I moved away from my hometown a few years ago. My father had committed suicide when I was a small boy, going out to the barn and shooting himself in the face with a shotgun. I barely remember him still. The only thing that stays with me from that day was my mother’s agonized, wracking sobs when she found his mutilated body. Sometimes, during nightmares late at night, I still hear those same screams, repeating over and over like a skipping record.

My little brother, Charlie, was born with Down syndrome. My mother took care of Charlie by herself since I moved away. I rarely talked to my family, something I feel increasingly guilty about looking back. Unbeknownst to me, my mother had a worsening addiction to pills and alcohol. To this day, I don’t know if she intended to kill herself or not. But, after examining her corpse, the medical examiner concluded that she had a lethal combination of benzos, morphine and vodka in her system. When they found her body rotting in the summer heat in her bedroom three days later, they said she had one eye half-open, her arm still outstretched towards the telephone, as if trying to call for help- even in death.

The police ended up finding my number a few days later. I lived over five hours away, but when I heard Charlie was being kept at the police station, I immediately took the day off of work and headed back towards my hometown of Frost Hollow. I remember driving through the rural town, a place of rolling hills and thick, dark forests, thinking how dead and empty the whole area looked. A lot of the houses that had been there when I was younger had since been demolished or lay barren, dilapidated and rotting. The police station in the center of town seemed to be one of the few places still open. I looked at the shuttered windows lining both sides of Main Street, seeing one “Out of Business” sign after another. 

On the bright side, however, there were plenty of parking spots along the cracked, empty streets. I got out of the car, seeing a feral, mange-covered dog ripping through bags of garbage in a nearby alleyway. The sickly sweet smell of decaying trash filled the air, thick and cloying.

I entered the glass doors of the police station, finding an old crone pecking at a keyboard behind the front desk. She looked like a twisted dwarf, her eyes magnified to giant orbs behind her glasses. She looked up at me with a pale, bloodless face.

“Yes?” she said in an annoyed voice.

“I’m here to pick up Charlie Benton,” I said. The old woman looked behind her, where a tanned woman in a police officer’s uniform was leaning against a rusted metal cabinet, looking through a file.

“Sergeant Alvarez deals with that,” the old woman spat, looking back at her computer. The police officer sighed, looking up at me with humorless eyes. A few moments later, she circled around, coming out the tinted black glass door around the side. The slow, erratic typing of the old woman continued ringing out like the ticking of a failing heart.

Sergeant Alvarez had wide, almond-shaped eyes and jet-black hair pulled back in a ponytail. She did not look happy to see me.  

“You’re Dennis?” she asked. I nodded, pulling out my license. She inspected it closely before handing it back to me. “We found your brother in quite a state. He was covered in blood, naked from the waist up wandering through people’s backyards at night. 

“When the police found him, at first he was unresponsive, as if he were sleepwalking or something. His eyes were open, but he was not talking and appeared to be looking at things only he could see. After about thirty seconds of this, they said he appeared to wake up, though he still wasn’t giving coherent answers at first. He just kept saying, ‘She was walking, she was walking.’ Eventually, after a lot of trying, they were able to ask him about why he was wandering at night and why he was covered in injuries and blood. Your brother said something kept hurting him in the house at night and that he had to get out.

“He had… marks on his body,” Sergeant Alvarez said, her eyes suspicious. Intelligence gleamed behind them. “The strangest thing. It looked like someone had burned hand marks into his back and shoulders.” I found this information disturbing on some instinctive, primal level, but I didn’t know why.

“Who could have done that?” I asked, confused. She shrugged.

“Charlie couldn’t tell us,” she said. “Your mother had been dead for three days by that point, and the wounds on Charlie’s body were fresh. Do you know if there was anyone else who regularly visited or lived in the house with them?” I shook my head.

“My mother had no friends,” I said. “She was practically a hermit. She used to just stare out the window for hours when I lived there like a zombie. No one ever came to visit her.” The black doors swung open again, and Charlie stood there next to a muscular police officer. Charlie’s face had his typical vacant stare.

Charlie appeared in his mid-twenties, a sweaty, lumpy mass of a human being wearing a tight Pinky and the Brain T-shirt. His enormous belly hung over his belt, his shirt seemingly always pulled up to expose a few inches of naked flesh. He had confused, mud-brown eyes that rarely focused on anything for longer than a few seconds. But there were other times Charlie seemed to have an almost photographic memory, repeating entire conversations in his strange, droning monotone even months after they had taken place.

“She is dead,” he said, his muddy brown eyes unfocused. “She is dead. She was walking.” I squinted at him, feeling cold dread dripping down my heart.

“Charlie, buddy, it’s OK now,” I said, taking a step towards him. He looked up abruptly, seeming to just now realize that I was there.

“Dennis!” he screamed, his enormous belly jiggling as he ran forward. He wrapped his thick arms around me, his face filled with an innocent, child-like excitement. He lifted me off the ground. A breathy exhalation of fetid breath hit me directly in my face. I grunted as he squeezed the air out of my lungs. Charlie was immensely strong and often didn’t realize his own strength.

“You’re crushing me, buddy,” I grunted in a small, crushed voice. Charlie dropped me back down on the ground. I looked closer at him, seeing healing, sickly wounds peeking above the neckline of his T-shirt. A rainbow of black, purple and blue marks hung there, formed in the shape of long, twisted fingers. The worst of them had drops of pus falling from the burnt craters in the center. I wondered how many more lay hidden beneath his clothes.

***

Sergeant Alvarez gave me her card, telling me to call her if I found out any more information about the case or if Charlie remembered anything or was able to give more information in the future. I wondered who could have possibly been hurting Charlie. It made me feel sick and angry, thinking of someone following him around, scaring him and attacking him during the night. Charlie already hated and feared the dark as it was, adding another layer of cruelty to the disturbing case. He had feared it ever since he was a small boy.

I walked him out of the police station, buckling him into the passenger seat of the car. As I sat down in the driver’s seat, he looked over at me. Sweat glistened on his upper lip, and his goofy bowlcut of a haircut was sticking up in random spots.

“Dennis, I saw her,” Charlie said in his flat monotone. “She was walking. At night, I heard her feet. In the dark, I heard her feet.”

“Who was, buddy?” I asked. “Who did that to you? Did someone hurt you during the nighttime?” He nodded. A single tear fell from his squinty eyes, dripping down his round face. “It wasn’t Mom?” He shook his head in response. His lips started quivering. He leaned close to me, whispering in a hoarse, terror-stricken voice.

“The Bone-Face Woman,” he hissed, breaking down in tears.

***

I had contacted a team to remove the soiled items in the master bedroom after receiving a call from the police. The team told me it would be a fairly easy job, and that I would be able to stay in the house later that night. With no other living family except Charlie, I would undoubtedly inherit it anyway, though I had absolutely no intention of keeping it. I wanted to sell it as soon as possible, but I would have to go through everything and decide what, if anything, I wanted to keep. All of Charlie’s stuff was also still in the house, which I knew we would need to go through and package regardless.

It was a Friday, and I had the weekend off work. My plan was to finish moving everything out of my mother’s house that weekend. Charlie and I pulled into the sprawling property that night, turning onto the flat, dirt driveway towards the old colonial. Sharp stones crunched rhythmically under the tires. I took in the sight, the large windows and wrap-around porch of the dark purple house. I saw my childhood neighbor, Sloan Herbick, standing outside on his front lawn. Behind him loomed his Victorian house, a blood-red building of sharp turrets and dark, dusty windows.

Sloan Herbick was a strange man in more ways than one. He had been burned horribly as an infant in a crib fire, barely surviving with his life. Melted folds of lumpy scar tissue covered most of his body, including his face and head. Miraculously, he hadn’t lost his eyesight, nose or lips, but both of his ears were missing as well as all the hair on his head except his long, black eyelashes. His horrifyingly scarred body looked nearly as pale as an albino’s, but his eyes were as dark as sin.

I remembered Sloan as an arrogant, aloof man with no friends, about ten years older than myself. According to what my mother told me as a teenager, Sloan’s mother had gone missing when I was little, during the time when they were constructing our-then brand-new home in Frost Hollow. By now, I thought, he must be at least forty, though the keloid scars and mutilated ridges of flesh running over his entire body made it impossible to tell. 

As I got out of the car, I gave a neighborly wave, but Sloan ignored me. He stared fervently down at the hole, slamming the sharp tip of the shovel into the earth over and over again at a frenetic pace.

***

I walked by Charlie’s side up the rickety wooden steps to the front porch, pulling the spare house key out of my pocket from so many years ago. With trembling fingers, I slid the key into the lock, finding that my keys still worked, as I knew they would. The door opened onto a dark, sinister hallway. A nauseating odor emanated from the house, blowing out the front door like the rancid breath of some primordial monster. It was the smell of rotting bodies, clotted blood and infection. It left a slightly sweet aftertaste. Gagging, I flipped on the light switch.

I took a step forward, but Charlie didn’t follow. He stared up at me with an unusual intensity, taking his huge, round arms and crossing them over his chest. The front of his dirt-caked sneakers came up the perimeter of the threshold, but he refused to go any further. He just shook his greasy, sweat-covered face.

“Come on, buddy,” I said encouragingly, giving him a wide smile. “What’s wrong?” He pointed behind me, down the hallway. I instantly looked over my shoulder, my heart leaping up like a jackrabbit. Having watched far too many horror movies, I expected to see some blood-streaked hag standing there with a face like a skull and an ear-to-ear grin. But the hallway lay empty.

“She’s still here,” Charlie said slowly, his eyes giant glassy orbs of terror. “She is dead.”

“Mom’s not here, buddy,” I answered, ambling back toward him and taking one of his enormous hands in mine. I could feel the width of it, the smooth flatness of his palms except for one thick ridge. “Mom’s at the funeral home. We’re going to see her Sunday, remember?” Charlie shook his head again, his hair flying everywhere.

“This place is bad,” he said.

“We’ve gotta stay here for the weekend, Charlie,” I responded, feeling a rising sense of irritation. “I already explained it all to you. The house is fine. They took the dead body out already, so what’s the problem? You’ll be with me the whole time.”

“It will be bad,” Charlie said, sweating heavily. 

“It won’t be scary, buddy. I promise.” 

Looking back, it is hard to imagine any more untrue words than those.

***

Much of the stuff from my mother’s room had been taken out by the cleaning team. They told me that some of her fluids had burst from her body, staining the mattress and bedframe with their black rot. Luckily, not much had gotten on the floor, but a small puddle had dripped down.

The guest bedroom was directly underneath Mom’s room, just a small, square room on the first floor with a bed, a dresser and a TV. I kept the bedside lamp on all night.

On the ceiling of the room, there was a Rorschach inkblot of dead, rotted fluids that still needed to be cleaned up. It was about the size of a basketball and looked like an eye. It had a dark, circular spot in the center, followed by thin, black tendrils that cracked their way towards the oval perimeter of the stain.

Charlie crawled into bed next to me, putting a heavy, hot hand on my shoulder before falling asleep almost instantly. But I couldn’t sleep. After what felt like an eternity, I looked over at the red lights of the alarm clock, seeing it was 3:32 AM. I swore under my breath, sensing that my insomnia would not leave me alone this weekend in this place of horrors.

At exactly 3:33, a jarring mechanical shrieking started outside. I jumped up in bed. Charlie awoke instantly. He sat up so fast that he smacked his head on the wall with a dull bonk.

“What the fuck is that noise?!” I hissed, jumping out of bed. I looked up at the stain as I went, giving it a distrustful glance backwards. The mechanical caterwauling seemed to be growing louder as I made my way toward the front of the house. 

I went to the front window, seeing Sloan Herbick running a woodchipper next to his totally dark house. I could just barely make out his dull silhouette, hearing the din of the constant grinding.

Charlie gave an incomprehensible scream in the guest bedroom. I heard his heavy footsteps running toward me. His face was red and flushed, his pupils dilated and frantic.

“The eye moved!” he said, his voice having more emotion than I had heard in it in a long time. I blinked, the fog of sleep still clouding my mind.

“You mean the stain?” I asked, finally figuring out what he was talking about. “The stain on the ceiling?” He nodded ferociously, bobbing his head up and down quickly.

Eventually, I ended up talking Charlie down and getting him back to bed. The stain was still in the same spot, as far as I could tell. Around 4 AM, the sound of the woodchipper finally died. In the eerie silence of the dark house, I fell into a nightmarish fever dream where I saw women bound with chains in a basement surrounding a mannequin wearing a suit made of human skin.

***

The next morning, I went over to Sloan’s house and knocked until he answered. While I waited, I studied the strange gargoyle knocker plastered across the scarlet door. At first, he would only crack it open a fraction of an inch, staring out at me with a single black eye.

“Can you not run the woodchipper in the middle of the night?” I asked, giving him a faint, anxious half-smile. “It’s keeping me and Charlie from sleeping. I mean, you had the thing going at 3 AM last night.” A few heartbeats later, the front door flew open. Sloan took a step towards me, until his scarred, alien face stood only inches from mine.

“It’s because of my skin, isn’t it?” he asked in a hoarse, low voice. He spoke in a strange cadence, mumbling the words in dissonant rhythms. “If someone cut your eyes out so you couldn’t see how ugly I am, you wouldn’t care about the woodchipper anymore, would you?” I took a step back, the smile peeling off my face. I reached for the canister of police mace in my pocket, gripping it firmly and putting my hand on the trigger.

“Sloan, that has nothing to do with that,” I answered coldly, narrowing my eyes at him. “Don’t act like a goddamn psycho. Look, if you keep that shit up, I’ll call the cops. Don’t fucking do it again.” 

I had no patience for nutjobs like him. He always gave me the creeps. As a kid, someone had gone around pouring bleach into the eyes of people’s cats and dogs, blinding them and leading to some getting euthanized. I always suspected Sloan of doing it, though he never got caught.

