My grandfather was a hoarder of information, but not in the way you’re probably thinking. He didn’t collect old newspapers or plastic bags. He collected microfiches. For forty years, he worked as a senior clerk for the municipal archives in our tri-state area, and when the county started shifting toward digital backups in the late nineties, they began throwing out thousands of old microfiche sheets the transparent film negatives used to store microscopic images of documents. My grandfather couldn't bear to see them destroyed. He brought them home in heavy, olive-green metal filing cabinets that sat in his damp basement until he passed away last autumn.

As his only grandson, I inherited the house, the damp basement, and those green cabinets. I also inherited his old industrial microfiche reader a bulky, heavy box from the late 1970s with a yellowish, glowing glass screen.

At first, I wanted to dump the whole collection. But out of a strange sense of nostalgia, I started going through them a few months ago. Most of it was mind-numbing: property tax assessments from 1974, structural blueprints of town halls that had been demolished before I was born, and local crime registries. But then I found the local newspaper archives from the mid-1980s. The local daily paper, *The Valley Ledger*, had been fully cataloged on microfiche by my grandfather.

I set up a routine. Every Tuesday night, I’d go down to the basement, turn on the loud, humming cooling fan of the microfiche reader, slide a transparent plastic sheet between the two glass plates, and manually turn the dial to scan through old black-and-white photos of high school football games, car dealership ads, and town festivals from forty years ago. There’s a strange, ghostly quality to looking at microfiche. Because they are photographic negatives, everything has a high-contrast, slightly blurred edge.

It was three weeks ago when I noticed him for the first time.

I was looking at a front-page photo from October 14th, 1983. The headline was about a major town parade celebrating the opening of a new public park. The photograph showed a massive crowd of people lining Main Street, waving small flags. The camera was focused on the mayor cutting a ribbon, but the depth of field caught the first few rows of the crowd in relatively sharp focus.

Standing near the edge of the frame, partially obscured by a woman holding a balloon, was a young man.

He was staring directly at the camera. While everyone else was laughing, looking at the parade, or squinting against the autumn sun, this guy was absolutely motionless. His face was pale, his eyes wide and hollow. But what caught my attention was his clothing. He was wearing a very specific, heavy winter jacket. It was a vintage, oversized, dark-olive canvas car coat with unique asymmetrical silver toggle closures instead of buttons, and a frayed patch on the left shoulder where a military insignia had clearly been ripped off.

I only paused for a second because that jacket looked incredibly familiar. I shrugged it off, assuming it was a common vintage style, and moved to the next slide.

Two nights later, I was scanning through August 1986. A photograph captured a small gathering outside the county courthouse after a controversial city council vote. There were maybe thirty people in the shot. I zoomed in manually using the reader’s focus dial to read a protestor's sign.

As the blurry black-and-white image snapped into focus, my chest tightened.

There he was again. Standing at the back of the crowd, completely unbothered by the summer heat, wearing the exact same heavy, olive-green canvas coat with the silver toggle closures and the frayed shoulder patch. He hadn't aged a single day. His face was identical the same blank, unblinking glare directed right into the lens of the photographer. It wasn't just a resemblance. It was the exact same person, down to the crease in the collar of the coat.

A cold bead of sweat rolled down my spine. The hum of the microfiche reader suddenly felt incredibly loud in the empty basement. I told myself it had to be a coincidence. Maybe he was a local eccentric who wore that jacket everywhere for years. People do that.

But then I found him a third time. May 1981. A high school graduation ceremony. He was standing near the bushes outside the gymnasium, looking past the graduates, straight into the camera. Same face. Same timeless gaze. Same heavy winter coat in the middle of spring.

I couldn't sleep that night. I stayed up until 4:00 AM searching old digital death registries and digitized town records on my laptop, but without a name, it was impossible. The next morning, I tried to distract myself. I needed to get out of the house, so I decided to go down to the local vintage clothing warehouse three miles away to browse through old jackets. I’ve always liked vintage clothes, and I figured buying something new would get my mind off the creepy microfiche guy.

I spent an hour pulling through racks of old flannel and heavy denim. Near the very back of the store, tucked away on a rusty rack labeled "Military Surplus & Outerwear," my hand hit coarse, heavy canvas.

I pulled the hanger out. My breath hitched in my throat.

It was an olive-green car coat. It had asymmetrical silver toggle closures. On the left shoulder, there was a jagged, frayed square of dark thread where an old patch had been violently torn away.

My hands started shaking. I checked the tag. There was no brand, just a faded, handwritten price tag: "$45." I felt a sickening wave of morbid curiosity wash over me. I bought it. I don't know why, but I couldn't leave it there. It felt like I was holding a physical piece of the puzzle I was looking at in the basement. When I got home, I threw the heavy jacket onto the armchair in my living room, sat down on the couch, and just stared at it for hours.

Tonight, I decided I had to find out the truth. I went back down to the basement with a notebook. I was determined to catalog every single appearance of this man in my grandfather's archives.

I pulled out a brand-new drawer from the green cabinet one labeled "Valley Ledger: 1988-1989." I slid the first sheet of film onto the glass stage, adjusted the lens, and began to scroll through the months.

January. February. March. Nothing.

Then I hit April 1989. There was a photo of a small group of local volunteers cleaning up trash from the riverbanks after the spring thaw. The photographer had taken a wide-angle shot of the volunteers standing by a pile of black garbage bags.

I turned the dial to zoom into the background. My hands were sweating so much the metal knob kept slipping from my fingers.

There he was. Standing on the opposite side of the riverbank, half-hidden behind a weeping willow tree. He was looking across the water, his hollow eyes locked onto the camera lens. He was wearing the olive-green coat with the silver toggles.

But this time, something was different. Something was deeply, fundamentally wrong.

In all the previous photos from 1981, 1983, and 1986, the jacket on the film negative looked pristine, except for the torn shoulder patch. But in this photo from April 1989, the bottom of the jacket was visibly caked in dark, dried mud. The left cuff was torn open, exposing a pale, thin wrist. And right in the middle of the chest, there was a distinctive, jagged L-shaped tear in the fabric.

My heart began to violently hammer against my ribs.

I stood up so fast I knocked my wooden basement stool over. The heavy thud echoed off the concrete walls.

I ran up the basement stairs, taking them two at a time, and burst into my living room. I threw myself at the armchair where I had left the vintage coat yesterday morning. I grabbed the heavy green canvas, my fingers frantically tracing the fabric in the dim light of the floor lamp.

The bottom hem of the jacket was faintly stained with old, set-in dirt. The left cuff's lining was frayed and splitting open.

And there, right on the left side of the chest, was a neatly stitched, but clearly visible, L-shaped tear.

I dropped the coat on the floor as if it had burned me. I am sitting on my couch right now, writing this on my phone, staring at the jacket crumpled on the rug. The fabric is completely identical to the one in the 1989 photograph.

But it’s not just that.

While I was staring at the L-shaped tear, I remembered something that made my blood turn to ice. When I looked at the 1989 photo on the screen downstairs just ten minutes ago, I hadn't just looked at his clothes. Right before I panicked, I had zoomed in on his face to see his expression.

In the 1981 photo, his hair was cut short. In the 1986 photo, it was slightly longer, parting to the left side.

In the April 1989 photo, the man on the microfiche had the exact same messy, uneven haircut that I gave myself in the bathroom mirror two days ago.

I haven't gone back down to turn off the microfiche reader. Its cooling fan is still humming loudly through the floorboards beneath my feet. I am terrified that if I go down there to turn the dial to the next frame, the man in the photo won't be standing on the opposite riverbank anymore. I am terrified he will be closer.

While rummaging through some boxes during the move, I found the old tapes I had kept. That brought back a memory I had long buried in my mind. When I was a child, my parents, still alive at that time, loved buying tapes to use on those heavy, bulky tube TVs. Ours was an old black and white set, a secondary TV in the house that no one else wanted. It was, by chance, on a sunny afternoon that I decided to watch a new release. I don’t quite remember if it was an action movie, but I think it was.

My sister, Jersey, a young girl with blonde hair and eyes so blue that the sky would seem ordinary next to them, was resting in the next room. Taking advantage of the fact that we were the only two at home, I started searching the shelf, among all the other tapes, for the one I wanted to watch. When I found it...

It wasn’t the one I was looking for, but it caught my attention.

This tape was wrapped in a transparent bag, with only the name: “The Tape.”

I, always very curious about things, opened it. I thought my father had finally gotten the new movie I had been asking for for so long. I sat on the round red carpet in front of the TV, which had a yellowish stain from the last time I spilled juice. I got scolded so much that day that my back still remembers it.

I put the tape in and played it.

What I am about to describe is what my mind tried to push to the back of my head.

The video starts off simply, but what caught my attention was the lack of music. The screen went black, and suddenly, the image of a lawn appeared. It looked more like someone was recording it, like a home video.

The only sound I could hear was heavy breathing.

The person raised the camera.

In the distance, a blue car was on fire.

The closer the camera got, the more I could make out two figures inside the car.

In the front, a man whose face seemed far too blurred. He wore a yellow T-shirt stained with red, with a hole in his forehead and his eyes closed.

The camera moved, zooming in on the man in the back.

He was the worst.

I will not describe him, but know this: he was worse.

The tape ended.

I was still in disbelief, unable to believe what had happened. That was when my mother’s soft voice started calling me from outside.

I, still frozen, didn’t know what to do.

My mother’s voice had a high-pitched, gentle, yet thin tone.

I stood up and walked toward the door. A shiver ran down my spine. Something was wrong, I just didn’t know what.

It was as if the voice was hers, but at the same time, it wasn’t.

I was just a few inches away, about to open it.

That’s when a voice in the back of my mind told me to stay away from the door.

The voice on the other side began screaming, demanding to be let in.

The door started shaking, with loud scratches that almost seemed capable of splitting the wood.

It went on like that for several minutes. I nearly peed my pants.

In my child’s mind, I thought it was the tape.

I put it back in the plastic and returned it to its place.

I went to my room, crawling under the covers, until my parents came home.

When my parents arrived, I told them everything, though they hardly believed me. I went to get the tape to show them, but it was nowhere to be found. Several fine marks, like scratches, remained on the door. They said I must have been up to some mischief and didn’t want to take the blame.

Curiously, years later, my father bought a car identical to the one I had seen in that recording, but being a skeptic in his adolescence, he hardly believed in the supernatural.

A big mistake.

My father and his friend suffered a terrible accident, one that cost both of them their lives.

My father was deep in debt and, unfortunately, paid with his own life.

When we went to identify the body, that was the moment I remembered: not the car, or the accident, but the tape.

We had started out the evening with a bottle of expensive Merlot I ordered off the wine menu. Monica always loved it when I took charge this way and saved her the trouble of having to browse the selections herself. Besides, after six months of dating, I was confident I had her preferences down to a T. When the bottle arrived I pointed out the label to her.

"Did you know Merlot is French for 'blackbird'?" I asked as our server poured us two glasses. We were at our usual table, rooftop seating, with an expansive view of the city.

"I did not know that," Monica acknowledged. I could always tell she was grateful when I taught her something new. I was glad when she didn't ask about the rest of the label. Probably could have figured it out if I tried, though. I've always been good at picking up on context clues.

"You know, speaking of birds, I read something interesting the other day," I mentioned as I swirled by glass. "They just published a study that found birds in the city are more afraid of women than men. You'd think it'd be the other way around."

"Who even pays for those studies?" Monica wondered. She surprised me by breaking off a piece of bread—Monica never ate bread—but it was only to crumble it up and sprinkle it near her chair.

"Seems like you have no trouble endearing yourself." I smirked as I watched a sparrow hop over to cautiously peck at the crumbs she had scattered for it. "Guess I'm dating a real-life Disney princess."

"Maybe if one lands on me you can say that," she played along with a laugh. "Or if I spontaneously break into song."

"I'd kind of like to hear that."

She scrunched her nose in a way I found adorable. "Take me out to karaoke next time."

Next time. If I had my way, there would be plenty of next times. I was going to marry this girl sitting across from me watching that little bird hop around her heels. She was funny, smart, beautiful, and judging by her intense focus, fascinated by the wonders of the natural world. She observed that bird like couples at neighboring tables observed the glowing screens of their devices. It didn't hurt that she didn't break the bank every time I took her out and insisted on treating her. She barely ate as far as I could tell. Yep, I was definitely a lucky guy.

"Hey, I'm gonna go use the restroom real quick." I set my napkin aside, still smiling, and rose. Monica looked up from the bird to beam at me. God she was gorgeous. Really I wanted to flag down our waiter without arousing her suspicions and see if there was anything special I could do for her tonight. Maybe I could lie and tell them it was her birthday so they made a big fanfare about it. Pretty sure she would love that, and the servers always looked like they enjoyed themselves in those moments. Sometimes I'd see them called to different tables five or six times in the course of a single evening. I'd never worked in the service industry, but it seemed like a fun job.

I never located our server. On my way back from the bathroom I paused at the entry to the deck, surprised, as I spotted Monica still sitting alone at our table. She had something in her hand, but that something wasn't her phone. I realized it was the bird she had been feeding earlier. She held its tiny body clasped in one hand, and was gently massaging the fragile dome of its head with one fingertip. Its beady little eyes were squinted half-closed in... was that contentment? Or fear? An uneasy feeling stole over me, but I shook it off. No, it looked like it was being lulled to sleep by her caressing. I wondered how she'd got hold of it. Clearly it trusted her enough to be held.

My girlfriend, the Disney princess. Communing with nature. I stood back and observed a moment with an indulgent smile on my face. I probably looked like a cornball, not something I've ever been accused of being, but I couldn't resist. I watched as Monica brought the bird nearer to her lips. I thought she was going to plant a kiss on it before letting it go, an idea I was less enthusiastic about.

Thoughts of avian germs, lice, parasites flew from my mind the next moment. I could see the bird visibly struggling now in Monica's fist, her skin bleaching white with the ferocity of her grip. She opened her mouth, and it was so much more than a kiss. Her lips parted wide, wider, until I thought her jaw would dislocate—and then it seemed to unhinge, and continue opening wide, ropes of saliva trailing between her upper and lower teeth, the crown of her head practically sinking back into the nape of her neck. The bird gave one last fearful struggle in her hand, but it was too late, as its head disappeared inside my girlfriend's mouth.

She didn't finish it in one bite, even though she could have, easily. Her teeth, so much longer than I knew, with her lips pulled back, champed down, pulling the bird's head from its spine, like Saturn devouring his son, a Goya painting I once described to her in great detail on our first date in a way that impressed her enough to agree to a second. I had guessed from the outset that Monica preferred a man of culture. But I was starting to wonder what I knew about Monica's preferences, actually.

Her mouth opened a second time, like the act of eating was mindless, automatic, her tongue the conveyor delivering the rest of the bird (still flapping, how was it still flapping?) down the yawning chasm of her throat. Her jaws snapped shut, her lips pressed tight together, and I watched the wriggling lump slide under her skin and disappear beneath the pressed Peter Pan collar of her dress.

I thought about bolting. I had never dined and dashed in my life; but wasn't Monica the only one who had dined at this point? My vision was tunneling, and still I stood rooted to the spot, fight or flight (hadn't the bird tried both and lost?) giving way to freeze. Monica glanced up then and spotted me, and there was no escaping back into the restaurant undetected. I walked slowly over to our table and sat down.

Our server reappeared within moments to take our order. "Just the house salad with dressing on the side for me," Monica said, folding her menu shut. I stared at something caught in her teeth. She noticed, and closed her lips abruptly, feeling around, her tongue bulging out a pouch in her lower lip before sweeping sideways to her cheek. She fiddled this way for a while, then plucked the detritus free and laid it out neatly beside her plate. "You know what they say about girls who can tie cherry stems into knots with their tongues," she said slyly. "They don't say they're Disney princesses."

"Uh-huh." She hadn't been drinking any Shirley Temples I was aware of, and the gnarled trophy she had produced for me definitely wasn't a cherry stem.

When our entrées arrived, I watched her sip wine and move leaves around her plate as she carried on convivially. At least she was giving the impression of eating. I hadn't even touched my Chicken Parmesan. I was too busy shooting furtive glances at all the other female diners—single, paired, gathered in groups—and noticing the identical house salads plated before them with dressing on the side. I could have sworn several of them were looking at me. The sun had just sunk below the horizon, and either the lengthening shadows or their evaluating gazes made my skin grow cold. There were no more birds hopping around underfoot. Maybe they had all flown away?

"What?" I asked when I realized Monica was awaiting a response.

"I was just thinking, when we move in together, we should set up a bird feeder," she repeated. "Or even a bird house or bath. We can make it really welcoming for all the urban birds in the neighborhood. That way, they'll know I'm not something they need to be afraid of."

"Uh-huh."

She smiled again, then dabbed her mouth with the corner of her napkin. She seemed to be having some indigestion.

I rose without meaning to. "I think I need to use the—"

I was suddenly surrounded by a crowd of people. I sat back down, sweating bullets, hemmed in on all sides. Someone slid a slice of cake in front of me, right next to my untouched meal, and a fleet of servers started clapping and singing in unison. A pair of hands garroted me with an elastic band as a conical hat was affixed atop my head.

"When you were in the bathroom earlier I told them it was your birthday!" Monica crowed.

I wasn’t supposed to see the second sky.

Three years ago my brother died and my sleep went with him. I started staying up until 5 or 6 AM drifting through forums about “thin places” — spots where reality supposedly folds wrong.

Most of it was the usual sludge.

Shadow people.

Frequency weapons.

Schizophrenic static.

But one thread was different.

No usernames. No avatars.

Just a title:

IF YOU DREAM OF THE STAIRS, DO NOT KEEP CLIMBING.

Attached was a blurry image of white staircases suspended in clouds.

At first I thought it was just surreal art. But the comments underneath weren’t treating it like art.

They were treating it like directions.

Never take the left staircase after the third arch.

If you hear footsteps above you, lie down immediately.

Do NOT look through the windows.

One reply just said:

> They notice you faster if you climb confidently.

The thread vanished two days later.

I should’ve forgotten about it.

Instead I became obsessed.

For months I searched dead occult boards, archived links, reverse image databases.

Every mention eventually led back to the same phrase:

The Higher Passages.

Apparently people saw it during near-death experiences, fevers, comas, sleep deprivation. The descriptions were always identical.

Endless white stairs.

Open archways leading nowhere.

Clouds beneath your feet.

And a feeling of being measured.

Not watched.

Measured.

Like something was calculating whether you belonged there.

I didn’t believe any of it until I started dreaming about the place myself.

It always began the same way.

I’d wake up barefoot on cold white marble with clouds stretching beneath me instead of ground. The air smelled sterile. Electrical. There was no sun, but everything glowed blue-white anyway.

The staircases made no sense.

Some climbed upward forever. Some folded back into themselves. Others just ended midair.

And somewhere far above me, I’d hear footsteps.

Slow.

Heavy.

Descending.

The first few times I panicked and forced myself awake.

Eventually curiosity won.

I started climbing.

Distance didn’t work correctly there. I could walk for what felt like hours without getting tired, but when I looked back the place I started was somehow still visible beneath me.

The windows were worse they didn’t show sky. They showed other places.

One looked like an ocean hanging vertically in darkness. Another showed gigantic black geometric structures rotating around each other like machinery.

Sometimes I saw movement behind the glass.

Things impossibly large and slightly out of focus.

Every time I stared too long, pressure built behind my eyes like my brain was trying to reject what it was seeing.

Then one night I made a mistake.

I looked beneath the clouds.

There was another sky underneath ours.

I know how insane that sounds, but that’s exactly what it was.

Beneath the clouds stretched a gigantic spiraling void full of stars and glowing lines that looked like burning equations carved into space. It twisted downward forever like reality itself had opened into a drain.

That’s when I saw them.

Figures standing on staircases far below me.

Small at first.

Then one moved.

Not human movement either. Its body unfolded upward instead of standing normally. Parts of it lagged behind themselves like frames loading out of order.

My brain refused to process its shape all at once.

Then more appeared.

All staring up at me.

I woke up screaming hard enough my neighbor slammed on the wall.

After that, things started bleeding into real life.

I’d hear footsteps in my apartment at night even though I lived alone.

Sometimes staircases would briefly look much longer than they should before snapping back to normal.

Then one evening while walking home, the clouds above me spiraled inward for half a second.

Like something enormous had turned beneath them.

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk because I swear I saw glowing symbols hidden inside the clouds.

My nose started bleeding instantly.

That same night I found the thread again.One new comment had been added.

No username.

Just:

YOU LOOKED DOWN.

Underneath it was another image — the spiraling void beneath the clouds.

And one final reply:

Most people wake up before they are noticed.

I stopped sleeping after that.

I stayed awake for almost three straight days because I knew if I went back there, something bad was going to happen.

Eventually exhaustion won andvI passed out in my kitchen. And then I went back.

This time the stairways were silent.

No footsteps.

No movement.

The silence scared me more than the footsteps ever did.

Because I realized they weren’t above me anymore.

They were waiting ahead.

At the center of the stairways stood a massive archway I’d never seen before. Complete darkness inside it.

Then I heard my brother’s voice.

“Please help me.”

Exactly his voice.

Not close. Not almost.

Perfect.

I knew it wasn’t real.

But grief does something horrible to logic.

I walked toward it anyway.

The closer I got, the more wrong the voice became.

Not distorted.

Assembled.

Like something constructing human speech piece by piece.

“Please… help… me…”

Then I noticed the stairs around the archway were wet.

Not water.

Blood.

And hanging upside down above the archway…

was my brother. His body was bent backward like a broken spider. His mouth stretched impossibly wide.

Inside his mouth were stars. An entire galaxy slowly turning where his throat should’ve been.

Then he smiled.

And every staircase around me filled with them.

Thousands.

Standing perfectly still.

Watching me.

Not angry.

Not hungry.

Curious.

Like scientists observing bacteria.

One of them forced something directly into my mind.

Not words.

Understanding.

The stairways weren’t heaven.

They were a border.

A filtration system between realities.

Human beings were never supposed to perceive what exists beneath our world.

We are not the top layer of existence.

We are something small living above something ancient.

Something that has been waiting for us to notice it. I woke up in the hospital four days later.

My landlord found me unconscious with my skull cracked open at the bottom of my apartment stairs.

Doctors said I must’ve fallen.

The problem is…

I don’t live in an apartment building anymore.

I live in a single-story house there are no stairs inside it and last night, for the first time since the hospital, I heard footsteps above me again.

The peephole showed my neighbor smiling.

The building camera showed a tired man in pajamas, standing outside my door with no expression at all.

Both versions knocked at 3:03.

Only one of them was really there.

The building had cameras in every hallway, which is why I thought this would be easy to explain.

It was not.

The first time, someone knocked three times at 3:03 in the morning.

Not hard. Three careful knocks, polite and angry at once.

When I looked through the peephole, my new neighbor from 1702 was standing outside.

His face was too close to the door. The hallway light stretched his skin flat and pale. He smiled, but his eyes stayed flat.

"Sorry," he said. His voice was thin through the metal door. "Could you stop walking around your living room?"

For a moment I just stared through the peephole. "What?"

"The footsteps," he said. Still smiling. "Every night. Back and forth. Back and forth."

I opened the door with the chain still on.

The hallway was empty.

The next morning I almost convinced myself I had dreamed it. Then it happened again.

3:03. Three knocks.

This time his face filled the peephole.

"Please," he whispered. "It is very loud tonight."

I shouted that I was in bed, alone, with nobody in my living room.

His smile stayed exactly where it was.

When I opened the door, he was gone again.

After that, I stopped trusting memory. I put my phone in sleep mode beside my pillow and left an old phone recording audio by the living room window.

At 3:03, the knocks came.

In the morning, the sleep tracker showed I had barely moved.

On the living room audio, footsteps crossed the tile for two minutes. Slow. Barefoot. Back and forth.

Under the steps was another sound.

Breathing, close to the microphone, as if someone crouched beside it, listening.

I went downstairs as soon as the property office opened. The manager looked annoyed until I said "harassment" and "security footage."

He took me to the monitor room.

The hallway camera showed 2:59, then 3:00, then 3:03.

My neighbor's door opened.

He stepped out in pajamas. He looked terrible. No smile now, just a man who had not slept in days.

He walked to my door and knocked three times.

Then he leaned toward my door, not smiling, just listening.

"See?" the manager said, relieved. "It is only your neighbor."

Then something moved in the corner of the frame.

The camera covered the corridor outside my door. A thin line of light showed under the door, dim and gray, the kind that leaks in from a window at night.

My apartment was dark. I had left nothing on.

Something kept breaking that line of light.

Slowly.

Back and forth.

The manager rewound the video.

Someone was walking inside my apartment. Not a clear shape. Just the light under the door, cut again and again by something passing it, at the same slow pace.

Those were the footsteps my neighbor heard.

"Change camera," I said.

The second angle faced 1702.

At the same time my neighbor was at my door, someone else stood at his.

That person was my height.

That person had my hair.

That person raised one hand and knocked on my neighbor's door, again and again, with the same careful rhythm.

Then it turned toward the camera.

The image blurred for half a second, like the camera had forgotten how to focus on a face.

When it cleared, the hallway was empty.

The manager backed away from the desk.

I went back upstairs and knocked on 1702 in daylight.

My neighbor opened the door only a crack. His eyes were red. The room behind him was dark.

"You saw it," he said.

I told him what the camera showed.

He laughed once, without any humor.

"I knew you were not doing it," he said. "That thing has come to my door too."

He said that on the nights he did not leave his apartment, the footsteps still started in my living room. Then three knocks would come from his own door.

When he looked through the peephole, he saw me standing there, showing all my teeth.

I told him that through my peephole, I saw the same smile on his face.

For a few seconds, neither of us said anything. Then the hallway filled with the smell of burned incense, like someone had just made an offering. The yellow talisman paper above the fire door, written over in red cinnabar, fluttered even though there was no wind.

I left before sunset.

The manager promised to export the footage. Later he said the files were corrupted. I believed him.

A month later, the property office texted about my deposit and sent a checkout photo from inside my old apartment.

It was taken from the living room, facing the window.

The room was empty.

But in the dark glass, behind the person taking the photo, someone was standing near the sofa.

The front door stood open behind them. The same reflection caught the corridor outside, and the yellow talisman above the fire door.

It had split straight down the middle.

The manager sent one more message:

Did you come back during checkout?

I let them keep the deposit.

I cannot believe how I got here. I don’t even know if I’m going to make it out. But I need to know that someone knew I was here. I need to know that I’ll be remembered, even if this place won’t remember me. 

It started a few weeks ago. I was at home scrolling online, looking for job postings. With everything going on in the world, you don’t have to think too hard about why I was searching. The job market is a mess, and employers are still toting the “no one wants to work” motto. I wanted to work. Student loans and medical debt are trailing me wherever I go. No escaping that. So I went job hunting. I started applying for everything I found. Waitress, baby sitter, dishwasher, cashier, stocker; you name it I applied for it. Well, at least everything that would allow me to apply with a certificate for 3D arts. I couldn't even finish a full degree. 

