked in the same spot he always used. He looked at the broken kitchen window as he walked up to the porch. I opened the door before he knocked.

Ray stood there with his hands in his pockets. He looked past me into the house, then back at my face.

"You alright?" he asked.

I nodded. "Yeah. For now."

He glanced at the broken window again. "You want help with that?"

"Yeah," I said. "That'd be good."

He stepped inside without saying anything else. I closed the door behind him. We stood there for a second in the quiet kitchen. Then Ray picked up the broom I had left against the wall and started helping me finish cleaning up the glass.

My phone buzzed on the counter while we worked. Claire's name lit up the screen. I wiped my hands on my jeans and answered.

"Hey."

"Evan?" Her voice was sharp. "What the fuck is going on? I just got like twenty messages from you all at once. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I said. "It's better now. I gave him back what he wanted and I salted the grave the right way this time. I think it's holding."

There was a long pause.

"Evan," she said slowly. "You sound like you're on drugs. You said something walked out of the grave. You said you hit it with a skillet. You said it came through the window. That's not normal. And I didn't get these texts one by one. They all came through together just now. What the hell happened out there?"

"I didn't send them all at once," I said. "The signal's been shit. They must've gone through when it came back. And I'm not on drugs. I'm just... it was bad for a while. It's better now."

She let out a long breath. "Okay. Well. You scared the shit out of me. Call me later when you're not in the middle of whatever this is. And maybe don't send me twenty messages in a row next time."

"I will. Thanks, Claire."

We hung up. I set the phone down and looked at Ray. He was still holding the broom, watching me with that same calm, tired expression.

"She thinks I'm on drugs," I said.

Ray gave a small nod, like that didn't surprise him. He swept the last bit of glass into the dustpan and handed it to me.

"You gave it back to him, didn't you?" he asked.

"The ring?"

Ray looked toward the plot. "Paul said he should have done it years ago."

He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket.

"I'm gonna call Father Keller," he said. "He knew Paul. Knew about the plot. If we're going to settle this for good instead of just keeping it quiet, we need someone who knows how to do it proper."

He hit the call button and put the phone to his ear. I stayed by the counter and listened to the wind coming through the broken window while Ray waited for the priest to pick up.

We didn't have to wait long, but it wasn't instant either. After Ray hung up, we stood in the kitchen for a few minutes. He finished sweeping the last of the glass while I held the dustpan. Neither of us said much. I wiped down the counter where the glass had been and tossed the broken pieces into the trash. Ray leaned the broom against the wall and looked out the broken window toward the trees.

"Father Keller's a good man," he said after a while. "He knew Paul. Not as well as I did, but he knew enough. He won't make this more complicated than it needs to be."

We heard the car coming up the gravel a little while later. An older sedan pulled in behind Ray's truck. A man in his sixties got out, wearing a dark jacket over a black shirt. He looked at the broken kitchen window as he walked up to the porch.

Ray opened the door before he knocked.

"Father," Ray said.

"Ray." Father Keller shook his hand the way people do when they've known each other a long time. Then he looked at me. "You must be Evan."

"Yeah."

He stepped inside and glanced around the kitchen — the broken window, the dustpan on the counter, the box of papers on the table. His eyes stayed on the box for a second before he looked back at me.

"Paul's nephew," he said. "I knew your uncle. He used to stop by the church every so often. Never stayed long, but he always made sure that plot was taken care of. I'm sorry he's gone."

"Thanks."

Father Keller nodded once, then looked toward the back of the house. "Ray told me enough. You gave Thomas Hale back what should have gone into the ground with him."

"Yeah."

He was quiet for a moment. "I'd like to see the grave. And I'd like to look at what Paul left behind, if you're willing. If we're going to settle this the right way instead of just keeping it quiet, I need to understand what we're working with."

Ray glanced at me. I picked up the box.

"All right," I said. "Let's go look at the grave first."

Father Keller nodded and stepped back out onto the porch. Ray followed him. I took one last look at the kitchen, then followed them outside.

Father Keller didn't rush anything.

We walked out to the plot together. The salt circle around the flat stone was still there, unbroken. Thomas Hale wasn't standing out in the open anymore. The grave had taken him back.

Father Keller stood at the foot of Thomas Hale's grave for a long time. He read through the letters I'd brought without saying much. When he was finished, he folded them carefully and handed the box back to me.

"Paul did what the family asked him to do," he said quietly. "He kept Thomas Hale here because that's what they made him responsible for. But it was never going to be enough on its own. Not forever."

He said Thomas Hale's name first. Then Paul's. Then he said them together. After that he placed one hand on the stone and stayed there until the wind eased off.

When he stepped back, the grave looked the same as before. But the air around it felt different. Quieter.

Father Keller looked at me. "He's back where he should be. The salt will help, if you choose to keep it up. But the rest of it... that part's finished."

He and Ray walked back toward the house. I stayed at the grave a little longer.

I looked across the rest of the plot. Paul's stone was a few rows over from Thomas Hale's. He had been buried here with the rest of the family, the way it should have been. Now both of them were in the ground where they belonged.