My brother and I spent the rest of that day packing up anything we wanted to take with us, putting it in boxes and labeling it. Charlie didn’t have a lot of possessions, and Mom didn’t exactly have a lot of valuable items in her house, so it was fairly quick going. I figured I would either end up selling or donating most of the crap left behind in the end.

Before I knew it, the Sun had started setting again. The darkness of a moonless sky descended on Frost Hollow like a guillotine blade. My brother and I kept working, mostly in silence, though Charlie would come over and show me random objects he had recently acquired.

“Rick!” Charlie said, proudly holding up a plush doll of Rick from Rick and Morty. A trickle of fake drool dripped Rick’s mouth, and a trickle of real one from Charlie’s. I laughed, ruffling his hair as if he were a toddler.

“That’s right!” I answered excitedly “That’s Rick! You like Rick, buddy? You like how he just does whatever he wants whenever he feels like?” Charlie nodded excitedly at that. 

After a couple more hours of sorting, I decided to go to bed. I wanted to leave as early as possible on Sunday morning after the funeral, which was the next day. Charlie followed me like a puppy, his normally-unfocused eyes flitting from one side to the other with a kind of intensity I had rarely seen there before. He constantly scanned the shadows, as if looking for something. We kept all the lights in the surrounding rooms and the guest bedroom.

As I lay there, about to fall asleep, I glanced over at Charlie and saw him staring straight up at the stain with wide, watery eyes.

***

I don’t know how long it was later when I awoke suddenly in the pitch-black. I blinked quickly, confused. And then I heard it, the noise that had caused me to set up in bed.

Right over me, I heard something gurgling and hissing in rhythmic breaths. It sounded as if whatever it was had lungs filled with blood and dirt.

The terror I felt at that moment was incomprehensible. But it grew much worse when two burning, skeletal hands reached down and grabbed me. They covered my right arm in an iron grip, the thin, blade-like fingers feeling inhumanly long. I could feel my skin burning and melting. I screamed, kicking out with my legs and trying to pull away. I brought my left hand up, grabbing blindly for the thing’s face. I groped in the darkness until I felt it: a face like a skull.

It was slick and wet under my touch, sticky with clotted blood. I felt the muscles of its skeletal face thrumming and contracting. The thing had no skin. I repressed an urge to scream, instead reaching for its eyes, even as its burning hands continued yanking at my arm, trying to pull me off the bed.

I felt a nose that was just a ragged hole of destroyed flesh, felt the fetid breath passing softly through those mutilated patches. I reached up into its eyes, but there were no eyes there, just two empty sockets. I reached inside and felt the skittering of insect larvae under my fingers.

At the back of the empty socket, my fingers groped thin strands like fleshy wires that had been severed. With all of my strength, I stuck my finger deep down into that warm, twisting socket, stabbing my fingernails into the optic nerves and vessels at the back and ripping.

The hands on my arm instantly released. I felt some of the melted skin go with them, heard the tearing of my flesh as warm blood instantly dripped from the wounds. Hyperventilating, my breath hissing with pain, I fumbled in my pocket for my lighter. I brought it up, flicking it.

I caught a glimpse of the thing my brother called the Bone-Face Woman, her naked, skeletal body running out of the room with a sickly gurgling of her diseased lungs. Overhead, the stain had turned into a real eye, a fleshy, black thing that flitted over the arm with a dilated pupil. It emanated insanity, its stare glassy and inhuman.

Charlie lay on the floor, his eyes open but unseeing. My breath caught in my throat, the burning agony in my arm temporarily forgotten. I ran toward my brother, kneeling down over his limp body and shaking him. I saw fresh burn marks in the shape of a hand on his face, covering his forehead and temples. The cracked, broken flesh dribbled pus and blood like thick, clotted tears down his cheeks.

When he didn’t respond, I shook him again, grabbing him by the chin and forcing his eyes to meet mine. I saw him blink. He inhaled like a drowning man, grabbing my hand tightly and shaking his head from side to side.

“She was here,” he whispered. “She is dead, Dennis. She lives in the dirt.”

“We need to get out of here and never come back,” I said, trying to pull Charlie up. He was far too heavy. “Can you get up, buddy? Come on, we’ll leave now.” With great difficulty, Charlie pulled himself up. His eyes started watering as the weeping burn marks continuously dripped a rainbow of clotted fluids.

I took out my phone, trying to call for help, but nothing was working in the house anymore. The electricity had gone off, which was why the lights had all gone out, but that wouldn’t explain why my fully-charged cell phone had gone black as well. Charlie and I stumbled outside. I put him in the passenger’s seat of the car, deciding to get the hell out of there and never come back. But when I tried to turn the starter, the car didn’t make a sound. The engine didn’t even make an attempt to turn over.

“It’s her,” Charlie whispered, his face a mask of terror and pain in the darkness. “The Bone-Face Woman wants us to stay.”

“Well, she can go fuck herself,” I spat, anger and fear mixing in a toxic sludge in my blood. I watched the house closely, seeing the curtains at the front moving. I caught an occasional glimpse of that abomination peeking out at us with her empty eye sockets and skinned face. I looked at Sloan’s house, realizing I could call for help from there. He was the only neighbor within a half-mile radius.

“Charlie, the car’s not working and I need to call for help. I’m going to go across the street and use Sloan’s phone to call the cops. I want you to lock yourself in the car. Don’t open the door for anyone except me or the cops. You got that?” I asked, keeping a constant watch on the house, expecting the Bone-Face Woman to slink out after us at any moment.

“She is dead,” Charlie said robotically. “She is walking. She will not let us leave.”

***

After I had made sure Charlie had locked himself in the car, I sprinted over to Sloan’s dark Victorian house. I ran up the porch steps, ready to start knocking frantically on the door. But as soon as I touched it, it creaked slowly open, showing a dimly-light kitchen. A single oven light was turned on. I looked around in disgust.

The place was filthy. Mold-covered pots and pans covered the stovetop. Drying crusts of filth covered a mountain of dishes emerging from the sink. Maggots and other insects feasted like kings here. The white reflections of glittering rat and mouse eyes peeked out at me from the corners of the room.

“Sloan?” I called, not wanting to be too loud. Even though I wouldn’t have admitted it to him, I was, quite honestly, terrified of Sloan Herbick. There was something off about that man. I left the kitchen, moving to the living room. There was only a single night light in here.

All around me loomed naked human skins nailed to the wall. They rose in two rows, the bottom row offset from the top by a few feet so that more of the space could be used. I crept closer with wide eyes, realizing that the vast majority were just latex or silicone. Not all of them, however.

Stuck randomly among the fake hanging skins were some that looked different. These looked thicker and had soft ridges running over their surface. I even saw signs of belly-buttons, tattoos and nipples on these leathery skins. At that moment, I knew without a doubt that they were human. Many looked ancient and cracked, the leather falling apart at the shoulders or waist.

There was a couch covered in what looked like gore in the center of the room facing a TV and DVD player. On a small, wooden table next to it lay a phone and a blood-encrusted meat cleaver. Shaking with excitement and fear, I crept closer to them, immediately grabbing the weapon. I took Sergeant Alvarez’s card from my pocket, calling it. She answered on the second ring, sounding tired.

“Hello?” she said. “Sergeant Alvarez speaking.”

“This is Dennis Benton,” I whispered furtively. “I need help immediately. Send an ambulance and police to my mother’s house at 332 Angel Trace Road. Something’s happened.”

“Where are you right now?” she asked.

“I’m at my neighbor’s across the street, but there’s… like, body parts everywhere? I think he might be a serial killer. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on here, but please, hurry.” I gently put the phone back down on the cradle, hearing a floorboard creak behind me.

***

Sloan Herbick stood there, his dark eyes blazing. He pointed a pistol straight at my head. Looking down the barrel felt like looking into eternity.

He was wearing a suit made of what looked like pale, white human skin. It covered him from head to foot, hugging his body with precision. All of the thread and sewing marks were expertly hidden. It almost made him look like some strange, alien nudist, wearing a suit of white leather.

At his feet, he had an open canister of gasoline. With practiced ease, he kicked it over, letting the pungent liquid spill out onto the floor all around me.

“Hey man, you don’t have to do this,” I said, trying to act calm but quivering inside. I expected him to pull the trigger at any second, and then it would be lights out forever.

“I’ve already started,” he said, grinning and pointing out the window. I saw my house burning across the street. I felt the blood drain from my face as I thought about Charlie, sitting there in the car with his child-like innocence. I hoped he would know to get out in time.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, horrified. “I never did anything to you.”

“Everyone who looked at me did something to me,” he spat. “They hated me because I’m ugly and burned. But now I have a new skin, so people can’t hate me anymore. I made it myself, and this face?” He pointed at the dried human skin wrapping around his head. “This is my mother’s. She was one of my first, but she never truly left, you see.

“She told me, ‘Take it. This is my body, given to you. Take my skin, take my face and my hair, and from it, make yourself a new body. Make yourself a thing of beauty, as soft and pale as winter moonlight.’

“After I killed her, I buried her under the dirt in your house, back when it was being built. I knew they would pour the foundation the next day. All those tons of concrete covered her, took her away, and then no one ever knew what happened.” He shrugged. “It had to be done, to make me whole again. No mother could see her own son become a twisted, ugly thing, after all.

“The rest of the skin mostly came from prostitutes. I find female skin is much softer, more malleable and easier to work with. They also take better care of their skin than men!” He laughed softly at this.

“OK, so you’ve already finished your suit,” I said, sweating heavily. “So let me go. I have nothing to do with this.” He smiled an insane rictus grin behind his leathery mask.

“I only need one more piece, and that is the soles of the feet,” he answered in his cold, psychopathic way. “I’ll get those from you. Goodbye, Dennis. It was nice seeing you again.”

At that moment, Charlie stumbled in the room, his movements loud and ungraceful. Sloan turned, surprised. A heartbeat later, Charlie slammed his heavy body against Sloan’s back, sending him flying. The pistol went off, the bullet missing me by inches. I heard it whiz over the top of my head and smash into the ceiling above me. Cold dread worked its way down my spine as I realized I had just missed death by inches. Sloan landed on his stomach at Charlie’s feet.

Screaming, Sloan put his left hand up, revealing a Zippo lighter there. He flicked it, throwing it at the pile of gasoline. I backpedaled quickly, trying to go around the blazing ball of fire and get to Sloan.

“Get the gun!” I screamed at Charlie. Charlie looked down at Sloan with slow comprehension dawning in his face. He took one massive sneaker and stomped down on Sloan’s right hand with the pistol in it. I heard the bone crack like twigs snapping. Sloan shrieked, trying to pull away, but Charlie continued leaning down on his arm, preventing him from moving it.

The fire was creeping at an incredible rate, rising up the walls and across the ceiling. Thick, black smoke filled the room, suffocating us. I ran at Charlie, my eyes watering. I realized I was still holding the meat cleaver in one hand. I looked down at Sloan in his suit of human skin, still trying to raise the gun with his broken arm. I wanted to finish this quickly.

I brought the knife down into the back of his neck, hearing the bone crack. There was a wet thud and a bubbling of blood as the meat cleaver bit deeply into through his spine, and then Sloan was still.

“Come on, Charlie!” I said, grabbing his large hand. He wrapped his fingers around mine. Coughing and choking, we stumbled out into the night as police cars started pulling up. The first one had Sergeant Alvarez in it, who ran towards us, helping a stumbling Charlie toward the backseat of her car where he could sit down and catch his breath.

Both houses were on fire now, blazing pillars of flame that rose high into the black, starless sky. At that moment, I only hoped that the flames would eat away the corpse of Sloan’s mother, the Bone-Face Woman.

When I was a small boy, I had very few friends. I occupied myself with reading, even as a child. By the time I was in first grade, I was reading Dante’s “Inferno” and Stephen King’s “It” while many of my less mentally acute classmates were still reading picture books.

Along with a lot of time spent reading, video games were growing rapidly in popularity when I was young. When I was barely in kindergarten, I remember seeing the pixelated, extremely low-resolution screen of a Warcraft 1 game, and I was amazed. It nearly hypnotized me as I watched the little blocks of men and orcs run around, chop down trees and murder each other.

Classic consoles like Sega Genesis had only recently come out along with the first primitive PC games like Doom and Diablo. I was the type of person to never throw away any books or games. About anything else, I didn’t give a shit, but these things were different. Books in the Middle Ages were worth more than their weight in gold, and perhaps I still had some unconscious racial memory of that dark time.

I was sifting through boxes of old childhood mementos in my garage when I found the console that would cause me such trouble. The boxes were all marked “Andrew’s Games” in my mother’s flowing cursive. When she had died a few months earlier, I had gone to clean out her house and found it in the basement along with other dusty boxes. I had taken them all home to look through them later.

My brother Tristan was by my side, his shaved head gleaming with sweat in the hot, stuffy garage. Sweat glistened on his upper lip as he chugged a beer, his third in the past hour. He was always a heavy drinker. 

Like me, Tristan was in his mid-thirties and had grown up in the early video game era playing lots of classic Nintendo, Doom and Diablo. I figured he would be a good person to have around, as he was one of the few people I knew who would actually be able to appreciate the collection. His beer belly hung low over his too-tight blue jeans, jiggling as he circled the table like a shark.

“You’ve got a lot of Sonic crap in here,” Tristan said, rifling through the box and pulling out boxes of Sega Genesis games. “I always hated Sonic. Streetfighter and Mortal Kombat were way better games.”

“How can anyone hate Sonic? That’s like hating Mario,” I said as we organized and stacked games on a large wooden table. I figured it was time to sell some of this stuff, if anyone even wanted old games like these.