While I was searching, I came across this posting. It was from this senior living community in my city, maybe about a ten minute drive from where I lived. Pay was decent too, $19.50 an hour, full time, Tuesday night thru Saturday night, or Sunday morning I guess, the wording seemed off but I was desperate. Overnight receptionist wanted. Skimming the requirements, I thought it was a long shot. It was wanting someone with any kind of degree and they preferred bilingual people. But everything else I was great at. I’ve worked in retail and customer facing roles since I was old enough to be hired. And I’ve worked at the front desk for places before as well. I thought I’d give it a go. So I did, and got back to hunting. 

It wasn’t until I got an email about the posting that I even remembered that I had applied. The email came from the community’s hiring manager, and it held a link for continued questioning. It felt off, but with how much technology is advancing and relying on AI, I just thought that maybe they were too. Following the link led me to this virtual interview thing. I was given questions and I had to record myself answering. It was typical stuff like why do you want to work for us, do you believe in our goals and beliefs. Normal everyday interview questions with full automation. No more than an hour after sending in the virtual interview did I get the email saying I was hired. I would be given links for training videos, an appointment time to do a drug test, and a log in so I could clock in and out for watching the videos. My first day would be that following Tuesday night. Three days away. 

The drug test came first. I had a premade appointment with a clinic of the companies choosing, and just had to show up. The clinic knew what company I was there for, I guess they do all of the drug testing for them. That, or I gave too much information when I checked in. Either way, I remember the lady at the desk gave me a look of pity when I went to fill out paperwork. Like, she knew something I didn’t but wouldn’t tell me. I wish I had known why. But I had been so swept up in the excitement of finally getting hired I didn’t think much of it until now. After I was done at the clinic, I went home and logged in to start the training videos since I was starting in three days. 

The videos had that old corporate feel to them. The ones that had people pretending on camera to act out scenarios, or do dramatic re-enactments of seniors with dementia getting angry at a care giver. The whole time it felt like I was watching relics of the past, not updated information. I learned more about the community I was going to be working at, for privacy sake I’m calling it WG. WG had been around since 1999, and was founded as part of a larger group of communities around the eastern seaboard. Seemed pretty normal at the time. Nothing stood out to me. Sitting here I remember there was one video that kept buffering around a part that kept talking about how WG had the highest rated memory care experience, but it buffered and repeated “memory” over and over until I had decided to give it a rest and start the video again the next day. 

I finished the other videos with no problem. I had a whole day to spend just relaxing and mentally preparing myself for going in. So I did what any sane person would do; I practiced a phone greeting in the mirror. It’s crazy sounding, but I had been answering phones for other places, I didn’t want to trip up and say the wrong place. When I was confident in that, I spent some time shopping for a few new blouses. One of the emails I had gotten said the dress code for the receptionist role was black or khaki slacks, a WG polo or other dress shirt (button ups, polos, blouses, those kinds of things). I had a few, but wanted to get a few new things so I had a little bit of variation, even though my shifts were going to be from 11pm at night to 7am the next day. I was still meant to be the first face someone saw when arriving at WG. 

While I was out shopping, I got a text message from a number I did not recognize. The text was extremely formal and professional. I almost ignored it. I changed the name of who texted me. I can’t risk them being found again.

“Hello, this is Laura from WG. I will be your mentor for onboarding. Please bring your documents and a notebook. I will see you at 11pm.”

So Laura was meant to train me in person tomorrow. The entire time since I got accepted had been automated or through some outside company. I was excited and nervous. I had so many questions at the time. How long would she be training me? Was this just another automated message and Laura was actually some AI program the company used? 

I got my sleep schedule fixed for doing overnights, and when Tuesday night came around, I was greeted by a person. The entrance for the place was really nice. There was an awning over the loading area for the entrance. Sliding doors that led to a vestibule that had a second sliding door that was locked. Laura had to let me inside. 

“Welcome. I’m Laura. Did you bring the documents I asked you about?” Laura got right to it. Her hair was drawn back into one of those loose half up ponytails, black slacks, and she had this bright yellow blouse with a grey cardigan over it. It reminded me of the sun coming out after a storm. How I wish I knew then that she was warning me of the approaching storm I’m facing now. 

I cleared my throat, “Yes, I did.” I handed them over and walked with her to the desk. The lights in the main lobby had been lowered, and Laura explained to me that the interior doors locked at 8pm when the sun went down. They stayed locked until 7am the next morning when the day staff would arrive. She told me this was to make sure no bad actors got inside. 

“While I get your documents scanned in, would you please put your name on your name tag? The label maker is in the bottom drawer.” Laura asked me once we sat at the desk. I did as instructed, and put my name. Silent. After that, everything was pretty standard. Laura showed me how to access the cameras, access Microsoft Teams for our phone system, showed me what doors are locked and where deliveries came to. 

At first I didn’t have questions. The overnight shift was pretty much there to make sure Care Staff did their jobs, answer stray phone calls at night, and accept the odd delivery every once in a while while doing rounds of the main building every few hours. It was around 1am that Laura showed me how to do the rounds, and introduced the “checklist”. She never handed it to me directly, but showed me where to find it when I was by myself. 

“Whenever you leave to do these rounds, always make sure that you grab the cell phone, the walkie, and the master keys. The door code is hidden under the keyboard. For tonight, I’m going to walk you through and show you. Tomorrow, I’ll have you do the whole thing.” Laura said, showing me where to find the aforementioned items. Near the time clock, at the desk, and under the desk. Pretty simple. Laura made sure that I held nothing tonight, showing me the best route and how to check the doors without waking anyone. 

“Now, whenever you leave the desk for any reason, you NEED to bring these items with you. If you realize halfway down the hall you forgot something, don’t go back and get it.” I didn’t think about it at the time, but sitting here I know why she said that. I had given her an inquisitive look when she first said that, and I remember her face changed from neutral to scared.

“WG wants us to report rounds within a certain timeframe. Backtracking can make that time go over, and they prefer the shorter times. Longer times typically mean problems that the directors don’t want to deal with,” she explained. I took it at face value. A company wants to report efficiency over quality at times. Nothing I haven’t dealt with before. From there, we walked the floors of the building. The desk was on the second floor, so we had some weird route to follow to get to all the other external doors. Anytime we walked past a certain apartment, Laura would tell me about a memory she had of that resident. Mr. Smith would always whistle instead of sing at sing-alongs. Mrs. Harlow needed to be across the street in Memory Care, but her son wouldn’t sign the paperwork. She wandered the halls at night. But if there was whispering from her room, she was in bed for the night. 

The 1am rounds were relatively quick. 20 minutes at most for the size of the building. When we got back to the desk, I noticed that there was a delivery driver standing at the main entrance. I was about to speak up about it, when Laura put a hand on my shoulder and walked me towards the copy room, hidden just behind the desk.

“Shouldn’t we see who the delivery is for?” I asked, confused as Laura started getting out papers from the cabinets.

“Not that one.” she said flatly. I was confused. She had told me earlier that we buzz in deliveries after hours to sign for them. I guess she sensed my confusion and went on to explain. “That one dresses like a delivery driver. Has the right style of outfit, but he never has any company logo on. He’s one of the bad actors we don’t let in.” I nodded at her explanation.

“Why haven’t we called the police about him if he keeps showing up?” I asked, worried. If that guy shows up so often that we know he’s a bad actor, why wouldn’t we?

Laura gave me a look that I couldn’t pinpoint at the time, but was telling me that this isn’t something that I really should be asking.

“We’ve… tried,” she says slowly, like she’s searching for the right words. “He…. always ends up gone by the time police show up. It’s best to ignore him.” She seemed a little more confident in her words. “If you ever see him at night, just make sure not to trigger the motion sensor by the door. That’s the only way he can get in.” After a beat of silence, we went back to the desk and he was gone. Just like that. I decided to just take it in stride. If they tried, the new girl wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. 

The next few hours were mostly quiet. There were maybe one or two phone calls for the other building that Laura showed me how to transfer, and then said something odd. She had said that the only time we ever talk with the other building at night was to transfer phones. I was about to ask why when she explained that the care staff have their own things going on that I might interrupt if it wasn’t a phone transfer. 

It was at 3am when we did our next rounds. Same thing. Phone, walkie, keys, door code. Laura still carried everything. But before we left, she had me check the cameras. The one for an entrance to the main building over by the loading dock.

“What am I looking for?” I asked. I saw nothing out of the ordinary. It was dark, but the night vision showed some insects flitting around and the outlines of the dumpsters. 

“If you don’t see anything, we are good. Let’s go,” was the only answer she gave me. I followed behind her as we went the opposite way for the rounds this time. There were some more stories of residents as we passed by apartment doors, and I noticed that the numbers seemed like they repeated themselves. I would blink and they looked right again. I attributed it to not being used to the overnight schedule. There was one door we passed by that we tested, apartment 329, that was unlocked when I jiggled the door. 

A faint voice answered through the door “Is that the knitting needles I ordered?” Laura’s face drained of color as she quickly locked the door. 

“No, no knitting club today Mrs. Lyra.” Laura whispered and shooed me on. A few doors down, Laura was still pale. I gave her a look, and she just smiled.

“That resident has her days mixed up. She got her needles a few weeks ago, but the club was cancelled due to lack of interest. Her door is always unlocked on these rounds. If she says something to you, just remind her that there’s no club today and move on.”

“What if the door is locked and she still answers?” I ask.

“Then you - “ Laura was about to answer when the walkie crackled to life. I couldn’t quite make it out, but Laura turned it off. After it was shut off, she turned it back on and set it to channel 2. She said nothing else, and started walking again. I followed, still trying to wrap my head around the layout of the building. 

These rounds took 30 minutes. When we got back, Laura showed me how to log the rounds into the computer, and we spent the next hours with me doing more training videos. I remember almost falling asleep a few times, and Laura was always there to nudge me awake. At some point, maybe around 4:40am, she showed me where to get coffee at the cafe near the desk. I think I was imagining it, but I remember seeing a shadow out of the corner of my eye when we were walking back. 5am came and went and we had our final rounds at 5:30am. It was the exact same thing as the other two rounds, but Laura let me pick which way to go. I wanted to see the route for the 1am again, so we went towards Mr. Smith’s door came and went, as did Mrs. Harlow’s door. I stopped to listen for the whispering, but I didn’t hear it this time. I looked at Laura. 

“She’s probably wandering the building. It’s best to just make sure the door is locked and keep going. She knows the way back.” Laura said, as if she was expecting the whispering to be gone. I took the keys and locked the door, which was still locked. I moved on, and right before we got back to the desk, I saw her. I think I did at least. There was a woman at the desk in a night gown that was moving her lips like she was in a trance. Laura and I returned to the desk, and sat down. 

If it had not been as quiet, I’m certain I would have missed where the woman asked “Are you here to help me Jane?” It took a moment, but I was about to say something about my name, when Laura piped up and said something else in response.

“Yes, I will meet you at your door.” That was enough for the woman, and she started shambling away from the desk. I stared after her, wondering why we wouldn’t clarify that we weren’t whoever this Jane person was.

“It’s just a thing for overnight staff. We don’t want to confuse residents, so if they think we are someone else, it’s just best to let them think that.” Laura explained. I remember reading that dementia residents lived whatever reality they were in, and agreed that it would be easier to just agree sometimes. 

Laura finished up the shift by showing me how to prep for the morning crew, and waited with me until it was time to leave. She asked if I had any questions before leaving. The only one was where to find the checklist tomorrow so I could practice with her. She showed me, and I went to pack my notebook. When I turned to say bye, she was already gone, the outside door sliding shut. 

All of this was yesterday. I was expecting Laura to be here when I got in tonight, but when I arrived, I was greeted with a locked door and an envelope addressed to me. I picked it up, and was surprised to see what was inside. 

“Silent,

Thank you for choosing WG as your new home for your career in senior living. We are excited to welcome you to our Reception Team. Below, you will find your door code to enter the building after hours. Second Shift has already gone home for today, but going forward you will swap with them at 11pm. 

For this evening, please find all your onboarding paperwork in the top left drawer in the copy room and fill out between your rounds. The Round Checklist is in the right drawer at the desk. Everything you need to know will be on that paper. 

If you have questions, please use the computer to email your supervisor. If an emergency arises, follow the normal emergency procedures.

Welcome, to WG
Management”

I was confused at the time, but I realize now what made that letter so unsettling. I used my new door code and let myself inside. Everything was the same as the night before, just… No Laura. I searched for the paperwork the letter mentioned, worked on that, apparently got lost in it. The next time I looked up at the clock was at 1:15am. A whole two hours had slid past me and I was already late for my first round. I scrambled for the checklist, and found it in the drawer, right where Laura and the letter had told me it’d be.

Third Shift Night Rounds

On all rounds bring the following

• Desk Cell Phone (access code on back)
• Walkie Talkie (set to channel 2)
• Master Key (located under the desk)
• Door Code (provided at hiring)

Under no circumstance are you to return to the desk before completing a round.
Log your round as soon as you return, including how long the round took.

1:00 AM Rounds

• Check all exterior doors to ensure security
• Ensure all resident doors remain locked

3:00 AM Rounds

• Check the Loading Dock Camera before leaving the desk
• If you see no activity, proceed by going to opposite way of the 1:00 AM rounds
• Ensure all resident doors remain locked

5:30 AM Rounds

• The order of these rounds do not matter
• Ensure all resident doors remain locked

OUTSTANDING INCIDENTS
If anything occurs during your rounds, log them into the book when you return. Do not allow residents to linger at the desk for too long. 

I read and reread the checklist. It was a lot more… clinical than Laura had mentioned last night. But I grabbed everything from the desk and started the rounds. The building was a lot quieter than last night. Every rustle of fabric or creaking in the floors made me jump. I went the same way we went last night, and went towards where Mrs. Harlow’s room is. I was hoping for something from last night, and was relieved to hear whispering when I got close to her room. But when I listened closely, it wasn’t coming from her room. It was behind me. 

I could feel my body turn rigid and my blood turn to ice. Laura said to lock the door and keep moving, right? I reached for the door, and started to turn the lock that was already in place. And that’s when I heard it.
“You are late Laura.”

It was just a whisper, but I couldn’t help the slight gasp. Laura? I turned around, expecting to see Laura behind me, but she wasn’t there. Just the woman in the night gown from last night. I was frozen. Was she talking to me?

“I…. I’m not Laura. I’m Silent.” I said, slowly. I remember the sense of dread that covered me as soon as the words were out.

The woman's frame twitched. Then a hand reached out. Towards me. I took a step back, and realized what I had done. I didn’t confirm the reality the resident was in. Mrs. Harlow looked up at me, slowly, almost mechanically. Her eyes were like voids when her gaze met mine, and I knew I messed up. 

I didn’t wait for anything. I sprinted down the hall as fast as I could, took a set of stairs and ran to one of the first doors I could find. A supply closet. 

It's not even 2am on my second night and I already messed up. I locked myself in here with the lights off. I can’t move. My legs burn, and I can barely see the screen while I type this. I am terrified. I can hear Mrs. Harlow wandering past the closet every so often. She keeps whispering my name, like she is trying to coax me out. But I don’t even know if that’s her out there. I just need someone to know I was here, just incase… I’m not anymore. 

I keep hearing something crinkling behind me. I’m too scared to even look. What did I sign up for? And am I even going to be able to get out?

Content Warning: Implied Abuse, Implied Self Harm

The doorbell rang a little before six thirty. I answered it to see Carrie in a modest long-sleeved black dress. She smiled at me and glanced nervously behind me at my mom, who very excitedly walked up to the door to greet her.

“Hello! You must be Carrie! I’ve heard so much about you.” Mom reached out her hand. Carrie reached out her hand tentatively and shook hands with mom.

“Nice to meet you,” she said nervously.

We gathered at the table. My mom had made spaghetti since this had all been short notice, but assured Carrie that if she had more time, it would have been something spectacular.

Carrie ate, slowly easing up but never fully letting her guard down. I picked at my food, enjoying the taste but not looking forward to the immense pain my break from my full blood diet would cause later. Mom ate some but was more interested in conversation.

“So, did you have fun at the concert last night?”

“Y—yeah,” Carrie said sheepishly. “It was a good time.”

“I never understood that stuff, but if it makes you happy it makes me happy.” Mom said, looking down at her plate, not noticing the look of confusion building on Carrie’s face.

It looked like Carrie was holding back tears. Mom must have noticed, because she stood up and got on Carrie’s level. “Hey, sweetheart. What’s wrong.”

“Why are you all so nice to me?” Carrie choked out.

I cannot express what an immensely sad thing it is to see someone you care about shocked to be treated like a human being. I wondered what sort of person her father was. He must have made mine look like a saint.

“Why wouldn’t we be? You’re a lovely and polite young woman.” She put a hand up to her mouth and went in close to Carrie’s ear. The next words came out as a whisper, but I could hear them clearly. “And between you and me, that boy over there is enamored with you. I’m beginning to see why.” She winked. Carrie laughed a little. I blushed and shrunk in my seat.

“You weren’t at all what I was expecting,” Carrie said, wiping her eyes.

“And what were you expecting?” Mom asked.

“Someone like my dad. You’re way more like my mom.”

“And what’s she like?”

“Kind, understanding, encouraging, just… wonderful.” Carrie looked down towards the floor. “She was murdered when I was younger.”

I was surprised to hear that. Not just ‘died’, but ‘murdered’.

“I’m so sorry. Alex’s dad has been missing for some time. It’s not the same, but I know what it feels like to miss someone like that.”

Carrie and mom hit it off great. I’d never seen either of them so happy. Mom embarrassed me more than a few times with stories of my younger years, but overall, I was happy. After Carrie left, mom came up to me.

“I can’t say that I’m too happy about you living together before marriage, but she’s a nice girl. Treat her well, Alex. That woman needs someone who cares. When I volunteered at the women’s shelter, I met a lot of girls like her.” Mom had volunteered a lot back when dad was around. She said it was the duty of every Christian to help others. The idea of abuse never crossed my mind when I talked with Carrie, but now it was all I could think about.

I wanted to kill her dad. I wanted to kill Mark. Maybe I could just feed on all the disgusting people of the world and make it a better place for everyone. Bill could die too. Then who? I didn’t know the answer to that. I’m sure I could find someone.

I had my car packed with what few belongings and clothes I had before my shift, with the intention of moving them in afterwards. As I parked in that familiar dark parking lot, I inhaled deeply. I was sure that I would not be ready or whatever insanity awaited me. I hoped that the old man would not make a move right away.

I had packed something else in that car, placing it inside my glove box. I took it out and put it in the large pocket of my work vest. It was a wooden stake, sharpened to a fine point. If that old bastard Renaud was here, only one of us would be leaving. I wasn’t terribly confident that it would be me.

I saw that white van parked close to the store, which was off brand from what I knew about Renaud. What almost escaped my vision was that silver Honda, parked on the other end of the lot. It was going to be a difficult night.

I walked into the store, Carrie was waiting for me, having changed into the shirt I bought for her at the concert along with a long-sleeved white undershirt. She smiled and waved as I came closer. Something was different, more pleasant, more relaxed. I felt more relaxed seeing her but couldn’t let my guard down. Peter and Renaud were both here, somewhere in the store.

I heard Rachel whistling somewhere deeper in the store. I was going to need to pay very close attention to that today. Fear made its home somewhere deep inside my chest, but I put a lock on it, determined to unpack the emotion once Renaud was dead at my feet and Peter was… what was I going to do to Peter? The man was trying to prevent people from dying. Could I really kill him for that? I might not have a choice, I thought.

“Hey, Carrie! Car’s packed, so I’ll be in today.”

“That’s great!” she said, way more excited than I expected. “I’m looking forward helping you unpack.”

“Yeah,” that little twinge in my chest which Carrie induced calmed some. “Me too.”

I was working in the housewares section that night, putting up microwaves and blenders on the shelf. I heard Rachel whistling, a few aisles down. I was close. I could respond quickly if I needed to. I heard footsteps down the hallway on the near side end of the aisle. They were heavy, dress shoes maybe. Peter. I heard the whistle again, but it cut short. Shit.

I ran out of the aisle. I felt a woosh of air run past my head. I looked down the aisle and saw a wooden crossbow bolt sliding against the white tiles. I turned around. Peter was there, crossbow in hand. I don’t know how he made it in with that, let alone how he could parade the aisles, armed and on camera, and get away with it.

My undead heart beat a little faster, pumping blood that wasn’t mine through my veins in a frenzy. “Blessed arthritis,” Peter said, using ‘blessed’ as a curse. “Sorry, Alex. My aim’s off, but I’ll make it quick.”

Not now, not now, not now!

I turned the corner. The old man was there, standing in front of Rachel. He stared down at her. It was like she was in a trance, completely paralyzed and not at all aware of her surroundings. He threw her on his shoulder then looked back at me. I heard Peter’s footsteps stop right behind me. A bolt flew past my ear. Renaud stepped to the side and caught it.

“Those English dogs at Agincourt had far better aim than you, Lutheran,” he hissed, the word ‘Lutheran’ sounding like a slur. He leaped onto the shelf, Rachel still on his shoulder. He then leapt across the tops of the aisles until he was gone. I felt Peter’s hands on me as he shoved me to the ground. I turned around in time to grab his wrist as he tried to plant a stake in my heart.

“Stop!” I pleaded. “He’s getting away!”

“Unless you know where he’s taking her, I’m afraid they’re both long gone. The most I can do is protect everyone else by killing you. Sorry, Alex.”

As I started to overpower him, his other hand produced a flashlight. He turned it on. It glowed that same blue color as the lamp on the pastor’s desk, burning my skin once more. My strength faded into nothing. Terror seized me. Rachel was gone. Carrie would wonder what happened to me. Mom would be all alone.

“I know where he is!” I yelled.

“The seventh commandment says though shalt not bear false witness,” Peter replied.

“I’m not lying! I’ll show you! Please!”

The light turned off, but the tip of the stake poked at my chest.

“I’m listening. Make it quick.”

My skin started to heal, almost bubbling in reverse as it reformed over my arm. I stared up at Peter, this kindly grandpa looking man who held the power of life and death over me.

“When he turned me, he took me to his house. I can bring you there.”

The pressure of the stake on my chest let up. Peter stared at me long and hard as I looked back up at him in a mixture of terror and determination. He sighed, then stood up.

“Meet me at midnight tomorrow. Don’t worry about your friend. Renaud’s old school. I’m sure turning her will be a last resort, if he’s even figured out how to do it. I imagine you were an accident.”

“We need to get her now!” I protested. The thought of Rachel, alone with that creep, made me feel sick.

“We need to prepare. If we rush in now, it’ll be the two of us dead and your friend won’t make it anyway.” With the stake still in his hand, I was in no way able to protest. “At the church at midnight. See you then.” He smiled, then turned away. “Also, don’t make me regret letting you live another night, and don’t think this means I won’t kill you later.”

I went towards the front end to leave as my shift concluded. I was staring at the floor, angry at myself for my complete incompetence. I had guessed that the old man was trying to avoid Peter, which was why had tried so hard to be discrete in how he tried to abduct Rachel. I had kept removing his options, and when Peter hunted me down here, it was now or never for Renaud. In short, it was all my fault.

“Are you okay?” I heard Carrie say. I looked up and saw her standing by the door.

“Yeah,” I lied. She looked unconvinced but said nothing. “Let’s get going. I want to get all my stuff in the apartment tonight.”

I hopped in my car and followed her car to the apartment. We got all of my stuff in fairly quickly. I’ve been sitting on the couch typing all this. I’ve been distant all day, I’m sure. I think it’s worrying her. She has this shift off, and I put in a sick day.

I decided to do some research about Carrie’s mother on my phone. She disappeared after dropping Carrie off at school. They found her in an alley downtown with two holes on her neck and completely drained of blood.

As I’m sitting down typing this, I see the light on in the bathroom from my spot on the couch. I can hear Carrie. It sounds like she’s in pain. I wonder if I should check on her or if that would be too much. I worry about her. I can’t begin to know or understand all that she has been through, but I want to be there for her. I also smell something sweet and am so very hungry.

At midnight I will meet Peter and end this, but now I’m scared of what I might do. I feel the hunger seizing me once more. Please God, don’t let me hurt her.

Long have I enjoyed its fruits.  The sensation of each bite was as invigorating as the first I ever took.  The taste is still a blissful, potent, intoxicating explosion.  That horrified shame I once experienced has been long dead and buried in some crevice of my eternal soul, lost in the infiniti I surrendered for the pleasures of extended mortality. 

It's been my life partner for nearly a century.  Born in 1934, I have enjoyed the bounty of youth well into my early hundreds.  My skin supple, my flesh strong, my mind sharp.  This plot of land has been my home ever since I discovered it, and I have never yearned for anything different.  An ecstasy permeates the very air around it, and every day, I get to wake and inhale its gifts.  How could I yearn for anything else?  How could I have known?

I remember that first day vividly on the cusp of the Smoky Mountains, beyond the East Coast.  I was a desperate man, looking for cheap land and distance from people I had little patience for.  On the brink of burning the last of my fuel, I pulled off the main road, down a dirt path.  Trees soon encompassed my beater vehicle, and the road continued down a sudden, side-winding cliffside.  Running on fumes, I let my curiosity follow the dirtway, no point in stopping while I can still go.

The barren drive gave way to a field, the road ended, but I let my car drift through the brush with its final burst of gas.  The gravity of my life must have been weighing my mind down somewhat, for I was numbly bursting through bushes and tall grass for a handful of minutes before I regained concern for my well-being.  In the nick of time, I swerved around a tree and skidded to a halt just past the treeline.  

Shaking my head in self-disgust, I looked at the odometer to confirm I had just burned the last ounce of fuel in my car.  Disgust was soon wiped from my thoughts as I looked up out my windshield.  

A graveyard stared right back at me.  A humble stone fence guarded its small perimeter.  The canopy of trees leered over the petite guard, but dared not cross it, leaving the bed of the dead open to enjoy the sun unmolested by shadow.  Scattered headstones poked out of the thick grass blanket, appearing as aged pillows stained by past eons known only by those silent few who slept within.  

In the midst of this archaic landscape, sat a single tree.  Young, yet to bear fruit, but straight and strong of trunk.  From it sprout nine branches, each identical in girth and extension.  All arched upward, before slanting sharply down, as if recolied fingers.  

The bizarre scene was captivating.  I had never seen anything like it.  Exiting my car, I walked to the fence and peered over it, like a child daring to wander onto an adult’s property to retrieve a ball. Mesmerized, I stared at it unblinking.  Before I realized it, I was standing under it.  Its shade was more than cooling; it was blissful, like a blanket of soft, liquid flesh massaging every inch of me in a loving embrace.  

I came to my senses after my foot hit a hard block just at the foot of the tree.  The roots had grown over most of it, but I made out what it was nonetheless.  A headstone peeked from under the magnificent plant.  Wooden tendrils had consumed most of it, but I could still examine the last name and date of death: 
Handstern 
- 1924

The tree had grown from his very resting place.  At the time, I simply thought it was poetically beautiful.  Evening was fast approaching, and the solitude, along with the gravitational force of the bizarre tree, was convincing enough for me to camp out in the graveyard.  