I thought about Paul living out here alone all those years, keeping the salt and the words going because the family had made him responsible for it. I thought about the ring now back with Thomas Hale. I thought about the house behind me — the broken window, the papers on the kitchen table, the years Paul had spent making sure this one grave stayed quiet.

I didn't want to sell it anymore.

I didn't know if I'd be any good at keeping up with the salt the way Paul had. I didn't know if I'd stay here forever. But I knew I wasn't ready to walk away from it. Not after everything.

I turned and followed Ray and Father Keller back to the house.

Behind me, the salt lay white around Thomas Hale's grave. Under it, where Paul's family could not take it from him again, the ring was back on his hand.

Me and my boyfriend started dating around 6 months ago. It was the first relationship I’ve ever had. I had never been so happy. It was like we were meant to be.

I met him at a coffee shop I frequent. I started noticing him there any time I went. Sometimes I’d catch him staring, and he’d look around all embarrassed whenever I did. I thought it was the cutest thing.

After a while, I found myself silently hoping that he’d come over and ask to sit with me. We’d been playing eye-tag for a couple of weeks, smirking and laughing at each other, but neither of us had taken the extra step of introducing ourselves.

When he finally did, I felt butterflies start flapping around in my stomach like never before. His smoldering blue eyes, that curly black hair, and his cute little freckles. I’m not afraid to admit that I was smitten.

Our relationship grew from there. We were seeing each other every weekend, catching movies, having dinner, playing some mini golf. I knew it was a honeymoon phase. I just didn’t care. He made me feel wanted, and that was just not something I was entirely used to.

He’d show up with my favorite flowers, favorite candies, always knew the right thing to say. I don’t wanna ramble. I just can’t get over how perfect I thought he was.

Things started to go a bit sideways one night at a sleepover at his house.

I had gotten up to pee late at night, and as I groggily dragged myself to the bathroom, I could’ve swore I heard the vibration of a phone coming from his sock drawer.

I was too tired at the time to really pay it any attention, but it was still fresh in my mind the next day. I asked him about it, and he got defensive enough for me to become suspicious.

He showed me all of his drawers, though, and there was no phone in sight. That kind of subsided my suspicion a bit.

A few weeks went by without issue. We never argued. He made me feel like the only girl in the world. Then we had another sleepover.

Yet again, after he was fast asleep, the vibrations of a cellphone came echoing, this time from his closet.

This time around, I was awake enough to actually investigate, but once I did, I immediately regretted it.

Hidden within an old shoebox that was buried beneath a stack of blankets, I found it. A second cellphone.

The screen was lit up with “storage full” notifications, but what caught my attention was the wallpaper.

It was me, asleep in bed.

I wasn’t even the wallpaper on his actual phone. Seeing myself like this only made my mind race more. I couldn’t help myself.

Luckily, he didn’t have a password to unlock the phone, but what he did have a password for was his photos.

I took a wild guess. That’s why I think it was fate that I made this discovery.

I put in my birthday, and the photos app unlocked.
My jaw dropped, and my heart sank.

There were hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures, and they were all of me.

Some were of me at his house. On the toilet, in the shower, sleeping in his bed. But some were from places that didn’t make sense to me.

Me at the coffee shop, reading a book. Me walking home from school. Standing in line at the grocery store. Me outside my apartment, fishing around in my purse for my keys.

More than anything, though, there were pictures of me asleep in my own apartment.

Some were taken from my window. My second-story window. Others were taken from inside the apartment.

I kept scrolling, and the more I did, the more terrified I became. The photos dated back to at least 2 years ago.

Family dinners, early morning jogs, study sessions in the library. I was getting sick to my stomach.

As I scrolled, a noise from behind me snapped me out of my trance.

The sound of my boyfriend’s bed creaking and squeaking from his shifting weight.
He called my name.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

I never responded.

I heard his footsteps rush up behind me. They stopped a few inches from my back.

Instead of asking what I was doing, apologizing, or even attempting to grab his phone, he began laughing.

Cackling. Like a mad man.

And as I stood there, too paralyzed to turn around, he finally spoke again.

“Happy anniversary, sweetheart.”

My husband has always wanted kids. We’re just, I don’t know… I feel like we’re just not old enough yet. We got married young. Fresh out of high school.

He works with his dad as an electrician, and I’m still in college, studying to become a teacher. Needless to say, it’s not kids that I have a problem with. I just want to make sure we’re both in a position to raise our children the right way.

He knew that when I agreed to marry him. He seemed supportive of it at first. I told him very clearly that I wanted to wait until we were at least 30.

For the first 2 years, it seemed like everything was fine. I didn’t know just how agitated he was getting with my refusal to get off birth control. Every time he asked, it was like a stab to my heart.

We started arguing a bit. We’d bicker about little things like any other couple, but when it came to kids, it turned into full-blown screaming matches.

“I can take care of a baby.”

“You can still do school.”

“We’ll find a good daycare.”

It became clear that he just wasn’t seeing my vision. Part of me regretted getting married so abruptly. So young. Our brains hadn’t even fully developed yet.

But then again, we did get married for a reason.
We loved each other. We’d been friends since middle school. We got married after dating for 2 years. We were each other’s homes.

He just wasn’t so hell-bent on being a father back then. I don’t know what changed, but when it did, it was just downhill from there.