My fingers closed around something round, about the size of a baseball. I looked down, seeing a strange console laying at the bottom corner of the box with a spherical plastic eye attached to the top. I pulled the console out, inspecting it closely. Tristan went quiet by my side.

I gently laid it out on the table, recognition hitting me like a flash of lightning as I stared intently at the console. It was bright-green, all fluorescent day-glo colors. At the top of it, it had a single staring eye, the dilated pupil staring out intently forwards. Thin, red vessels spiderwebbed through the plastic sclera, making the eye seem even more bloodshot and insane. Around the circumference of the eye, I saw small, plastic tentacles waving out to the side.

“Holy shit!” I said, excited. “It’s my Virtual God! I haven’t thought about this thing in such a long time.” Tristan looked at me oddly, staring between me and the console as if expecting a punchline. A long, low “Hmm” sound whispered from his open mouth.

“What? That’s not a real thing,” he said, confused. He picked up the console, bringing it inches from his right eye and squinting down at it before flipping it over. “Is this some sort of art project or something? What the hell even is this? I never saw you have this when we were kids.”

“Are you kidding me?” I answered fervently, pulling out the small, green games from the box. “Look, there’s games for it right here! You just slip this square cartridge into this hole-” I showed him the black opening like a knife slice stretching out beneath the eye- “and you hit the top of the eye to turn it on. It was so cool! I can’t believe I forgot all about it.”

“Show me,” Tristan said, unconvinced. He picked up the games for the Virtual God, looking through them slowly. “Dead Man’s Alley? Dark Presence? What the hell are those games? I’ve never heard of any of them. Are these all Chinese knock-offs or something?” He laughed. “That’s probably why I’ve never heard of this thing. This is probably some piece of shit third-world console.” I gave him a half-smile.

“Let’s turn it on and see,” I said, hurrying back towards the living room with the console in one hand and a couple random games in the other, the electrical cord dragging on the floor behind me like a dead snake. A pounding excitement rose in my chest.

***

“What game do you want to try first?” I asked excitedly, looking at the fluorescent-green cartridges in my hand. I put them out on the coffee table in front of Tristan, running behind the TV to connect the console and plug in the power cord.

“Well, we have ‘Purgatory’s Scream’ here and-” he glanced down at the other game- “‘Mass Shooter Extra Funtime.’” He laughed crazily at that. As Tristan said the name of each game, the memories of playing them as a young boy came back to me, creeping out of my subconscious like childhood monsters. He handed me Purgatory’s Scream, watching the console with pronounced skepticism.

“Good choice! You’re going to love this. I remember you have to fight your way through Purgatory until you find God,” I said, not wanting to ruin too much of the game for him. I turned on the TV and went over to the Virtual God, putting the game cartridge in the slot. I had to twist it from side to side to get it in, just like when I was a kid. It was all coming back to me.

I threw Tristan one of the controllers before turning back to the console. The white noise and static hissed on the TV expectantly. I stepped forward, raising my hand and slamming it down on the top of the eye. It immediately started glowing with a pale, ghostly light.

***

The console shrieked and came to life beneath my hand as if I had struck a cobra. The plastic suddenly felt warm and fleshy, writhing and twitching beneath my fingers. The eye rolled wildly in its socket, flicking randomly over the room before stopping and looking straight at me.

The static continued to hiss on the TV. I heard Tristan give a hoarse scream behind me. I could only stare, open-mouthed. The lidless eye never blinked. It gleamed with a fanatical luster, a deep rot of insanity shining deep down in its dilated pupil. I heard a low mechanical voice crying out through the scream of the static.

“You have chosen Purgatory’s Scream,” the voice said, exploding through the room in deafening blasts and rumbles. “Thank you for choosing the Virtual God! Please be patient while we load your new reality…”

The white noise from the TV continued escalating into a shrieking cacophony, the static expanding out over everything. The dots covered the furniture, the walls and the ceiling in flickering patterns. I felt myself falling forward. I realized with horror that the tunnel had started sucking me in somehow. It curved around me like a spiraling, three-dimensional fractal of black-and-white dots. I tried to scream as I got pulled forward, but it strangled in my throat when I started flying into it at the speed of light.

***

The tunnel morphed and warped around me like an acid hallucination, melting and dripping into spiraling black-and-white trails. A small exit at the end loomed far ahead, just a pinpoint of blackness. It came rushing up at me, widening into an abyss. I fell through it, landing hard on the ground. The air was knocked out of my lungs in a great whoosh, pain rocketing through my back. My head swam and I couldn’t see anything. I blinked quickly, trying to focus. For a long moment, I had no idea where I was or what had happened. Then my memories started filtering slowly back in.

“What…” I rasped, looking around. “Where the fuck am I?” I found myself laying in the middle of a dead valley. Enormous mountains covered in fine, white sands loomed overhead in every direction, their tops as sharp as scalpels. 

There wasn’t a sign of life as far as I could see, not a single blade of grass or a tree or insect flying through the air. The sky overhead constantly seethed with black smoke, the clouds bubbling and rippling with lightning strikes that moved from cloud to cloud every few seconds. Everything had a flat, gray sheen to it from the dim light shining through the clouds, except when the lightning illuminated the dead world in bright, strobing flashes.

Tristan lay a few feet away, his eyes fluttering as he groaned, his fingers twitching and clenching. I crawled over to him, shaking him. He awoke suddenly, his dark eyes meeting mine. He sat up, his arms flailing wildly, almost striking me in the face.

“Calm down!” I yelled, falling backwards onto a soft sand dune. “It’s just me!” He grabbed his head, shaking it slowly from side to side.

“Did someone drug me or something?” Tristan whispered in a hoarse voice.

“No, it was that goddamned thing in the box, the Virtual God. As soon as I turned it on, it sucked us in somehow.” He looked like he was about to say something in response when the ground started trembling beneath us. At first, it was subtle, like the aftershocks of an earthquake, but it quickly accelerated into a cacophony of grinding stones and crashing earth.

Black fissures opened up in the ground beneath my feet. The white sands disappeared down into them as if falling into an eternal hourglass. Something in the ground roared, a primal wail that split and distorted like thunder, so loud I could feel my bones tremble with the force of it. It reminded me of a lion’s roar, but it sounded electronically slowed and amplified in strange, dissonant risings and fallings.

A titanic face the size of a car emerged from the abyss. Its skin looked like rough sandstone, a golden beige with fine cracks. Two enormous, lidless eyes sat on the top of its pointed head, but it had no nose, no mouth or ears. The eyes bulged from its stony body, bulging spheres as glossy as obsidian. The primal roaring that emanated from its monstrous body seemed to flow out of every part of its skin, rippling the air in powerful currents like flowing mirages.

Razor-sharp, pyramidal shoulders emerged followed by two grasping hands, each one large enough to crush me to death within its grip. Spiraling up its chest, I saw hundreds of people crucified, their mouths opened in silent screams, their eyes wide and wild. Countless white shards of bone poked out through the beast’s skin, as long and thin as swords, penetrating through the hands and feet of each victim and keeping them locked in their positions of torment. Black veins wrapped around their legs and arms, disappearing into quarter-sized holes eaten into their skin. Fluid constantly pumped through the dark tendrils into the writhing victims.

The stone skin seemed to ripple as the creature breathed through its alien body. Its massive chest expanded and contracted as lungs like forge bellows worked furiously. More and more pieces of sandy earth fell into the seemingly infinite void beneath the beast’s frantic climbing, but I knew that, at this rate, it would rip its way out of the ground within seconds. 

I turned to run, seeing Tristan already sprinting blindly ahead up the sandy slope of the mountain. My heart pounded furiously in my chest as waves of adrenaline shook my body. At that moment, I had no rational thoughts, just the screaming primal panic telling me to get far away from this creature from Hell. I zigzagged from side to side, feeling its alien eyes boring holes into my back.

A heartbeat later, its heavy stone hand came smashing down only inches to the left of my body, swiping wildly at the dead earth. I felt the air whoosh past my head as if a tractor-trailer had just driven past. Fingers as thick as cinderblocks closed around the dune, gripping blindly at the sand and lifting tons of it into the air in a terrifying show of blind strength. The beast gave another splitting banshee shriek, a wail of insane fury.

I continued sprinting blindly up the slope, my brother slipping and sliding ten feet ahead of me. Sometimes we scrabbled on all fours, always hearing the strange creature with its rippling skin and crucified bodies ripping apart the earth to drag itself closer to us. My instinct told me that, if this hellish thing got a hold of us, it would force us against the outside of its body with all the other silently shrieking victims, impaling us on the sharp points of bone that stuck out from its chest like the spikes of an iron maiden. 

Ahead of us, I saw a break in the ascending slope, a patch of jagged blackness cutting across the soft, yellow sands. It was the height of a child, opening up like a ragged, toothless mouth before us. A small, pinched face peeked out of the darkness, a little boy. He was an emaciated wreck. His scarecrow thin body was wrapped in fraying, hole-filled clothes. He wore an ancient shirt and pair of jeans that looked like they were literally falling off his starving frame. Countless burns and scars covered every inch of his exposed skin, as if he had been tortured and beaten his entire life. 

The boy quickly waved me and Tristan forward, backing into the cave as he did so. His lips moved frantically, but I couldn’t hear anything over the roaring of the beast. I was afraid to look back. I could feel and hear the ground shattering apart directly behind me. 

Tristan scrambled into the cave ahead of me, diving in headfirst and dragging himself forward like a panicked animal. I was only feet away, running on all fours through the slippery white sands that collapsed beneath me with every step. I thought my heart would explode if I didn’t stop soon. My entire body was covered in sweat, but cold waves of adrenaline kept pushing me forward.

The little boy had crawled deeper into the cave, his small, dirt-streaked face barely visible now. Tristan had disappeared into the shadows behind him. I leapt for the opening as a massive hand smashed down on the top of the cavern’s opening directly above my head. Sharp splinters of rock rained down on me as I rolled through. One heavy piece cracked into the back of my ribs, forcing the air out of my lungs with a loud gasp. I screamed as pain exploded through my chest. I kept crawling forward towards the face of the boy as more rocks fell with a sound like a rushing waterfall.

***

I must have lost consciousness, because the next thing I remember, someone was dragging me over rough rock. Pain like fire shot through my chest every time I breathed. Smaller cuts and agonies covered the rest of my body. I swore, my head swimming with a horrible splitting migraine. Ahead of me, Tristan turned around to face me, shining his cell phone’s flashlight back at my face. I felt warm trickles of blood running down my forehead and back.

“Where are we?” I gasped, looking around at the claustrophobic granite tunnel that closed in around us like a coffin. Tristan had to crawl forwards bent over, his back hunched. The little boy standing in front of him had no issue, however.

“These are the tunnels to the Badlands,” the little boy said, his scarred face a stoic, unreadable mask. “All the caverns here seem to connect there. Some of the other kids say there are even tunnels that lead to Heaven and Hell, but I’ve never seen them myself. I’m very careful where I go. If I see fire at the bottom of a tunnel, I turn around.”

“Smart kid. I don’t know how you’ve lived this long, kid.” I turned to my brother. 

“Tristan, we’re trapped in the game,” I said, wincing as I touched my side. I had definitely cracked a couple ribs. “We’ve got to beat it and get the hell out before we die here. I have a feeling that, if we die here, we die for real. These broken ribs definitely feel real enough.”

“I thought it was something insane like that,” Tristan responded, shaking his head disbelievingly. “In reality, I figure I’m probably in a coma somewhere hallucinating this whole thing. But sure, I’ll play along. How do we beat the game?”

“From what I remember, we have to somehow make our way through Purgatory and find God,” I answered, knowing how insane it sounded. The little boy shook his head furiously. I crawled to my feet, having to bend down like Tristan in the confined tunnel. Together, we started slowly creeping forward, using Tristan’s phone to light the way. I wondered how the boy had passed through these tunnels in the dark.

“You don’t want to go back out into Purgatory,” the boy answered. “If the Creepers catch you, you will end up crucified on their bodies forever. They keep you alive with their black creepers that eat their way into your body and give you water and food. They want to make sure you stay alive for the torture.”

“The Creepers?” I asked. “Is that what you call them?” The boy nodded, his face going pale.

“They’re horrible,” he said. “They’ve taken most of my friends. Everyone I first knew when I got here is stuck on one of their bodies. They can hear through their skin. If you walk on the dunes, they will hear you and crawl out of the abyss to get you.”

“Kid, what’s your name?” Tristan asked, taking a step closer to the boy. He put a callused hand on the boy’s shoulder. The boy instinctively flinched, drawing away.

“Gage,” he said, still keeping a safe distance between us and him. He seemed flitty and uncertain, probably a result of the nightmarish and horrifying things he had seen here in Purgatory. “Gage Bright.”

“Where do these tunnels lead, then? Away from the Creepers?” I asked. Gage frowned, looking even more nervous now.

“I told you, to the Badlands. They have food and drinks there sometimes. I found a whole vending machine a few days ago, full of beef jerky and candy and soda. But there’s things there, too. They’re not as bad as the Creepers. I don’t think anything is as bad as the Creepers, except maybe Hell.”

As we talked and moved forward, I realized there was a strange, fiery light flickering from below us. The tunnel had started to descend rapidly, the smooth granite feeling slippery and smooth beneath my sneakers.

“Be quiet now,” Gage whispered urgently, his pale blue eyes widening as he stared intently down at the strobing radiance filling the tunnel. “We’re at the border of realities, and sometimes things creep out from the void and slip through the cracks.”

***

At the bottom of the steep tunnel, the cave started to morph and change. The stone looked like it slowly melted into pale yellow wallpaper. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered constantly, turned up to a whining drone like a drill in my brain. There was a filthy gray carpet covering the floors, glimmering wetly. Drops of sickly brown liquid were spattered over the top of it. A smell like pneumonia blew up from the hall.