The night sky was vivid and bright, and the cold wind was shielded by the tree under which I slept.  My dreams were filled with orgasmic sensations and vibrant warmth.  Never had I slept so soundly and yet experienced so much while doing so.  When I woke, the faint kiss of those dreams was imprinted on my mind.  At first, I was oblivious to the trees' influence and chalked it up to the peaceful, scenic bedroom I found myself in.  

Stretching and breathing in the morning air, I realized I was atop an incredible overlook, something the night and forest had hidden from me.  Just past the graveyard was the cliff edge, looking over the immense forest valley below.  I was completely floored by the wonder this location seemed to spring on me from moment to moment.  What are the chances?

I sat there for most of the morning, legs dangling off the rocky overhang.  Existential contentment was an abnormality for me at that time; never had I felt, not just at peace, but aroused by life.  Breathing was invigorating, silence was enchanting, my body pulsed with energy, and my mind was sharp and heightened.  I had never felt more alive, more human, until that first moment here. 

Bolting to my feet, pounding my chest in elated joviality, I turned back to my car to assess my supplies, determined to camp here as long as my luggage would allow.  Hopping over the compact fence, I came to a halt beside one of the nine, finger-like branches of the great tree.  I was shocked to discover, upon the very tip of this wooden appendage, a blooming bud of some sort.  A bud I was certain was not there the night before.  Flabbergasted by the speed of this eruption of life, I shook it off as yet another mystery of this oddity of botany.  

I decided then and there that, no matter how scarce my supplies were, this was a sign to camp here a few more days.  My rationale at the time was simple: I desperately needed this cleansing of body and spirit before venturing back to the “real world”.  The sluggish banality, quiet desperation, and sullen patheticness of searching for work, let alone the haunting possibility of actually succeeding this hunt, was an experience I was eager to put off.  

So, I spent the remainder of the day strolling the vicinity, picnicking under the tree, and occasionally by the cliff edge.  I cannot lie, the natural silence was beautiful, but there were moments where, even in that paradise, my thoughts wandered to places I was uncomfortable with.  At the time.  

The first was of my family.  What little family I had was scattered across the continent, but I was leaving a sister and a younger brother up in New England.  Not to mention a potential sweetheart whom I had unsuccessfully and sporadically courted on and off throughout my years in our small town. 

 
I was thinking how pleasant it would be to share this place with them, when I realized I was having a difficult time remembering their faces.  Vague whispers of shapes and skin tones seemed to intermingle and morph in my mind's eye the harder I concentrated.  Alarmed and distraught, I jogged to my disabled vehicle and shuffled through the glove compartment.  Stashed haphazardly under a pack of cigarettes lay the few pictures of home I had bothered to hold on to.  Lifting one of them, I absorbed their faces.  My brother and sister were on either side of me, humble smiles radiating off them.  

This reassurance was soon met with a bizarre sense of detachment.  I could see their faces, but I could not retain them.  A smog would obscure their faces the very moment I blinked.  Any mortal man would’ve been shaken by this rapid onset of dementia; however, I was pulled away from these worries by the First Sign.  

A rustling from behind me drew my attention.  As I turned, heavy clouds blew across the vibrant sky, shading the graveyard in immense darkness.  Wind raced through the branches and grass, spattering dew onto my face.  Despite the buffeting, my eyes remained unblinking as I witnessed it.  

The recoiled branch of the bud creaked and groaned as it adjusted its arm, like stiffened bones being torn from their crypt.  Now arched like a lure, this single branch remained bare, except for its very tip, which bulged with a new, throbbing appendage.  The bud was now a moist, crimson sac, like an over-ripened apple made of flesh, dangled from its wooden umbilical cord.  

With a sudden burst, it ejaculated a flash of leaves and flowers.  A rainbow of archaic foliage sprouted its strange patterns, itself in its collective bunches in the shape of a flower.  At the center of which hung the First Sign, and the first of my holy fruit.  

I must admit, even with the fragrance of that blooming majesty, it was not enough, at the time, to disway my initial shock and disgust.  From the kaleidoscope of color and leaves, a raw, human head, devoid of skin, hung.  Its mesh of dripping, bloody muscle fibers hung loosely off the skull, barely gripping the agape jaw as it dangled in the wind.  Eyeless sockets dripped crimson, coating the white teeth in a thin red paint.  

Long, clumpy hair draped from its cap, with a flimsy braid holding the locks in place, a stream of texture.  What strands weren’t glued together by chunks of wet sinew showed a lush brown color.  Given the head's ravaged state, the hair was the sole indicator of its distant humanity.  A desperate clasp on what individuality one retains before death wipes clean the slate of our flesh.  

And clasp it did, for I recognized that color.  Its hints of amber, its braid, even in the dimmed atmosphere, rang an alarm of familiarity throughout my body.  With a shaking hand, I raised the picture I had fished from my car.  My sister, smiling in that eternal capsule, had flung over her shoulder, cascading down her torso, that very braid.  

The coincidence was unbelievable.  I examined that clotted, mutilated fruit, only to discover more similarities.  The high cheekbones, the teeth, what features there were, retained an uncanny resemblance to her.  Suddenly, I found myself under the tree, gazing up at the pod, mouth agape.  That fragrance permeated, like the pulse of a beating heart.  And I had locked onto its source.  The hair was dangling just inches from my mouth.  Its scent was ecstasy. 

 
I gasped as I realized I was sliding the moist mane down my throat, hand outstretched, plucking the fruit free.  The taste erased any moral repulsion or instinct of disgust from my mind.  What was perceived as coagulated blood tasted of the richest butter; what was perceived as rotting follicles tasted of the richest pastry; what was perceived as oozing muscle tasted of the rarest poultry; what was once my sister was now a rejuvenating sustenance of celestial origin.   

Each crunching bite was a burst of flavor my tongue has never and could never enjoy from the natural world.  The fragments of cranium complemented the chunks of grey matter, both intensified by the flood of blood, which was riddled with the pulp of rotted arteries.  Each gulp, warm and titillating, filled me with radiant vitality.  

Lips coated in its juices, I looked down at my hands, stained red and sticky.  Not a seed remained of that abnormality.  A perfect calm filled me; never had I been so satisfied.  I was shaken from my trance by the retracting branch.  Like a withered arm, it coiled into a spiral, bark blackening and tearing. With that, the First Sign had come and gone.  Horrified that I had killed this holiest of holies, I feverishly began wrapping its limb in torn fabric, hauling water over to hydrate it, and doing what little else I could think of.  

I was interrupted by a rapid migraine that coursed violently from my spine to my frontal lobe.  Its sharpness knocked me to my knees.  I dropped my bucket, splashing water over myself, only stopping my fall by supporting myself against the tree. It was gone as soon as it came.  Gasping, I collected myself, carefully stretching my neck and back, testing for the source of the pain.  With no signs of returning, relief flooded me.  I examined my soaked pants before fishing out their contents to examine the damage.  My photo was moist, but remained intact.  Flapping it in the air to help it dry, I looked up at the branches, all eight others still intact, no sign of similar wilting. 

Content with my efforts, I paused my drying of the print and looked down at the photo.  For the last time, I believe. The migraine returned with a soft wrapping up my spinal column, into my eyes as I gazed at my sister's face.  I forced myself to continue looking despite the pain, for a new terror revealed itself to me.  I could not recognize her face.  An insistent blur seemed to be mutilating her features, obscuring them in both mind and vision. The migraine grew in intensity the longer I stared.  For a minute, I resisted, cold sweat coating my forehead as I churned my brain, trying to recall her.  

At last, the pain searing and sharp, like hot nails being driven into my eyes, I turned away.  Distress riddled my stomach, anxiety coated my throat, and a terror of my actions replaced the drumming in my skull.  

I’ve come a long way since.  Such troubles are a distant ache.  But even then, all that turmoil I felt was dashed away by the enticing scent of the timber.  It seemed to sense my distress and exuded a fragrance that filled my lungs with fresh joy and my mind with calming comforts comparable only to the warm swaddling of a loving mother.  

With a sigh of relief, I crumpled the picture in my fist.  No longer would it distract me from my bliss.  No familiar bond, no loving friend, no caring mother, could ever fill me with the euphoric contentment I feel here, in my garden of graves.  The fog filled my mind’s eye as countless faces began to dissipate like a thin mist.  I inhaled deeply and accepted their departure.  

Before I knew it, I lived under the tree.  The surrounding forest supplied me with the material to construct a humble log cabin, on the cusp of the graveyard's fence.  Every morning since, I sat under my tree to await another Sign. Once every decade, one would appear.  The Second Sign was my brother; he bloomed like my sister, a gnarled, ghastly skull, dripping with his liquefied muscles, like the juices of the ripest fruit.  What apprehensions I had were dashed upon that first, delectable bite.  The skull gave way to my teeth, like the skin of a dried mango, the gush of blood filled my mouth, paired with the tenderness of the muscles as I chewed, all cascaded down my throat like a river of divine mana.  

Like the first, the branch withered into its spiral of rot, signaling seven Signs yet to come.  Like the first, what remaining aspects of my brother’s face I could recall were liquidated.  Like the first, my conscience was suffocated by the ethereal peace.  

Only after the Third Sign did I realize my extended youth, my aptitude, and my overall health.  That one was my mother, I believe.  She was especially ripe.  Dense with flesh, that first crunch resonated among the tombstones like the echoes of a barren cave.  A waterfall of thick veins and brain matter poured over my face.  No longer did her face haunt my dreams; her voice no longer badgered me for the sins I had supposedly committed. 

 
By the Fourth Sign, I could no longer even guess who I was consuming.  The past and future seemed equal in obscurity, both unknowable concepts, capable merely of prediction by analyzing the present.  However, my longevity and radical health dissuaded any such analysis.  The present was where I lived, where I flourished, where I was safe.  No work to distract me, no relations to challenge me, no ailments to hurt me.  The tree sheltered me.  For a price I thought fair, no matter what sliver of shame and anxiety would sliver out from the cravacesess of my soul.    

These pathetic episodes were short-lived in an otherwise bountiful blur of happiness.  Decades of extended, youthful mortality have a way of swaying one’s moral considerations.  At least, until the Eighth Sign.  

Strange, it was only a decade ago, yet it feels so distant.  It bore its fruit, and I sat patiently waiting for its full bloom.  Another faceless head, its limited features no longer affecting me.  No longer drawing out memories of whoever was about to be consumed.  Upon the final gulp, the final sigh of bliss, I felt it.  It rushed, no, sprouted from my stomach lining, a shoot, piercing up my esophagus.  

It was the first time I had felt pain in half a century.  Long gone were the days of piercing migraines; my secluded paradise softened me to the slightest irritations.  Even without this factor, the pain would have keeled over a marine.  Hunched, howling into the dirt, I felt as the finger of something growing trickled up my innards, choking me all the way.  It halted about a third of the way up my throat.  Its girth was not enough to suffocate me, but each breath felt like sucking down razor blades.  

I lay there trembling, miserable, confused, and bitter at the brutal interruption of my heavenly delights.  Risking additional pain, I adjusted myself onto my elbows, only to feel the spear drag across my lower esophagus, slicing and splintering along the tender lining.  I gasped in pain, but I was satisfied with the experiment.  I now knew what was growing inside me.  
   
  A sapling.  

Denial plagued much of the following weeks.  It was soon replaced entirely by misery.  The pain never dissipated.   Like a slug, I crawled along the tombstone garden, a trail of coughed-up blood trailing behind me.  With each month, I felt it grow.  Leaves would bloom, tickling my lungs at first, before causing a rash that spread throughout my insides.  The torment was unbearable.  Pain that only grew, paired with an intense itch that flared in every crevice of my torso.  

After a year, I would have ended it if I could have moved.  Instead, I lay against my beloved tree, a statue of flesh positioned upright by the sapling sprouting from my torn, bloody throat.  Nine branches had pierced through my chest cavity, their leaves stained red, decorated with my innards dangling from them, like Christmas ornaments.  Endless tortures vandalized my once youthful appearance as it germinated within me.  My strength was stolen, nutrients for my seed.  The only thing that remained was my life.  No matter the blood loss, the hollowing hunger, the eternal fatigue of muscle, I would not die.  

A decade passed by like seven eternities, the time I had so gleefully last track of, now pestered my every thought, like a mocking jester to his dying king.  Each moment a bastard of itself: every second felt like an hour, every hour, a year, every year, a decade.  The only perceivable hope was now the one thing I had spent decades dancing from.  Decay.  

Long was his shadow, its cooling shade the only remedy for my wailing existence.  My mind was now wiped of not only the memory of people, but of memory entirely.  Sapped away along with my vitality.  The fog had replaced my mind, festering and darkening each day, fueled by the agony I endured.  Like an animal, only the present was conceivable to me.  Despite my prayers to be free of its torturous aura.  

At last, the Ninth Sign came.  

The eight withered spirals above my imprisoned living corpse exploded with life, extending straight and upright like the prongs of a crown.  The ninth branch, in the middle of its brothers and sisters, remained fixated, the tip of its retracted finger blooming more brilliantly than any other Sign.  Like an encrusted gem, its foliage gleamed and shone, brighter than any star.  I strained my eyes upward, the searing pain radiating through my body, for a moment, forgotten.  

An oozing bud, blazing like the sun, appeared, like the head of an infant being pushed out of its mother.  Unraveling itself, its fruit began to appear, as hot afterbirth dripped over me.  This fruit maintained its face, its flesh covered in supple skin, hair, vibrant and healthy.  

As it grew and formed, I could not help but weep as I stared into my own face.  

Fully sprouted, it hung over me, its closed eyelids quivering for a moment before opening.  I stared into myself, a new agony burning through my body and soul.  It began to lower, a moist umbilical cord pulsing from the branch, extending it closer and closer to me.  My eyes stung as I attempted to cry out, gagged by the sapling buried in my throat.  Anchored at the foot of this majestic tree, I sat with my mouth forced agape, while the Ninth Sign slid down my gullet.  

Its size unhinged my jaw and tore my esophagus as it crawled its way down.  Each hair atop its head dug into new internal gashes and old wounds, stinging like a horde of wasps.  The sapling within me seemed to guide the fruit deeper and deeper, until at last, with a plop, it splashed into my stomach.  Bile quickly boiled over, gushing up my shredded, bloodied throat, like lava.  I erupted, red vomit exploded from my shattered jaws, shooting violent convulsions down my spine.

Exhausted and miserable, I leaned my head back against the tree I had so loved all these passing decades.  Its ninth branch, now nothing more than a withered spiral, joined its decayed fellowship, resuming their silent prayer.  The blackness of the branches spread to the trunk, rotting its bark and suffocating its moisture.  The stench of rotting flesh replaced its once enchanting fragrance.  Like a cripple’s hand, the tree shrank into itself.  Nothing more than a decaying stump, it resembled a tombstone more than a tree.  

There I lay, tears running freely down my battered face, staring up into the glum, dark sky, eager for my final moments to arrive.  Contemplating solely on a past pillaged from my mind, a present I could not endure, and a future I was desperate to escape.  My stomach, eviscerated and ravaged, pulsated as the fruit fertilized the sapling.  My living corpse no longer enough, the crop certified the saplings' final nutrition.  

My sight grew hazy, my limbs numb, my heart weak.  The tree within me began to expand, its trunk bursting through my stomach lining, tearing me in two, yet held together by its roots entangled in my spinal column as they burrowed into the earth.  

I was the Final Sign.  I stared up at the young, proud tree, still growing over me, from me.  Its nine branches, poised like retracted fingers, encircled its trunk.  All pain was gone, my nerves, whether consumed or ruined, no longer screamed out.  

There I lay, my final moments here at last.  A strange parental affection filled me, and was soon ratified by the entrancing fragrance of the newly enshrined tree.  With my last breath, I drew in the fruits of my labor, and as I exhaled, I wept with joy.  The tree blessed me with a gift of passing, and with it, all regrets melted away, as I slipped into oblivion. 

I became a paramedic because I wanted to be the person who showed up on time.

I wasn't, when it mattered most.

Her name was Renee. She was thirty-four years old, she drove a blue Subaru, and she had this habit of leaving her coffee cup on the roof of the car when she loaded groceries, then driving away and calling me twenty minutes later, laughing about how she'd done it again. I have seventeen voicemails from her on my phone. I've never deleted them. I've never listened to them again either. They sit there... a voice on a screen.

She was on Route 9 when the other driver ran the light.

I was four minutes away.

I know that because I've thought about it every day for two years. About what four minutes mean, about what I could have done with four minutes. Whether four minutes was always going to be the difference or whether it was just the number the universe picked to make sure I'd spend the rest of my life suffering over it.

I was not her paramedic. They pulled me off the scene before I could be, which was the right call, which I would have made myself for anyone else, but it didn't make it easier to sit in the back of a unit with my hands shaking while other people tried to do what I couldn't.

She died at 4:17 PM in December.

Toby was eleven. He's twelve now. I’m grateful he’ll still remember her. That's the thing I'm most grateful for and the thing that hurts the most, depending on the day.

The house got quiet after she died.

Not immediately—immediately, there were people everywhere. Her sister, my mother, and neighbors I hadn't spoken to in years all showed up with casserole dishes and apologies. The house was full for about a week, and then one day it wasn't, and I realized that all the noise had been a kind of buffer between me and what my new reality was.

It sounded like Toby watching TV in his room with the volume low.

It sounded like one person making coffee in the morning instead of two.

I went back to work six weeks later. Earlier than I should have, and earlier than the crew said. I told myself Toby was okay, that he was resilient, that kids are resilient, which now I know is something people say about kids when they need kids to be resilient, because the alternative is too much for them to carry. Toby didn't fight me on it. He just nodded, went to school, came home, did his homework, ate whatever I put in front of him, and went to bed. He was so easy that I didn't understand that easy wasn't the same as okay.

We talked, we just... didn't say anything.

I'd ask about school, and he'd say, "Fine." I'd ask about any new friends, and he'd shrug. I'd say goodnight, and he'd say goodnight back, and I'd stand in the hallway outside his door, looking at him for a moment, trying not to cry, before I went to my own room. I still had her nightstand on her side, which I hadn't moved, which I wasn't ready to move.

That was us... the shape of our life.

I tried telling myself it would get easier.

The first time Toby came home in clothes I didn't recognize, it was a cold day in November.

A sweater, it was dark gray, and was cable knit, the kind with the thick seams that you can feel when you run your thumb along them. I noticed it immediately because it was the kind of sweater I couldn't afford, not with the hours I was working and what hours cost in this county when you're doing them alone.

"Where'd you get that?"

Toby looked down at himself like he'd forgotten he was wearing it.

"Eli gave it to me. Mine got dirty."

"Who's Eli?"

"Just someone from school."

He dropped his backpack by the stairs and went to the fridge, and I stood there with a dish towel in my hand, thinking about the sweater. It was expensive. It also fit him perfectly. Not a hand-me-down fit, with it loose in the shoulders or short on the sleeves, but actually perfect, like it had been bought for him. Like it had been bought specifically for him.

I told myself it was nothing.

I was good at that by then.

A week later, it was a pair of boots. Timberland Pros—waterproof, steel-toed, and brand-spanking new. Toby said Eli’s feet were bigger, so he gave them to him.

Then came a pair of expensive raw-denim jeans. Then a leather jacket that looked like it cost more than my monthly mortgage payment.

Each time, the explanation was the same. 

"Mine got dirty."

"Eli let me have his spares."

"Eli says he doesn't need them."

In my line of work, we’re trained on "Mechanism of Injury." You look at the damage to the car to understand the damage to the spine. And, I'll admit, I started looking for the damage on Toby.

I’d catch him coming in at 6:00 PM, two hours after the bus usually dropped him off. I’d perform a visual sweep before he took his coat off. I looked for petechiae around his neck. I looked for defensive wounds on his forearms. I even started checking his pupils when he sat down for dinner—looking for a sluggish response to see if he had been drugged or sedated.

Physical findings: Zero. Toby looked healthier than he had in years. He had color in his cheeks, his hands were calloused and covered in a white dust—limestone, I realized, the same stuff they mine at the Quarry.

But the psychological indicators were redlining.

Everything in his world was now filtered through a single syllable: Eli.

Eli says we’re working on a project.
Eli’s place is cooler than ours.
Eli gave me this because he said I looked cold.

He never said "Eli's parents." He never mentioned a "house." He just said "Eli's place," and in my mind, that space began to look like a studio apartment, or a van, or a crawlspace in the woods. I began to picture Eli as a twenty-eight-year-old with a squirrelish voice and an evil plan.

The paranoia became a constant adrenaline spike anytime my mind would race.

Yesterday, Toby came home with a bruise on his cheek; it was a contusion, maybe two centimeters across.

"What happened to your face?" I hadn't realized I didn't even say hello. I just grabbed his chin, tilting his head toward the light to get a better look.

"It's nothing. We were just clearing stuff out at Eli’s, and I tripped."

"Clearing what out? Where do you even go after school, Toby? I’ve checked the school roster. There isn't an "Eli" in the seventh grade or eighth grade.”

Toby pulled his face out of my hand. The easy, shy kid was gone.

"He’s not in my school," Toby said flatly.

My stomach dropped. My heart was probably doing 110. "How old is he? Where does he live? Why is he giving you a leather jacket, Toby? Adult men don't just give kids clothes for no reason."

"He’s my friend!" Toby shouted. It was the loudest the house had been in years. "He’s the only person who actually talks to me at school! Why have you been acting so weird about him!"

"I am trying to protect you—"

"From what? Having a life?" Toby’s eyes were wide and wet, identical to Renee’s the day she died. "Why aren't you just happy I'm not alone anymore? Just because your life ended when Mom died doesn't mean mine has to!"

He didn't wait for my response. He stormed upstairs and slammed the door so hard that a framed photo of Renee fell off the hallway wall.

I put it back on the wall and just stood in the dark, realizing I had lost the scene entirely.

I spent the rest of the night sitting at the kitchen table, performing a mental map of the last two years, looking for the exact moment the internal hemorrhaging had started. My training is designed to fix physical trauma—broken bones, stalled hearts, collapsed lungs, what have you.

But there isn't a tourniquet in the world that can stop the bleeding in a broken home.

The next morning was silent. Toby left for the bus at seven. He was wearing a new jacket—a hefty, black canvas work coat with a corduroy collar. It looked expensive and far too heavy for a middle-schooler’s backpack.

I didn't ask where he got it, or even say goodbye. I just watched him walk down the driveway, my heart doing a steady, anxious 110.

I tried to be the "good" dad for the next forty-eight hours. I told myself I was overreacting. I went to my shift and tried to focus on the radio chatter, but every "Walkaway" call from the North side made my skin crawl.

When I got home Thursday morning, I did something I promised Renee I’d never do. I searched his room.

I felt like a predator myself, creeping through his space while he was at school. I didn't find a "smoking gun." I didn't find drugs or burner phones.

But I found the "Gifts."

Tucked into the back of his closet were three more hoodies, two pairs of expensive boots, and a leather-bound journal with high-quality cream paper. None of it had been used. It was just... stored there... like he didn't want me to see it.

I pulled out one of the hoodies—a thick, gray zip-up. I pressed it to my face.

It didn't smell like Toby or our house. It was the scent of organic clover laundry soap, but beneath it, I smelled something else.

Limestone.

It was the same white powder I’d seen on the boots of the workers at the Quarry. My clinical brain went into overdrive. Toby wasn't just meeting "Eli" at school. He was going to the Quarry.

That afternoon, when Toby came home, the "Easy" kid was gone for good. He walked past me in the kitchen, and I saw the way he was moving. It was guarded—he was protecting his ribs.

"Toby, stop," I said, my voice dropping. "Take off the hoodie."

"No." He didn't even turn around.

"I'm not asking, Toby. You’re guarding your left side. Did he hit you? Did Eli hit you?"

Toby spun around, and for a second, I saw Renee's fire in his eyes. "Nobody hit me! We were working! We’re building something, okay? Something real!"

"Building what? Why are you going to the Quarry? All the clothes are covered in limestone."

Toby froze. His pupils dilated—a classic "Fear/Flight" response. "How do you know where I go?"

"Because I'm your father! You're twelve years old, Toby! Why is a man giving you tailored clothes and work jackets? Why is he isolating you from me?"

"He's not isolating me!" Toby screamed. "You isolated me! You’ve been a zombie since Mom died! You just work and come home and sit in front of the TV and eat pizza!"

The words hit me, and I felt my breath hitch.

He didn't just slam his door this time. I heard the lock click.

I sat in the hallway for hours, staring at the closed door.

In my line of work, we talk about the “Golden Hour”—that critical window of time after a traumatic injury where medical intervention has the highest likelihood of preventing death. I realized, sitting there on the carpet, that my window had likely closed weeks ago.

I didn't try to open the door, I just went to the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee I didn't want, and sat in the dark.

The next morning, Toby left for school without breakfast. I watched from the window as he walked down the driveway toward the bus stop. He looked like a stranger, or like a man going to work.

I called out from work that day. I told them I had a family emergency, which felt like the first honest thing I’d said in years.

I sat in my truck two blocks away from the middle school, tucked behind a row of parked cars. I felt the shame of it—the stalking, the lack of trust on my end—but the paramedic in me overrode the father. I told myself I was "evaluating the environment." I told myself I was looking for the source of the "limestone dust."

At 3:15 PM, the bell rang. I watched the students pour out in a chaotic wave. Then I saw him.

Toby wasn't alone. He was walking with a group of three other boys. They were jostling each other, laughing, and for a split second, I saw my son—the twelve-year-old kid.

I felt a surge of relief so sharp it made my hands go limp on the steering wheel. I almost turned the key. I almost went home to move Renee’s nightstand and wait for him with an apology.

But then the group reached the corner of the street, and the other boys turned toward the bus stop. Toby didn't.

He kept walking, heading straight toward the gravel paths that led into the deeper parts of town.

I put the truck in gear and followed from a distance, watching him navigate the rocky terrain. He didn't look back once.

He stopped at a small, cedar-shingled house tucked into a clearing of trees, about four miles from the Quarry.

A man was standing on the porch. He was tall, dressed in a quarryman's uniform. As Toby approached, the man stepped down and met him halfway. He reached out and pulled my son into a paternal side-hug. He ruffled Toby’s hair, said something that made Toby smile, and ushered him inside.

Condition fucking Red.

I didn't think about "Scene Safety." I didn't think about "Calling for Backup." All I saw was a grown man taking my son into a house I didn't recognize.

I sprinted across the street.

I'm not proud of what came next.

I hammered my fist on that door.

It swung open, and the man stood there, looking startled. He looked... remarkably average. He had a pair of reading glasses perched on his head and a smudge of white dust on his cheek.

"Where is he?" I screamed. "Where the hell is my son?"

The man blinked, holding up his hands. "Whoa! Take it easy! What are you talking about?"

"I know he's in here! Are you Eli?! You touch him again, and I will fucking kill you!"