The arguments persisted, but so did I. So did we. I never wanted to turn my back on him. I just wanted us to make it through.

It seemed like all my prayers had been answered when the arguments just… stopped one day. I soon came to realize that that wasn’t exactly the blessing I thought that it was.

I remember he started going out more. Staying at work late. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and find that I was alone in our bed.

Of course, my already stressed brain jumped to the worst conclusion.

I didn’t want to distrust him, but he wasn’t making trust easy.

When he saw me, it was just all sunshine and rainbows, but when he was gone, it was like he was dead.

No texts, no calls, nothing. At first, I was happy for the space, but as it went on, I started getting more and more unnerved.

When he wasn’t out or at work, he spent a lot of his time in our shed. He’d spend hours out there. I’d see him carrying food out there.

It became strictly off-limits to me.

Any time he saw me even come close to the building, he’d stop me and guide me back into the house.

This is around the time I became convinced that he had lost his mind. He started talking about a daughter that I know we didn’t have.

“Roxxy is a little fussy today.”

“You keep working on your schoolwork. I’ll take care of our baby.”

“I need to go out and get some food for Roxxy.”

Any time he mentioned it, all I could do was laugh awkwardly and ask him what the hell he was talking about. Every time, his answer was nearly the exact same.

“You know what I’m talking about.”

He’d just smile and play it off like he wasn’t acting like a complete lunatic.

What scares me, though, is I’m starting to think maybe he’s not a lunatic.

I swear it’s like sometimes I can hear cries coming from the shed. Soft, weak little cries that are just audible enough for my guard to come up.

I found a pair of little pink socks in our dryer last week.

I always seem to find empty cans of baby formula hidden beneath the trash in our trash can.

When I really started grilling him about his behavior, the arguments came back. He’d scream at me. Call me horrible, awful names that I could’ve never imagined would’ve escaped his lips.

But the part that concerns me the most… is that he’s chained up the door to our shed.

He’s spray-painted over the windows.

He keeps the key with him at all times.

The crying has been getting louder and louder.
I don’t know if I’m too afraid to accept what’s happening, or if this is all just a nightmare that I can’t wake up from.

All I know is that now he doesn’t just talk about wanting a kid.

He tells me he wants another.

My name's Ernie. Ernie Ball. Yeah, like the guitar strings. No, I don't play. No, you're not the first person to ask. My dad thought it was funny. He is not currently alive, which has improved my patience with the joke by about forty percent.

I drive nights because I'm a grad student, rent exists, and campus jobs pay like they're doing you a favor. I have a 2009 Honda Fit, a cracked phone mount, a cheap work phone for the app, and my personal phone in the cupholder because I used to think keeping those things separate mattered. Most nights it's drunk kids, late food runs, and people asking if they can add a stop after they're already in the car. Some nights the app sends me to addresses that aren't there when I check the map again.

The first thing you need to know about Mourner's Crossing is that nobody here gives normal delivery instructions. In Hartford, "leave at side door" means leave it at the side door. Here it means leave it at the side door, do not read the chalk marks, and ignore the little boy humming inside the wall if you hear one. I should have stopped driving nights after the first order from Hawthorne House. I did not, because I am stupid in the specific way poor people are stupid.

Order #187: Ichiban to Hawthorne House, 1:17 a.m.

The order came in right after I dropped a drunk undergrad at the dorms. Three orders of the A5 wagyu, rare, no substitutions. Deliver to the side service entrance. Do not use the front doors. Tip already added at thirty-eight dollars. The app asked if I felt safe. I said yes. The app said thank you and routed me past the closed gate on Cedarwater like it had never seen a map before.

I parked where the pin said. The side door was propped with a brick that had a piece of paper taped to it. The paper said DO NOT KNOCK. The door was already open six inches. Warm air came out. It smelled like the kitchen at Ichiban but also like wet stone.

A guy in a black coat stepped into the light from inside. He took the three bags, checked the receipt against his phone, and said, "Rosemary cracked on the second tray. Tell Iain she was laughing when it happened. He'll want to know."

"I don't work for Ichiban," I said.

"You do tonight." He handed me an envelope. "For the trouble. And for not asking why the drop-off moved three times while you were driving."

The app on my work phone updated while I watched. The original address disappeared. A new one appeared two blocks away, already marked delivered. The tip stayed at thirty-eight. The rating request popped up immediately.

"The app thinks I already dropped this," I said.

He looked at my phone, then at the brick holding the door. "It's learning. Try not to be the lesson."

He closed the door. The brick stayed where it was. I got back in the car, and the app pinged again before I could put it in drive.

New request nearby.
Passenger: F. Bell
Pickup: Mourner's Crossing University, Caldwell Lot
Drop-off: Home
Note from passenger: Do not accept if it is after 2:13.

It was 1:41. I looked at the thirty-eight dollars in the envelope. I looked at my gas gauge. I looked at the app, which had already added a surge multiplier like it was proud of itself. I hit accept.

The map rerouted me before I left the curb. The new route went past the old railbed even though that was not on the way to campus from here. The voice on the phone said, in the same calm tone it always used, "You are going the wrong way."

The problem was, I was not moving.