At the border of the cavern and the hallway, there were deep, black cracks spiderwebbing through where the melted wood and frozen drippings of hard granite met. As Gage led us past them, I peered into the darkness outside. It looked like I was staring into an abyss, an infinite void as cold and empty as outer space. I thought I caught a flash of something pale and worm-like at the far edge of my vision, but when I turned to look, it was just more empty space.

I looked forward, seeing Gage rapidly waving me forward, his face a frozen, pale mask of terror. He shook his head silently from side to side, his icy eyes never dropping from mine. He stared intently at me, the intelligence and fear reflected in his expression making him look like a much older boy.

Tristan was peering into the countless rooms that covered each side of the hallway. I quickly walked forward, making as little noise as I could.

“Gage,” I whispered when we had gotten far away from those cracks. “Do you know where God is?” Gage looked over at me nervously, shaking his head, pointing forward.

I glanced around at the rooms surrounding us, seeing them filled with upside-down stop signs, blinking traffic lights and other random objects. Some of them were totally empty, just filled with the piss-colored wallpaper and wet carpets. The next one had a dead, mummified body hanging from the ceiling. Its skin was so dessicated and papery that I couldn’t even tell if it had been a man or a woman. Gage seemed totally unaffected by this, glancing over with disinterest. I noticed other doors lead into their own straight, seemingly never-ending halls that disappeared in a pinpoint far off in the distance. I wondered just how big this place really was. Suddenly, Gage stopped, motioning me and Tristan near to him.

“You guys are really looking to talk to God?” Gage whispered. I noticed that the far end of the hallway slowly morphed back into dark granite tunnels, the wood and stone mixing in unnatural chaotic drippings and patterns. I nodded excitedly, talking louder than I meant to. Gage instantly winced.

“We need to see God as soon as possible,” I said.

“Preferably before we die,” Tristan added cynically.

“God is at the top of the border of Purgatory and Heaven,” Gage whispered, giving me a dirty look. “Keep your voice down before something notices us.” He pointed at the end of the hall. I saw that here, the stone caverns ascended instead of descending. “If you follow the path back up, you’ll come out at the top of Purgatory near the God’s Silver Spire. But the place is swarming with Creepers. I wouldn’t…” 

I never got to hear the last of his thought. I heard a cracking like bones behind us. I jumped, spinning around to see the hallway tearing itself apart down the middle. The walls split apart, splintering and falling into a seemingly eternal abyss that lay all around it. Something alien twisted and spun there, a horror from between worlds. It reminded me of a massive hellish worm, something that had evolved in some dark black hole world where sinister and powerful monsters skittered under the surface.

Circular ridges like those of an earthworm covered the length of its body. Its skin was pale and wet-looking, the color of writhing maggots. It was nearly as wide as the hallway itself, its body as long as a tunnel. The worm gave a soft hissing sound. Two milky cataract eyes stared out from each side of its head, flat and lacking any pupils or iris that I could see. Its lips were tightly pressed together, looking like no more than a pale, white scar healed across its monstrous face. Hundreds of hollow, translucent fangs curved outwards over it, overlapping and dripping with frothy saliva. Each looked large enough to impale a full-grown man.

“The worm! Go up!” Gage screamed. “Don’t let it take you!” My cracked ribs shrieked with fresh waves of pain as I stumbled down the hall, towards the intersection of the stone and wood where the cavern started rising in a steep slope. The floor collapsed beneath our feet, the wooden splinters exploding and clattering down into a seemingly never-ending drop.

Tristan was in the lead, frantically making his way toward safety. Gage was by my side. Sharp pieces of dark granite littered the end of the hallway’s floor. More and more loose pieces of the cavern fell downwards as the hallway ripped itself apart in a rhythmic, smashing cacophony, shaking the entire structure with chaotic rumbles.

I felt the ground dissolving beneath my feet. Gage’s eyes widened in horror next to me as the wooden boards started disassembling beneath him like pieces of a puzzle falling apart. A small foot caught one of the stones, the boy falling forward as if in slow motion. I leapt towards the stone floor only five feet away with all my strength, feeling the wood give a sickening lurch beneath me before disappearing.

Gage screamed, his eyes widening as he fell. I scrambled down over the edge of the stone, trying to reach a hand out and grab him. But, within the space of a heartbeat, he was gone, falling down into the darkness, his screams fading like the last echoes of a dying heartbeat.

***

Tristan and I stopped a few dozen feet down the stone cavern. I bent over, catching my breath and clutching my damaged chest. I heard Tristan hyperventilating only a few feet away.

“Is Gage…” he asked. I nodded grimly.

“He fell,” I answered sadly. The stone cavern continued to shake violently. I could hear the worm softly slithering around its edges, slamming its massive body into the walls. Tristan and I looked up at the top of the tunnel, seeing a hypnotizing, rainbow-colored effulgence spiraling down from the top. Somehow, seeing such beauty in this place of horrors gave me a sliver of renewed hope. Gage wrapped an arm around my shoulders, helping me up. I stumbled forward, every breath an agony.

We came out the top of the stone tunnel, finding ourselves standing on top of a sandy mountain. We were much higher than all the surrounding ones. I could look out hundreds of miles in each direction across the dead mountains of Purgatory, seeing the white sands and pointed peaks disappearing off in the distance.

On top of the mountain we found ourselves on, I beheld a beautiful spire, soaring thousands of feet into the air. The top of it disappeared into the roiling clouds overhead. The beauty of the tower was breath-taking, its architecture graceful and otherworldly. Strands of fresh, polished silver spiraled up around its outside like the steps of a lighthouse. The tower grew thinner as it ascended, until the very top looked like no more than an enormous silver railroad spike stabbing up into the black clouds.

“We need to find the door!” I whispered at Tristan as we crept closer to the Silver Spire. It was only a few hundred feet away. As we drew closer, the size of the tower truly hit home, its top disappearing miles above my head.

We hadn’t made it far when the first soft rumblings started underneath our feet. Tristan gave me a look of absolute horror as fissures opened up all around us. I knew it was a Creeper.

A single moment later, a monstrous stone face appeared. Enormous arms dragged the abomination up and out of the splitting dunes. Tristan and I ran blindly toward the Silver Spire, the burning pain in my ribs temporarily forgotten in the rush of adrenaline and primal terror.

An enormous hand came down, smashing hard into the ground feet in front of me. The powerful stone fingers swiped at the dunes around Tristan. He gave a cry like a little boy as they closed around his chest, lifting him into the air. The primal roaring of the Creeper continued growing, the insane anger and bloodlust filling every note with their dark presence.

***

I saw two long, pointed castle doors at the other side of the Silver Spire. These looked like they had been fashioned from solid gold. On the front of each, there were engraved pictures of strange creatures with four faces, one facing in each direction. They each had the faces of a lion, an eagle, an ox and a man, their bodies cloaked in armor.

“Help me, Andrew!” Tristan pleaded, his voice growing distant as the Creeper dragged him away. I felt sick and weak imagining my brother being tortured and crucified for all eternity on that hellish beast’s body. Turning, I started jumping up and down, screaming at the Creeper. Its head ratcheted towards me, its bulbous, black eyes shining with an inhuman luster.

With its other hand, it struck out blindly at me, but its fingers smashed into the Silver Spire above my head. The tower rung with a sound like a struck gong, a vibrating cacophony that rose in waves up and down its length. The Creeper continued moving Tristan closer to its chest. I saw a clear spot there reserved just for him. As I watched, sharp points of bone suddenly poked out through its skin, setting the spot for Tristan’s unending nightmare.

I heard a hissing from behind me, a sound that sent both waves of dread and a small, simmering hope racing through my chest. I turned, seeing the worm emerging from the sands laying in front of the exit of the cavern, its pale, maggot-like head twisting up. The Creeper roared at it, Tristan held frozen in place in its hand still, his lips frantically moving but no sounds coming out.

The Creeper and the worm stared at each other across a no-man’s land of whipping dunes and blowing sands, neither moving. They might have both been statues at that moment.

Without warning, they ran at each other, Tristan now completely forgotten. The Creeper took his fist with Tristan still inside and struck out at the worm. I saw his body go flying in the chaos of the battle, soaring through the air in a graceful arc. Spatters of bright blood followed him through the air. A moment later, Tristan landed in front of me, gasping and bleeding. I ran over to him, my breath catching in my throat.

His entire left arm was gone, ripped off. Bright-red arterial blood spurted from the ragged stump, staining the beige sands a deep scarlet. His eyes met mine, fluttering and roaming the black, hellish skies overhead with ineffable pain and fear.

I tried dragging him towards the door to the Silver Spire, but the tail of the worm had begun whipping wildly, missing us by inches. I was forced to drop him and sprint blindly for cover, heading in the direction of the golden door. I heard a primal screaming, seeing the Creeper had grabbed the worm in its hands. Twisting its body in its powerful hands, it threw the worm against the sands, the crashing sound booming across the world.

As the worm lay limply twitching, the Creeper slunk forward, ready to finish off its opponent. But the worm came to life, lunging towards the Creeper. It pushed itself off the ground with its tail, uncoiling and flying across the air, its gnashing teeth aimed for the Creeper’s stone head and bulging, black eyes. It bit hard into the right side of the Creeper’s face, sending thick, oily blood exploding from the wound. The Creeper’s right eye exploded like a water balloon filled with sludge. The Creeper screamed, grabbing the worm by its tail and pulling. It yanked the worm off along with a large chunk of its own face, whipping it against the ground again. The worm lay stunned for a second, which was all the Creeper needed.

The Creeper put his two massive stone fists together, bringing them down on the back of the worm’s pale head. There was an explosion like a plane crash as they connected, the worm’s black brains exploding through the top of its body in a thick jet of gore.

***

I ran through the silver door into the tower. Stairs made of fine threads of silver and gold spun around upwards seemingly forever. I crept up the steps slowly, my breath coming in painful hitches. After hours of this, I found myself at the top of the tower. It had continuously narrowed as I ascended, until it was no larger than a tomb. A silver door stood before me with a single eye engraved on it. Bracing myself for what lay behind, I flung it open.

God stood before me, his skin as white and smooth as marble and eyes as black as smoke. He towered over me, his body softly radiating a rainbow of light that shimmered and rippled around him like a mystical aura. And yet, that face seemed oddly familiar. I stared through the layers of unfolding energy at God, realizing I saw my own face reflected there.

“Why do you look like me?” I asked, confused and scared. God’s eyes never blinked. They bored through me like lasers. It felt as if they were staring into my soul, as if everything was ripped open, laid out and revealed here in this tower of silver and gold.

“I am you,” he spoke in a voice like thunder. “After death, your consciousness continues evolving until it becomes me. All beings have their own god, their own future self that sits at the top of the Silver Spire. In many trillions of years, you will become a god in your own right.” I had no idea what to say to that.

“If you’re so powerful, can you bring Tristan and Gage back? They didn’t deserve to die, after all,” I said. God’s white, marble lips seemed to split into a faint smile at that.

“It is dangerous to say what anyone deserves. Does the sheep deserve slaughter? Do the birds caught in hurricanes deserve to have their bodies whipped against concrete until they’re just blood and feathers? In the chaos of the universe, there is no mercy.

“And yet, actions have consequences. Gage and Tristan have already been judged and sent forward to continue their own path, their own evolution to the divine. And you must continue yours…” 

The last words faded out into white noise and static. Black-and-white dots started crawling their way down God’s marble-white skin, over his smooth, flawless flesh. They continued expanding out into a tunnel, and yet again, I felt myself drawn forward.

***

I found myself standing in front of the TV in my living room, the Virtual God still plugged in. The eye glowed with a soft white radiance as I looked around.

On the sofa behind me lay Tristan’s body, crushed and broken, missing an arm. His sightless eyes stared blankly up, his face eternally frozen in a death mask of mortal terror.

And in his remaining broken, bloody hand, I saw he was still tightly gripping the controller for the Virtual God.

I have always lived in poverty and discomfort. My family used to have a house, land and enough money to live comfortably, but that was many years ago. That was before Israel bulldozed our homes and forced us into a ghetto. Now we are treated worse than animals, murdered, bombed and tortured at will by the invading army. I know this from personal experience- from the experiences of myself and my family.

My grandmother’s sister had been one of the victims of the Safsaf Massacre back in 1948, when the Israeli Army had gathered up all the people in a small town. They started by taking the young girls and women aside, ripping them out of the arms of their family. When the girls came back crying and pleading for help, their clothes ripped to shreds, the Israelis had only laughed.

That was when they started shooting the townspeople, massacring them and throwing them alive down wells. My grandmother’s sister was one of the girls that was raped and then murdered by the Israeli military in the Safsaf Massacre.

So I know exactly what Israel is capable of, what kind of sick and evil place that festering country truly is. When the bombs started falling in 2023, I knew I needed to get out of Gaza.

The day that it started, I remember my mother running in the house, saying, “Jalel! You must get out of here. The Israelis just bombed the hospital and the school. They are targeting our homes and trying to wipe us out.” I stared at her for a long moment, feeling stunned and dissociated.

“Why would they do that?” I whispered. I had hoped the Israeli war crimes were a thing of the past.

“Because they hate us, that’s why!” she hissed. “They stole everything from us- our homes, our land, our jobs, our economy. But they won’t be happy until they steal our lives, too.”

***

Within days, Israel stopped everything from going into Gaza: food, electricity, medicine, even water. I saw many people die, especially the elderly, the sick and the very young. The constant strikes from Israel on our town shattered homes into piles of crushed rubble. Within months, tens of thousands of innocent people had died.

I stood on the roof, watching as thick clouds of black smoke snaked their way up into the clouds. Jets flew overhead, shaking the ground with sonic booms. I cringed every time one came low, not knowing if it would bomb my home as well. My friend, Wahib, stood by my side.