The man’s expression shifted from fear to deep confusion. "I'm not Eli," he said slowly. "Eli... Eli's my son." He turned his head slightly. "He’s in the kitchen with his friend. May I ask who you are?"

The adrenaline in my system evaporated at once, leaving me cold.

I looked into the house. It wasn't a grooming den, or anything of the other insane things I'd pictured for weeks.

It was a home.

There was a half-finished puzzle on the coffee table. There were muddy work boots by the door. In the kitchen, a woman was helping Toby and another boy—a kid with freckles and the same build as Toby—scrub mud off their arms in the sink.

The smell—that sweet clover scent. It was coming from the laundry room.

"It’s an organic soap," the woman said, looking at me with concern. "Our son has a skin condition. It’s the only thing that doesn't cause a reaction."

"I... I'm—so sorry. I'm Toby's father," I stammered, dragging my hand down my face.

The man let out a long breath. "Oh, man. We’ve been trying to get a hold of you. Toby said you worked 72-hour rotations at the station. He told us your... your wife passed away. I-I'm Mark." He said, holding out his hand.

I shook it and looked at Toby. He was standing by the sink, holding a damp paper towel. He looked ashamed. He looked at their messy living house—and then he looked at me like I was the intruder.

"We've been letting the boys help me build a stone firepit in the back," Mark said, gesturing toward the limestone blocks visible through the window. "Toby's a hard worker, but he’s a messy one. He kept ruining his school clothes, so we just started giving him Eli’s spares. They’re the same size, and Eli outgrows everything in a month anyway."

"He told us he didn't have any clean clothes because he said you worked long hours, he said he didn't want to bother you," Eli’s mother added softly. "We just... we just wanted him to be warm."

I stood in the middle of their living space and realized I was the only dead thing in the room.

Toby hadn't been stolen. He had found a family that was still whole, and he was trying to borrow enough of their life to survive the one in mine.

Toby got up and grabbed my arm, not looking at Mark or his wife, or at Eli.

"I-I'm sorry, again," I called out, following Toby out of the house.

I didn't say anything on the drive home. Toby stared out the window, his jaw set, his eyes fixed on the blurring trees.

When we got inside our house, the silence hit me. The kitchen was clean. Renee’s empty chair was still tucked perfectly under the table.

"I'm sorry, Tobes," I said.

Toby stopped at the foot of the stairs. He didn't look back at me.

"You didn't even know his last name, Dad," he said quietly. "You didn't even ask if he was my age."

He went upstairs. I heard the door click shut.

I'm sitting at the kitchen table now. Renee's chair is still tucked in perfectly across from me. I've never moved it... I don't know why I haven't moved it. Maybe I'll move it tomorrow.

I spent weeks convincing myself a stranger was taking my son.

I never stopped long enough to ask him about his new best friend.

EDIT: Fixed a few wording/details after rereading some parts and replying to comments. Nothing major changed.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Her breath was the only thing I could hear.
I kneeled to the ground as reality hit me like a truck.

Whatever came back from Mercer Ridge had gotten inside my life somehow.

Maybe it had been there longer than I realized.

They hurt people I promised to protect, killed pets and nature, spread fear like a plague.
And worst of it all, they did something to my son.

"Claire... listen" I paused "Head to the station, I'll arrive as soon as I can. And I promise to tell you everything about Jeremy."

"Jeremy?! What do y--"

I hung up, her voice would have broken me down completely, and I still had a promise to fulfill to Greyhaven.

I walked back into that rotting house and climbed the stairs once more.
Each step felt heavier than the one before.

"You found something?" I asked the boys.
"Yeah, come to the bedroom. " Barrett said.

I entered the room and found countless empty soda cans and cigarette butts, that were more dust than anything else.
At the center of the room, where the wood still remembered the shape of an old bed, five chairs were placed in a circle, facing each other.

The chairs had dust and cobwebs all over them, but none on the seat.

A sixth chair stood lonely in a corner, this one was completely covered in dust.

Between the five chairs there were books of all kinds, going from kids' tales to sacred scriptures of every religion.
Beside the books there were pictures, drawings and toys.

"What the hell is this?! What were they doing here?!" Pike had lost his mind, I saw him run into a burning house to save a cat once. But this room... broke him.

"Pike, compose yourself, we can't lose ourselves. This badge represents all the people of this town. If we show fear, they will lose hope." Barrett told him, calmly.

"I have no idea what this is, Pike. I won't lie, I hoped we would've found drugs." I took a deep breath and again I hid my shaking hand in my pocket.
"Let's take some pictures and ask Melanie to print them while we head back to the station."

My wife's car was parked just beside Harris' truck.
We got out of ours and headed in.

"Hey Mel. Did you print those photos we sent?" Barrett asked.
"Yeah, I put them just by the projector, where the hell did you go?"
"Don't ask, we have no idea."

"Oh one more thing chief, Warren has been sending pictures of Mercer Ridge all day. Do you want me to print those too?"
"No we're good for now. Thanks Mel."

My wife was waiting in the briefing room. A small room with a projector and a whiteboard, usually used to plan out town events.
She was looking at the pictures of the room.

"Thomas... What is this place? Why are Jeremy's childhood drawings there?!"
"I hoped I was wrong... I hoped so deeply Claire... I hoped those weren't his, that I was just misremembering." I tried to fight it, but as I looked her in the eyes, I couldn't hold my emotions anymore.
I hugged her so tightly that I heard her back crack.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Pike asked. "Shut it." Barrett told him.

After we finally stopped crying, we started talking again.

"Well then. Let's try to make something out of all of this." I said as I moved the whiteboard closer, and started attaching the pictures to it with magnets.

"We know that six people are part of this, four of them are in the hospital." Barrett started.
"The fifth is Jeremy." I added. "And we have no idea where he is." Claire added.
"Or who the sixth person is."

"Wait..." I thought out loud. "I saw something... at the crater... right in the middle of it. Pike."
"Yes?"
"Ask Melanie if she has any clear picture of the crater. If so, bring it here."
"Roger that."

As we waited for Pike to come back I couldn't stop staring at the empty chair.

"Okay while we wait for the rookie. Can you tell me what this place is?" Claire asked, breaking the silence.
"It looks like a... classroom?" Barrett said, confused.
"What kind of classroom has this variety of books? It has kids' stuff, religious stuff, literature, it doesn't make sense." I added.
"None of this is making sense."

"GOT IT!" Pike screamed, entering the room.
He walked up to the board and stuck the picture of the crater on it.

"There! You see it?" I asked them as I pointed to the center of the crater.
"What even is that?" Barrett asked.
"Not what, who." Claire corrected him. "That's a shadow, burned on the ground."
"Did someone bomb us? How is that even possible?" Pike asked.
"I wish I knew Pike. I just hope it isn't Jer---".
My phone rang, louder than usual.
"CHIEF! THEY'RE AWAKE AGAIN!" Dr. Lewis screamed, his voice trembling in fear.
"Calm down doc! What are they doing?"
"They're crying, shouting! They're trying to dig out their eyes!"
"Strap them to something! Don't let them go blind!"
"The entire staff is trying, but they're too strong! And the cries are making us go mad!"

His phone fell to the ground as he jumped back in trying to stop the men.
But we could still hear them.

"THIS IS SORRY! THIS IS SORRY! THIS IS SO SORRY!"
They kept shouting this over and over.
They never stopped.
They never breathed.

Until we heard them collapse to the ground. Not before shouting one last thing, all together.
"THIS DIDN'T. JEREMY. THIS IS SORRY."

Throughout my life, I’ve experienced a nightly event that has followed me into adulthood. All this time, it never seemed like a real threat. This last year proved otherwise.

The first time it happened I was young, probably about 6 years old. It started the same then as it does now, I was just in my bed sleeping, until I awoke to a sharp, slow tapping on my bedroom window. Being so young, I didn’t know what to do, so I froze. The “thing” by my window kept up its tapping for 10 minutes. Sometimes it sped up, other times it would slow down or move to different sections of the glass. For some reason, I always felt like the tapping quickened if I thought about looking at it, but I had no real proof of that.

The one thing that made it very consistent was how it ended, with a sharp dragging noise going down the glass before it stopped completely. After that, I found the courage to push my toddler frame up and stand on the bed. Peeking through the curtains I saw nothing, another frustrating consistency this thing had.

Telling my parents about it the next morning before school, they feigned interest before my dad dismissed the monster theory.

“Part of living in the country Ollie, lots of critters come by to say hi” he said.

“Probably a silly raccoon trying to play with his own reflection.” my mother said with a chuckle.

Despite what many may call dismissive, my parents really can’t be blamed for their reaction. After all, I was the type of kid to go on about how our dog could talk to me but didn’t talk to my parents because they only talked about work and bills. To give my parents even more credit, as the tapping kept going for the following nights, they played into my “imagination” and looked for the monster by my window. Every time this happened, the tapping would stop, then as soon as my parents found nothing and we all went back to bed, it started right back up until it completed its ten minutes of racket.

For weeks my brain worked up as many schemes as possible to catch the tapper. No matter how fast I opened the curtains or how often my parents looked, it would always be gone before anyone could see. Then as soon as I gave up and laid back down, the sound returned to finish its routine. After trying to discover what was happening for so long I eventually decided that as long as whatever it was couldn’t get through my window, I would be fine.

To make myself feel safer, I remembered that my dad kept a few old padlocks and latches in his shed. Sneaking in there one afternoon I found the box they were kept in and grabbed a handful of supplies. After struggling for around half an hour I had managed to roughly nail two hook latches into the wooden frame of my window without alerting my parents. I then looped the padlock through and locked it shut. Pulling with all my strength, the window wouldn’t budge open. Grinning at my own ingenuity, I went to sleep that night feeling like I had won in some way. I woke at the usual time of 3:30 AM to hear the tapping. After the ten minutes were up I eagerly checked out the window to see the lock holding firmly in place.

The next morning I woke up still pleased with myself for outwitting whatever it was that tapped each night. I swung open the curtains to admire my handiwork once again when my smile dropped.

While the window remained completely untouched, the lock, latches, and nails were all gone.

Fear overwhelmed me as I desperately hoped that I would go to breakfast to hear my dad scolding me for taking his things without permission. I had never wanted to be in trouble more than in that moment.

Dad never said a word about that lock, and while I could always tell myself he silently took his things back, I knew that wasn’t true. The box in the shed was still missing the stuff I grabbed.

After the lock went missing, I felt like I was out of options, and in reality I pretty much was. So I started doing what I do to this day, just let it happen. My body grew used to it, waking up each night to listen for 10 minutes, from 3:30-3:40 AM. Over the years not much of note occurred except a few things that I remember.

The first time something different happened was about 6 months after it started. I was staying over at my friend Jed’s house for a sleepover. I woke up just before 3:30 like I usually do. I listened for a few minutes and like normal, I heard tapping on the window. I didn’t even realize it at first, I was so used to the routine of it that I didn’t even think to question anything.

Looking over at Jed sleeping on an air mattress it hit me. How could this be happening away from my house? Being so young, I didn’t really process all of this until a year or so down the line. However, it became abundantly clear over the years that whatever did this followed me around. On every family vacation and sleepover I would hear it. Even on camping trips, I would wake up to hear tapping the side of my tent.

The next time something changed, I was in the third grade. It was Veterans Day at school, and as a special guest we had one classmates dad come by to do a presentation and talk to us. He had served in the navy and, for a couple hours, we listened to stories, asked questions, and did some activities. It was all pretty basic stuff but I remember my favorite part of the day was him teaching us about morse code, and we all got to learn how to use it.

We took turns in groups of two taking a flashlight and signaling different messages to each other. However, the only one that really stuck with anybody was how to signal SOS. It was pretty simple, 3 quick flashes, 3 slow flashes, and then another 3 quick flashes. Jed and I spent a good 15 minutes just doing that over and over again before we got in trouble for flashing the light in a girls eyes too many times.

That night, my parents even got to see just how good I had gotten at my SOS signaling, before again getting the flashlight taken away after shining it in my own eye. Despite that, I fell asleep proud of my new survival skills.

Waking up that night to the usual routine I had made, I groggily came to understand the pattern hitting the glass.

tap! tap! tap! Tap. Tap. Tap. tap! tap! tap!

It repeated to tap SOS on the glass for 10 minutes while I tensed in my suddenly freezing bed, before the sound dragged away like normal. That was the only time it used any real code that I can recognize. It doesn’t use actual patterns often, but on occasion I can hear it tapping out rough melodies. The songs I do recognize all come from my childhood.

For years this went on, and I’d now spent much more of my life with the tapping than without. Apart from the occasional unsettling nature of it, I hadn’t really been bothered by the sounds. Part of me even started to think I was the only one who could hear it. Aside from Jed, I didn’t have much for friends, and even he didn’t stay at my house very often. As far as I knew, I was the only one who did hear it. Going into my mid teens, it even gave me a weird sense of comfort. It’s hard to describe but it felt so private. I could be making it all up in my head but it was something just for me to experience and no one else. Those 10 minutes every night were completely mine, and I liked that.

This all leads up to the last year and a half. After my 22nd birthday, I finally found a small house I could rent in town, only about 20 minutes from my parents place. I liked staying close to home but this finally gave me my own space. My dad and Jed helped me move in, and after my first night, I knew the tapping followed. It wasn’t a surprise at this point, I knew it happened no matter where I was, and honestly, I was happy to know it’d stay. I liked a certain level of isolation but the company every night really became something I looked forward to.

The house itself wasn’t much, my bedroom led out to a short hallway opposite of my bathroom. Past the hall was my living room and a small kitchen that felt more like a corner than its own separate room. At first it seemed cramped, especially with Jed’s large frame carrying my moving boxes through the short hall, taking up most of the walking room. But after falling into a new routine, I felt like a king.

At least I did for about 4 months. See Jed still lived with his mom and I knew for a while now that they had been arguing more and more. Eventually, he got caught with some weed in his room and she kicked him out. When he came to me asking for a place to stay for a few weeks, I really didn’t want to give in. It sounds selfish to say but I really never liked sharing my living space, and I didn’t want to end up turning Jed’s few week stay into a permanent roommate agreement.

I did decide to cave, since he was my closest friend, and to his credit he was really grateful. Just for letting him sleep on my couch he went to the trouble of buying me a huge floor speaker as a thank you. It was nice for a couple nights until my landlord told me about noise complaints and forced me to stop using it. Still, it was useful to pile laundry on top of since it sat on the wall closest to my bed and I still hadn’t bought a clothes basket.

After about 2 weeks, I really did start to like having Jed around, since it meant we got to hang out a lot more often. Every couple nights we’d boot up some games from really old consoles we were given during our childhood and replay them while we had some drinks. A lot of these were outdated even when we were kids so it was fun seeing how bad some of them were now. One night, Jed brought home a PlayStation 2 that his uncle had saved. I grabbed some beer from the local gas station and we spent hours going through the variety of old, crappy games that we grew up thinking were gold.

After about 6 hours, we were both pretty far gone and yet we still had a handful of games to go through before we agreed to call it a morning at that point.

Jed clumsily fiddled with the PlayStation, “I ain’t satisfied til I’ve played some Resident Evil man”.

“You didn’t even like that game when we were kids dipshit” I laughed

“Fuckin thing was scary bro! Only reason you liked it was to stare at that blonde Ashley.”

“And it was worth every second of playing”

While Jed fumbled through the remaining cases we hadn’t touched, I took a chance to stretch and glance outside for a minute. Not a single neighbor of mine had their lights on anymore. Curious, I pulled my phone out to check the time.

3:22 A.M.

It felt like a spike ran through my body. Should I leave it be? Surely I can skip for a night and stay up with Jed.

But something felt wrong about that. I had never missed it. I shouldn’t have been up this late. I needed to get to my room even for just 15 minutes. I glanced at my phone again.

3:24 A.M.

My palms began to sweat as I looked over at Jed, now placing the game into the PlayStation and sliding it shut.

“Alright let’s get started! Pass me another beer dude”

I stayed silent, barely listening to him

“Dude?”

I looked outside again

“Ollie can you quit thinking about Ashley Graham’s tits for 2 seconds and pass me a beer!?” Jed practically yelled with a huge grin.

“Shit yeah- I mean- hey fuck you dude, take your beer” I said, realizing too late what he said.

Jed practically cackled “fuckin got ‘em!”

“Whatever dude” I tried to smile and play it off, sitting back down.

“This is your game man, I’m passing the controller off to you alright?”

I paused, taking a chance to glance at my phone again.

3:27 A.M.

I couldn’t stay.

“Shit, hey dude, you get it started for me alright? I gotta do something quick”

“You gotta take a piss as soon as I start this up huh?”

“Nah, I just have to go to my room and do something real quick, just give me like 10 or 15 minutes”

“The fuck you gotta do?”

“I can tell you when I get back, just give me a bit, okay?”

Before he could answer I got up and headed towards my room. I had to contain myself from moving faster than a walk, I didn’t need Jed thinking something was wrong and following me.

I closed my bedroom door behind me and checked the time

3:29 A.M.

I made it. Laying down on the bed, I breathed a sigh of relief and closed my eyes. My head spun from the alcohol as I listened for the sound of my nightly companion.

Tap tap. Tap. Tap tap tap tap. Tap tap.

I listened as a rhythmic pattern formed on the window. Opening my eyes only occasionally to check how long I had before I could go back and come up with an excuse to give Jed.

Tap. Tap tap tap tap. Tap tap.

I turned over on my side and stared at the base of the floor speaker Jed had gotten me. Only the bottom was visible due to the pile of clothes draped over it. My thoughts drifted away from the tapping for a moment to reminisce on what I would tell Jed when I came back. I only got a moment of this before I heard a palm slap against my bedroom door.

“Ollie! The hell are you doing man? You calling it a night already?”

I looked at my clock.

3:34 A.M.

Shit.

“I-I’ll be back in a few minutes bro, just give me some time okay?”

Jed’s slurred laugh came through the door. “What are you fucking up to in there dude?! You beating your shit in there or something?”

I rubbed my face with my palms. “Fuck off dude, just wait for me for a few more minutes.”

“If I come in there and you’re doing some freaky shit, you ain’t touching that controller again dude!”

I sat up and looked at my clock.

3:35 A.M.

Before I could tell Jed to leave me alone again, he stumbled through the door.

“You gotta put a lock on this shit if you plan on abandoning your friend just to wack off!”

Jed tripped through with one hand over his eyes and another outstretched trying to feel his way around.

I snapped “Jed! If I need some fucking privacy in my own place I’ll take it dammit!”

He pulled his hand off his face. “Wow dude sorry, chill out I was just making a joke.”

“I know dude just give me a few minutes… fuck.”

“Alright man jeez” he turned to leave but before I could close the door he spun back around.

“The fucks that noise?”

I froze for a second. “I don’t hear anything.”

I heard exactly what Jed did, but I had no idea why it hadn’t stopped when he walked in. I had never had anyone else hear the tapping, not even my parents when I begged them to check as a child.

“Somethings hitting your window bro” Jed insisted.

“Probably a tree branch”

“You only have trees in the front yard dude”

I took a deep breath, just my luck that the drunk guy making an ass of himself 10 seconds ago is able to make logical determinations in his next sentence. It didn’t help any that I never could lie for shit.

“Yeah dude I don’t know, I’ll take a look after a bit.”

Jed stared at me with a furrowed brow before pushing past me, sitting up on the bed and walking towards my window.

“Jed don’t-“

“I’m just taking a peek calm the fuck down man.”

Jed snuck up to the window above my bed and pulled back the curtain. Not only did the tapping stop immediately, but nothing sat outside the glass. I exhaled.

“It’s nothing dude, see?”

“I just think it’s weird man, quit being a prick about it okay?”

“Are you done?”

Jed closed the curtain without a response and turned towards the door, after only a few steps the tapping started again.

“The fuck?” Jed turned and threw open the curtain again only for the same sight to show.

“Don’t look at me crazy again Ollie, I know you hear that shit too!”

I blinked at him before rubbing my blurring eyes. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe Jed’s persistence, but I gave up.

“Yeah dude, I hear it every night.”

“What? Every night for how long?”

I tried to downplay it. “I don’t know, like a couple months now?”

“And you don’t know what it is?”

“No dude. I’ve tried checking a bunch of times and there’s nothing, just like you saw.”

“Okay… but what are you actually doing up here?”

“I just… look Jed, this is gonna sound weird but I listen to it.”

“What?”

“I’ve just kinda gotten in the habit of listening to it every night. It starts around the same time each night and I-I guess I like it.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“You don’t gotta believe me”

Jed paused and looked back at the window. “Well shit. What do you think it is?”

I didn’t like how calm he sounded. I desperately wanted him to dismiss the whole thing.

“Just a raccoon I think.”

He smiled. “You don’t believe that”

“Could be anything I guess, doesn’t matter since we can’t see it.”

“I bet I could see it.”

I stared back at his grinning face. I knew he had an idea behind those eyes that I would hate.

He explained further. “Look, you can keep up your weird nightly ritual shit, I don’t care about that. But I wanna find out what it is.”

“Why?”

He stood for a second before smiling again. “Just sounds like the type of dumb shit we did as kids”

I sighed once more and mulled over Jed’s idea. Realistically there was no reason for me to worry, since neither of us knew anything about what this thing was. Despite that, I wanted to talk him out of it. To him it probably was just an animal, but to me it was something more. I felt uncomfortable, however, after working out the details, we agreed on a plan that would satisfy the both of us.

The plan was, Jed would go out the following night and stake out my window. I would lay in bed like normal and we’d both wait for the tapping to start. I only agreed once Jed promised not to interact with or scare away whatever it was making the noise. Part of me really hoped that all of this was alcohol led ambition and he really had no plan on following through the next night. Unfortunately I woke up the next afternoon to find him preparing for his hunt.

Outside he had found a small cover of knee high grass at the neighbors fence that he planned to hide in.

“How obvious do I look man? Is this good cover?”

“You’re wearing a white t-shirt asswipe, no it’s not good cover.”

“I’ll wear black tonight smart ass.”

“I’d still catch your lanky frame laying in the same patch of grass the neighborhood dogs all piss in.”

“I sleep on that greasy sofa each night dick, this feels like Egyptian cotton by comparison.”

I felt myself smiling at Jed’s words to the point that I almost forgot how pissed I was that he insisted on all of this. I only hoped that he found nothing and gave up, but he was always persistent towards the seemingly least important things.

That night, Jed said he’d start waiting outside around 2:30 A.M. to make sure whatever was making the sound wouldn’t be there before him.

As I laid in bed, I couldn’t sleep. My mind went through an array of thoughts that my only personal secret would all come to unfold tonight. My mystery visitor would be exposed as some simple creature or trick of the mind. I’d be left with unsatisfying answers to questions that had already died years ago.

All because Jed seemingly needed to fulfill his dream of acting like a child again. Had it been anyone else they would’ve written off the entire thing and went on with their life. Of course I had the one friend with nothing better to do except lay outside and wait for something to hit my window.

I knew I was acting overly bitter at the soon to be loss of my longest life mystery, but I couldn’t help but wish the entire illusion could remain. I didn’t want to know what it was. More importantly, I didn’t want Jed to know. My most personal experience was now being turned upside down by someone with no understanding of what this meant to me. Needless to say I was pissed at the guy, but I let him go on with his experiment just to satisfy his curiosity.

Tossing to my side, my mind continued to wander through what Jed might find. Making blank eye contact with the pile of clothes near my bed, I was shaken out of my own mind by the typical tapping on my window.

For the first time in over a decade, the sound startled me. I cautiously listened for a few minutes, worried that Jed would interrupt it all. As time ticked by, nothing unusual seemed to occur, and after 10 minutes straight the tapping slowly dragged away.

As soon as the tapping faded away, my body tensed with the knowledge that Jed would burst back in and tell me everything he saw. I stared towards my ceiling and waited.

2 minutes passed, surely he’d be in soon. Then 5 minutes, then 8.

After what felt like a second lifetime, I looked at my phone to see how long it had been.

3:56 A.M.

What the hell was taking so long? I hadn’t heard the door open but maybe he just went in and laid down. Surely even he needed to get some sleep and talk about his discovery tomorrow?

I decided to rise out of bed and check quickly. Maneuvering my way through the dark I found my bedroom door and peeked my head past the hall.

Empty.

Silent.

Jed was still outside.

Fear struck my chest as I grabbed a jacket and pushed through my front door. Weaving to the side of my house I called out in a forceful whisper.

“Jed! You still out here? Get inside!”

Crickets and wind.

Moving closer to the patch of grass Jed had picked out I saw an unmoving leg caught in the moonlight. Bile rose in my throat as I knelt down and reached out.

“Jed, wake the fuck up, fucking move dude!”

As I pressed harder into his bigger frame he jostled back into his previous slump. My heart raced with panic and I practically beat him in the torso with my fist, trying to get anything to react.

Tears welled in my eyes at my waning attempts.

“Fuck dude, get up, tell me what you saw…”

I fell back from the grass and wiped my eyes, every part of me wanted to look away, but I moved back to look at his face.

Two shadowed eyes blinked back at me, as a groaning breath parted his lips.

“Holy shit Jed! Get the fuck up, you about gave me a heart attack you dick!”

“I’m fine. No thanks to you, is that how you wake people up?”

His voice was stiff and low, with a tone behind it that leaked a sense of resentment.

“Motherfucker I thought you were dead! Corpses sleep lighter than that you crazy fuck!”

“Whatever, I’m headed back in to sleep.”

“Wait, did you see anything?”

His eyes met mine and I noticed bags under them I never knew existed. The usual lighthearted glow you could find in his stare was gone, he could’ve just as easily been looking at the houses behind me. I’ve felt more compassion in eyes that pierced with hatred than the cold indifference I now greeted.

“Nothing came by your window.” The words weren’t meant to be debated.

“But you were sleeping.”

“I waited as long as I needed to, doesn’t matter now.” He shrugged.

I squinted at his empty expression, “Bullshit.” I challenged.

“You don’t gotta believe me.”

As he turned back towards the house I was left to chew on the echo of my old words. Technically I got what I wanted, Jed no longer seemed interested in whatever did this. But that was the problem, Jed never had a lack of ambition in his small adventures. In the blink of an eye, the smile on his face that seemed almost permanent was missing. He just didn’t engage with me or the world around him like he once did. At the time, I tried to justify that he’d be fine the next morning, but it never could be that easy.

I snapped back to the present once I heard the front door of my house slam shut. Jed was gone, having left me out in the grass with my own thoughts. I went back around the house to the front door. Going inside I saw a heap of blankets on the sofa, he seemed to already be asleep. I passed by and carefully retreated back to my bed. Shutting my eyes I waited to see if tomorrow would be any different.

I must’ve gotten some form of rest that night, as I opened my eyes to see that the sun was already up. I looked at the time to see that I had slept through the morning and into the afternoon.

Ignoring all else I crept out of my room to check on Jed. The house seemed empty, and calling out his name earned me no response. Nervous, I checked each room before looking outside to see his car still parked on the street. Letting out a deep breath, I rubbed the crusted corners of my eyes before stepping outside into my obnoxiously bright yard.