Ride #188: Caldwell Lot pickup, 2:09 a.m.

The pin said passenger F. Bell, standing by the cart. I pulled up. A man in a dark jacket and boots stepped out from between two cars. He looked exhausted, but not confused, which was somehow worse. He opened the back door, put a lunchbox and a flashlight on the seat, and got in without looking at me.

"Home," he said.

The app already had the address. It was not the one on the original request. The map flickered once, then settled on a street I knew existed but had never delivered to after midnight.

I said, "You're the one who put the note about 2:13."

He glanced at the phone mount. "Frankie Bell. Overnight security. The note was for the app, not for you."

"It took the request anyway."

"It does that now." He settled back. "Drive normal. Don't speed up if the lights start acting like they have opinions."

I put it in drive. The surge was still on. I told myself that was why I was still here. We were two blocks off campus when the voice on the phone said, calm as ever, "You are going the wrong way." I checked the mirror. Frankie was looking out the side window like he had heard it before.

"The app's been doing that," I said.

"It learns addresses it shouldn't have," he said. "Sometimes it learns people. Sometimes it learns rules that were never meant to be in the system."

The map updated again. The drop-off address changed to something three streets over, then changed back. The time on the screen read 2:11.

Frankie said, "If it asks you to confirm arrival before we get there, don't confirm."

"Why?"

"Because the house it thinks I live in isn't the one I actually live in. And the one it thinks I live in doesn't like visitors after the time it doesn't understand."

I kept my hands on the wheel. The app pinged a new notification.

Customer added delivery instructions:
Do not bring him here.

Frankie read it over my shoulder without leaning forward. "That one's new," he said. "Keep going. I'll tell you when to stop."

The voice on the phone said again, perfectly pleasant, "You are going the wrong way." I was still moving.

Ride #188, continued: 2:13 a.m.

The time on the screen hit 2:13 and the map went white for half a second. When it came back, the route line had reversed. We were being told to go back to Caldwell Lot.

Frankie said, "Pull over."

I didn't. The surge was still climbing, and I could already feel the rating request waiting for me. If I ended the ride now, I'd lose it. If I kept going, maybe it would settle. That was not smart. It was also not the dumbest thing I did that night.

The voice on the phone said, "You have arrived." We had not arrived anywhere.

Frankie leaned forward just enough to see the screen. "If it asks you to take a passenger photo, don't."

It asked. The prompt popped up clean and corporate: Confirm passenger identity for safety. A little camera icon. The fare estimate ticked up another dollar while the box sat there.

I told myself it was just the app being the app. I told myself Frankie was tired and seeing patterns that weren't there. I told myself I needed the money more than I needed to be right. I hit the camera.

The screen showed the back seat. Empty. The lunchbox and flashlight were still there. Frankie's seatbelt was still buckled across nothing.

The voice on the phone said, perfectly pleasant, "Thank you. Passenger confirmed."

Frankie sat back. He didn't look surprised. "Now it knows what you look like when you're willing to lie to it."

The route line turned around again and started pulling us toward campus. The blue phone outside Caldwell Lot began ringing on the screen even though we were already two blocks past it. The sound came out of my phone speaker like it was coming from inside the car.

"I can cancel," I said.

"You already confirmed," Frankie said. "Canceling now just tells it you're paying attention."

The app pinged again.

New request nearby.
High priority. Surge active.

Pickup: Caldwell Lot
Note from passenger: You left something.

Frankie looked at me in the mirror. "Your choice. But if you take that one, don't let it put anything in the back seat with you."

The phone kept ringing. I hit accept before I could talk myself out of it. The ringing stopped, and Frankie closed his eyes.

Ride #188, continued: 2:17 a.m.

We rolled back into Caldwell Lot at 2:17. The security cart was still there, crooked in the same place. The blue phone had stopped ringing on the screen the second I accepted the new request. That felt like the app checking a box for a deal I never made.

Frankie didn't open his eyes when I stopped the car. The new pin was right on top of the old one. No passenger name this time. Just a dot and the words Item left behind. I got out. The lot was empty except for us and the orange lights. Something small and rectangular sat on the curb where the cart had been: a lunchbox, same size and color as the one still sitting on the back seat next to Frankie's flashlight.

I picked it up. It had weight, and it was warm. The app updated while I held it.

Secure item in vehicle for drop-off.
Back seat only.

Frankie's voice came through the open window, calm and flat. "Don't put it back there."

I stood there with the lunchbox in both hands like an idiot. The surge was still active. The rating request from the first half of the ride was still pending. If I left the box on the curb, the app would probably just generate another request until I picked it up again. If I put it in the trunk, it might decide that counted as not securing it. If I put it on the front seat, I could at least see it.

I opened the front passenger door and set the lunchbox on the seat. It clicked against the plastic like it was heavier than it should have been. The app didn't complain. The surge stayed where it was.

Frankie opened his eyes. "It's going to want you to open it eventually," he said.

"Not while you're in the car."

He nodded like that was fair. "Then drive. The lot doesn't like people standing still in it after the time changes."

I got back in. The lunchbox sat on the seat beside me. It didn't smell like food. It smelled like the inside of a phone case after somebody's had it for too long.

The map updated with a new drop-off.