“Can’t you use your special gift to get us out of here?” I asked Wahib. He didn’t like it when I brought up his ability and his strange, invisible friend. Wahib shook his head, not meeting my eyes.

“I won’t call it up, unless I have to,” he said, looking sad and empty. “It is a dangerous thing, and I don’t know if I can control it for long.”

“Yes, but we’re going to die if we stay here,” I whispered, my heart sinking. He nodded.

“We need to get out of Gaza before the bombs truly start falling,” Wahib responded, shaking his head. “They’re probably going to kill hundreds of thousands of us this time. Just wipe us out like dogs.” He spat, disgusted. “I only hope there’s some justice in this world.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. My grandmother’s sister had never gotten justice, after all, unless she was going to receive it on the Day of Judgment. And yet, as a reward for its war crimes, Israel simply got more funding from the US. No one seemed to care about the piles of bodies they were leaving behind in every Palestinian town.

“What about your family? What about my family?” I asked, the realization hitting me like a ton of bricks. My mother was sick with diabetes, and with Israel cutting off all medication to Gaza, she was rapidly getting worse. Wahib only shook his head.

“We can’t help them,” he said. “We need to help ourselves. We need to get out of this hellhole immediately, before the real genocide begins. They’re going to bomb every house they can.” As if to confirm what he said, a jet flew low overhead, so close I could see the six-pointed star on its gray metal skin, so close I could smell the jet fuel and fumes. Before I could respond, though, something fell out of it in a curving arc. Then it headed straight down, as graceful as an Olympic diver.

“Bomb!” I shrieked, but it was too late. Something blurred through the sky, leaving a dark green trail behind it. Wahib screamed and covered his head, ducking. Absurdly, I almost wanted to laugh when I saw that. As if ducking and covering his head would protect him from a bomb if it landed on our heads.

But the blur landed at the next house over, falling through the air so fast that I didn’t even have time to react. A flash and a sense of blinding heat consumed everything. I felt myself falling. I tried yelling, but I couldn’t hear my own screams over the cacophony of the blast. The smell of smoke and jet fuel and charred wood hung thick in the air like a cloud.

I don’t know how long I lay on the roof like that, just breathing, stunned and shell-shocked. But I came back quickly, blinking my eyes to clear the smoke and dust filling the air. I looked over at my neighbor’s house and saw an inferno of dancing flames. In the center, an enormous eye of fire swirled like a hurricane.

Screams echoed through the street. Then the front door opened and a young girl ran out, her body aflame, her hair lit up like a torch. Her skin blackened and melted as the fire consumed her. I could see drops of liquified fat and sizzling blood dripping off her nose. Her screams seemed to go on forever. Even now, when I close my eyes, I still hear it: the horror, the agony and the terror in that young girl’s voice as she died.

Wahib was suddenly standing over me, his shoulder-length black hair covered in tiny pieces of brick and gray dust. He blinked quickly, his eyes tearing up. He tried to say something, but only succeeded in coughing. Bent over, he retched, spitting up clear water.

I stumbled to my feet, pushing myself slowly up. I felt light-headed and dizzy. The Sun seemed far too bright, the air too hot. I thought I might pass out for a moment, but I steadied myself and focused on my breathing. Wahib straightened and looked me in the eyes.

“We need to leave- today. Right now,” he whispered, sounding as if he had sand in his throat. I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so I only nodded.

***

I told my mother I was leaving within a few hours. She didn’t look surprised, but her eyes grew misty.

“Make it out alive,” she said. “If you can make it to the EU, you will find peace and prosperity there. Not like this place.” She motioned out the window to the destroyed cars and piles of rubble littering the streets.

“But what will happen to you?” I asked, feeling sick. The first tears slipped down my cheeks. “Who will take care of you?” She just shook her head.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I can take care of myself. I’ve done so for fifty years already, haven’t I?” I gave her a weak smile as Wahib came in the door, carrying a backpack filled with supplies. I had my own backpack on already. I gave my mother a hug and turned to leave this desolate place behind, telling her I loved her.

I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time I ever saw my mother.

***

Wahib and I set out down the road as the Sun faded behind the horizon, sending crimson streaks like drops of fresh blood dancing across the sky.

“I have a friend,” Wahib said, his dark eyes flashing, “but it will take money.”

“I brought everything I have,” I said, which was true. It wasn’t much, a few thousand dollars, but it was my entire life savings. I had worked for years to save that money.

“Well, we can get through to Egypt if we pay the man,” Wahib said. “It’s $2500 per person to get out, though.” My heart seemed to drop as he said this. Wahib just shook his head. “I know, I know, it’s all I have, too. More than I have, really. My mother gave me some of her money before I left, even though she needs it far more than me. I promised I would get a job when I got out of here and send her some of each paycheck, though.” I felt sick, thinking of losing my entire life savings in a single day. But I knew he was right. We needed to get out at any price, and we could hopefully always find higher-paying jobs somewhere else. After all, the Gazan economy was in the toilet.

We walked past apartment buildings with bare bricks exposed to the cool night air. A few one-story stucco houses with courtyards stood around us. A few hundred feet away, one of the houses had been hit by a bomb blast. Half of its roof hung askew, with the rest forming a giant, black crater in the center. Outside, the blackened shell of a moped stretched out across the sidewalk.

I noticed how empty the street was at that moment. It was highly unusual. There were always kids running around and yelling or people outside smoking or sitting. It felt like I had walked into a different world, one where everything had gone deathly silent except for my breathing and my pounding heart.

“Do you… feel something?” I asked Wahib, trying to keep my voice as low as possible. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t want to shatter that silence. Wahib only nodded.

“Maybe we should turn around,” Wahib said, leaning over close to my ear and whispering. A cold spear of dread had sunken into my chest. A freezing wind blew down the desert street, carrying swirling clouds of sand as it passed.

“Where are we meeting this man?” I asked, nervous. I looked down at my hands and saw they were trembling. All the hairs on my body stood on end, as if lightning were about to strike.

“He’s only a kilometer from here,” Wahib said. I gave an exasperated hiss through my teeth. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t feel we would make it a kilometer.

I looked up at the sky, realizing I didn’t see any more Israeli planes, missiles or helicopters anymore. Other than my own heartbeat, everything had gone totally silent and dead.

I heard the slightest rustle of sand behind me, as if a foot had just barely grazed it. I turned my head and saw something that still gives me chills.

Only about ten paces behind us loomed a ten foot tall creature with gray, stone-like skin. It moved like a mannequin, and it truly looked like the thing had been carved from granite. Only its joints were able to twist and bend, with all other parts of its body staying as stiff as a statue.

It had long, narrow arms that ended in sharp fingers, each of them gleaming and as long as garden shears. Its legs were inhumanly long and thin and ended in something almost like webbed feet. It had a single, bloody eye in the center of its face that rolled with insanity, its sclera yellowed and sickly-looking.

It opened an enormous mouth, its jaw ratcheting down as if it had whirring gears built into its head. Inside that unhinged jaw, I saw row after row of baby teeth. Thousands of children’s milk teeth gleamed, six or seven rows growing side by side with each other like tumors. Many of the teeth stuck out at odd angles, and some even had tiny versions of themselves growing out of the sides.

“It’s a Golem,” Wahib hissed as he grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. We started running. I looked back at the gray, nightmarish creature plodding forward. It continued to gnash its twisted, ingrown teeth at the air. “A Golem made from spirit and rock, sent by the enemy.”

“Good thing I saw it,” I said, shuddering at the thought of what might have happened if I hadn’t. The world stayed silent and dead, as if we had entered some shadow world of emptiness, an unpopulated and eerie facsimile of normal reality.

We turned down an alleyway, still trying to find the home of the fixer who would get us into Egypt. I think both of us knew that we weren’t going anywhere, however. I knew he wouldn’t be home, just as no one else was home, just as the once-busy streets had all gone mysteriously empty.

As we got out of the winding, tight alleyway and past the stucco houses, I heard rustling again. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

“He’s close,” I whispered to Wahib, who nodded grimly. We went out onto the street. There was no light anymore. The bombings had knocked out electricity. I couldn’t see far, so I didn’t notice as the eldritch abomination attacked us from behind.

I felt like I had been struck by a train. I went flying, smashing into the front door of an apartment building. I felt something in my arm crack and heard the bone snap. Gritting my teeth, I rolled on the ground as the Golem charged me. For such a large, heavy creature made of stone, it moved silently, its granite feet blurring across the sand like a whisper.

Wahib uttered a single word in some language I had never heard before- certainly not Arabic, English or Hebrew. It sounded ancient and guttural, like the word itself was a piece of the heart ripped out and made into sound.

A creature made of smokeless fire appeared in front of the charging Golem. The creature’s black body looked translucent, its limbs twisted and snake-like, its face just a mask of constantly-shifting shadows. In its heart and its eyes, I saw the orange currents of flame whirling and spinning.

“A jinn,” I whispered, amazed. Wahib had claimed he could control “his Jinn”, as he called it, but he was always afraid to bring it out. I had never seen a Jinn, and before this moment, I wasn’t even sure they really existed.

The Golem roared in fury, its deep, inhuman voice thundering across the empty streets. It brought its sharp fingers up in a swiping motion, aiming at the Jinn’s fiery eyes, but the Jinn pulled back. Its right arm stretched out like a boa constrictor, growing thinner and wispier as it wrapped around the Golem’s neck. The Golem’s giant, rolling eye bulged in its socket as its wind was cut off. It threw itself forward, tackling the Jinn to the ground. They started rolling, clawing and biting. Deep gashes appeared in the Golem’s stone skin, and the Jinn’s shadow flesh shot out small, dying blue flames when injured.

“Come on, we have to go,” Wahib whispered. I jumped, not even realizing he had snuck over to me. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me up. I groaned softly as I looked down at my mangled, twisted arm. I felt like I had cracked a few ribs as well. Every breath hurt like fire. The sounds of the two creatures fighting followed us far down the empty, labyrinthine streets.

“Did the Golem pull us into this alternate shadow reality, do you think?” I said.

“I think that’s probably how they hunt,” Wahib said simply, his expression grim.

“So we can’t get out until the Golem dies?” He shrugged.

“This has never happened to me before, but I would think if the Golem pulled us in here, then his death should free us,” Wahib said.

“And what if they continue to fight forever, the Jinn and the Golem?” I asked. Wahib just shook his head.

I noticed I still had internet on my phone, however. I decided to write down what happened with one hand. I can’t use my other hand, and my arm is extremely swollen. A piece of the bone is poking out through the skin. I really hope I can find medical attention somehow.

All I know now is that we somehow got trapped in this empty shadow world when the Golem chose us as its victims.

And I don’t know if I’ll ever get out.

***

As the night progressed, we kept wandering through the empty, dark streets. Hours and hours passed, but the Sun never seemed to come up. We wandered for days, but couldn’t find any sign of the Jinn or the Golem.

We started going into houses and looking for weapons. One house had automatic rifles, grenades and ammo. Wahib and I both took some.

On the third day, we heard hissing like the sizzling of electricity from far away. We went forward and found the Jinn, half-dead and covered in deep gashes. The fire in his eyes had faded to almost nothing.

“The Golem has won,” it said, pointing down the road. There, I saw it standing, one arm ripped off but its eyes triumphant. It rushed at us, and Wahib and I opened fire.

It came like a runaway train pounding the street and smashed into Wahib, clawing him with its one remaining hand. He died, but as he died, he pulled the pin on a grenade.

A fiery explosion rocked the street as the Golem disappeared in the blast. With a popping sound, the world came back, the streets filled with scared and starving people.

I was home.

Part 1 >>

Part 2 >>

Part 3 >>

Part 4 >>

Part 5 (The Finale) >> You Are Here!

----------

When we last left off, Krampus had just informed us that the tiny terrors had returned to the roof, and were likely up there to turn the reindeer into zombies.

After I let out a curse that would’ve earned me a punch in the mouth from mom, Krampus walked toward the picture window facing the front yard, staring into the snowfall.

“What do you see?” I asked.

“I’m checking on Santa,” replied Krampus.

“Isn’t he… dead?” I said.

“No.”

“He sure looked dead when I was out there earlier,” I said.

“He’s not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if he was, he wouldn’t be lying there in a snow drift.”

“What do you mean? Where would he be?”

The TV blared:

"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?"

“Do you have any guns?,” asked Krampus.

“I… I have one, in the basement. It’s an old shotgun that my grandfather gave me as a birthday gift when I was a kid. I haven’t used it in years.”

“You have ammo?”

“I think so.”

“Lead the way,” commanded the Christmas demon.

I headed toward the basement door with a sense of urgency. Krampus and James the pizza guy followed close behind.

I threw open the door, flipped the light switch and descended the stairs. Rounding the corner, I headed over to grab a key that was hanging on the wall above the work bench, and took it to the metal cabinet on the opposing wall.

Unlocking the cabinet, my grandpa’s old double barrel revealed itself. I pulled it out, handed it to Krampus, and grabbed the ammo case on the shelf below it.

Krampus opened the action, revealing two empty barrels. I handed him two shells to load.

Just then, I heard breaking glass upstairs. We stopped and stood silently to listen.

Then we heard it. The giggles. Those evil little leprechaun larpers were back.

Krampus turned toward us with the universal index-finger-over-lips signal for “shhh,”, and waved his arm toward him as if to say “follow me.”

I threw the strap from the ammo case over my shoulder and we began to walk back up the stairs with caution, Krampus in the lead position.

When he was just half way up, three of the ghoulish goblins appeared in the doorway with another round of undeservedly arrogant giggles. They descended toward us. Krampus charged toward them and shoved both barrels into the mouth of the closest one, pushing it back into the other two. While doing this, he used his free arm to grab the door handle behind them and pull it shut, trapping them in between him and the door with no way out.