Squinting through the sun, I rounded the house in a brisk walk, stopping at what I found. Jed stood in the yard, still dressed in the black t-shirt and shorts he wore the previous night. His posture looked like he might collapse any second, shoulders slumped, arms hanging to his sides. The only part of himself raised upward was his head, slightly tilted high. His eyes ran back and forth, tracing every inch of the window to my bedroom. If I hadn’t seen him on the couch the night before, I would assume this is what he had been doing ever since.

I walked up to him carefully, he still didn’t react. Reaching out I tried to shake his shoulder, and before I had even spoken his name, the contact ignited the person behind the blank stare.

“Hey! What the fuck?! Don’t sneak up on me! What the hell are you doing following me?!

I nearly fell over from the outburst “Jesus Christ Jed! I didn’t follow shit! The fuck are you doing out here?”

Before he could yell again he looked up and squeezed his eyes nearly closed, as if he just noticed the sun still existed.

“Fucking hell, what time is it?”

I eyed him worriedly “it’s one in the afternoon, a little past that now.”

He flashed a look of almost shock, before smothering it back down with his previous venom.

I tried again “Jed, why are you out here again? What are you doing?”

“I was on a walk.” His voice was numb.

“Somethings up with you dude, the fuck happened last night?”

His tone was calm but the next words were anything but.

“Why is it that when someone’s finally sick of your shit you assume they’re the problem?”

The words hit like a truck, I was beginning to think that our friendship was completely collapsing in front of me. My words lost all fight as I just stared at him.

“The hell’s gotten into you?”

His eyes left me and went back to the window for a moment.

“Maybe some sense for a change.”

With that, he once more pushed past me, his face pink from the inescapable sunlight that he had stood in for God knows how long. I couldn’t bring myself to even react at this point. I stayed in the yard for a length of time, eyes fixed on the glass like Jed had. By the time my gaze broke and I began stepping away, I still couldn’t discern what he might’ve been looking for.

I tried over the next week to talk things over with Jed, but the same cold attitude followed him like a shadow. No more banter, no more late nights, not even a memory of a smile passed his expression.

Coming home from work one night, his things were gone, as was he. You wouldn’t know another man called the place home just that morning. I tried reaching out to his mom only to find out she hadn’t been able to hear from him either, but all his stuff from her house was missing too. Last I heard, his mom found him living about an hour away, in some small apartment complex. She only got 2 words out before he closed the door on her.

I don’t know if Jed saw anything that night. But I’m almost certain that whoever visits me during those early hours saw him first.

(End of part 1)

After having been single for the first three years of college, I wanted to dip my toes in the dating scene. I installed Tinder and swiped right until my thumb turned purple.

Excitedly, I got a match fairly quickly. Her name was Bella. She was a petite, 21 year old woman with sandy blonde hair and dimples that made me melt on the spot. According to her profile, she went to the same university as me and she was a junior in college.

After some back and forth between the two of us, she surprisingly invited me to a party in the wealthier part of town. She said she knew some friends who were going to be throwing an absolute thrasher and wanted to bring a date.

I agreed immediately.

We chatted some more and I agreed to pick her up at 10pm. The plans were set. Beaming, I threw my phone on my bed and fist pumped the air.

That was far easier than I could have imagined.

Later that night, I picked her up. I fully expected her to be a catfish but lo and behold, as I approached her address, she was already standing on the curb, smiling and waving excitedly. She was wearing a beautiful sweater and stylish pants that fit her curves well. 

If I’m honest, the outfit she wore kind of made her look older than I initially pictured, almost like a soccer mom, but that’s neither here nor there. She got in my car and we headed toward the party.

As my car rolled up to the address of the party, my jaw dropped in awe. The house was massive and had the appearance of a souped-up grandiose mansion. I asked Bella if this was actually the house and she nodded emphatically. 

On the way to the door, I was in shock at how fancy the yard and exterior was. It truly looked like an establishment owned by a multimillionaire. Strangely, though, there were only a handful of other cars parked in front of the house, despite the loud volume indicating there were far more people inside.

As we got closer to the house, my estimates were right. In the windows, I could see probably over a hundred people dancing and partying inside, while music emanated from the interior. 

As soon as Bella and I came in through the door, however, it felt like everyone in the house froze for a brief second. I’m not exaggerating when I say it looked like every single pair of eyes in that house were on Bella and I just for a moment. Then, as if I had imagined it all, the party resumed and everyone continued dancing as if nothing had happened at all.

I noticed immediately that something wasn’t right, however. These people, who I assumed to be college students, all looked to be in their late 30’s to 40’s. I couldn’t tell if there was a single college student in sight. Much like Bella, they were all dressed as if they were all attending a book club instead of a late-night weekend thrasher.

When I whispered my observation to Bella, she just brushed it off immediately, saying they were probably just all upperclassmen. I suppose she had a point and we made our way to the drinks to loosen up.

As I approached the drinking station, I turned around and realized Bella was nowhere in sight. I texted her asking where she was while I took my first sip of spiked fruit punch. 

While I was standing there, I could have sworn I kept catching people staring in my direction in my periphery, but they shifted their eyes as soon as I turned my head.

I was starting to get seriously disturbed and a knot formed in my stomach as I waded through the crowd trying to look for Bella. 

Eventually, I made my way near the back of the house and found a hallway that wasn’t occupied with clumps of people.

Walking down the hall, I read BATHROOM on a sign and followed it. “Great, just the breath of air I need,” I muttered to myself.

I sat on the sink replaying the oddities of the party in my head when I heard a knock at the door. I yelled “Occupied,” but the guy on the other side of the door insisted he had to use the bathroom. I reluctantly opened the door and to my surprise, the guy was the first person who actually looked like a college student. 

He was young, tall, and was actually dressed like the people I’d been accustomed to seeing across campus during my time at college.

Before he could close the door to the bathroom, I stopped him and asked if he picked up on the strange vibe at the party as well. 

He smirked for a second before leaning in and dropping his voice to an almost imperceptible whisper:

“Take a look around. Do these people really look like college students to you?”

I let out a sigh of relief, as if my concerns had finally been recognized by another person. Before I could say anything, he kept whispering:

“You came here with a girl, right? How old did she say she was?”

Confused as to how he knew I had a date, I said “I met this girl off of Tinder earlier today, she said she was 21.”

The guy laughed under his breath. “Typical. Well, if it isn’t obvious already, she isn’t who she says she is.” Then a pause, before he finally whispered once more:

“Hey man, do what you want, but if I were you, I’d say get out of here sooner rather than later.”

And with that, he shut the door before the hallway became dark and silent once again.

I had heard enough. I quickly made my way to the door, feeling everyone’s eyes on me like daggers. Just as I was about to leave, I heard my name being shouted by a person I could only guess to be Bella.

I didn’t stop to see.

I closed the door behind me and jogged back to my car. I peeled out and started driving back home. Something ate at me though.

On my way home, I drove back to the address I picked Bella up at. Curiously, as I pulled up, an older couple had just arrived home and they were walking to their door. I don’t know what possessed me to do this, but I rolled my window down and shouted a question I already knew the answer to:

"Excuse me sir, do you have a daughter named Bella?”

Confused, the older man made his way to my car with his wife, before telling me—to no surprise of my own—that he and his wife had no kids.

I asked them if they had ever seen a woman who matched the description of Bella, describing her appearance and outfit. 

To my surprise, they mentioned seeing a woman who matched that description identically, standing outside of their house waiting for a car almost weekly. They had just assumed she lived around the area and that was their designated meet-up point, given that their house was on a corner. 

After hearing that, I quietly thanked them and drove back home. No radio. Just silent with my own thoughts. 

I can’t help but think I avoided something potentially fatal, and if it weren’t for that young guy outside the bathroom, I’m not sure I’d be typing this story right now.

One thing is for certain: I’m never using Tinder again.

I just arrived back home from work. I am terrified of what they might do to me if they work their way into my building, but for the time being, I need to write this down as evidence in case of my disappearance.

It started a few hours ago, when I walked back from my quiet office downtown. Today was like any other. I walk in at 8:45, turn on my computer, grab coffee, and start my day. An hour later, bathroom break, and 30 minutes of doom scrolling. I burnt both my hands making hot water for tea, but otherwise fairly chaos free. After putting out a few fires with some unruly clients, I enjoyed a brief happy hour with my coworkers.

Jason works in IT, and usually keeps to himself. I never had a reason to dislike the guy, but I usually avoided him due to him trying to convert us over to his church. Given we don't see him outside of the office too much, I asked him to join us at the nearby bar.

"Drinking is a sin," Jason snapped. Turning his head towards me and realizing my invite was genuine, he muttered "But if you need the extra accompaniment, there's no harm in joining for a soda." I recall almost regretting inviting him right then.

I walked with Jason and the rest over to the bar. Jason slinked behind the rest of us. He's normally enthralled by the tablet he keeps by his side, but today was different. He stared directly at me the entire walk to the bar.

Sitting down, we yapped about the office drama, unruly clients, annoying bosses, etc. But Jason just kept staring. Not just staying silent and looking up at us - his eyes were piercing right at me. Not with alarm or disgust, but a strange intrigue.

It wasn't until everyone was wrapping up that Jason finally spoke. "Th-thanks again for inviting me," he said, still glaring. "I know you guys do these things a lot, I never wanted to be a bother." It was at that moment that I began to question: how long has it been since he last blinked?

"You really should come by the church. I'm sure everyone else would really love to meet you."

I told him no. He seemed disappointed, but smiled back to me gently, with a look of anticipation. "The one who endures in the end is the one who will be saved, I guess."

I put on my airpods and began my walk home. My commute to and from work takes roughly an hour, and with summer almost here, I try to get my steps in by walking to and from. It took about twenty before I walked by a man staring directly at me. No blinking.

If it weren't for the man's dilapidated clothes, I would have guessed it was Jason again. But no, just a random homeless man. A stranger, who bears no weight in my life whatsoever. He didn't move, he didn't say a word, and no one else seemed to say a word. As I stepped closer, I could see his body shake uncontrollably, until he got down on his knees. Staring, with a strange innocence to his face.

Though I wasn't too scared, you can't be too careful in this city. I rushed by him, blaring my metal music to amp me up and get home faster.

The music was only interrupted by bell-ringing. Specifically, from a church. Worse yet, the alleged "church of rejuvenation". Jason's church. I knew it, only because Jason wouldn't stop inviting us to mass, christian singles functions, and movie nights where they only played veggie tales.

The priest (I assume - he wore a long white robe with an orange sash around his neck??) came out quickly. Like the homeless man before him, his whole body vibrated until he got to his knees.

Unlike the homeless man, he quickly rushed towards me, walking still on his knees, and staring without blinking. What the hell has been going on? The priest began weeping, not from fear, though I certainly was afraid. With my airpods in, I couldn't hear what he was trying to tell me, but I could tell he kept repeating the same words over and over again.

This cycle of behavior continued the rest of the hour. Random strangers would prostrate themselves in front of me. Looking around, it didn't even seem like anyone noticed. Was it just that people mind their own business? Could they not see what was happening to me? I ran back faster, hoping to avoid this madness. I looked down on the ground, trying to avoid more eye contact, but I could feel their glares pressing down on me, harder and harder all the way back to my apartment.

My building is old, but it is my sanctuary from these unblinking strangers. I've worked hard for this place - a corner apartment on the seventh story. Windows outstretch the entirity of its walls, with the East wall facing into the city street. Across the street, a larger apartment complex, with patios lined systematically. I've always been worried people could stare inside, but the distance is too great that even if one could look, it would take extraordinary vision to see what was going on.

That's what I thought at first, until on each of the patios were individuals, all glaring at me. I almost fell down, from concern. It wasn't just looking at my apartment, they were looking at me. They are looking at me, even as I write this.

Looking up from my laptop screen, I notice some are crying, others laughing, but all unblinking, with almost void expressions preventing them from feeling anything. Others seem to have vanished altogether.

I realized where they went looking down onto the pavement. Most unmoving, with a few still writhing on the ground since the height of their patios weren't high enough to finish them off. Looking closer, the survivors (at least, the ones still moving) kept their gaze toward me. Even if I hid behind a wall, I could feel their bleeding eyes directly on me.

Walking upstairs to my room, I found a note. Welcome, our chosen - Matthew 24:14. Someone entered my home!

I've hid myself in the bathroom, and called the cops. Though to be honest, I'm unsure if they will be able to help me given the growing number of bodies piling outside.

I'm no expert in contagion, psychopaths, religion, cults, or whatever, but if anyone can help explain what is going on, and what any of this means, please help.

And if you live in my area, please avoid looking directly at me at all costs.

My name is Mateus. I’m from Brazil, and I’ve always been obsessed with Geocaching. I love the thrill of the hunt, the hidden containers... I even found R$500 once! Believe it? But let’s get to the point.

I recently took a trip to Germany. It was expensive, and I wasn't about to waste my money being bored, so I decided to check Geocaching website for local caches. I did about 19 successful hunts, finding all sorts of trinkets. But the 20th time... that’s when everything went south.

I picked a spot that looked normal enough: "Forest Hill." The difficulty was rated near maximum, which only made me more determined. I traveled for some days to reach the location, i was in the far northeast of Germany and the location was in the far southeast, so I took the opportunity to visit some tourist spots too. When I finally arrived, I was breathless. It was a hill—not too high, not too low—nestled in a dense forest of pines. It was hauntingly silent. No animals, no insects, no birds. No people. It was miles away from any village, yet it was beautiful. The grass was a vibrant green, dotted with flowers as if it were eternal spring. I started searching at 4:50 AM. I hunted everywhere, but found nothing. By 6:00 PM, after fourteen hours of searching, I was beyond frustrated.

Then, around 8:00 PM, something impossible happened. I found a small cave—it looked like an animal’s den—but the inside was eerily clean and empty. Stranger still, it was louder inside than outside. How was that even possible? I found nothing and crawled back out, only to find something that wasn't there before.

— HOLY SHIT! — I screamed, jumping back.

A rustic wooden cabin had appeared at the top of the hill. I thought maybe I had just missed it, but looking back, that sounds idiotic. I’m a distracted guy—once, at sixteen, I was being robbed and only realized there was a loaded gun pointed at me five minutes into the encounter—so I convinced myself I just hadn't noticed a whole house.

I went inside. It looked abandoned for years, yet it was spotless. Too clean. It felt lived-in, which terrified me. Was I trespassing? But the worst part was the smell. It reeked of mold and rot, like something... or someone... had died and was decomposing behind the walls. I searched every room.

Living room? Nothing. Bedroom? Nothing. Kitchen, dining room, bathroom? Empty.

I realized the smell was coming from the only place I hadn't checked: the basement. I didn't want to go down there, but I had to. I grabbed a glove from the kitchen, a knife for defense, and used my phone’s flashlight. The stairs were massive and pitch black. I figured it would be ten, maybe fifteen steps. But my flashlight was useless. The darkness was so thick it seemed to swallow the light. I started counting.

8... 9... 10 steps. No floor.

15... 20... 40! It didn't end.

50... 100... 300... 900... I was exhausted, but I remember the final count: 978 steps. 978! What kind of basement was this? Finally, I saw light. I hit the floor.

When my feet touched the ground, I felt no relief. The silence of the stairs was replaced by a high-pitched electrical hum coming from the ceiling—a sound so constant I could hear my own blood pulsing in my temples. The place was a labyrinth of perfect 90-degree angles. No curves, only T-junctions and crossroads, as if someone had designed a city based on road signs but forgot the streets. The concrete ceiling was low, making me feel crushed, yet the air pressure was identical to the surface. I was nearly 600 feet underground—equivalent to a 60-story building buried in the earth—and my ears didn't even pop.

The floor was covered in a dull red gray carpet. I couldn't tell if it was the original color or decades of compacted dust and cobwebs. The smell was a sickening mix of "new house" scent and the suffocating air of a closed room that triggered my allergies instantly. It was a comfortable cold, like a room after a rainstorm, but the comfort was what scared me most.

The wooden doors led to rooms that looked... normal. Bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms. Some were empty; others had a single chair in the corner, facing the wall. It felt like being a child again, waking up from a nightmare and realizing you’re home alone. Everything is familiar, but your gut tells you something is fundamentally wrong.

I thought about going back, but the thought of 978 steps again was paralyzing. Besides, the darkness of the staircase looked different from here. It looked solid—like the only point in the universe that absorbs 101% of all light. I backed away.

— There has to be another exit — I whispered to myself.

I checked my phone. It was 8:01 PM. How? How had all of that only taken one minute? I had a sliver of battery and a tiny bit of signal left. I opened my GPS. I froze. Black. Just black. There was nothing. The pin marking my location was floating in a total void. I zoomed in, I zoomed out, but the vastness of the black remained.

I tried calling a friend I met in Germany. He actually answered.

— Otto, bist du da? (Otto, are you there? )

— Mateus? Bist du's, Mann?! (Mateus? is that you, man?!)

— Hast du dich noch an das Restaurant erinnert, in das wir heute gehen wollten? Ich habe auf dich gewartet! (did you still remembed that restaurant we were supposed to go to today? i was waiting for you!)

— Ich weiß, ich weiß, aber das ist jetzt egal, Otto! (I know, I know, but that’s irrelevant now, Otto!)

— Dein Empfang ist schlecht, such dir einen Ort mit besserem Empfang. (Your signal is cutting out, find a place with better signal)

— Verdammt, Otto! ( Goddammit, Otto!)

— Hör mir zu, ich meine es ernst! (Listen to me, I’m serious! )

—SCHNELL, OTTO! ICH BRAUCHE — ( FAST OTTO! I NEED— )

The signal died…. My battery hit 0%. And then, the stairs... they DISAPPEARED right in front of my eyes. It wasn't a fade-out. They vanished in a shockwave of energy that threw me against the wall.

I scrambled up, but I couldn't even process what happened because further down the hallway, I saw it. It looked human, but it wasn't. Its skin didn't fit its body. Its teeth were a mess; its eyes were fundamentally wrong. It was naked, and its mouth was open in an impossible way—the jaw hung straight down as if held by invisible wires. It moved like an empty costume, jerky and unnatural.

When its drifting eyes finally locked onto me, I ran. I have never run so fast in my life. The thing was incredibly quick, but its speed was its weakness; it couldn't handle the 90-degree turns and kept slamming into the walls. I dove into a room and barricaded the door. Through the gap at the bottom, I saw its shadow linger. It didn't knock. It just stood there. Finally, it left.

As I sat on the floor to catch my breath, my hand touched something... viscous. Slimy. Fleshy. It was a human corpse. I wasn't the only one here. I looked at the body. It was wearing a brown Hazmat suit, almost the same color as the wood of the walls. I searched him with a mix of disgust and desperation.

He had a flashlight, a power bank, and a modified phone with a miniature signal tower attached to it. I used his Face ID to unlock it—I had to pull the mask off his face to do it. Bingo. There was nothing on the phone, but I turned on the hotspot to charge and connect my own phone.

I found his ID card. His name was "Richard." He was 23. No family. He was a "B.W.E." for somebody called Lea.

I managed to move to a kitchen area and barricaded the door with a cabinet. There’s plenty of food here. I checked my cellphone. It’s 8:03 PM. Only three minutes have passed since I entered the basement. None of my contacts are answering. Reddit is my last hope. i don't know when the post will be published becouse of the signal don't one of the bests

What do I do? Who is Lea ? If anyone knows anything, please... I’m scared

(Part 1)(Part 2)(Part 3)(Part 4)(Part 5)(Part 6)(Part 7)

(TW: Suicide)

Bow down before me! For now, I have finally achieved the top 1% of our society! The cream of the crop! Ce qu’il y a de mieux! You are wondering what separates me from you peasants? Well, my (not) girlfriend has bought us tickets to Disneyland with our casino earnings. Jealous? I could hardly blame you. Only the best of the best get to suckle from the teat of the mouse. The ambrosia that Disney provides, we get to sip. But I don’t intend to sip. I will guzzle. I will drink until the glass is dry.

But don’t fret. Maybe one day you will have a divine entity win at Craps enough so that you can see a fake castle in the Californian sun.

Lately, Sod and I have gone through some stressful events, to put it mildly. A break was in order. If you’ve ever watched a sitcom, or like an anime or something; this is our beach episode where everyone just has fun, and nothing bad happens. That is what I would love to say. Unfortunately, there are no beaches, and bad stuff happens. Go figure.

The first bad thing happens right away. Almost unforgivable in my eyes. Perhaps the most egregious event to occur. We pulled up to park at Disney and mother fucker. $40 to park Jayco? Are you fucking mad, Disney? What are you going to do? Spit shine her wheels and fill up her gas? Anyway, that pissed me off, but our day was going to go off without a hitch. We had to park waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay in the back, and the parking lot had every fucking minivan variety under the God forsaken son. No doubt those shitboxes were filled with ungrateful puke gremlins who aren’t even old enough to store this “monumental” visit in long-term memory, but hey. Who am I to rain on a suburban mother’s parade? My (not) girlfriend is buying my tickets, so I shall not cast stones or whatever. 

Still, the walk was brutal. Going to Disney on a Saturday was probably not the best idea. But hey, just like those suburban moms, ya gotta live, laugh, love. 

When we started walking to the ticket center, Sod began questioning what was so important about Disneyland, as if I didn’t perfectly illustrate the fact on our way here. But she must have been reading her fucked up demon book and not paying attention to the Disney lore I was giving her.

“So we are going to spend nearly all our earnings just to attend one day at an outdated park? Isn’t there a more financially responsible way to spend that money?”

“Sod, you don’t understand. You aren’t a real American until you’ve hugged a guy in a Mickey Mouse costume.”

Sod looked disinterested, which sort of hurt my feelings.

“I don’t know if I care to do such a thing.”

I gasped. She really knows how to strike you when you're down, but I didn’t let it bother me too much. Eventually, we were greeted by a costumed cast member. They didn’t speak, as one would expect. They were just sort of in the parking lot? Whatever. I had Sod take pictures of the mouse and me. Without a moment of hesitation, I made it my phone background.

“Sod look! Look! I got a picture with Mickey Mouse!”

She began to humor me at this point, because she cracked a smile.

“Fascinating. Can we go home now? This place gives me the creeps.”

“Creeps?!” I nearly jumped out of my skin. “We just got here.”

“Just a feeling I have.”

Something odd that I did note was that there was an unattended cast member in costume outside the park. If my late-night rabbit holes of Disneyland POV compilations have taught me anything, cast members in costume are always with someone professional-looking. But I passed it off as nothing. Although the people who were walking beside us or taking the tram were quite under the weather. They kept coughing and mumbling under their breath various rude remarks. Like I heard one guy say, “Isn’t that guy a little too old to be wearing Mickey Mouse short-shorts?”

Like for one, I am not. And two, I got these from thrifting. Someone obviously can’t appreciate this luxurious piece of fashion, so I had to. 

When we reached the ticket booth, behind the plexiglass, was another cast member in a costume.

“Howdy, folks! H’yuck! Would you like a ticket today?”

The cast member was doing a really good impression of that one Disney character whose name I can’t remember right now. 

“Um, yes. Two, please.” My voice was small because I’d never met a celebrity before, and the fact that one was selling me a ticket to the greatest place on Earth? Starstruck doesn’t even begin to describe how I was feeling.

The person in costume turned away from me and rummaged through something before returning. 

“Gorsh, Fellas! It’s your lucky day! Admission is free!”

Sod’s ears perked up at the word “free”.

“Really?”

“Uh huh! Now go on in, Partner! We’re ready to see ya! H’yuck!”

Now, for some of you, this would've already been the start to a horror film, but this was turning out to be the greatest day of my life. I had my thrifted Mickey ears, cup, and short-shorts. Nothing was going to ruin my day.

The costumed cast member made an exaggerated movement, pointing to the security checkpoint. When we reached the checkpoint, that’s when I noticed something strange. There were costumed characters in stereotypical police attire, holding batons and handcuffs. I didn’t know if this was some strange rebranding thing from Disney, but it seemed that nearly every person here was in costume.

We were let into the park without issue, and that's when things got even more bizarre. Hundreds of mascots were within the park. What was off-putting about this fact is that they didn't seem limited to only Disney properties. I'm pretty sure I saw a handful of Shreks. I expected this to be some unexpected collab with Universal Studios, but as Sod and I traveled through the park, the properties in which the costume characters appeared were only more obscure and unrecognizable. Have you guys seen the 1982 Tron? There were cast members like… as the speeder bike, the really shitty polygon one. It was… interesting. I couldn’t think of a single person who’d want to take their picture with them, but they were just scooting around. It was surreal.

After some exploring, we found an empty shaded table in New Orleans Square and sipped on our Pineapple Dole Whip.

“You were not kidding, Mortal. This is divine!” Sod said as she drank the majority of a Dole Whip, which we were supposed to share*.*

“Yeah, no. Totally. Uh, Sod can I—?”

“Whose winnings were spent on this?”

“Well, yours but—”

“If you wanted your own, the request should've been made at the establishment we procured this from.”

I frowned. Sod happily hogged the whole fucking thing. I watched as the yellow liquid slowly disappeared from the plastic container. Despair overcame me. And just when I thought all hope was lost, she handed me the remnants. They also had a shitty paper straw, so I’m pretty sure I was drinking cardboard. I smiled because Sod’s lips touched the same straw, but I just wanted a fucking Dole Whip. 

The queues for all the rides that day had been nonexistent. I was surprised. We quickly got used to the fact that nearly everyone was in a costume, but the few people who weren't were a real drag. They complained about anything and everything. Like one mother shielded her daughter’s eyes as we walked by? How rude can you possibly be? Sod isn’t that unattractive.

Like, my brother in Christ, you are at the most magical mother fucking place on Earth. I have counted at least thirty-seven women in either crop or tank tops wearing black Mickey ears. Is what Sod is wearing really that offensive?

Some people just want it all and can't enjoy the moment.

“Is your face bothering you?”

This brought me back to reality. What Sod was referring to was the mark on my face. It had grown exponentially. It lost its triangle shape, but now instead covered most of my cheek. However, it would only be visible sometimes, and the burning pain was a lot worse than before.  When the mark was visible, it appeared as almost a void, as though my face had disappeared. Shortly after this sudden disappearance, it would return to normal. Sod made me aware of my new deformity as I was driving one day, and I nearly drove Jayco straight into a ditch. I thought the mark sort of looked like a face anus. I tried not to be insecure about it. 

So I humored my companion. I was uncomfortable, and I was nervous. But I didn't want Sod to worry about me or my new deformity. This was supposed to be our perfect day.

“It's fine.”

Sod seemed to study me for a moment before responding. “That's good to hear. Where else did you want to go?”

“Well…”

So, for those who actually appreciate Disney, you will know the ride I am about to bring up. It is the culmination of peak human engineering and creativity. Some say the ride is too intense. Not for the faint of heart.

We stood in the queue, and Sod was immediately skeptical of my excitement.

“You’re a frog that goes to Hell?”