Mourner's Crossing Sheriff's Department.

Frankie looked at the screen. "Good," he said.

"Good?"

"Better than the other address."

I put the car in drive. The lunchbox made a small sound against the seat, like something inside it had shifted.

Ride #188, completed: 2:28 a.m.

The app ended Frankie's ride three blocks before the Sheriff's Department. No warning. No arrival prompt. No question about whether the passenger was safe. The screen just flashed once and updated.

Ride complete.
Passenger dropped off safely.

Frankie unbuckled his seatbelt.

"This isn't your house," I said.

"No. But the ride's complete."

"That's not the same thing."

"After 2:13, it's close enough."

He picked up his own lunchbox and flashlight from the back seat. The dome light did not come on when he opened the door. Before he got out, he looked at the lunchbox on the front seat.

"That one isn't mine."

"I figured."

"No, you hoped." He stepped onto the curb. "There's a difference."

The work phone chirped.

Delivery route active.
Bring item to recipient.

Frankie leaned down to the open door. "Don't open it alone. Don't put it in the back seat. Don't take it home."

"Where am I supposed to take it?"

He looked toward the department lights down the street. "To someone who can tell it no."

He shut the door. I watched him walk behind the car in the rearview mirror for one second, then the streetlight above him went out. When it came back on, he was gone.

Delivery #189: Mourner's Crossing Sheriff's Department, 2:31 a.m. to 2:51 a.m.

The route the app gave me was clean. No reroutes, no sudden address changes, no "you are going the wrong way" voice. Just a straight line to the department with the estimated arrival time updating every few minutes like a normal job. That should have helped. It did not.

The lunchbox sat upright on the passenger-side floor mat where it had slid after the last turn. The latch was still cracked open a little. Every time I hit a bump or took a turn too sharp, it made a small scraping sound against the plastic, like whatever was inside had to settle again. I kept both hands on the wheel and didn't look at it more than I had to.

The work phone in the mount stayed on the map. The personal phone in the cupholder stayed dark. I told myself that if either one lit up again, I would ignore it until I reached the department. That lasted until the first red light.

At the light on Route 17, the work phone chimed once.

Item temperature alert.
Open container to verify condition.

The fare estimate ticked down a dollar. I kept my eyes on the light. When it turned green, I drove through it without touching the phone. The estimate ticked down another dollar at the next intersection. By the time I reached the old railbed crossing, it had dropped five dollars total and a new prompt had appeared over the map.

Item temperature alert.
Open container to verify condition.
Failure to verify may affect delivery rating.

I pulled into the empty lot beside Dunne's Gas & Mini-Mart, put the car in park, and picked up the work phone. The camera prompt was already open. Front-facing this time. My own face looked back at me from the dark car interior, tired and badly lit.

I switched to the rear camera, aimed it at the lunchbox on the floor mat, and took the picture without opening anything. The app accepted it immediately. The estimate went back up. A new line appeared under the map.

Item verified. Thank you.

I put the phone back in the mount and pulled out of the lot. The lunchbox hadn't moved. That bothered me more than the scraping.

The rest of the drive was quiet. No more temperature alerts. No more prompts. Just the map and the little lunchbox icon in the corner and the steady click of the turn signal when I changed lanes. I started to think maybe the department run was going to be the easy part. That thought lasted until I turned onto the street the app wanted.

The Mourner's Crossing Sheriff's Department sat behind a low brick wall with a chain-link gate that was already open. One cruiser was parked at an angle near the side door. The lights inside were on but low. Through the big front window, I could see the dispatch desk and the back of someone's head. Kerri Donnelly's shift, probably.

I parked in the visitor spot closest to the door. The app updated.

You have arrived.
Confirm arrival.
Leave item with recipient.

I got out, left the engine running, and opened the passenger door. The lunchbox was heavier than it looked when I picked it up. Warm through the plastic. I carried it in both hands like it might spill.

The front door opened before I reached it. Kerri Donnelly stood on the other side with one hand still on the handle. She looked at me first, then the work phone in my hand, then the lunchbox.

"Delivery?" she asked.

"Yeah. App sent me."

She didn't ask for a name or an order number. She just stepped back enough to let me into the lobby. The Sheriff's Department smelled like old coffee, floor cleaner, and paper. Kerri pointed to the counter, but not the bare counter. A gray plastic evidence tray sat there with a clipboard beside it.

"Set it in the tray," she said. "Do not fix the latch."

I set the lunchbox down. The cracked latch stayed cracked. From where I stood, I could see something dark inside, but not enough to tell what it was.

Kerri picked up the clipboard and slid it toward me with a pen. "Sign that you delivered it intact and unopened. Date and time are already filled in."

"You get a lot of these?"

"No."

That did not help. I signed where she pointed. My handwriting looked worse than usual under the fluorescent lights. When I pushed the clipboard back, she did not take it right away. She was looking at the work phone.

The screen updated.

Handoff initiated.

"Did you do that?" I asked.

"No."

That helped less. Kerri reached under the counter and pressed something I couldn't see. Somewhere behind the interior door, a buzzer sounded once.

"You're the new night driver," she said. It wasn't a question.

"I guess."