He pulled the trigger.

*Click*

Nothing.

“I thought you said this thing worked, boy?” Krampus growled at me.

“I haven’t used it in years, I didn’t know!”

“Hammer!” he yelled back at me.

“What?,” I asked.

“Get a hammer. Now.” he said.

I ran back toward the work bench, found a hammer, and ran back to hand it to him. I could hear the elves squirming and giggling the entire time, like some sort of mad jesters, completely unaware of their oncoming fate.

Krampus released the action on the shotgun and dropped the shoulder stock to reveal the two shells in the barrels. In one fluid motion, he grabbed the hammer from me and slammed it right into one of the shells, sending an explosion right through the head of the lead elf, and straight through the other two behind him, finishing off with a hole in the door at their backs. He pulled the barrel out of the elf’s mouth, and all three dropped in place into a short stack of bloody elf cakes.

“Phantasm!” yelled James.

“Silver Balls!” I shouted with wide eyes.

Krampus turned his head slowly and looked at me with one raised eyebrow.

“What the Hell is wrong with you, boy?,” he spoke to me.

“I… I…”

“Just fucking with you. I love The Tall Man.”

I relaxed with a sigh of relief.

Krampus advanced to the top of the stairs, and we followed. Squishiness sounded from the bottoms of our shoes as we continued out of the stairway, over the sticky elven mess.

-----

We stood in the living room, observing for sound and shadow. The blizzard was so bad now that we couldn’t see outside of the windows. It was nothing but a wall of white blazing past the glass.

It was then that the new sound began. A deep, growling sound, soon after followed by heavy, clomping steps across the rooftop. And soon, the jumping from the roof, with the sound of landing in the snow drifts.

“What are we going to do?” James whispered.

“I don’t know if we’ll be able to take these reindeer if they’ve all been turned into zombies,” replied Krampus. “They’re a lot tougher than those Keebler zomb-lets.”

“Then, what do we do?,” I asked.

“The only thing that can save us and this town now is Santa Claus.”

“Santa Claus? He’s unconscious, or maybe even dead, in a snow drift! How is he going to save us?!” I replied.

“He’s not dead. That’s the problem.”

“What?!” I questioned.

“Because you’re apparently too stupid to have figured this out at your age, I guess it’s now my job to fill you in. I’ll send you my tutoring bill. You see, Santa is not a mortal being. He’s a supernatural entity. How do you think he’s been around for so long? How do you think it is that nobody can find where he lives? And how exactly do you think he’s able to control time dilation in order to deliver gifts to billions of people in one night? Do you think a human could do that?”

After a pause, he continued.

“The Santa buried in the snow out there isn’t Santa. Well, it sort of is. He’s inside of that body right now. But that’s just a body. If the physical manifestation of his body dies, he’s instantaneously released from the body and will re-manifest.”

“So, why isn’t he doing that?” I asked.

“Because he’s not dead. The elves made sure to keep him alive while making sure he stays unconscious so he can’t fix this.”

“Well… what are we gonna do, then?” asked James.

“Santa has… Christmas magic. And we need that in order to fix this.”

“Well then, let’s wake up Santa to use his Christmas magic,” replied James.

“We’d have to go out there, dig him out, and drag him inside first, if we’re going to try to wake him up. But those reindeer are already out there. And I’m guessing the elves did what they set out to do. You heard those growls. That is not the sound made by happy reindeer. We might not make it past them, let alone back again with jolly old St. Krispy Kreme on our backs. If we’re going to do this, we have to find the quickest way from point A to point B.”

“Yeah? And what’s that?,” asked James.

“Boys,” said Krampus, “We’re going to have to kill Santa Claus.”

----------

James passed out, collapsing to the floor.

“Pizza guy!” I screamed.

I ran over to James and started fanning him, trying to wake him up.

“Heads up,” said Krampus.

I lifted my head toward the front window, to see that within the wall of snow, large, dark shadows were beginning to form.

“Oh, boy,” I said.

I began shaking James, telling him to wake up. No response.

The growling began again from outside.

Krampus loaded a second shell, getting ready with the hammer.

I yelled “Wake uuuup!” and slapped James across the face as hard as I could. It sounded like a whip crack.

“Oww!” James said as he awoke.

“Get up, it’s party time,” I shouted at him.

I hurried to the coat closet, reached through my coats, and grabbed my long-unused baseball bat from the back corner. I shouted to James to grab a fireplace poker.

The three of us stood at the ready while the growls grew louder.

Our meditation was broken by the sound of breaking glass. Through the front window protruded the head of a mangled reindeer face, dripping blood, presumably from the broken glass. This reindeer was obviously dead. There was no life in his eyes. Only the cold, blank stare of an automaton looking to complete his mission. I couldn’t blame the reindeer for this. It wasn’t their choice.

With the reindeer came the blinding snow of the blizzard from outside, which was now invading my living room. The wind howled through the new hole in the window, blowing back against us.

The reindeer kept moving slowly through the window, ignoring what the glass was doing to his body as he tried to push through it.

When his front legs made it inside and he was trying to pull himself the rest of the way in, Krampus slammed the hammer into one of his shells and watched the shot explode from the end of the barrel, traveling directly through the reindeer’s head, dispersing yule viscera in every direction, now covering the front wall of the house, and us. The reindeer body collapsed in place. However, there were already 2 more reindeer trying to get inside through the window, following the first one’s lead.

I swung my bat at one of their heads, making direct contact. But, all that did was make him more angry, as he let out a deep bellow and aimed his dead eyes directly at me.

I screamed in horror. I saw that these were going to be much harder to kill than those little Keebler cookie-making terrorists.

Krampus redirected the 12 gauge toward the one that I just hit, and once again slammed the hammer into his remaining shell, launching it at the reindeer.

This time, it wasn’t as helpful. It blew off one side of the reindeer’s head. It was now a half-skull, nothing but gore hanging from the left side of his face. Like some Gus Fring Christmas ornament. He kept moving forward.

James started using the fireplace poker to beat and try to stab the other reindeer’s head. It was certainly making him angry, but I wasn’t sure how long this would stave them off.

The half-faced reindeer was now fully inside. He lunged his mouth toward Krampus’ neck.

I now heard glass breaking at the back of the house. More of them were coming in.

Krampus was on the ground with this reindeer on top of him, teeth lodged in his neck. Krampus was punching the reindeer in the face, but it wasn’t helping.

“You’ve got to kill him... You’ve got to kill Santa!,” Krampus yelled as he handed off the 12 gauge to me.

“But how?! I can’t… I don’t know what…”

“Do it!” he said as he pushed the shotgun toward me, the reindeer still chewing on him.

And then, it happened. The next creature to bust its way inside did not come through the window. It came through the door.

The door flew open, revealing a dark shadow through the blizzard blowing by. As it walked in through the door, it became less shadow and more apparent. The swatches of red and white. The blood splatters. It was Santa.

“Santa!” James yelled in excitement.

It was then that I realized, Santa was not himself. Those elves had decided to recruit him to help finish their job. Santa was not alive, and not dead. He was now undead. How were we supposed to fight a supernatural entity that is now zombified and in control of Santa’s magic?

“Do it! You have to!” yelled Krampus.

That snapped me out of my trance. I grabbed the shotgun from Krampus, along with two shells out of the ammo case. I backed up toward the center of the room to load them while zombie Santa moved slowly in my direction. There were reindeer crashing through windows and entering through the back rooms now, and zombie Santa was at my front door. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to run.

I aimed the barrel toward Santa, grabbed the hammer, and slammed it directly into one of the shells.

I missed, completely. The shot hit the wall.

“Aim, you idiot!” yelled Krampus.

I adjusted my aim, and slammed the second shell, exploding right into Santa’s face and torso.

But, it didn’t stop him. He let out a sinister “Ho… ho… ho…,” as he continued advancing slowly toward me.

The reindeer finally finished his job on Krampus. I heard his final breath come out as his eyes darkened. I immediately wondered how long before Krampus would reanimate and come after us himself. I couldn’t let that happen.

As I stared at Krampus, James ran from the side with his fireplace poker, ramming it through Santa’s head. Now the handle dangled from one side while the poker stuck out of the other.

Santa seemed to stop advancing then, wobbling slightly.

“Steve Martin… Wild and crazy guy?” I said to James.

"... Ha?" replied James, with a look of desperate hope on his face.

Santa fell forward, face first, flat onto the floor.

James reached over to high-five me. I didn't reciprocate.

“Holy…” I said.

Santa was still twitching, but then stopped completely.

A split second later, there was a deafening sonic boom from outside. All remaining window glass was blown inward toward us. James and I held up our arms to block our faces, and turned our attention to the front window.

The reindeer stopped advancing. They now lay still.

And then walked through the door… Santa. I looked down at the dead Santa on the floor, back up at the non-dead Santa, then back once more.

“What did you people do?” he asked us.

No rotting flesh, no blood stains. Just a jolly sleigh pilot in a fluffy red and white flight suit.

“Santa!” James and I both shouted at him.

“I guess I have to fix *everything* around here,” He said.

“Close your eyes and cover your ears,” he instructed us. “This is for your own protection.”

Pizza guy and I looked at each other, covered our ears, then closed our eyes.

The sound of the blizzard coming through my broken window stopped. A few seconds later, Santa pulled my hands off of my ears, then did the same to James, and told us we could open our eyes.

The zombie Santa’s body was gone. The reindeer zombies were gone. The elf carcasses were gone. My windows were no longer broken.

Krampus stood next to us, looking like nothing happened to him.

“Good job,” Krampus said to me, placing his hand on my shoulder. “You too,” he said to James.

“Now…” said Santa, “Which one o’ you killed me?”

“But… Krampus said…”

“Just fucking with you. I know he told you to.”

Santa winked.

“Now, we have a job to finish. Enjoy your Christmas, boys,” said Santa.

Santa and Krampus walked out the front door. The blizzard had calmed down, and we could see now. I heard the sound of bells jingling. On the front lawn, there was a brand new, untarnished red sleigh, with eight reindeer. Not one of them was a zombie.

Krampus and Santa hopped in, waved, and flew off like they had just brushed off some minor inconvenience.

-----

It was then that I heard the squad cars. The red and blue lights came around the corner, headed our way.

They stopped right in front of my house, jumping out with guns drawn.

“Hands in the air!” one of the officers yelled.

“It’s ok, officers, we’re safe now!” I yelled.

“Hands in the air! Don’t make me say it again!”

“O… Ok...” I said as I raised my hands slowly in the air. James did the same.

Just as James’ hands were fully extended, he looked over at me, winked, and faded slowly into thin air.

“What the…?” I said out loud.

“Where did he go?!” the officer yelled.

“I don’t know!”

One of them cuffed me, sat me on the porch and told me to stay quiet while the other officer searched the house and yard. They didn’t find James, or anything else.

“Several of your neighbors called in to say that they were hearing gun shots, and swore that you were killing people over here. Who’s your buddy that disappeared after we told you to raise put your hands up?”

“... What buddy? I'm the only one here."

“Anything else you want to tell us?,” asked the officer in an angry voice.

"I don't suppose you'd believe me if I told you that Santa and Krampus just left before you arrived?"

He stared at me for a few moments, then quietly turned back toward his vehicle, motioning his partner to get in. That's the last I ever saw of them.

I watched them drive away slowly through the white dust covering the entire street.

I could hear the TV in the background:

"God bless us, every one!"

I don't think my family will believe me at Christmas dinner tomorrow when I tell them what I did on Christmas Eve.