“Ermmm, actually he's a toad but Sod, it’s the greatest ride ever! You really just don’t get to appreciate the finer things in life until you’ve been on this ride.”

Sod remained unimpressed with the queues and the old-timey cars. I was allowed to sit next to Sod on the ride. This is probably the second time I’ve been closest to Sod; the first time was when I changed her diaper. But she seemed scared at the sudden, jerky motions of the ride’s vehicle. She gripped the bar tightly, and ever since I mentioned “Hell,” she had been on edge. As we went through the ride, however, she was exceptionally skeptical and honestly overbearing on the old ride.

“Human. You spent about three hours talking my ear off about this ride before we came to this accursed place. Yet, it is the most benign experience I have ever had. Furthermore, Hell does not look like that and is worse than you could ever imagine.”

“Sod, this is a ride, you are supposed to enjoy it.”

She narrowed her eyes at the word “enjoy”.

“Enjoy? We spent thirty minutes in the queue just for it to be over in three. How do you find that to be a sufficient use of your time?”

“Because life isn’t about being efficient, Sod. It’s about enjoying the time you have and sharing a fucking Dole Whip.” At the utterance of this statement, I realized Sod is immortal, and the concept of limited time and maybe sharing a pineapple drink doesn’t necessarily apply to her.

“Whatever, Mortal.”

“Merry Christmas, everyone!”

A short toad with a squeaky voice and some crutches poked me in the thigh as we stood at the exit to the ride. The character looked straight out of a Christmas special. I told him to leave us alone. That wasn't the first time a costumed character snuck up on us, busting a one-liner like some sort of action figure that day, and it wouldn't have been the last.

The mood kind of soured at that point, despite the good tidings. Sod was also upset at how overpriced the food was. And, to top it all off, I was growing extremely annoyed by all the costumed cast members. If I hear one more, “Faith, trust, and pixiedust,” I might have to beat the shit out of Peter Pan. If these almost autistic outbursts were one or two characters, it would be fine. However, I stopped counting after I saw over a hundred different characters all reciting one-liners like their life depended on it. It was insane and certainly copyright infringement on Disney’s part.

I wondered if I could make money from this somehow when a person in an owl costume stood in front of the path, nearly blocking the whole walkway. But it wasn’t an ordinary owl costume; they were probably eight feet tall. There had to be at least three cast members in the suit because of its size. When I stared at it, its eyes spun hypnotically. Then it spoke to me.

“Do you know?”

Its voice was scratchy and very deep. The question asked was odd and seemingly random. I looked around to Sod, but she just shrugged and sipped on her second Dole Whip. 

“Do I know what?”

“Do you know where you are?”

Creepy, but not like… that weird, I guess?

“Disneyland?” I asked as a question rather than an answer.

The costumed head of the owl slowly spun in a 360-degree motion, and then it said, “A man is waiting for you. An important man.”

“Walt Disney? I knew he wasn’t dead! There is no way a megacorporation has all that money and doesn’t discover immortality!”

“This is the last day you will get to enjoy.”

“Well, yeah. We probably won’t get to come back because of ticket prices and—”

Before I finished my thought, the owl took off into the sky. The gust from its wings nearly sent me toppling over. I know Disney has a lot of money, but this is kind of insane technology, no? The feathers of the costume had a real depth to them, and its wings were utterly silent as it took off into the sky and perched itself on a building. I figured it was some animatronic, but I honestly couldn’t tell.  From that point forward, no matter where we were, the owl was watching us from somewhere.

I tried not to let this giant, eight-foot-tall bird bother me, but it was fucking creepy. It was lingering over everything we did, even when I went to the restroom, I’d see it in the distance, waiting for me to get out. I don’t know if they know I stole from one of the gift shops, and this was heightened security or something, but to say I was unnerved was an understatement.

Despite recruiting a bird-shaped stalker, they didn’t directly speak to me again. They only watched from a distance. I was probably going to go to guest services and speak to a manager about that rude interaction. But it was just a minor setback, nothing that should ruin my special day. 

By the end of the day, we did pretty much everything that was worth doing. The sun began to set, and we had enough time to squeeze in one more Mr. Toad’s. On our way there, the fireworks show began, and people started funneling towards the excitement, which emptied a lot of the queues.

I'm never one to miss an opportunity, so I quickly dragged Sod to our fourth excursion to Mr. Toad's. It was just as eventful as the first three. Sod remained unimpressed, but she hadn't complained. She kept telling me, “She has a bad feeling about this place.” But I think that's because she hasn't been around joy as of late, so to experience happiness in its purest form, it may take a while to settle in.

When we disembarked the ride, the fireworks show was nearly over. Sod and I stared from the middle of the walkway up at the sky. I dare say this is the closest Sod and I have ever been on a date. I didn't say as much and just enjoyed the moment. I tried putting my arm around her, but was promptly rejected. Can't blame a guy for trying.

When the show ended, we were both exhausted. I was unaware of how tiring it is being at a theme park all day because my dad never took me. Those suburban moms may be onto something after all. However, we heard a voice in the distance that sounded like it was addressing a crowd for one final performance. When we reached the commotion, there were thousands of costumed characters filling up the plaza. As we walked by, some of them seemed to be staring at us.

“I think we should leave…” Sod said quietly. 

I, however, didn't mind the attention. They followed our every movement, as if anticipating our arrival, which I knew not to be true because that'd be crazy.

Lights suddenly blinded us as two spotlights encircled us from the sky. If all the costumed characters weren't looking at us before, they were now.

“Our guests have arrived!” A voice boomed.

On a stage stood a singular man. I was hoping it was Mickey Mouse, but it wasn't. The spotlight left us and traveled across the courtyard and straight to The Man With Many Faces. 

I didn't speak or try to draw attention to myself. Sod grabbed my hand and tried to lead us through the crowd.

Something I’ve neglected to mention up until this point, and Sod did for quite some time as well, is that some of her powers are returning. Remember that book I was mentioning earlier? The really fucked up one that looks like a Devil worshipper's wet dream? Well, she has been able to perform several of the rituals within that book now. Like communing with the dead and impressing imagery into someone’s skin. Don't ask how I know how she can do those things. Sod assured me once we destroy enough hearts, she’ll be able to return home and “fix” everything.

Vague as ever my southern belle is, but now I wonder what else Sod is capable of. We nearly reached the exit when we were stopped by a wall of costumed characters.

“Harvey! You are so close! You can't give up now!” The Man With Many Faces stood on the stage. The giant owl lingered behind him. “Who wants Harvey and the Fool to get up here?”

Fool? Why would he mention me twice?

The costumed characters all did an exaggerated clap and jeered. They slowly encircled us, so there was nowhere to go but the stage. When we stepped on the platform, the excitement died down as The Man With Many Faces addressed us.

“Beautiful! Now, why don't you introduce yourselves!”

A bootleg-looking Donkey Kong shoved a microphone in front of my face. Now that I was looking closely, only now did I realize how fleshy their costumes were.

The words caught in my throat; it was like I had to remember who I was. Eventually, I did remember, and I spoke into the microphone.

“Harvey…”

“And you?”

The microphone was shoved in front of Sod's face. She appeared resolute, but clearly nervous as I was.

“Alexandria.”

“Great! Now that they're introduced. Who wants Alexandria to win their soul back?!”

The crowd was excited at the mention of “soul,” and I was confused. Why did Sod need her soul back, and when did she lose it? This situation instantly raised many questions. I looked across the stage, and Sod looked dejected and miserable. I wanted to help, but I was out of my depth.

“Perfect! Let's have her play a game she's familiar with!”

The owl descended into the crowd and grabbed someone at random. I watched in a horrifying display as the owl wrapped the man up in a cocoon like a spider. The crowd's hysteria only grew by the moment. The owl eventually dropped the stranger in front of us, and The Man With Many Faces asked a question.

“Will you sacrifice this stranger or Harvey?”

I froze as The Man With Many Faces shouted my name. I didn't know whether to beg or plead or shit my pants.

Sod stood silently; she didn’t show much emotion. The fact that she was wearing Mickey ears made me sick to my stomach. This was no place for murder.

“Oh, come on, Alexandria. You've sacrificed far more than just one soul. One more couldn’t hurt, right?”

“I won't kill Harvey.”

The crowd gasped, but in an instant, the cocooned man was tossed into the characters. They ripped through the cocoon and started tearing him limb from limb. They ravenously ate his entrails as even children joined the affair. My stomach turned to knots. 

“I didn’t expect that.” He said quietly. “I didn't know Harvey meant so much to you.” He chuckled to himself. 

The owl descended from the sky, and one by one started picking up costumed cast members. It wrapped them in a sticky web so that only their heads were visible. When the owl finished, there were five characters on the stage.

I fell to my knees and pleaded before The Man With Many Faces. “Please spare Mr. Toad! I know his ride is kind of shitty and outdated, but it doesn't mean he should die!”

The Man With Many Faces shook me off his leg and continued as if I didn't exist. “Sacrifice these five souls, or Harvey. Remember, if Harvey dies, you get your soul back!”

My heart sank. Why did I have to die so Sod would get her soul back?

“Kill the strangers.” Sod didn’t even flinch.

All five were tossed back into the crowds and torn apart. I watched in horror as Mr. Toad was decapitated. I was beginning to think this wasn't a scheduled show.

The stage lights shifted from us and illuminated all of the crowd. I could actually see some regular people there, but they seemed unaffected by the insanity. All of their faces were drooping and clearly unimpressed.

“Kill everyone here, or Harvey!”

“Gorsh, Fellas! I've never been ritualistically sacrificed before! H'yuck!” A voice erupted from the crowd.

Sod looked more annoyed than pained. “I won’t fall for your tricks!”

The Man With Many Faces stopped his exaggerated theatrics, and his eye twitched. There was some sort of reaction he wanted Sod to have, but wasn't getting. He tapped a finger to his lips as if he were thinking of another solution.

Just as he raised the microphone, the owl grabbed Sod, entrapping her in its talons. 

“I know you think you are all-powerful, Alexandria. But you are nothing without fear.”

Sod squirmed in the owl's talons. I wanted to do something—anything to help! I didn't have the dagger or any weapon on me, so I did the only thing I could think of. I pulled down The Man With Many Faces' pants. He surprisingly doesn't wear a belt. Or underwear.

Just before he was probably going to kill me, Sod pulled out the slithering dagger. I don't know how she got it past security, but instead of stabbing the owl or The Man With Many Faces, she slit her own throat, then snapped her fingers. I watched as the blood poured from the wound, coating her body and the owl’s talons.

I wasn’t sure whether Sod was going out on her own terms. But whether she knew what was going to happen or not, I was clueless. But as I thought I watched my (not) girlfriend die, the world changed around me. And I was alone. There was no stage. There was no Disney. There was no Sod. My feet felt like they were on concrete, but I was in a vast void. 

I shouted for Sod but received no answer. My voice echoed for quite a while before fading into the black.

I wandered through nothing for what felt like a lifetime. Somewhere deep inside me, I don't know if it's instinct or not, but I expected the sun to eventually come up, but it never did. It felt like I was at the edge of the abyss and at any moment I would be relieved of the darkness, but I never was. I was alone and terrified. The utter void of loneliness was all-consuming; it felt as though my chest was being torn open by a beast. I felt formless and abandoned.

I walked and walked until I couldn’t walk anymore. Part of me was expecting a heart to show up out of the blue as it had three times prior, but it never came. After an unknowable amount of time, I started seeing things. Firstly, my mother. It was a vague outline in the black like lines in a coloring book. Memories of her neglectfulness resurfaced. But I knew she had become that way because Dad left us. Over time, I could hear her voice, and eventually, a thought came into my head. In my mind's eye, I saw my childhood home, before things were complicated. It always appeared bigger in my memories, but that’s probably because I was so small back then. 

The home appeared suddenly and unapologetically, as if there was no logic or reason to its manifestation. I walked up to the front door and felt like knocking. When I did, my mother opened the door. She had no face. A blank slate with wrinkles and scars. I knew it was her because of how her arms looked, which is weird, but I just know how they look. She led me to an oversized table, and we sat with empty plates in front of us. She never spoke to me, not surprising because she didn’t have a mouth. I knew it was my mother, but this situation only made the loneliness worse. As I stared at the empty plate in front of me, I couldn't help but crave a bologna sandwich.

After a foodless meal, I washed the dishes. I couldn’t see the water, but I could feel it. Then I was reminded of cornfield hell, and of the women who were my companions for such a long time. Then there was that filthy house. When I looked out the window in front of me, I saw that cornfield. Half of it was the corpses doing a poor imitation of the yellow stalks, and half of it was just regular corn. I could hear the corpses' howl of agony, and it scared me. But after some time, the horror faded, and I wanted to be scared again. When I looked at my mother, whose arms slightly sagged and had stretch marks from years of disuse, I felt lonely again. I’d talk to her, but she wouldn’t acknowledge my words or jokes. She’d sometimes look away as I said something I thought was funny.

I thought of all the jokes I had told, all the time I made people laugh. That made it better for a little bit. I browsed my phone, but every time I went to watch a video, it wouldn’t load, and every time I tried to text someone, it wouldn’t send. I eventually reached the end of my recently messaged contacts, and one made my heart stop. It was Joseph. I opened a text thread.

“Hey, I'm gonna b late. See ya in th morning.”

“Ya, no problem, Harv. See ya tomorrow.”

Those were the last two messages we sent to each other. I leaned back, and I could see Joseph. His long black hair, his long face. His nose, which was too big and the reason he couldn’t get a girlfriend, if you asked him. If you asked me, his problem was a lack of confidence, and I told him that. He needed to let loose and maybe not be so much of himself, as mean as that sounds. I looked up from my phone. Joseph sat in the seat my dad used to sit in.

“Hey, bro,” he said to me as though the last time I saw him I didn’t push a dagger through his chest. He’d been sitting there, unmoving, unblinking for Sod knows how long, but he just says that?

“Not much,” I responded. 

I couldn’t think of anything else. I couldn’t say anything else. We just sat in silence for quite some time. But it wasn't an enjoyable quiet. I didn’t even know he could speak until moments ago. It was very uncomfortable as if something needed to be said, but was never uttered. I wanted to talk to him, to apologize, but I couldn’t. A lump appeared in my throat every time the subject crossed my mind.

“So…” He said after the silence was beyond deafening.

“Yes?” I asked. I felt guilt in my chest. It was overwhelming.

“Want to get some drinks?”

No.

“Yes.” My mind was void of my own body, answering for me.

We walked out the front door and into a bar. The same bar from that other dimension, where I got eaten by a monster. The purple glow was nauseating, but I kept laughing at all of Joseph’s jokes. My words were not my own, and even a little garbled. I kept slurring even though I knew what I wanted to say. People chatted with us, and I almost felt like I was having fun for the first time in a long time, but before I could actually enjoy myself, we were heading out of the bar. I knew where this led. I knew what this meant. Joseph was going to die.

I was screaming at myself to stop walking to the car, but I won’t, no matter how many times I scream. I screamed until I could feel the blood coat my throat, but no one could hear me. I watched as he entered the passenger side, laughing and smiling, stumbling over himself. He looked so happy. He was only happy when he drank.

Then I drive. I drive at a reasonable pace, which isn’t how I remembered it. We returned home with no incident. In my mind, I remember an accident, but that’s not what happened. That was simply the last time I had a good time with my friend. 

I woke up on a couch. My head ached like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my skull. The room was blurry, and my friend was nowhere to be seen.

The next thing I knew, he threatened to end it all after he found out a girl he liked had given me her number. It was an unwinnable argument and an unimportant situation. Looking back now, I probably said some things I shouldn’t have. He was already convinced he’d be alone forever. In the middle of this argument, I had to watch myself make a mistake again.

“Just one time… Just one time I want you to help me, Harv.” Joseph’s voice was desperate. 

Watching now, I saw him reaching out for me, but I didn’t reciprocate. “You can’t be helped, Joseph.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“And you're an alcoholic.”

Why did I fucking say that?

I knew he was mad at me, but he’d been mad at me before. The pity party had run its course, and at the time, I couldn’t take another minute of it.

As odd as it sounds, I had the insatiable urge to pee, like my bladder was going to explode. I left the argument and stood in front of the toilet. But there wasn’t a wall in front of me. It was the Grand Canyon. I looked down and saw the patterned rocks below me. I looked to my left, and there was a bathtub with a shower curtain. The curtain beside me was closed. I knew what was behind the curtain. I knew what lay in a river of red. Something I could never unsee. 

Some sort of self-preservation instinct was supposed to kick in, but didn't. I did the thing I knew I wasn't supposed to. I opened the curtain.  When the metal rings all accumulated on one side, I saw red. Red with a body. Red with a friend whom I was never supposed to see like this. Red with a cut that consumed most of his forearm. The cut reminded me of a never-ending road.

Weeks later, I got Jayco. My beloved Jayco. The thing that finally got him off my mind. I contemplated the hundreds of different things I could’ve done differently every day, but never came to a satisfactory conclusion. When I got Jayco, I was able to run. I went over to his family's house, and his little brother was there. I didn’t know how to break it to them or explain how I felt, despite them already knowing what happened. I didn’t even speak with his sister; she won’t talk to me anymore. She blames me as much as I blame myself. She worked at the daycare, and I used to visit her on weekends, but I never got along with any of the kids. Truth is, I couldn’t really look her in the eye anymore after that happened. We were going to break it to him that we were in love, but… he died, and that was that.

This cycle of events continued and continued and continued until I could recite them just like Groundhog Day. I saw everything and understood very little. Just as I felt I was getting somewhere, I would be back into the void.

I looked at my feet, and the floor was glass. A massive red heart beat just underneath the surface. Joseph stood on the opposite end of the glass, looking up at me, and I looked down at him. 

Our feet aligned, and every time I stepped, he did as well. He mirrored my movements perfectly. 

“You never take anything seriously, Harv.” His voice was muffled by the barrier that separated us, but I could tell he was yelling.

“I know.”

“I told you I would do it.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t believe me.”

I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t believe him. You can only call so many bluffs, right? I guess I gambled with his life. I could’ve been a more caring or serious person, but I can only be me. I can only do so much.

I felt a heat press against my chest. It was the slithering blade Sod, and I had used countless times. It lay in my jacket pocket, and when I pulled it out, so did Joseph. 

“You going to kill me again, Harv?”

“It wasn’t my fault, Joseph.” I raised the blade in the air. Although I couldn’t see the heart on my end, I could see it on Joseph’s side. He would have to stab it for me.

“Remember?”

This caused me to stop. “Remember what?”

“When we were kids? When we played baseball, and your dad would yell at you to hit the ball, but you couldn’t, despite it being on a tee?”

The memory was the first pleasant one I had had in a long time.

“Yeah, I sucked ass.”

He laughed softly. “I miss those days, Harv.”

“Me too.”

I closed my eyes and thrust the blade to where I knew the heart was. Joseph followed my movements, and I was blinded by red for the last time.

I was suddenly in the passenger seat of Jayco as Joseph was the one driving me to a place I had never visited. A place that scared me more than anything I’ve seen up until this point. We drove until we ran out of gas, and then we walked until we reached it. When we entered the graveyard, I saw Sod, and she saw me. She looked familiar, but different. She was in front of a gravestone. It read my friend's name. Sod held my hand, then leaned her head up against me. But it wasn’t Sod, it was Sarah. Sarah forgave me for not being the attentive friend I wanted to be. 

Then I heard a snap, and I was suddenly in an RV I cared dearly for. Sod was reading her creepy book inside Jayco, and we were nowhere near Disney property.

“Sorry you were in there so long. It was the only way.”

It felt like I woke up from a bad dream, but I remember it clearly, even to this day. 

“What was the only way?”

“I sent everyone to Hell.”

“Like… literal Hell or a Mr. Toad’s situation?”

She shook her head.

“The dimensions we traverse, those are His dimensions. When I snap my fingers, we are sent to the bearer's personal Hell.”

“So Disneyland was part of His dimension?”

“Yes, and all of those characters were souls He's tricked or damned. To get us out, I had to send everyone to Hell, including Him.”

“So that's why you cut your neck? For like a ritual or something?”

Sod nodded and revealed her scar, but it appeared to be healing rapidly. “I got you out as soon as I could.” She looked relieved. “I didn't know if that would work, if I'm being honest.”

This explained a few things I was curious about. Namely, being how Sod could seemingly change how the world looked. I now knew she was revealing Hell.

“So Hell in that cornfield dimension was…?”

“That little girl was scared of the cornfields and never seeing her family again.”

“And the Grand Canyon?”

“The dog was afraid of their owners never coming back.”

“What about the casino?”

“That was my Hell.”

“Babies and gambling?”

“A reminder of my folly, yes.”

I didn’t feel like talking about what I experienced with Sod. My Hell was a crippling loneliness and a reminder of all of my mistakes. I guess some of my experiences bled into the other dimensions, but I don’t know how or why. It didn't matter.

“I want to go home.” 

I know I've created a mountain of shit for me to clean up because of my irresponsible actions. But I didn't want to be on the road anymore. I didn't care if there was another heart or if Sod was God or the fucking guy from The Daily Show. I saw Hell, and it was a reminder of what I lost. I was just too busy fucking around to do anything worth a damn.

Sod shut her book and looked up at me. “I'm sorry, Mortal.”

“For what?”

“For you discovering me. I made a bet with Him a long time ago, and ended up trapped. I inadvertently got you caught up in my circumstances. I apologize for that.”

Sod was being nice. Weirdly nice. I don't think I liked it. I finally got the answer I was wondering ever since I met her.

“Are you really God?”

She nodded.

“Does that mean there is a Heaven?”

She shook her head. “All that awaits us is what we expect. If we breed suffering, suffering is all that awaits us.”

“Do you have your powers back?”

Sod shrugged. “We can go our separate ways. You've done enough, Mortal.”

“What about The Face Guy?”

“He is something I will never be able to control, but if I need your help, I'll come after you.”

“You can call me anytime, Sod. I had a nice day with you.”

She stood from the couch and stretched. “Likewise. It's been a pleasure, Harvey.”

“So that's it? What about your soul?” One of the last things I remembered was how The Man With Many Faces said Sod could “Win her soul back.” What did that mean exactly?

“Nothing in which you need to concern yourself.”

An answer I wasn’t particularly fond of. Part of me wanted her to stay, part of me wanted this to all be over. It seems she got what she needed.

“So you’ll be okay?”

She nodded. “Nothing more we can do.”

“But you’re God. Can’t you do anything?”

“If that's what you believe.”

She gave me a genuine smile, walked over, and kissed me on my cheek. I felt a warmth, and then she was gone. In my hands was a page from her book. It wasn’t all fucked up and schizo like the rest of it. The page was in Sod’s handwriting.

Harvey, 

I knew goodbye was going to be difficult. One kiss is all you are getting. You are a buffoon, but you have a good heart. Humanity could use more people like you. Although your lust for me was apparent and overbearing, I can tell there is something you care about more than I. Live your life, Harvey. I’ll fix everything. Don’t you worry.

Sincerely,
Alexandria

A.K.A. Sod

“Well, that’s not vague or cryptic.” I folded the letter and placed it near the torn teddy bear, the chewed baseball, and the playing card. I picked up the playing card, it seemed regular and not at all how I remembered it with The Face Guy on it. I ended up tossing it out the window on an interstate somewhere.

That was the last time I ever saw Sod. We never had sex, which was probably my biggest regret.

I began the long drive back home. Jayco wasn't fuel-efficient, so it'd take a couple of pit stops, and hopefully, there were no more dimensions I'd accidentally wander into.

But on my occasional rest stop, I'd look into the mirror and notice something horrifying. I couldn't see my own face. I could feel my nose and cheeks or whatever, but there was a gaping hole where my face was supposed to be.

I feared that’s how others saw me, but my mom didn't comment on it when I made it home, and everyone else could see me for myself, so I try not to let it bother me too much. I reconnected with Sarah, Joseph’s sister. We're trying to move on together. She said she missed me, and I said I missed her. I never noticed until now, but she sort of looks like Sod, if not a little different. I wondered if that was on purpose.

I wanted to see the world, and I got more than I bargained for. I've never been a fan of the Supernatural, especially after Season Nine, but at least I've learned something while accumulating a lot of debt. I’d say it was worth it.

Deep down, I knew something was still wrong with me, and I couldn’t help but wonder what Sod is going to “fix” exactly or if her reflection is just like mine. I knew that The Man With Many Faces was out there and that no matter what, he would be a part of me. I would be reminded of what I lost when I looked in the mirror.

I could feel my smile, but couldn't see it.

And that didn't matter.

I was nineteen years old when I decided to spend my summer vacation in Ohio. I rented a small, cheap basement apartment in an old house owned by an elderly couple in the suburbs of Toledo.

The house was surrounded by a neglected yard, and the apartment had a separate, completely isolated side entrance.

During the first week, everything was pretty normal, and honestly, a bit boring. I spent most of my time reading and browsing the internet. But things started to change at the beginning of the second week, specifically during the afternoons.

In this area, the afternoons are dead silent because everyone stays indoors due to the heavy humidity.

I started noticing a strange sound coming from the corner of the room, right behind the heavy wooden wardrobe that was fixed against the wall.

It was a faint, steady scratching sound, like something alive was moving very slowly behind the drywall. At first, I just thought it was mice, which is pretty common in old houses around there.

But the sound was too heavy and it never happened at night. It always started exactly at 1:00 PM, lasted for a full hour, and then stopped out of nowhere.

One day, wanting to get rid of the mice, I decided to push the heavy wardrobe aside to see what was behind it. When I finally moved it with great effort, a strange chill ran down my spine.

The wooden wall behind the wardrobe had a small, neatly cut square covered by a piece of cardboard attached with old duct tape.

I peeled off the cardboard very slowly. I expected to find a utility space filled with pipes or wires. But what was disgusting was the smell that immediately burst out. It was the scent of very old dust mixed with something that smelled like burnt sulfur.

I pointed my phone's flashlight into the gap. There were no pipes. It was a narrow, dark tunnel extending horizontally beneath the foundation of the house.

I carefully put my head inside the opening and shone the light to the very end of the passage.

A few meters away, I saw something that made my breath completely catch.

There was a small child's sneaker, blue and heavily faded, covered in a thick layer of dust. Right next to it was a long strand of blonde hair lying on the ground, and old postage stamps from the 1980s scattered all around it. And at that exact moment, the power cut out completely in the apartment.

The room went pitch black. And I heard it clearly, coming from the depths of the dark tunnel right in front of my face.

It was the sound of a deep, wet breath being drawn in, followed by a warm child's voice whispering in pure terror, "Please, put the cover back before he wakes up."

I scrambled backward violently, smashing my back against the wardrobe. I was hyperventilating in pure panic, surrounded by total darkness.

I grabbed the piece of cardboard and frantically taped it back with shaking hands, then pushed the heavy wardrobe with all my strength to block the opening again.

I immediately went upstairs using the outdoor steps to speak with the owner of the house, old man Arthur.

I knocked on the door loudly until he opened it.