"Frankie got word to us. Said you might show up with something that doesn't belong to you."

"That sounds like him."

"You know Frankie?"

"I drove him for twenty minutes and aged a year."

Kerri almost smiled. It did not last. The work phone chimed again.

Delivery complete.
Thank you for your service.

The fare hit while I was still standing there. Better than the Frankie ride. Not enough to make up for the temperature alerts and the photo and the way the car had stopped on its own earlier, but enough that I noticed. That bothered me more than it should have.

Kerri took the clipboard, tore off the top sheet, and folded it once. "You should go soon," she said. "Before the app decides you need a receipt."

I looked at the lunchbox in the tray. "You're keeping it?"

"For now."

"What's in it?"

"If you don't know, I'd like to keep you that way."

That was the first thing anyone had said all night that sounded like mercy.

The interior door opened before I could leave. Sheriff Doyle came through in jeans, boots, and an old department sweatshirt, like this was not even close to the weirdest reason he had been called downstairs before sunrise. He took in me, the work phone in my hand, Kerri, and the lunchbox in the tray. Then he looked at the phone again.

"Ernie Ball?" he said.

"That's been true all night."

Kerri made a small sound that might have been a laugh if the room had been less horrible.

The sheriff came closer but did not touch the lunchbox. He looked at the cracked latch, then at the screen. "Whose voice did it use?"

I felt my mouth go dry. "Mine."

His face did not change much. That was worse than if it had.

"And whose picture?"

I looked down at the phone. "Mine."

The work phone chimed before anyone could say anything else.

New request nearby.
High priority.
Pickup: Mourner's Crossing Sheriff's Department.
Drop-off: Your current location.
Passenger: Ernie Ball.

Kerri said, "That's new."

Sheriff Doyle looked at me. "It's done with the box. It's trying to move you now."

I did not like how calmly he said it. The phone pulsed in my hand.

Accept to proceed.

The sheriff held out his hand. "Give it to Kerri."

I handed her the work phone. She turned it face-down on the counter without looking at the screen.

My personal phone lit up in my pocket. Not a ring. Not a chime. Just the screen waking against my leg. I took it out.

Driver reassigned.

Below that, smaller:

Welcome back.

Nobody said anything for a second. Then Kerri said, "You should not drive alone."

"I don't have anyone to call."

"You have Wren's."

The sheriff nodded toward the front door. "Go there. Don't take another job. Don't confirm anything. Don't argue with it if it talks. Just drive to Wren's and go inside."

"What about my car?"

"If it tries to stop you, call here."

"With what?"

Kerri slid my work phone farther away from me. "Your personal phone still calls people, doesn't it?"

I looked down at it. The screen had gone dark again. "For now," I said.

The sheriff almost smiled. "That's usually enough in this town."

Outside, my car was still running. The passenger seat was empty. The lunchbox was gone. The work phone stayed face-down on the Sheriff's Department counter. My personal phone lit up once more before I reached the driver's door.

New request nearby.
Pickup: Mourner's Crossing Sheriff's Department.
Drop-off: Wren's Pub.
Passenger: Ernie Ball.

I looked back through the glass. Sheriff Doyle was still watching me. He shook his head once. I did not hit accept. I drove to Wren's anyway.

Wren's Pub, 4:07 a.m.

Wren's was still open when I pulled in, which in Mourner's Crossing usually meant someone important was still inside or something important was still happening. The lot had three cars and one truck with the engine ticking as it cooled. The big front window was lit warm against the dark street. Through the glass, I could see a couple of regulars at the bar and Wren herself behind it, sleeves rolled up, looking like she had been there since dinner and was going to be there until breakfast.

I parked, killed the engine, and sat for a minute with my personal phone face-down on the passenger seat. The screen had gone dark again after the last request. I didn't trust it to stay that way.

The lot was quiet. No new pings. No temperature alerts. Just the low hum of the building's exhaust fan and the occasional clink of glass from inside. I got out and left the phone in the car.

The bell over the door gave a tired little ring when I pushed it open. Warm air and the smell of fry oil and old wood hit me at the same time. The place was mostly empty: two guys I vaguely recognized from campus maintenance at one end of the bar, a woman in a puffy vest at a table near the window, and Wren wiping down the bar.

She looked up when the bell rang. Her eyes went over me once, fast and practical.

"You look like shit," she said.

"Thanks."

"App?"

I nodded.

She didn't ask for details. She just reached under the bar, came up with a clean glass, and poured me a Coke without ice like she already knew I wasn't in the mood for anything that would make me slower.

"Sit," she said. "Or stand. Whatever keeps you upright."

I took the stool at the far end, away from the maintenance guys. The Coke was cold and too sweet and exactly what I needed. I drank half of it before I set the glass down.

Wren leaned on the bar across from me, arms folded. "Frankie said you might come through tonight. He didn't say what shape."

"Human, technically."

"That's better than some."

The maintenance guys did not look over. That told me this was not their first four-in-the-morning conversation that sounded like it should have come with a waiver.

Wren nodded toward the kitchen. "Eat something."

"I'm fine."

"You came in here looking like a raccoon that got shown its own autopsy. Eat something."

"Sandwich is fine."