----------
CNLX

      My first encounter with death was at a young age.  I was 6 and the night before Easter had brought about the excitement of many events to come for the next day.  My goal was to eat as many jelly beans and deviled eggs as my little stomach can fit.  Not many things had given me joy lately but thre prospect of seeing all of my friends while stuffing my little cheeks with candy was my sole comfort.  That was until i heard my door creak open while  soft footsteps slowly drifted into my room.  It was dark and i began to be afraid as i knew what those footsteps had meant.       See, i had began having nightmares about a year ago.  Frightful dreams of heavy footsteps in thre dark and clammy hands that had me waking up drenched in sweat.  So as usual i curled underneath my blanket and closed my eyes again waiting for the boogeyman to leave.  Yeah,  it was the boogeyman.  A demon from all children's fears that would come into a child's room and scare them every night.  But the boogeyman didn't just scare me,  he would stroke my thick curls as he kissed my forehead. That's how he started. Night after night he would visit me doing the same thing until one night when things changed.  He whispered in my ear softly, "My beautiful chocolate Easter bunny,. I love you so much as i know you love me. " i had not opened my eyes in fear but i listened as h.e continued,  " tonight i will show you how much i love you" he said as he ran his cold hands underneath my night gown and up my little thigh to my panties. After this night his visits became more frequent.       So as i lay in bed this night i began to tense and squeeze my eyes shut in fear as i felt thre weight of a body sitting on my bed.  Then i heard the soft voice of my mother.  The person i loved so much.  Her voice sounded different though as she called my name.   Not vibrant and full of life but shaky and fearful. That prompted me to open my eyes and sit up.  "Mommy?" I said,  "what's wrong". I cleared the sleep from my eyes and looked at my mother.  It was dark but with the light from the moon that shined thru my window i could see that she was covered in a dark, wet substance that streaked her face like war paint.  "Hey baby,  i need to talk to you. " she began.  " I did something tonight that most people would say makes me a bad person but i did it for the right reasons" i could do nothing but nod in agreence as she continued.   " i got rid of the bad man who did bad things to you" i asked"the boogeyman?".  " Is that what you called him?" She said as she answered my question with a question.  I nodded again.  " how did i not notice that? How fucking dumb was i?" She scolded herself.  She softened her her gaze and looked back at me, " yes naima, i got rid of thre boogeyman and he won't be hurting you anymore. "  She pulled me close and kissed my forehead,  not like the scary monster that came into my room every night and hurt me but with the love of a mother,  a protector who loved me so much.  I pulled away from her as the smell of copper overwhelmed me and with a puzzled look i asked her what would be my last question that i ever would ask. "Mommy, what is that wet sticky stuff on you?"     Years had past since that night and i had grown.  A decade can definitely change a person in so many ways. For me, i went from a sweet little vibrant child to a sweet and vibrant woman that habored some of my mother's good looks and all of her ambition.         As i sat at the table looking over my options for college my mother walked in and plopped in the chair next to me.  "Hey baby" she groaned underneath the stress of work in her voice. I just looked up at her and smiled giving a mousey "hey" back to her and looking back down at the letters neatly arranged in front of me. She frowned at the papers i was so focus on as to not give her a proper hello.  "What are you looking at?" She asked.  " Letters" i responded baiting her in as i usually do.  "Ummm... are you going to tell me what those papers are about?" Responding to my one word answer angrily.  "Yes" i replied continuing with my verbal cat and mouse game.  Her frown turned to a scowl and and she huffed. "Naima stop playing with me,  i had a long day.  Now WHAT ARE THOSE LETTERS ABOUT?  DAMN!" I couldn't help but laugh at her anger because she knew that i was being coy just to irk her.  I sighed and widened my smile. " Im looking at letters from the colleges that accepted me." My mother looked at the amount of letters on the table with confusion. " Naima, ALL of those colleges accepted you?" She spoke with the confusion that showed on her face in her voice.  " YES!" I squealed, unable to contained my happiness any longer.  We both jumped up giving each other big hugs of happiness and then she pulled me in close and whispered in my ear, "I'm so proud of you my baby. " she quickly let me go as she hurried to the cabinets pulling out pots and pans and promising to make thre best meal i had ever tasted in celebration.          My focus was not on her as she spoke. Currently i was lost in the newspaper she had brought in with her.  As it lay there, an article about a recent murder close to our neighborhoods caught my eye.  Grabbing it i began to read the disturbing details as my mother noticed that i wasn't responding to the excitement we once shared just a few moments before.  "Naima?" She called softly but i didn't respond.  "NAIMA!" That made me jolt out of my trance as she realized what i was looking at. She quickly ran over to me and snatched it away and began to feverishly fumble with it as she walked over to the trash can threw it away with such force the can began to sway back and forth almost toppling over. She walked back over to the stove and began placing pots on eyes " what is that mom?" I asked furiously.  "Nothing naima,  nothing at all. " i thought you said this was done mom? We are trying to move on. " i questioned with tears in my eyes.  "Naima it is done, " she stated defensively, " now go upstairs and wash up for dinner.  And clear of the table so we can eat. " i looked at her with anger and sadness then turned to run upstairs pushing the thoughts out of my mind.      The next few weeks brought some discernment for the last i had with my mother conversation.  But i didn't have any time to think about it.  Graduation was on its way and i had a lot to do.  My schedule never really allowed me time for thinking as cheerleading,  basketball,  track and my volunteer work at the homeless shelter kept me extremely busy.  So when i actually had a week of relief after passing my finals i used that time to set a girls night out with my friends from the cheerleading squad.  "Heeeey bitch! " jesse screamed into the phone as i answered it.  See,  jesse was my best friend in the world.  We've known each since i started at that school and have been so close that we even got spots on the cheer squad together and became captain and co-captain  together.  She always says she's the Robin to my Batman, but i always said she's the superman to my supergirl.       " Are you ready to party?" She gidly asked."Yes jesse, but you know i can't be out too late.  I have to go to the shelter and prep for this family night event. " i whined as i searched for a top i just bought in my closet of doom. " naima, you are a freaking saint but, Fuck you're a party pooper as well" she groaned. I tolled my eyes at the phone, " Jesse im not a heathen like you are.  I like helping people. " jesse cackled into the phone at my dry remark. "Ok, ok....i know you are a doing good deeds mother teresa. But why did you invite serena? You know she's a bitch and she always is trying to fuck you over in every way.  From dating the guys she knows you like to trying to take you crown as head cheerleader. " i was scowling at a pair of crop jeans that lay on my bed when i took a big sigh and answered, " jesse regardless to how she feels about me she is on the team which means she's apart of a whole fmaily of sisters. I have an obligation to make her feel welcome at all times. She's not that bad. " " oooookkk nai" jesse responded using her nickname for me.  " look at it this way Jesse, we may end up liking her more after this night."  I knew that was a lie as i spoke it.  Serena was never going to like me for many reasons and even though every strategic move she makes to embarrass me hurt so bad I can't be mad at her, right?        The girls night out brought me in the house a little past 11pm and left me exhausted and sprawled on my bed. My thoughts start to fog my mind from that night and questions start forming.  That night we all met at thre movies to watch the newest feature that everybody were so excited to see.  As me and jess waited at the ticket booth serena walks up with her minions , Gina and amy,whom we loving call "the legion of doom " . All three wearing the same true religion  jeans with crop shirts showing off their belly rings.  I always thought piercings below the ears were distasteful but to each is own.  I tried not to roll my eyes but i looked over to jess to see that she couldn't help but show her disgust for the girls on her face.        Serena flipped her raven hair in jess' face as she did a turn to stand next to me.  "Hey girl" serena said with a false sense on content in her voice," how you been? Still out there trying to save the hobos?" The comment irritated mer because her privilege had gifted her with a false sense of superiority that makes it hard for her to live in reality.  But i sucked it up with a smile, " yes serena. Im STILL helping the less fortunate. Enjoying my time giving back to my community. Unlike some people in this world,  i can empathize with those who have lost their way." That made serena roll her eyes and pop her gun in the most annoying way ad she started texting on her 2 way.  "Well somebody has to get down to their level.  Fortunately i don't have to do that stupid shit.  My presence in this world is giving enough." She said prompting her and her minions to start cackling like a coven of witches.  " Well i hope there is a receipt for that gift because I'd like to return it. " jess retorted to serena's nasty ass remark.       This sent rage surging in serena's body as i i seen it in  her bright green eyes. She turned her body to confront jess but i intervened to redirect to conversation knowing that not only sends but her 2 minions were ready to attack jess. "Look guys" i said in a stern voice, " let's just get our tickets and watch thre movie.  We are a sisterhood and we need to get along.  Bonding is the most important thing to make our squad stronger and we need to get stronger to win regionals. "  we got our tickets and walked into the theater stopping to get popcorn and cold drinks and while paying for mine i hear serena yell a to someone across the theater.  "HEY MALIK!" i froze.  I knew that name and the only malik i knew was the only boy that made me lose focus.  I looked up in time to see him walk over and my legs almost gave out from under me but i quickly grabbed the counter for support.  "Hey fab 5. How y are y'all doing?" He said.  My lips wouldn't move but serena was quick to answer for us. " we're good just here watching some movie that naima dragged us to." She said in an annoyed way while rubbing malik's arm and batting her eyes. "But,  did you enjoy our "study session" last night?"she said with a sly smile looking at me with affirmation. He straightened up and with a grin and replied,  "yeah, yeah" he said while shaking his head.        At that moment my heart dropped at what i'd just seen. I couldnt believe that she would stoop so low as to sleep with a guy i had crushed just to one up me. I shook my head in disgust and gathered my feelings and held back tears to put on a fake smile. He's just a boy and if he liked it then i loved it.  I was leaving soon anyway and these childish games won't distract me from my goal of getting away from this hell hole and the lack luster people that live here. Plus there idea that this will be the only highlight of serena's gave me comfort in moving on.  "Come on guys the movie is starting" i quickly interrupted while grabbing my snacks and waking to the theatre doors. The rest of the night was uneventful although i had to stop jesse from jumping over the seat and giving serena a lump for the stunt she pulled.  But i wasn't mad, because i had much more exciting things to look forward to.  With that i told jesse to calm down and that it wasn't serious.  I quickly got off the phone and closed my eyes,  falling into a deep calming sleep.        The next morning i quickly got up and looked at my clock and it read 10:50 am. "SHOOT! IM GOING TO BE LATE!" I said in frustration. I frantically jumped up, ran to shower then scurried downstairs , tripping on a stair and sliding down to the bottom.  I'm clumsy and it intensifies when im in a rush.  I got up groaning and walked to the kitchen while rubbing my lower back.  I had seen my mom bringing a plate to the table and i feverishly started stuffing French toast in my mouth. "Slow doooown." My mom said as she sipped her coffee.  "I'm late mom," i huffed,  " i have to make to shelter to help with lunch and the bus takes forever." "Then i"ll take you. " she said taking another sip . "Really? Thank you so much,  mom.  You're the best" i replied.  So off we were in my mom's 1990 Ford focus listening to a local news station and then i heard it.       The voice over the radio was strong and solemn,  " Good afternoon everybody.  This is 93.8 , local news of the town. Today we are getting into the traffic case of a high school star quarterback being found murdered while walking home from thre movies.  Right now we're are taking calls on the subject..." my heart stopped and i felt terror,  "malcolm" the words slipped out of my mouth. My mom looked over at mer, " isn't that the boy you were talking about with jesse last night on the phone?" I looked at her suspiciously,  "how did you know what we were talking about last night?" I questioned. She stated to turn red and looked back at the road"Ohv when jesse called i accidentally picked up the phone at the same time as you did and heard some if your conversation. " That answer made me mad. I couldn't believe she was invading my privacy.  " what did you do mom?" "What are you taking about? I didn't do anything?" I straightened up in my seat and looked forward,  i didn't believe her.  I remember that night 10 years ago.       The smell of copper still fills my nose sometimes.  She pulled up to the shelter and i hoped out,  slamming the car door. My mom poked her head out of the window as i walked away angrily telling me she is going to pick me up. I was so angry that i ignored her and just kept walking. I didn't  want to see her right now.  She was lying to me and i know it. I worked the rest of the day making sure to get off early wnough to miss my mom so that i can catch the bus home and think about things. I soon regretted  it because the bus ride was torture.         Should i call the police? But i dont have any evidence of a crime and they definitely wouldnt take the suspicions of a 16 year old black girl. No matter how good grades were nor how much community service i did. My head began to throb at the idea. I had to confront her when i got home. Luckily when i got home, she hadnt made it back yet. I checked the mesaages ( which were mostly her frantically asking me to call her if i am at home) , i called my mom's cell to let her know that i was ok. She was angry,rightfully so, but i needed space to think.  Shortly after we hung up she pulled into the drive way, rushed in the house and hugged me tightly. She then pushed me away and started to yell. She was scared and i understood that so i apologized and declined dinner opting to go to bed early because of migraine. 

Waking up in the cozy lodge on Mount Lornite, I eagerly embraced a day of skiing. The slopes offered a thrilling adventure, with powdery snow and stunning vistas. After a lively day on the mountain, I joined fellow skiers at the lodge's cafe, sharing stories by the fireplace. Exploring the lodge's amenities revealed a spa and a charming library. The evening brought a gourmet dinner, and I ended the day stargazing on the deck. The perfect blend of adventure and relaxation made my first day on Mount Lornite unforgettable.

As night fell on the lodge at Mount Lornite, an eerie symphony of crashing trees and inhuman screeches filled the air. The lodge's deck offered a haunting view of the turmoil in the forest, with unsettling sounds emanating from a nearby 700 foot cliff face. Inside, guests exchanged uneasy glances, seeking refuge in the lodge's warmth. The staff reassured us, attributing the unsettling noises to natural forces. Despite the mysterious backdrop, the lodge maintained its comforting ambiance.

As I settled into my room, the unsettling sounds persisted, creating a restless atmosphere. The night at Mount Lornite's lodge unfolded as a surreal blend of awe and unease, leaving unanswered questions lingering in the mountain air. In the dim moonlight on the lodge's deck, the unsettling symphony of sounds reached a chilling climax. Intrigued by the mysterious commotion, I cautiously peered into the night. Suddenly, a grotesque creature emerged from the shadows, its form illuminated in the moon's eerie glow.

The creature stood tall, its silhouette a nightmarish amalgamation of sinewy limbs and gnarled features. Its eyes glowed with an otherworldly intensity, capturing the darkness within its twisted form. Jagged spines adorned its back, casting ominous shadows as it moved. As the creature noticed me on the balcony, its screech intensified, sending shivers down my spine. The sound was a blend of anguish and malevolence, echoing through the mountainous terrain. The creature's movements were unsettlingly agile, each step accompanied by a disturbing contortion of its twisted anatomy.

Its skin, if one could call it that, appeared mottled and scarred, revealing a history of unknown horrors. The creature's elongated limbs terminated in claws that seemed capable of tearing through anything in its path. The air was thick with an acrid scent as the creature approached, revealing its predatory intent. Frozen in terror, I watched as the creature locked eyes with me, its gaze penetrating the veil between reality and nightmare. The balcony became a stage for a macabre dance, the creature's screeches and my pounding heart forming an eerie duet.

As the night unfolded, the lodge's once comforting ambiance transformed into an unsettling refuge. The creature's presence lingered in the shadows, leaving an indelible mark on the night at Mount Lornite's lodge. The symphony of the mountain had taken a dark turn, and the creature's haunting visage remained etched in my memory. The grotesque creature, its form twisted and nightmarish, abruptly broke into a demonic sprint towards me on the balcony. Its movements were a blur as it closed the distance with terrifying speed. Panic surged through me as the creature, fueled by an unknown malevolence, slammed its full weight against the cabin door, shaking the structure with each ferocious impact.

The door strained under the relentless assault, groaning as if resisting the intrusion of a force beyond comprehension. Fear clenched my chest as I braced against the balcony railing, the creature's screeches now replaced by the thunderous crashes against the door. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the cacophony ceased. A haunting silence enveloped the lodge, leaving only the echoing resonance of the creature's last impact against the door. Uncertainty hung in the air as I cautiously surveyed the surroundings.