He was wearing his gardening overalls and looked tired. When

I told him that I heard strange noises and found a hidden opening, the look on his face changed completely.

The kind expression vanished from his eyes, replaced by a cold, dead stare. He said in a sharp, dry tone, "That opening is just for maintaining the old heating pipes. Do not mess with it again, or I will have to terminate your lease immediately."

He didn't give me a chance to argue and slammed the door right in my face.

I went back down to my apartment, completely shaken up. I couldn't sleep at all that night. Around 3:00 AM,

I woke up to a faint vibration in the apartment.

The refrigerator in the small kitchen was making a strange noise, like it was shifting from its spot. I got up and turned on the living room light with trembling hands.

When I stepped into the kitchen, I froze. The fridge wasn't moving on its own. There was a small gap in the hardwood floor right beneath it. And there were human fingers, incredibly pale, long and thin with no fingernails, reaching up through the crack, slowly trying to pull the fridge's power cord downward to unplug it.

I let out a terrified scream. In a split second, the fingers retreated back into the crack with a strange speed, and a heavy silence followed.

I approached very slowly and looked through the small gap using my phone's flashlight. I didn't see a face. Instead, I saw a massive pile of papers and old photographs scattered down there.

They were pictures of missing children, including a little boy wearing blue sneakers. Suddenly, a very wide eye appeared in the crack, staring right up at me from below. It blinked slowly.

Then, I heard a sharp scratching sound of fingernails against the wooden floorboards right beneath my feet, moving straight toward my bedroom.

I couldn't take it anymore. I threw my essential belongings into a small backpack and decided to leave the place immediately.

When I stepped out of the side door into the yard, it was almost 4:00 AM, and a thick fog was suffocating the Toledo suburbs. I walked fast toward the nearby bus stop, about a quarter of a mile away.

The streets were completely empty of cars. I got on the very first bus that arrived, went straight to the airport, and booked the first flight back to my hometown.

A few days after I got back, I couldn't get what happened out of my head. My conscience was eating me alive because of those pictures of the children.

I decided to call the Lucas County Sheriff's Office in Ohio, and filed a detailed report about what I saw in that basement apartment and the photos under the floorboards.

The police took the report seriously and sent a unit to search the house. Two days later, the detective in charge called me back. His voice was filled with absolute shock.

He said, "We raided the house, son. Old man Arthur and his wife were found dead in their bed. They've been dead for at least two weeks from gas poisoning, which means they were rotting corpses the entire time you were staying there." My mind went completely blank.

I asked him in a panicked voice, "Then who was the man I talked to?!"

The detective let out a heavy sigh and said in a terrified tone, "When we moved the wardrobe, we didn't just find pipes. We found a massive network of narrow, dark, wood-lined tunnels extending under the entire neighborhood.

We found belongings of missing children dating back to the eighties, and secret passages leading inside the walls."

"We uncovered extremely tight spaces in the tunnels right under the floorboards of the neighbors' bedrooms, perfectly designed for someone to lay flat on their back and listen to everything happening above them." Ten years have passed since that night.

The tunnels were completely filled with concrete, and they never caught the person, or the thing, that was living down there.

I tried to forget everything and live a normal life in my new high-rise apartment in Boston. But about a week ago, the humidity in my bedroom started rising for no reason, and dark spots began appearing on the plaster ceiling.

Yesterday, at exactly 1:00 PM, while I was reading in the quiet living room, I heard it clearly.

A faint, steady dragging sound, like something heavy was sliding very slowly inside my bedroom wall, followed by a tiny whisper coming from right behind the power outlet next to my bed. It was the sound of a wet, hissing breath saying, "We missed you."

I’m scared to go home.

In fact, I don’t think I will ever return, I don’t care that everything I own is there, or even that it is my childhood home, I’m never going back. It was only a few months ago that I received the call that would change my life. I sat in my dorm, studying for a psychology exam, when the monotone chirping of my phone broke through the tranquil silence.

“Hello?” I answered blankly

“Yes, am I speaking to Erin?” a thick, masculine voice broke through the speaker

“Um yeah it is, whom am I speaking to?”

“Well Ma’am, I’m Sheriff Waterson from back in Centerville, your father is Roger correct?”

My voice cracked as I whispered “yes. Is everything ok?”

A heavy, pained sigh came through the phone.

Dad’s funeral was harder than Mom’s. Mom’s was a long time coming, the cancer had pillaged her body for years, it laughed with glee as it poisoned her blood and left her a hollow husk months before her final breath. But Dad had drowned. Not in a lake, not in a pool, in his own home. They told me he fell asleep in the bathtub. Three days after the sheriff’s call, I stood in the small, traditional Wesleyan chapel. As I stood in front of the simple casket, wrapped in a black dress, I realized I was now an orphan. Later that evening Dad’s lawyer sat me down to walk me through the last will and testament.

I sat there on the couch in a grief induced shock. The legal jargon spouted from lawyer overwhelmed me like a flood. Very few of his words reached my mind. But one of his final statements broke through my stupor.

“…And finally, your father has left you the entirety of his estate, including the house.”

“Wait what did you say?” I asked the dry lawyer

“Your father left you the house, as well as the majority of his earthly possessions.” He replied as if it was the most mundane statement ever.

“Oh” was all I could muster.

“Also, your father left you this” he said as he handed me a small, simple envelope that bore my name.

“Thanks” I said as stuffed it into my purse.

Days passed filled with casseroles, hugs, and sloppy signatures on legal documents. Several members of the family advised that I sell the house to pay for my schooling. But how could I? How could I sell the first and only home my parents ever bought? How could I sell the home that held my childhood? Instead, I kept it, I transferred to an online program and before long I found myself moving the few boxes from my dorm into the house that was now mine.

A few short weeks later, I found myself alone in the house for the first time since dad died. No one tells you how loud it is after the funeral, nor how quiet it is after everyone leaves. The silence brought to mind every good memory of my dad, though they were tainted by loss. There would be no new memories shared, no happy hugs as I graduated college, no tearful laughter as he walked me down the aisle, I had ever memory of my dad that I would ever have, and as I grew older, they would fade, eventually disappearing altogether. Then my dad would truly be gone.

As gentle tears ran down my cheeks, a memory of a note hidden in my purse came to mind. Grabbing my purse, I fished out the letter that bore my name in my father’s shaky yet elegant handwriting. A single tear dampened the envelope as I gently opened the letter. My heart awaited eagerly for the wisdom it may contain, yet to my surprise it only had one single sentence:

“Always keep a glass of water on the nightstand”

I don’t know how long I stared at the lone sentence, but as I did, anger boiled up within me. And before long I screamed.

“That’s it?? That’s the best damn advice you could think of? Gee thanks Dad I’ll always be hydrated at night! What about ‘I love you?’ or ‘I’m proud of you?’” I screamed at an empty house as I slid to the ground and wept.

“Why did you have to go? Why did you leave me?”

That night I got drunk. A cocktail of anger and grief fueled my drive to the local liquor, where I bought enough boozes to supply any frat house for a week. After several bouts with Jack Daniels, I finally collapsed on my bed in a drunken stupor. It was around 3 AM when I coughed and gagged myself awake, it felt like my lungs were full of water. I sat up quickly, fearful that I was choking on my own vomit. But as I lurched upward, the feeling passed. My airway opened and I greedily sucked in as much air as I could. My hands shook uncontrollably, as I tried to calm down. Standing up I walked into the master bathroom and bent to the sink to splash some cold water on my face. Glancing up I saw my sorry reflection in the mirror, and for a moment in the reflection, I saw movement.

It was slight, but there in the reflection of the gaping darkness that was the doorway to my room, was movement, the kind of movement your eyes notice a second too late. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, as the implications reached me. Slowly I turned and faced the dark void that used to be my bedroom. Armed only with a hairbrush, I cautiously entered the room.

“Hello?” I said, trying to disguise the fear in my voice

“Is someone there?”

 The room was empty, no one was there, and I soon turned my attention to the door to the hallway. Peeking my head into the hall, I looked down both ways, and as I did, from behind me I heard the gentle trickle of water. My journey back to the bathroom felt like it took hours, I kept expecting something to touch me from the dark. but soon I stood fully in the low white light of the bathroom, before me was the sink. a thin stream of water flowed from the faucet. My mind offered dozens of explanations, but the one I settled on, was that in my fear I failed to fully turn off the faucet and didn’t notice until my terror had passed.

“it’s nothing, just the alcohol” I whispered aloud to myself as I locked the bedroom door and returned to bed.

The next morning, I awoke in a strange mix of groggy exhaustion and quiet hope. I found myself somewhat embarrassed about the night before, both the drinking and the fear. And though I was still grieving, I told myself I wasn’t going to be controlled by the loss anymore. That morning I started to unpack and clean. The work was good for me; it kept my mind from dwelling on the loss. Soon I started back on my studies, which brought me some enjoyment. For the first time in days, I felt hungry. So I walked a few blocks down to the pizza place, the same one I worked at in high school. Billy the owner greeted me warmly with a hug as he told me how sorry he was for my loss.

“Thanks Billy, that means a lot” I replied

“We love you kiddo, and you always got a job here if you want it.”

I smiled “if your serious, yeah that would actually be great, I could really use a distraction right now.”

He nodded “start whenever you’re ready, we’ll take you anytime.”

“how’s tomorrow sound?”

He patted my back “tomorrow is great”

A few moments later my large pepperoni pizza was ready, as Billy hand it to me he said, “on the house Kiddo, it’s the least we could do.”

I thanked him and carried my dinner back home.

I wish I could say that that night was normal, what I thought was just a drunken reaction to grief turned out to be something greater. Every night that week, at 3 AM I woke feeling like I was drowning, every night the feeling grew more intense, and lasted longer than the night before. After a full week of restless sleep, I couldn’t take it anymore. Not knowing what else to do I emailed one of my professors and asked if we could schedule a video call. Dr. Martin was one of my favorite professors, he warmly encouraged my desires to become a psychologist, and after some small talk, I opened up to him. I told him about my father’s death, how he had drowned, I told him about my nightmares and the terror I felt as my lungs filled with imaginary water. All the while he listened attentively.

As my account came to an end, Dr. Martin stared intently into the camera, clearly deep in thought, a moment later he spoke

“Honestly, Erin, It sounds a lot like grief-triggered sleep paralysis.”

“Sleep Paralysis?” I echoed

“Yes, it seems to be that your subconscious has taken this grief and internalized it in the form of a paralysis experience that mimics the final moments of your father.”

 I stared for a moment as this news sunk in “well is there anything that would help?” I asked

“Well, if you’re wanting to go the medication route, I’d have to refer you to someone, but if you’d ask me, medication might not be necessary. Perhaps all your mind needs is some form of closure.”

I thought for a moment, before nodding “thank you Dr. you’ve been really helpful.”

“of course, Erin, happy to help.”

Closing my laptop, I sat there at the end of my bed, trying my best to digest what I had just been told. What would closure even look like? Moments later it hit me, the note. The stupid one sentence note my dad had left me, the note that was currently hiding in the back of my junk drawer. Soon I found myself staring at the wrinkled piece of paper. All it said was:

“Always keep a glass of water on the nightstand”

Why would he write this? The thought bounced around my mind over and over again, but ultimately it doesn’t matter, if listening to the note would give my mind closure, I’d do whatever it said. That night before bed I set a tall glass of clear water on my nightstand, I stared at the cup as my eyelids grew heavy and soon, I was fast asleep.

I woke in the morning shocked, not only had I slept all the way through the night, but it was some of the most restful sleep I’d ever had. I felt relaxed and energized, ready for the day ahead. My smile rarely left my face all day, later that afternoon Billy remarked

“Your in a good mood today Erin, glad to see it.”

I chuckled slightly “yeah, it finally feels like I can move on with my life.”

He smiled and nodded as we got back to work.

That night, I dumped out the glass and filled it to the brim with fresh water. Hopping into bed, I silently hoped that night would be just as good as the night before. Again, morning came, and with it the renewed energy of a restful night. I woke with a smile on my face, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed something was different. It was the glass; it was half full. I stared at it for a moment. I vividly remember filling it full last night, but now it wasn’t full. It took a moment to convince myself that I had just taken a drink in the middle of the night and simply didn’t remember.

“weird” I said aloud as I forced a shrug.

Despite my efforts, a feeling of unease stuck to me all day. The day itself was a blur, I couldn’t tell you one thing about that day, only that I spent every moment of it wondering what happened to the water. Again, evening came, and I found myself filling the same glass with fresh water. As I set it on the nightstand I took a moment to note the exact amount of water that the glass held. It took longer to fall asleep that night but eventually sleep took me.

Again, I awoke refreshed and happy, but it lasted only a moment as I looked to the nightstand and saw that the glass was a little more than half full, definitely less than the night before. That day my mind was consumed by one thing; the water. Did I drink it and I just don’t remember? I must have. But why don’t I remember? Where else could the water have gone?

“Everything ok Kiddo?” Billy’s voice broke through my questions

“Oh, yeah, sorry, just a lot on my mind.”

“Well, if you need to talk about anything just say so.”

I nodded as I tried to distract myself with work.

That night I had an idea. After filling the glass, I took a red marker and marked the waterline. In the morning there would be no doubt about how much water I had put in. The next morning the glass was completely empty. In a fit of anger and fear I threw the glass across the room, it shattered as it hit the wall.

“What the hell is going on?” I screamed at the empty house.

That afternoon as I walked to work, I realized that before I overreacted, I needed to be sure that I wasn’t drinking the water. For all I knew I could have been sleepwalking. If I could see that I was drinking the water that would put an end to it. I knew my phone wouldn’t record all night, and I didn’t have time today to drive to the city over and purchase a security camera, so if I couldn’t record video, maybe I could record audio. I often used a voice memo app to record college lectures to help with studying, and I knew that there wasn’t a limit to how long the app would record. By the time I walked into the pizza parlor, I had already decided. Tonight, I would record everything.

As night fell, I made another decision. I decided to fill four glasses instead of just one, if it turned out that this was just me guzzling water while sleepwalking, four glasses of water would certainly cause me to have to use the bathroom, and the discomfort would wake me. And so, with four glasses of water on the nightstand, and my phone recording every noise in the room, it didn’t take long for me to fall asleep.

As consciousness returned in the morning, I quickly turned to the nightstand, and a cold chill ran through my body as I say four empty glasses. With a sweaty hand I picked up my phone and began to play back the eight-hour recording. The first few hours no sound other than my light snoring was heard. I sped up the playback even more, till around 3 AM, when suddenly a new sound came across the phone. It was a startling sound; the type of sound only heavy inhaling of water can create. It sounded like a thirsty horse was violently lapping water from a drinking trough. It lasted about 30 seconds, and as quickly as it came it was gone. The rest of the recording was just my snoring.

I was horrified, that couldn’t have been me, I couldn’t have made those sounds, but I dared not consider the other option, the option that said something else was drinking the water, I hadn’t heard any footsteps, no other breathing, nothing, just the unhuman lapping of water. I had no other choice, hearing wasn’t enough, I needed to see what was going on. I called Billy and called off my shift that afternoon, I told him I was sick, he wished me a quick recovery. Not long after I hopped into my car and headed out to buy a camera.

Centerville wasn’t big enough to have any stores that sold the type of camera I needed. The nearest store that did was 45 minutes away. I walked into the store and quickly found the tech section. The young man behind the help desk looked up as I approached, with a grin he said

“Hi, can I help you?”

“Um yeah you can” I quickly replied, “I’m looking for a home security camera, that has night vison, and I can access from my phone.”

“Sure, we got a few options right over there if you want to follow me.”

Out of four options I chose the cheapest.

“That’s a good model.” He said, “The camera app will work as long as your phone has Wi-Fi.”

“Great” I replied

 After the employee walked me through the set-up progression and user functions, I returned to my car and headed home. As my father’s house came into view, I was startled by how foreign it felt to me. It was no longer the home that protected me as a child, it was no longer the home that filled my mind with good memories and peace. Instead, it was some twisted version of that place. I wanted to leave and never come back, I really did, it was the house that killed my father, but if I left then Dad was really gone. As I entered, I felt nothing, no love, no nostalgia, no comfort, only fear.

I set up the camera as quickly as I could, I couldn’t stand being in the bedroom anymore, the only thing that kept me going was the desire to know the truth. After setting up the camera and insuring it was connected to my phone, I walked down to the local pharmacy. I walked in to the small, dusty place illuminated by dim fluorescent lights that omitted a flittering green glow. It didn’t take long to find the sleeping pills that I was looking for, I doubted I could’ve fallen asleep on my own that night, some help would be nice.

A frail old man stood behind the counter and offered me a gummy grin as I walked up.

“Hello, young lady, find everything you need?”

“Yessir, thank you.”

He looked at the pills as he put them in a small bag

“Troubles sleeping Ma’am?”

With a nod I said “yeah, I guess you could say that”

“Well, hopefully these will help, take care now.”

“You too” I said as I walked out

Night fell. With shaking hands, I filled a glass to the brim with water. Checked one more time that the camera was working and facing both the bed and nightstand and took two pills. My heart beat fast as I climbed into bed and with a sigh, I turned off the lamp. Morning came and I can honestly say it was the best night of sleep I’ve ever had. With a stretch and a yawn, I rose from the bed, happy and ready for the day, but it took only one glance at the empty cup for all the fear and dread to fall back onto my shoulders. I didn’t even bother to change out of my pajamas, as I grabbed my phone and walked out onto the porch.

After connecting to the camera, I saw my room at 11:30 the night before, the cameras infrared illuminated my room with an eerie white and gray glow. I watched myself sleep at three times speed and between 11:30 PM and 3 AM nothing happened, the room was quiet and peaceful. But what I saw at 3:01 took the breath right out of my lungs.

From beneath my bed crawled a form as quietly and smoothly as fog sliding over mountain tops, it was impossibly tall, when it finally stood it had to bend over for its head and shoulders rested against the ceiling. Its back, which faced the camera, was damp, and disgustingly thin, every vertebra of its spine was visible. Its arms reached below its knees. It didn’t move like a predator in a hurry. It moved like something that already owned the room. The thing slowly reached for the glass of water, which looked tiny in its massive hands. It raised the cup to its lips and loudly sucked the water down, and after it finished, its neck turned its head to me, as I slept peacefully in my bed. As it stared at me sleeping it raised a hand and gently ran its fingers through my hair, and eventually down the side of my face, where one of its claws pressed against my cheek hard enough to break the skin. At this I began to stir, I mumbled for a moment then my sleeping mouth spoke the words.

“Dad? Is that you?”

The creature stared at me, then its body shook with wet choking laughter. And then with a creaked unhuman voice it replied mockingly

“Yes, it’s me”

“I missed you so much dad.”

It then bent over and kissed my forehead, before silently slinking back under the bed.

I couldn’t breathe. My stomach churned as I stumbled off the porch and into the yard. I couldn’t make myself look back at the house. I just wanted to get away, to put as many miles between me and that thing as possible. So, I got in my car and drove. I’m hours away now, writing this from a hotel room in another state. I’m never going back. I think it knows I left. I’ve been watching the camera feed, and thirty minutes ago it crawled out from under the bed. Since then, it hasn’t moved. Its eyes have been locked on the camera the entire time. They’re horrible eyes. Pure black, with tiny white pupils. It hasn’t blinked once.

It’s getting late now, I don’t want to go to sleep, I’m afraid I’ll drown.

 

This happened about three or four months ago, back in January, and I still think about it on random nights when I can't sleep. It’s just one of those things that leaves a permanent, weird knot in your stomach because there's no satisfying explanation for it.

Back in middle school, my best friend Leo and I had this running inside joke where we’d watch awful indie horror movies and write these incredibly sarcastic, detailed reviews in a shared Google doc. We did it for a couple of years, filling up dozens of pages with stupid 13 year old humor.

In the summer of 2014, right before we started high school, Leo passed away in an accident while visiting family out of state. It was devastating. Over the years, life kept moving, I finished school, moved away, got a job, but I always kept him in the back of my mind.

Anyway, a few months ago, I was doing a massive digital cleanup, moving old files from a high school Google drive account to an external hard drive and that's when I stumbled across that old shared document. I hadn't opened it in over ten years. Feeling a bit nostalgic, I clicked on it just to read through our old jokes.

While I was looking at it, I noticed the "Last edit was made..." timestamp at the top. I decided to click open the version history, mostly just to see the exact date of our last summer session together before he died.

But the history showed a modification date from November 14th, 2023.

I thought it was some weird Google server glitch, so I clicked on that specific 2023 version. Someone had scrolled all the way to the bottom, past all our old middle school stuff, and added a short, three paragraph review for Talk to Me, a horror movie that came out in 2023. Seeing the text typed out on the screen completely turned my stomach. It looked like this:

TALK TO ME (2023)

--- okay so basically some australian teenagers find a ceramic embalmed hand and use it to get high off literal ghost possession. completely realistic, 10/10 premise.

--- the main girl gets absolutely peer pressured into holding this thing and letting a dead guy take over her body. the vibe was similar to when mr. henderson made you present your solar system project alone because the projector broke, and you just stood there shaking and sweating for ten minutes.

--- 3 out of 5 stars. clever concept, but trying to talk to the dead through a ceramic hand is stupid.

I completely froze, the mr. henderson thing couldn't be a generic guess, that was our 7th grade science teacher, and that exact projector incident was an inside joke we brought up for months. Even the formatting, using triple hyphens instead of regular bullet points, and never capitalizing the start of a sentence, was Leo's exact layout habit from 2012.

I checked the sharing settings immediately. The only two accounts with access were my old email and Leo’s old yahoo address.

A few days later, I actually called his mom. It was super awkward because we hadn't spoken in nearly a decade. I asked her as casually as I could if anyone still had access to Leo’s old laptop or email. She told me his computer was destroyed in a basement flood years ago, and she’d personally had his yahoo account deleted and shut down a year after his funeral because it was getting slammed with spam.

I ended up downloading the file and deleting the online doc because looking at it just made me feel deeply uncomfortable. I’ve tried to rationalize it in every way possible. Maybe a hacker got into his deleted email years later? Maybe Google recycled the old yahoo address handle and someone randomly inherited access to a private doc? But why write a movie review using our specific inside jokes?

It’s been a few months now, and the initial panic has worn off, but every now and then I’ll just be sitting on the couch and the thought will pop into my head. I don’t believe in ghosts or anything, but I genuinely don’t think I’m ever going to figure out who wrote that.

I shouldn’t have been driving that night.

The snowstorm had gotten so bad that I could barely see past my windshield, but I kept telling myself I was close to home. Just a few more kilometers. That’s all I needed.

The roads were empty. No headlights. No houses. Just endless snow and the sound of the wind hitting my car hard enough to shake it.

Then my tires lost grip.

Everything happened too fast.

The car spun, the headlights flashed across the trees, and then I slammed straight into a ditch on the side of the road.

For a few seconds, I just sat there in silence, trying to process what had happened. My airbags had gone off. My nose was bleeding. The engine was dead.

I grabbed my phone.

No signal.

Of course.

Outside, the storm kept getting worse. Snow was already piling against the doors of the car. Staying there meant freezing to death.

So I got out.

The cold hit me instantly. My shoes sank into the snow with every step as I started walking down the road, hoping to find literally anything.

After what felt like forever, I finally saw a light in the distance.

A house.

Old. Isolated. Two stories tall with warm yellow lights glowing through the windows.

I almost cried from relief.

I knocked on the door so hard my hands hurt.

A few seconds later, an old woman opened it.

She looked to be in her late sixties, maybe older. Gray hair tied back neatly, soft smile, warm eyes.

“Oh my God,” she said immediately. “Come inside before you freeze.”

The heat inside the house felt unreal.

She sat me down near the fireplace, wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, and made me tea while apologizing over and over for the storm, like she somehow controlled it.

Something about her was… strange, though.

Not creepy at first. Just too friendly.

Too caring.

Like she was overly happy that someone had shown up at her house.

“You can stay the night,” she told me. “My son’s old room is still upstairs.”

I thanked her at least ten times before going upstairs. Honestly, I was exhausted enough that I probably would’ve slept anywhere.

The room looked untouched.

A perfectly made bed. Shelves full of old books. Clothes hanging neatly inside the closet.

It didn’t feel like a guest room.

It felt like someone still lived there.

I sat down on the bed and noticed a folded piece of paper sticking halfway out from beneath a dresser.

At first I ignored it.

Then curiosity got the better of me.

I pulled it out.

It was an old psychiatric evaluation report.

The name matched the woman downstairs.

I remember my stomach tightening as I read parts of it.

Paranoia.

Violent episodes.

Psychotic delusions involving her son.

One sentence stood out more than the others:

“Patient refuses to accept that her son died several years ago.”

I stared at the paper for a long time.

The wind outside howled against the windows.

Suddenly the entire house didn’t feel warm anymore.

I looked around the room again.

The clothes.

The books.

The perfectly made bed.

She hadn’t preserved this room out of grief.

She genuinely believed her son was still alive.

I wanted to leave right then.

But outside was a blizzard, my car was wrecked somewhere down the road, and I had no signal.

So I convinced myself I was overreacting.

I locked the bedroom door and tried to sleep.

I must’ve drifted off eventually because the next thing I remember was waking up to a deafening crash downstairs.

It sounded like furniture being thrown over.

I checked my phone.

3:07 AM.

At first, I thought maybe the old woman had fallen.

I slowly opened the bedroom door and stepped into the hallway.

The house was dark now except for the faint orange glow coming from downstairs.

Then I heard a man’s voice.

Calm.

Talking softly.

I froze.

There wasn’t supposed to be anyone else in the house.

I moved closer to the staircase and looked down into the living room.

And that’s when I saw her.

The old woman was lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs.

Dead.

Her neck bent at an angle that made my stomach twist. Blood had spread across the wooden floor beneath her head.

And standing over her…

was a man.

Tall. Thin.

Covered in snow.

He was talking to her body like she was still alive.

“You shouldn’t have let him stay here,” he whispered. “You know what happens now.”

I nearly made a sound right there.

Instead, I backed away from the stairs as quietly as I could and locked myself inside a small storage closet down the hallway.

I covered my mouth with both hands, trying not to breathe too loudly while I listened to him moving around downstairs.

Floorboards creaked.

Cabinets opened.

Then silence.

Complete silence.

I grabbed my phone again.

Still no signal.

My heart sank.

Then, for one second—one tiny second—a single bar appeared.

I immediately called the police.

The dispatcher answered almost instantly.

I whispered everything as quietly as I could. The crash. The dead woman. The man downstairs. The isolated house in the middle of nowhere.

The dispatcher suddenly went quiet after I gave him the address.

Way too quiet.

Then he asked:

“Are you inside the Miller house?”

Something about the way he said it made my blood run cold.

“Yes,” I whispered.

Another long silence.

Then he said something I still can’t stop thinking about:

“Listen to me carefully. Hide. Do not leave your hiding spot. And do not ask any more questions.”

I remember whispering:

“What do you mean?”

But he ignored me.

“I’m sending someone now. Stay quiet.”

Then he hung up.

That’s when I heard footsteps downstairs again.