She disappeared into the back for a minute. While she was gone, one of the maintenance guys glanced over, recognized me from some late campus run, and gave me a small nod. I nodded back. That was enough conversation for both of us.

Wren came back with a plate: turkey on rye, mustard, pickle on the side. She set it in front of me and stayed standing there instead of going back to whatever she'd been doing.

"You still driving tonight?" she asked.

"I don't know. The app keeps offering me things. Kerri told me to come here instead of accepting the next one."

"Good advice. Kerri doesn't waste words unless somebody makes her."

I took a bite of the sandwich. It was better than it had any right to be at four in the morning.

Wren watched me eat for a second, then said, quieter, "You left the work phone at the department?"

"Kerri kept it."

She made a small approving sound. "Good. Don't hand it the easiest door."

I swallowed and wiped my mouth with the napkin she'd given me.

"You've dealt with this before."

"Everyone who works nights has dealt with it before. Some people just pretend harder than others."

The woman in the puffy vest looked over at us, then went back to her phone. She didn't seem worried. Just tired.

Wren leaned in a little. "Whatever it's trying to hand you right now, don't take it in the car. Not until you've got someone who knows how to say no sitting next to you."

"Is that an official town rule?"

"No. Official town rules have worse fonts." She straightened up. "Eat the pickle."

"Is the pickle also a rule?"

"The pickle is me being generous."

I ate the pickle. The sandwich was gone faster than I expected. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until the food was in front of me. When I pushed the plate back, Wren took it without comment and refilled my Coke.

My personal phone sat face-down on the passenger seat of my car outside, dark for now. That felt better than it should have. It was still there. It just wasn't being listened to.

Wren must have seen something in my face because she said, "You can stay as long as you want. I'm not closing until the sun's up and the people who need to be gone are gone."

"Thanks."

"Don't thank me yet. I'm going to put you to work if you're still here when the breakfast crowd starts pretending they didn't see anything weird on their way in."

That almost made me smile. I stayed on the stool and drank the second Coke slower.

For the first time all night, nothing was actively trying to make me move. It wouldn't last. I knew that. But for ten minutes, while Wren wiped down the bar again and the maintenance guys argued quietly about whether a locked supply closet could legally order a mop bucket, it was enough.

Wren's Pub, continued, 4:28 a.m.

I was on the second Coke when the kitchen ticket printer clicked on. It shouldn't have. The kitchen had been closed for over an hour. Wren had already wiped the pass and turned off the heat lamps. The machine made that little warm-up whir it only did when someone sent an order through the system.

Wren stopped mid-wipe and looked at it. The printer spat out one ticket. She tore it off, read it, and didn't say anything for a second. Then she said, flat, "No."

I sat up straighter. She turned the ticket around so I could see it.

Pickup: Wren's Pub
Drop-off: Your current location
Item: Driver
Special instructions: Do not let him leave with witnesses.

The maintenance guys at the end of the bar had gone quiet. The woman in the puffy vest was pretending very hard to still be on her phone. Wren set the ticket down on the bar like it had personally offended her.

"Kitchen's closed," she said to the printer.

It clicked again and printed another ticket.

Substitution approved.

Wren stared at it. "I said closed."

The printer made a soft, almost polite sound and went quiet.

She looked at me. "You're not leaving alone."

"I can just..."

"No," she said. "Sheriff Doyle told you not to drive alone. I know how to say no. And I'm not letting the app turn my pub into a pickup location."

She walked around the end of the bar, grabbed her coat off the hook by the kitchen door, and shrugged it on. One of the maintenance guys cleared his throat.

"You want backup?"

Wren shook her head without looking at him. "I've got it. Lock up when you leave."

She looked at me. "Car's out front?"

"Yeah."

We walked outside together. The lot was still mostly empty. My car sat under the security light like nothing had happened. My personal phone was visible on the passenger seat through the window, face-down and still dark.

Wren stopped a few feet from the driver's side. "Keys."

I handed them over without thinking. She unlocked the door, then stopped. The locks clicked again on their own. All four doors. Like the car had decided to help.

Wren looked at the door, then at me. "Rude."

She opened the passenger door, moved the phone to the center console, and got in. I stood there for a second like an idiot until she reached across and unlocked my door from the inside.

"Get in," she said. "Before it decides to start the engine for you too."

I got in. Wren pulled her seatbelt across and clicked it like she did this every night.

"Where were you headed before the app decided you needed an escort?"

"Home, I guess."

She made a small sound that might have been a laugh. "Bold. All right. Home it is. But we're taking the long way, and if your phone starts talking again, I'm answering it."

The personal phone stayed dark for now.

On the road, 4:41 a.m.

Wren waited until I had the car in reverse before she spoke again. "Phone stays face-down unless it starts yelling."

I nodded and backed out of the spot. The lot was still quiet. Through the big front window, I could see the maintenance guys still at the bar, one of them already moving to lock the door like this was normal enough to have a closing routine.

We pulled onto the street. Wren adjusted the seat a little and looked out the windshield like she was checking the weather.

"Home's the long way tonight," she said. "Stay on Main until the old feed store, then cut over on Cedar. Avoid anything the app tries to suggest after that."

The personal phone lit up on the console between us before we reached the first light.

Passenger added note:
Escort not authorized.

Wren picked it up, read it, and set it back down face-down.

"Too bad," she said.

The phone stayed dark after that for about thirty seconds. Then it lit up again with a new route suggestion overlaid on the map. Old Cellar Road was highlighted in bright blue, with a helpful little arrow and an estimated time savings of four minutes.

Wren didn't even look at it. "Straight. Past the feed store. Then left on Cedar."

I did what she said. The phone tried again at the next intersection, same suggestion, same helpful arrow. She reached over without looking and turned the screen face-down again.

"You know it's just going to keep doing that," I said.

"It can keep doing it from the console. I'm not arguing with a phone about roads I've been driving since before it had an operating system."

We drove in silence for a minute. The only sounds were the tires and the low rattle of something loose in the dash that had been there since I bought the car. Wren watched the road.

"You been driving nights long?" she asked eventually.

"Couple months. Started because the money was better than campus jobs."

She made a small sound that might have been understanding or might have been judgment. "Money's never better than campus jobs once the app starts noticing you. It likes drivers who need the money. Makes them easier to keep."

I didn't have a good answer for that, so I didn't try.

We passed the old feed store. The building was dark except for one security light over the loading dock. Wren pointed left at the next street.

"Cedar. Then we stay on it until we hit the bypass. App's going to hate that."

Sure enough, the phone lit up again the second I turned. This time it didn't just suggest Old Cellar Road. It tried to reroute the whole trip through it, complete with a little warning icon and the words Faster route detected.

Wren picked up the phone, looked at it for a second, then set it back down. "Rude. And wrong. Cedar's better after dark anyway. Fewer trees trying to remember your name."

I glanced at her. "Trees remember names?"

"Some of them try. Most of them are bad at it." She shifted in the seat. "Old Cellar Road's one of the ones that tries harder than it should. App keeps sending people down it like it's a shortcut. It's not."

We were coming up on the turn for Old Cellar Road now. The sign was still there, half-covered in some kind of creeper vine that hadn't been there the last time I drove past. The phone screen brightened again on the console. This time it didn't even bother with text. Just the map, Old Cellar Road pulsing like it was trying to get our attention.

Wren didn't look at it. "Straight. Past the sign. Don't slow down."

I kept my foot steady on the gas.

Something was standing just off the shoulder near the sign. It stood in the tall grass at the edge of the trees, tall and thin, with shoulders too narrow and arms that hung a little too low. Its head was tilted slightly, like it was listening to something.

The phone screen went dark on its own. Wren didn't turn to look at it. She kept her eyes on the road ahead.

"Keep going," she said. "Whatever it is, it's not getting in this car tonight."

I didn't argue. I drove straight past the sign and didn't look in the rearview mirror until we were two blocks down Cedar and the only thing behind us was dark road and the occasional orange reflector.

Wren let out a slow breath. "Good. Now we can talk about what you're actually going to do when you get home."

On the road, continued, 4:58 a.m.

We drove the rest of the way in mostly comfortable silence. Wren gave directions when the phone tried to reroute us again, and I followed them. Cedar to the bypass, then the back way through the quiet neighborhoods. The phone kept lighting up with suggestions. Wren kept turning the screen face-down without looking at it.

When we finally pulled up in front of my building, the app had one last try. The screen lit up as I put the car in park.

You have arrived.
Confirm passenger drop-off.

Wren picked up the phone before I could touch it. "Don't confirm anything."

She opened her door and got out. I followed. The night air felt colder than it had when we left Wren's. My building looked exactly the same as it always did: cheap siding, bad lighting over the front door, one of my neighbor's bikes chained to the railing even though it had been raining earlier.

Wren walked me to the door like she was making sure I actually went inside. The phone in her hand lit up one more time.

New request nearby.
Pickup: Your current location.
Passenger: Ernie Ball.

She looked at it for a second, then declined the request and turned the phone all the way off. She handed it back to me.

"Leave it off until morning," she said. "If it turns itself back on, call me. I don't care what time it is."

I nodded. I didn't know what else to say.

Wren looked at the building, then at me. "You did all right tonight. Most people would've taken the box home or tried to argue with the app the whole way. You listened when someone told you to stop moving."

"Felt like the only smart thing I did all night."

"It was." She held out her hand. "Keys."

I blinked at her. "What?"

"Keys," she said again. "You are not leaving your car outside with that app still sulking in it. I'll park it behind Wren's until noon. You can come get it when the sun is up and you've had coffee made by someone who is not being hunted by software."

I gave her the keys.

She stepped back. "Go inside. Lock the door. Eat something that isn't from my kitchen if you can stand it. And don't accept any jobs until you've had at least six hours of sleep."

She turned and walked back to the car. I watched her get into the driver's seat, adjust it forward, and pull away without looking back. I stood there on the sidewalk until her taillights disappeared around the corner. Then I went inside.

The next morning the hold on my earnings was gone. So was my five-star rating. My account standing said At Risk. And when I opened the app, there was already a scheduled shift waiting for me.

Tomorrow. 1:17 a.m.
High priority. Surge active.
Auto-accepted.

I stared at it for a long time. Then I closed the app, turned the phone off, and went back to sleep.