Slow. Heavy.

Coming toward the staircase.

The closet I was hiding in suddenly didn’t feel safe anymore.

Because I realized something horrifying.

To call the police, I’d had to leave the closet and go into the old woman’s bedroom upstairs where the signal was stronger.

If he had seen the light from my phone under the door…

then he already knew exactly where I was.

And now I can hear him walking through the hallway outside.

We were bastard children of a generation reshaped by a conflict that left a gaping wound in the world. 

The men who came back from the fields of Europe and the islands of the pacific, gave rise to a new generation of men...more so boys, who were completely ill equipped for this new world. A world that bore scars and damage so deep, it affected even the lands that never saw the conflict.

An evil unknown by man except for maybe in the times of Genesis, was unleashed upon the world. Spreading itself across the globe and creating ripples of destabilization.
Those shockwaves are still felt today.

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

Running, jumping, pull ups, pointless tasks, getting screamed at, repeat.
Day after day, week after week. The monotony of every day felt almost like a messed up 9 to 5 as opposed to basic training.

We were all young and dumb, eager to serve our country and fight the evil commie hordes.

Constant discipline and structure molds you into an obedient soldier. It teaches you how to think and move like a single unit, how to follow orders as well as improvise when things inevitably change.

You learn to fight, with your hands, blades, guns, whatever is provided. All that training makes a young man feel invincible. Millions of naive boys have met terrible fates across the ages from this Superman fallacy.

Sometimes even with the training, the stupidity of young adult hood, and millennia of human kind learning and studying war; you find yourself in a situation that reduces you into nothing more than small ink letters in the pages of a casualty report, filed away to never be seen again.

Of course, the US government does its best to keep that kind of sobering reality locked up tight. That wouldn't make a very good recruitment poster on the wall of a Woolworths.

If you spend enough time in the military, you become privy to this reality. Some learn the hard way; most however, only get glimpses of it in after action reports. Often too proud or ignorant to even put the pieces together.

I, however, have never been a lucky man. 

I was not fortunate enough to only get a glimpse of that kind of horror as it merely passed through my finger tips on the way to a fax machine...

My platoon was a recon platoon, stationed in Camp Davies on the Saigon River.
Life was pretty good, despite us being in the thick of it in 1966, we didn't have many threats that far south.

Just occasional deployments to some random patch of jungle, to scout ahead for a larger force.
My squad and I spent a lot of our time drilling, reading comic books, and telling stories about women, cars, sports, you know.

Quite frequently when we were really bored, or sleep deprived in the middle of the night, we would start telling ghost stories.

"Carter" , our machine gunner, is a good ol' Appalachian boy. 6 foot 4, 280 pounds of corn liquor and repressed childhood trauma. 

He always had the most, and the best stories. Tales of creatures on two legs, inexplicable sounds in the woods, disappearances, wild people, even bigfoot.

Most of the time I think he was making them up or embellishing a sick deer encounter. Sometimes though, I couldn't help but feel like there was an actual air of truth to his ramblings.

On one of these nights, all of us huddled in a circle in the middle of the barracks. 

Carter was in his element, scaring the new guys with a story he'd told a hundred times about how his ancestors spoke of a tribe of people deep in the hills. 

Feral people, that hunt hikers and moonshiners, live in caves, and don't have any kind of language other than grunts and screams. 

His ancestors believe these tribes of people exist everywhere on the globe, even as far as Vietnam. 

Of course Carter uses this to try and scare the shit out of the privates fresh from basic. Most of the time it worked.

My closest buddy "Bill" was a devout Christian, and tended to be the voice of reason to combat Carter, in defense of those poor recruits. 

He may have believed in God, spirits, demons, and a plethora of other supernatural things, but he seemed dead set on disproving all of Carter's tall tales.

Bill was in the middle of telling a very annoyed private about how Carter is a Godless heathen, when our barracks door swung open abruptly.

Our lieutenant stood silhouetted in the light of the hallway outside, one hand holding the door open.

"JOHN, BILL, CARTER, MATTHEW, RONALD! You have a new assignment" He said sternly

I looked at Bill, confused. Why did the LT only need our squad? Why was he giving us such short notice in the middle of the night?

"Can I finish my story sir?" Carter asked

"I was just about to get this kid to piss his pants." He said, smirking and gesturing at a young freckled kid across from him.

"No you weren't!" The boy retorted, his voice cracking in the process.

"Negative, they want you right now. Get your shit and get up." The Lieutenant barked.

"They?"

"You'll find out when you get to the airfield. Now get going!" He ordered, shutting the door behind him.

Grumbling, we put on our uniforms, grabbed our packs and kit, and headed to the airfield.
We were greeted by the LT and a man in plain clothes, looking kind of like a tourist. They stood hunched in front of a blacked out huey, engine running and ready to go.

"This is your handler for the next few days!" The LT shouted over the whir of the blades.

"You'll be taking orders from him, and he'll be taking you where you need to go!"

I glanced at the man, light hair, clean shaven, aviators. At night. Who does this guy think he is?
He met my gaze and simply gestured to the open chopper doors.

The five of us piled in, and put on the headphones, as we watched the man climb in the co-pilot seat.

As we were lifting off, Ronnie (our group control freak) broke the air with a question we were all thinking.

"Why are we not getting a briefing, and where are we going? 

Our handler replied with a voice I didn't expect "You're going to be looking for a team we lost on a search and destroy mission. Details classified, all you need to know is they reported contact at 03:50 yesterday, and we haven't heard back from them since."
"We will drop you off 10 klicks from their last known position, afterward you will trek north until you find the position on the maps that will be provided to you."

A question burned in my mind that I'm sure was shared amongst the group: Why us? We were just a regular army recon team, and this guy wreaked of the Agency. 

Did they want someone disposable? I squirmed in my seat, hoping that thought was a simple anxiety induced exaggeration. 

The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful, albeit long. The five of us stayed silent, exchanging glances at each other. Carter made lewd gestures to try and break the tension, but he could tell it wasn't working.

Our handler gave us the maps. Fairly standard terrain, nothing we couldn't handle. We were going to a hilly location with a river to the north. They'd been kind enough to mark the previous team's path. 

We'd follow a valley about 5 klicks north until we hit a small mountain. After climbing that, we'd follow the ridgeline east for about a mile until we reached an old landslide. After that it was a simple hike through the unforgiving jungle, until we got within a few hundred yards of the river. That's where they lost contact with the team.

Our silence was shattered by the voice of the pilot "30 seconds out, get ready."
Bill put his hand on my shoulder and sent up a silent prayer for our team. A ritual that has come to comfort me more than I care to admit.

We touched down in a small, burnt out clearing in the jungle. With one last "Good luck boys." From our handler, we hopped out of the huey and into the dark expanses of never ending jungle.

I knelt at the front of our perimeter, scanning the trees and waiting for my eyes to fully adjust.
The sound of the chopper slowly faded away, and I gave a silent hand gesture to move forward.

The second we stepped through that tree line....I don't know.. there was just a heaviness to the air. Like something evil resided there. I think everyone felt it; even Matt - always one for quick humor - was completely silent, scanning the dense undergrowth.

We made it about a mile before we heard rustling to our right. We immediately dropped to a knee and listened. It sounded quick and light, like a rodent or something. It scurried around on and off about 30 yards away, probably hunting for bugs or something.

Honestly, it was kind of comforting. I cracked a small smile imagining its little body scampering around the undergrowth, in its own giant world....until I heard a crash, sticks breaking and frantic squeaking before it was abruptly cut off with a flesh ripping tear.

We stayed silent, waiting for the stray dog or big cat to leave. Eventually we did, but the footsteps sounded weird. They were heavy, like what we expected, but there was something off that I couldn't figure out.

After a few minutes we continued on our path, trudging through the foliage and making sure to watch for traps left by the Vietcong.

We stumbled upon a body right before we hit the mountain. We smelled it before we saw it. The sour, thick smell of death violating our nostrils. It was hanging from its leg, stuck in the crook of a branch about 10 feet up.

Getting a closer look, we could tell it was an NVA soldier, his blue uniform ripped and tattered, barely clinging to his rotting flesh.

"I thought the other team came through here just yesterday.. how the hell is this dude so ripe already?" Ronnie mumbled.

"I don't think the team did it.." Bill whispered, pointing to deep claw marks on the man's arms and face.

Even though he was my enemy, I felt bad for the bastard. Being mauled by a tiger is not exactly the way I'd want to go out. The thing that confused me was that it didn't look like he'd been eaten or anything. Just killed, stashed in the tree, and abandoned.

My thoughts were interrupted by Carter placing a grenade in the corpse's mouth.

"A parting gift, in case these rats come back for him." He grinned.
Bill looked particularly disturbed, but kept his mouth shut. Clutching his rosary.

I about jumped out of my skin when a bird abruptly landed on the branch the corpse was hanging from. 

We all locked eyes with it, a couple rifles raised. It just watched us, unmoving. It opened its mouth to screech but nothing came out. 

A gunshot ripped through the air as the bird exploded in a ball of feathers. I looked over to see Matt was trembling, his finger not even relaxed yet from pulling the trigger. His eyes still locked on the spot on the tree where the bird had been.

"There was no blood.....no sound, no blood...no sound, no blood" he muttered under his breath.

He was right, there wasn't even a drop of blood on the tree, just some scattered feathers.
I grabbed Matt's rifle barrel and gently lowered it, grabbing his shoulder to ground him.

"What do you mean? That thing exploded like a watermelon. It's just dark man, your eyes aren't adjusted from the muzzle flash." I lied. Trying to comfort him.

"No..no blood, no sound..." he muttered again.

I exchanged concerned glances with the rest of the group and grabbed Matt by the shirt.
"Snap out of it Matt. We have people to find. Stop freaking out over a damned bird." I said sternly.

Pulling him behind me to continue on.
I will admit, I was rattled too. In the moment I chalked it up to the darkness playing tricks on us and sleep deprivation (The usual excuses). I still had a pit in my stomach as we marched on.

We reached the peak of the mountain and started along the ridgeline, watching our feet so we didn't slip and break a leg or something.

The trees were thinner on the ridge, and it was the first time we'd gotten to see the stars that night. It helped to ease our tensions a little, there's just something about those little flecks of light in the inky black sky that makes you feel at peace. Then Bill slipped.

He was probably looking to the stars, praying or distracting himself from our tense reality. Regardless, he hit the ground hard, rapidly sliding down the side of the mountain screaming in panic. His scream cutting off sharply after a short distance. 

We shouted his name into the jungle and tried to slowly pick our way down to him.
About 50 yards down we found him, cradled in a nest of tree branches and foliage, almost like he was caught.

He was unconscious, and somehow seemed unscathed. Ronnie grabbed him and shook him, shouting his name to try and wake him up. He woke up a few moments later, dazed and delirious. 

"What the hell happened man?" Matt asked, concerned.

Bill stared back at him with a glazed look.
"I....I don't know...something grabbed my foot I think.."

"What?." I asked abruptly

"Something grabbed my foot..I got dragged..I didn't fall. I felt it dude."

Loud crashing sounds came from the jungle below us. The unmistakable sound of a human clumsily running through the undergrowth.
We raised our rifles, covering Bill in his concussed stupor. 
The crashing grew closer and closer until we heard Vietnamese. We immediately opened fire on where we thought it was coming from.

Emptying our magazines with a mix of fear and defiance to the enemy we were here for in the first place.

We ran dry and began to reload, listening for any more movement. A panicked shout came from the brush "Giúp đỡ, bình an! | Help, Peace"

It was definitely a trap. We all knew it. There was no way we were going into that jungle to find that guy and try to help, just to have him stab us or pull a grenade.

We listened to him cry for help for a few minutes, waiting for his buddies to ambush us, or for him to die.

Our concerns were validated when we heard more movement beyond him. Slowly approaching his position. We got ready to fire, as soon as we could identify who it was, listening intently.

The movement got close to the man, before we heard him say something in a relieved tone. Followed by terrified, blood curdling screaming, thrashing, the sounds of flesh ripping, bones breaking. His screams turned into gurgles and gasps, before the commotion stopped.

We sat there, too terrified to move or even fire our weapons. We heard what sounded like wood creaking and a body being dragged, and still we didn't fire. 

My heart was in my throat, beating with the sound of a Mongol cavalry charge. until the movement began to move towards us. Only then did we fire. Again, and again, we fired until we ran dry. This time I can guarantee it was out of fear.

Reloading, we listened for any movement and waited. None of us wanted to be the first to recommend what we were all thinking. We needed to identify whatever this thing is.

Bill was still dazed and huddled in the middle of our group, his weapon missing from the fall.

I looked at Ronnie and Matt "Stay here. Watch Bill. Find his rifle"

“Carter, you’re with me”

I began carefully making my way towards the man…the thing we shot at.
Whatever bit of comfort we had experienced before, was completely gone. Our muzzles never stopped moving, scanning, waiting. Ready for some creature to jump out at us.

We quickly found the thing that killed the man..it wasn't a tiger like we'd hoped...it was the corpse from the tree. Lying there on the jungle floor, in the same ripped and destroyed blue uniform, but with a distinct lack of rot. He looked fresh, and worst of all..he still had the grenade in his mouth.

We'd definitely killed him, he had about 10 bullet holes in him across his whole body. I put a couple in his forehead just in case.

"What the hell is going on here?.." Carter asked, staring at the dead NVA. Bending down to check him over.

"I don't know.." The only thing I felt confident about that night was that answer. I had no clue what was going on or if this was even real. It felt like one of those nightmares you wake up sweating and crying from. It couldn’t be real, none of this was real.

Deep in thought, trying to get a grip on our situation, Carter brought me back "John.....there's no blood..." Dude's dry.

He removed his finger from one of the bullet holes. Completely dry.

How is this possible? This is a guy, a normal guy. We're fighting a war against his people, we know they bleed. Why doesn't he bleed? Why didn't the bird bleed? How is the grenade still in his mouth?..wait.

I bent down to check on the man's mouth and grabbed the grenade to pull it out. Reaching out I immediately revolted, jerking my hand back and screaming. It was soft, and warm. Not metal.

It wasn't a grenade. It was his mouth... it still looked like a grenade, but there was an opening with teeth, and a tongue.

I grabbed my bayonet from its sheath and began frantically hacking at the NVA's neck. Panic taking over, and fueling my frenzied chopping and slicing. Whatever this thing was, I wasn't giving it any chances.

Once the head had been completely severed, Carter grabbed me by the scruff of my shirt and hauled me to my feet.

"Feel better now? Remind me to not get on your bad side Wolverine." He joked

I looked at him, expressionless, letting myself catch my breath.
"We need to go find that guy we heard screaming. We need to identify him and see if he had any intel on him." I stammered.

"Nope, screw that."
"We're going back to the group and not messing with whatever messed up juju happened over there."

Conflicted, but kind of relieved for the sanity check, I nodded my head and we made our way back to the rest of our squad.

We found Matt and Bill where we left them. Bill was on his feet now, drinking some water. Matt was standing sentry near him, rifle raised at us.

"Where's Ronnie?" I asked confused.

Matt looked at me with a concerned expression on his face.
"We don't know. He went up the hill to find Bill's rifle and hasn't come back yet. We haven't heard anything since he left."

"Damn it." I muttered.
"Lets head back up the hill and link up with him on the way to the ridge line" I ordered.
"Can you walk Bill?" I asked

"Yup, all good. Just a little sore." He replied confidently

We started our hike back to the top, quietly whistling and calling for Ronnie.
About halfway up I thought I heard a stifled yell. I jumped and cracked my elbow against a large, lumpy knot on a tree.

We sat and listened for a bit but heard nothing, and continued on to the top.

We found Ronnie's helmet hanging from a tree.
We didn't even say anything, we knew he was gone.

Especially since the chin strap had been ripped clean from the helmet.
I tried to radio back to base and let them know we had a casualty, but no response. Just dead air. The radio was dead.

Matt grabbed his helmet, rested it at the base of the tree, and we stood silent for a moment as Bill sent up a prayer for Ronnie.

At the moment I hoped he at least died quickly, but knowing what I know now, I know that wasn't the case...

We finally reached the landslide after about 45 minutes. A quick look showed the paths the previous team had used to get down, in the old loose dirt.
At the bottom of the slide, we saw a flash of a silhouette. What looked to be a human.

"Maybe it's one of the team." Matt whispered hopefully.

"Only one way to find out" Carter stated, hopping on to the edge of the slide and beginning a clumsy slide/walk down the hill.

We all followed reluctantly. How he could be this gung ho after what we've seen tonight is beyond me.

"When we get out of here, you're the one telling Ronnie's family he's gone." Matt said coldly to Bill.

"What, why?" He replied confused

"It was your rifle he went looking for, it's only fair you tell them what happened to him."

"Not now Matt." I ordered.

"He could still be out there, we don't know yet." I lied again.

"Yeah. Sure." He mumbled. We all knew I was lying.
We continued on.

We arrived at the last known position of the team about an hour before sunrise. 

There was evidence of a fire fight. Some grenade craters, blood, trampled plants, but no bodies.

In the center of the carnage, was a large tree. Significantly larger than the ones surrounding it, like it was claiming all the nutrients from the surrounding area. It was black and scorched from the base to about halfway up.

They had clearly set it on fire somehow, whether it was intentional or not, I only now know.

"You think they tried to burn someone out?" Bill asked

Pointing to a large hollowed out portion in the base of the tree. Easily big enough to fit a human in.

"Maybe. Must not have worked though. No bones." Carter stated.

He was right, there was no evidence of any remains in the hollow. All there was, was a large strange knot, and a pile of jelly like mess. Thick and viscous, deep red in color, and smelled like rotting fruit, and gasoline.

"Dudeee, that's gross" Carter chuckled, bending down to touch the slime.

"It's warm" He noted

"Well duh, the damn tree was on fire. Of course it's warm" Matt scoffed.

"If you'd use your head more than your biceps more often you'd be able to fi-" Matt's mockery was cut off sharply as a shadow lunged from the tree line and slammed him into the ground.

He screamed and squirmed as the olive green clad figure grabbed him by the face and drug him quickly into the jungle.

We whipped to face the way he went and listened to his screams travel into the distance. We expected to hear him ripped to shreds like the others, but we only heard his screaming fade as he was dragged further and further into the dense green expanse.
Begging to a God that couldn't hear his screams over his rifle firing wildly into the air.

I pissed my pants. I was completely and totally frozen. My brain scrambling for any reasonable explanation to our unnatural predicament.

Grasping at any little fragment of training or intel I could find in the recesses of my brain.

This isn't real. I'm in a nightmare. I'm being punished. This isn't real. I tried to convince myself.
I started to see more shadows in the trees around us. 

Dashing between gaps, ducking behind trees, I think I even saw some climbing.

No grunts, no breathing, just footsteps and foliage being brushed aside or broken.
Carter started firing his machine gun into the trees. Pointing at anything he saw move, hoping to hit anything at all.

Then, the movement stopped.
Suddenly, and completely, it stopped.

Carter stopped firing, breathing heavily and staring wildly into the trees. Bill standing against the tree, shocked and audibly praying for deliverance from this hell.

My heart was pounding in my ears. My eyes whipped from tree to tree, looking for any threat possible. My ears listening for any sound... there was nothing.. not a sound. 

That's the problem, there was absolutely no sound. No bugs, no birds, not even wind.

Then it clicked. There never had been. Ever since we landed I couldn't figure out what felt so off. There were never any normal sounds. Wherever we were, it was dead. It was dead and we were about to be too.

Bill went white as he turned his head to look at my left. I turned to the side and my heart dropped. It was Ronnie.
Just as we'd left him, but no helmet.

He stood there, about 20 feet from us, just staring.

"RONNIE!! YOU OKAY??" Carter yelled in both fear and reluctant optimism.

Ronnie turned his head to Carter slowly and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out...he just silently mimicked Carter with his mouth.

I raised my rifle and shot him in the stomach.
He didn't even flinch, just maintained eye contact with Carter.
A hole in his stomach, not a drop of blood to be seen...

I have never felt more fear in my entire life. The thing that stood in front of me was not natural, it wasn't Ronnie, and it was evil. And it was now surrounded by more.

They had emerged from the trees almost in sync. It must have been the lost team. About 8 of them, in uniforms I'd never seen before, but distinctly U.S.

All their uniforms were in different states of disrepair. Bullet holes, rips and tears, blood stains. 

One man even had a handgun that seemed to take the place of his hand. I locked eyes with a taller man, uniform almost completely scorched. He must have been the one that torched the tree behind us. 

A valiant last stand by a desperate man in a horrible situation. Something within me felt I would soon become brothers with this man in that aspect.

In unison, the horde raised their right arms to point at us, and slowly unhinged their jaws. I wish they screamed, I wish they made any sound, but it was silent. They just stood there, trembling and pointing.

Ronnie lunged at Carter. Knocking his machine gun out of his hands and pinning him to the tree. We didn't even have time to react before Bill and I were tackled to the ground and held down. Heads yanked and craned up to watch Carter wrestling with Ronnie.

The burnt man approached the two and grabbed Carter by the throat, effortlessly hauling him off the ground, keeping him pinned to the tree. He raised his hand. Long unnatural nails, almost like claws, capped the ends of his fingers. He swiftly plunged them into Carter's stomach.

He cried out and choked through the man's iron grip, writhing and twisting in an attempt to free himself.

The burnt man reached inside the wound and came out with a fist full of Carter's long intestine. We watched in horror as the man wrapped the intestine around Carter's neck and tied it. 

Ronnie grabbed the other end and started climbing the tree, pulling the intestine out as he went. Carter kicked and thrashed as his executioner quickly disappeared into the branches, and the intestinal rope drew taught. 

The burnt man let go and Carter dropped, suspended by his own insides, a wild panicked look in his eyes. We watched him die for what felt like hours. I heard Bill vomit before he as well was dragged to the tree, screaming.

Ronnie jumped back down from the tree, hitting the dirt, and making eye contact with me. Carter's body slowly began to be pulled into the branches of the burnt tree.
Disappearing into the darkness, the only sound being his body scraping against the bark, and the squelch of his entrails. 

In his struggle, Bill managed to grab his bayonet and stab one of his captors. I could see the pride and sense of accomplishment in his eyes....so did Ronnie. 

He calmly reached over, grabbed Bill's arm, and broke it in one swift, unnaturally strong movement.

Ronnie seemed to watch as the pride in Bill's eyes changed to anguish and defeat. The burnt man then grabbed Bill by the face, lifted him up and impaled him on a branch. He didn't suffer, maybe by some form of cruel grace of God, the branch went right through his heart. 

Still, his death, of all of them, impacted me the most. I’ve always struggled with religion, but Bill’s faith was weirdly one of the things that made me feel grounded or protected. Losing him took all my hopes of divine intervention, and crushed them beneath the boot of fate. I screamed in defiance and blacked out.

Bill got it the easiest, he's the only one of us that didn't have the time to wallow in the reality of our own demise. He was there, then he wasn't.
I envy him in that aspect, and I hope he is embraced by the God he trusted so heavily in.

I regained consciousness and looked back at Bill on the tree.

My eyes widened as I watched the branch he was on, slowly grow and envelope him like an octopus. It bore through to his brain, burrowed into his body, and completely swallowed him up in a cold, hungry embrace.

I no longer felt the pressure on my back, and I realized I couldn't see any of the creatures surrounding me.
I was completely alone.

I laid there for an eternity, scared to move, waiting for a hand to grab me or claws in my back. Preferably even a gunshot to my head. Nothing.

Just the scraping, stretching sound of the tree consuming my friend.

I sat up, confused, reeling from what I just witnessed. Looking around for any sign of the things that just mutilated my team.

Again, nothing. All there was, was the radio. The radio that could have been our savior, could have kept all of this from happening,  if it hadn't abandoned us in our time of need.
Falling to the backs of our minds in the horrors we were subjected to because of it. It sat about 5 feet from  the base of the tree. I knew it wouldn't work, this place was clearly making sure of that, but I was desperate. I scrambled on my hands and knees, and grabbed it. 

I switched to the emergency frequency, and pulled the trigger. "This is Sergeant John Patrell. Broken Arrow, Broken Arrow."  ......Dead air, not even static.

I began to weep. The weight of everything that happened tonight, finally crashing down all at once.

Then, a crack in the distance. I snapped my head to the trees, awaiting my death, but the sound wasn't the same cracks and crashes we'd heard from the jungle before. It was the radio.

A flurry of cracks and sputters through static.

"Sergeant Patrell. Thi- --- Agent Smith, did you find t- team?" Asked who I assumed to be our handler.

"Confirmed. All KIA. Squad is gone, I'm the only one left. I need immediate evac."

"What did you find Sergeant?" He asked casually.

What the hell kind of question is that? I wondered angrily.

"The team is dead sir. I found no survivors"

"What did you find Sergeant?." He repeated coldly.

I paused for a while, wondering what to say to that question. What was I supposed to say? They'd never take me seriously. You even hint at ghosts or supernatural, or monsters and you'd get thrown in the loony bin.

How am I supposed to explain the deaths of my team to him, or their families?
I mulled over my options, and slowly depressed the radio trigger.

"....I don't know sir. Unknown enemy. Strength unknown."

There was silence for a minute, I wondered if my response even went through.

"Understood. Sending evac. Sit tight." He said quietly.

The tension in my body relaxed, for the first time that night I felt hope. They were coming for me, I just had to make it until they got here. Once I hear the choppers everything will be okay.

I felt it wrap around my ankle.. I knew what it was. I could feel the bark even through my uniform. 

I felt it wrap around my leg and move up my body. I didn't want to look, I didn't need to.
I didn't move, I knew resistance wouldn't get me anywhere, it would just numb the impending dread with adrenaline. 

As I sat there, accepting my fate, I looked around at the jungle around me in the slowly emerging sunrise.

Faces. All the trees had faces. The frozen, agonized faces of past victims, absorbed into the trees. I looked towards the burnt tree, as it dragged me to my inevitable demise. 

My eyes looking up to the branch Bill died on, to the still, scared face of Bill... forever immortalized in his own personal, supernatural crypt.

I didn't know what it would feel like, but I didn't expect it to be warm, and wet.. The tree slowly began to swallow my feet into its base, slowly, inch by agonizing inch. 

It didn't hurt, at least that much is good. I just watched as my lower body was slowly swallowed into the charred bark.

I reached my hand out slowly to touch my captor. I don't know why, I think I just wanted to know what my eternity would feel like. 
Maybe it was a silent plea to the creature devouring me, or a final act of delirium. I'll never know.. I'll never have the time to know.

All I know is I can hear the hueys coming, I can hear the young men on their way to a trap laid by a being that knows no malice, or compassion, or any emotion for that matter. Only hunger.

I know because it told me. It's in my head, and I'm in it. I don't know what the afterlife will be like, or if there will be one. I don't know if I did a good job in this life, or if my family will know the truth. I don’t know how many more will be claimed by this evil patch of jungle.

All I know is I can feel the sun on my face.. I can hear the choppers landing in the distance, and I can see myself, leading my team towards them.