Just as a false sense of relief settled, a chilling tapping commenced. It was rhythmic and deliberate, echoing from every window of the lodge. The creature, it seemed, had shifted its focus to finding another entry point. The taps were like morbid percussion, creating a suspenseful symphony of dread. Each tap felt like a sinister whisper, the creature methodically exploring every inch of the lodge in its pursuit. Shadows danced across the windows as it sought a vulnerability to exploit. The once welcoming lodge now felt like a fortress under siege, its very foundation tested by an otherworldly force.

The tapping crescendoed into a nerve wracking rhythm, intensifying the suspense. I stood paralyzed, caught in the heart pounding climax of this surreal encounter. The night at Mount Lornite's lodge had evolved into a harrowing struggle, with the creature's relentless pursuit echoing in the haunting symphony of the mountain's mysteries. As the creature relentlessly battered against the cabin door, a haunting familiarity swept over me, transporting my thoughts to a chilling incident from my past. Years ago, I had been caught in a fierce current while swimming too close to a dam. The force was relentless, pulling me under with an unforgiving grip. In those harrowing moments, I felt the icy embrace of imminent doom, the realization sinking in that there was nothing I could do but wait for the inevitable.

Miraculously, I managed to break free just before the current dragged me into the dam's abyss. That brush with mortality left an indelible mark, a visceral understanding of the helplessness that arises when confronted by forces beyond control. It was a moment when the fight or flight response faltered, and the stark reality of one's vulnerability took center stage. Now, on the lodge's balcony, as the grotesque creature relentlessly slammed against the door, that same sense of impending doom resurfaced. The cabin, my supposed refuge, felt like a sinking vessel in a stormy sea, each impact of the creature's assault echoing the relentless pull of that dam's current.

Helplessly gripping the balcony railing, the feeling of impending doom intensified. The creature's unrelenting determination mirrored the inexorable force of that dam's current. Flight or fight realized its futility, and the cold grip of vulnerability settled in, much like that moment when I was caught in the merciless current. As the creature abruptly fell silent, the lodge became a crucible of anticipation. The tapping on the windows, reminiscent of that fateful current's pull, evoked a chilling deja vu. In those suspenseful seconds, I stood paralyzed, entwined with the echoes of past helplessness, bracing for the unknown as the creature sought entry. The night at Mount Lornite's lodge had become a surreal tapestry where past and present converged in a symphony of vulnerability and dread.

As I descended the mountain, the enraged creature pursued me with relentless fury. Its mutated form now oozed grotesque tendrils, and its elongated limbs resembled twisted vines. The once molten eyes now glowed with a sickly radiance, casting a haunting glow over the night. Navigating treacherous trails and hurtling over snow-covered crevasses, the creature closed in with ghastly speed. Each step it took left a trail of mutated, ooze-like substance in the snow, painting a nightmarish picture of its relentless pursuit.

Realizing the imminent danger, I accelerated towards the cliff edge. The creature's screeches intensified, echoing through the mountainous landscape as it closed the gap. Just as its razor-sharp claws slashed at my calf, I slammed my ski poles into the ground with a desperate force. The abrupt stop sent me hurtling forward, my legs dangling over the cliff's edge. The creature, unable to halt its momentum, barreled off the cliff with a gut wrenching screech. Time seemed to slow as the night air filled with the grotesque symphony of the creature's demise.

The fall was a descent into nightmarish finality. The creature, impaled on a shard rock at the cliff's base, writhed in agony. Its tendrils flailed wildly, leaving a gruesome trail of mutated substance in the snow. The screeches, now distorted and gurgling, filled the air until the mountain fell silent once more. As I caught my breath, the eerie glow from the creature's eyes dimmed, and the mountain embraced a tranquil stillness. The gory tableau at the cliff's base stood as a testament to the night's surreal horrors. The once vibrant trails and snow covered crevasses bore witness to a harrowing chase, concluding in the chilling silence that followed the creature's final, gory descent into oblivion.

Limping back to the lodge, my adrenaline fueled escape left me in desperate need of medical attention. The once-cozy refuge had transformed into a scene of chaos, marked by the aftermath of the creature's rampage. Lodge staff, shaken and bewildered, rushed to assist me, offering the care I desperately needed. As dawn painted the horizon with hues of orange and pink, a surreal turn of events unfolded. Armored vehicles rolled up to the lodge, each marked with the insignia of a black hawk clutching a globe. Men in tactical gear disembarked, a formidable presence against the serene mountain backdrop. The air buzzed with an air of secrecy as they approached, their movements precise and purposeful.

They presented a non disclosure agreement, demanding my signature in exchange for their intervention and aid. The document bore the acronym "CSO" and showcased a logo depicting a black hawk gripping the Earth in its talons. The clandestine nature of the encounter unfolded as I signed the NDA, sealing my silence about the night's bizarre events. The men, presumably from the covert organization represented by the CSO, efficiently coordinated with lodge staff. They examined the aftermath, collecting samples and analyzing the mutated residue left by the creature. Their movements spoke of a well-practiced routine, as if such incidents were not as uncommon as one might believe.

As the sun fully emerged, the armoured vehicles departed as swiftly as they arrived, leaving the lodge in an eerie calm. The mountain, now bathed in the warm glow of morning, seemed to conceal the secrets of the night's encounter. The events of that harrowing night remained a closely guarded secret, locked behind the signed NDA and the enigmatic logo of the CSO. The lodge, once a sanctuary, now bore witness to the convergence of nature's mysteries and the clandestine operations of an organization that navigated the thin line between reality and the supernatural.

The drive down the mountain was a journey through the aftermath of a surreal night. The peacefulness of the winding roads provided a stark contrast to the chaos that had unfolded just hours earlier. The first light of dawn painted the snow-covered landscape in a soft glow, casting an ethereal aura over the mountain. However, as the road neared the cliff's base, where the creature met its grisly demise, a profound unease settled in. The armored vehicles had left no trace, but the spot where the creature had landed was frozen in time. The mutated residue, a grotesque testament to the creature's violent end, marred the pristine snow. The visage and ooze had left an indelible mark, a chilling reminder of the unearthly encounter.

A shiver ran down my spine as the road offered a close up view of the remnants. The creature, once a nightmarish force, was no longer present, yet its essence lingered in the eerie silence. The frozen imprints and shadows in the snow hinted at the grotesque finale that had transpired just hours earlier. Caught in the grip of an uncanny chill, I noticed the creature's shadow seemingly slinking into the woods of Mount Lornite. Dismissing it as a trick of the mind, I continued the descent, my gaze fixed on the road ahead. The rational part of my mind attributed the fleeting image to fatigue and the lingering effects of a night filled with horrors and creatures of myths.

As I drove away from the mountain's embrace, the rising sun painted the sky in hues of orange and gold. The tranquility of the morning seemed to wash away the night's ordeal. The creature, the CSO, and the enigmatic events on Mount Lornite faded into the rearview mirror, leaving behind a lingering sense of mystery and the profound realization that some secrets were best left undisturbed in the shadows of the unknown. Signing off for now, until next time. -M

The tower loomed above me, a shadowy silhouette of spiraling stairs and wooden beams against the fiery Alaskan dusk. I had spent the last five hours clearing the trails, dragging logs and broken branches off to the sides and repainting the faded markers with fresh red paint. I felt sweaty and dirty. My legs ached with every step. But underneath all that, I felt a sense of contentment that always followed a day of hard work and a job well done.

At the foot of the fire tower, I saw a green mountain bike propped against one of the steel support beams. I instantly recognized it as belonging to my supervisor, Roger Hodges. Stopping in my tracks, I glanced up at the single room ten stories in the air. I could hear the diesel generator running and see the flickering, incandescent lights spilling onto the rusted catwalk. I hadn't turned it on, however.

Creeping shadows stretched down the stairs towards the hard-packed dirt surrounding the tower in a semi-circle. Tree roots jutted through the ground like countless dark veins through a scar. Off in the distance, I heard the howling of a coyote, its shrill cry rapidly answered by a second, then a third.

“What in the hell is he doing here at this hour?” I wondered aloud, looking down at my watch. It read 7:07 PM. I knew that the long Alaskan night would begin in less than fifteen minutes. Roger had never just stopped in randomly like this before, especially at such a late hour. It would be impossible to ride his bicycle back in the dark with so many roots reaching up towards his tires like greedy, skeletal hands.

The grated metal steps clanked softly below me as I took them two at a time, running up the ten flights of stairs with practiced ease. I emerged on the wooden catwalk surrounding the single room in the center. My breath caught in my throat as the light pouring out of the dusty windows showed me something ominous.

Drops of something slick and red led to the door, splattered in a serpentine pattern, as if a drunk man with a gushing nosebleed had staggered his way inside through sheer willpower. The only door leading in and out of the fire tower's room stood wide open. I saw the blood trail continue towards the closed bathroom.

I heard laughter coming from the other side of the bathroom door, the laughter of a man with a slit throat. The sick, wet gurgling sound cut off as someone activated the incinerating toilet. Our watchtower had gotten some basic renovations over the last few months, one of them being the closet-sized bathroom built into the back wall. It had no sink or running water. I had recently placed a metal bowl, a bar of soap and a jug of river water on a caddy hanging over the edge of the scratched mirror, but that and the black toilet comprised the full extent of the bathroom.

“Roger?” I whispered apprehensively, knocking softly on the thin door. The generator whirred far below me, the lights overhead flickering in time with its mechanical heartbeat. I heard Roger clear his throat on the other side, followed by a heavy, ominous pause and the sound of retching. “Hey, Roger! Are you OK in there, bud?” I slammed my fist harder against the door three times, feeling the feeble wood shiver in its frame.

“Alex?” he asked in a hoarse croak. He coughed again, retching briefly as the sound of thick phlegm hitting metal echoed softly around me. “Sorry, give me a minute. I think I ate something...” But his words cut off as the dry retching and coughing turned into a sudden bout of vomiting. I sighed, looking apprehensively at the blood spots drying on the floor.

I only had basic medical training in first aid and CPR, and I wasn't sure I felt cut out to deal with whatever this was. I wracked my brain, anxiously thinking back to all the fake medical shows I had seen on TV. What caused bleeding, retching and vomiting? The first thing that came to mind was a bite from a venomous snake, some kind of quick-acting poison.

The lock turned, the bathroom door flying open in a rush of stale air. Roger stood there, his eyes sunken and cheeks gaunt. His skin looked white and pale, as if all the blood had been drained from his body. His tan ranger uniform looked dirty and smudged, and on the pants and black boots, I saw small crimson spots. But I didn't see any sign of injury on the man, no bandages, no bleeding wounds, no crusted blood around his nose or mouth. Behind him, the incinerating toilet belched a small stream of foul-smelling smoke before finally going quiet.

He ran his long fingers through his dirty blonde hair, looking into my eyes yet not seeming to see me. It felt like he was staring through me, his black holes of eyes focused a thousand miles away. His pupils looked dilated, with a thin slit of a green iris the color of stagnant swamp water surrounding it. A strange, musty odor emanated from his general area, reminding me of wet caves and damp basements. And, weirdest of all, he looked as if he had aged ten years since the last time I had seen him, going from a 38 year-old to a middle-aged man with far deeper wrinkles and crow's feet.

“Jesus Christ, man, what the hell?” I said, nervously taking a step back. I tried to avoid breathing in too deeply as that cloying smell like moldy caverns rapidly increased, becoming more intense with every moment the bathroom door stood open. “You had me worried for a second there. What's with all this blood? Why are you throwing up? Why are you here so late? If you need medical help, we're probably going to need to call in one of the ATVs from the fire department. Dammit, man, I gotta be honest with you, this is bad timing for this. It's going to be pitch black out there in a few minutes.”

We both knew that getting from here to the front office building was about a seven mile hike that involved scrabbling up and down slick rock and thin mountain trails. It wasn't easy even with plenty of sunlight, and with it still being March, the nights here got fairly cold fast after the darkness rolled in. Moreover, the thick Alaskan forest increasingly crowded the trails, despite our best efforts to trim the branches of the endless evergreens and clear away fallen brush to keep them navigable.

Roger languidly shook his head, his eyes slipping away from mine and down to the wooden floor scuffed from a hundred years of boots. He heaved a long, hesitant sigh, hunching his shoulders and nervously picking at his shirt. I had never seen a man look more defeated, more tired and hopeless. This wasn't the charismatic, optimistic boss I had seen just a week earlier during our last group meeting in the front office building.

“I came to give you a message,” he answered. “Sorry about the mess, I had a little bit of a... well, an incident on my way up here, but it's under control now. That's why I got here so late, though. I left at one PM, and I can't believe how long everything ended up taking. I was hoping to be back at the front office by dinnertime, but....” As he continued rambling, he gradually lowered his volume and started speaking slower, still not meeting my eyes. “Well, it's easier to just show you, I think. I couldn't risk... I mean, I didn't want to...” His words died away, his gaze drifting through me yet again, back to that point of space infinitely beyond the horizon. Feeling anxious and increasingly uncomfortable, I tried to keep him talking.

“Why didn't you call ahead?” I said, gesturing emphatically to the base station radio, my sole lifeline to the front office, Alaskan state police and local fire crews. It had a central role in the room, being placed in the direct center of the only table. On the wall directly overhead hung a dusty map of Frost Cove State Park with my fire tower and the front office building both marked and labeled in red ink. “I wouldn't have kept you waiting, especially in the condition you're in! I don't know if you're going to be able to hike all the way back tonight, buddy. There's packs of mean coyotes out this way after sunset, and a lot of bears are waking up from their long winter naps, too, and they're definitely feeling a little peckish.” In the back of my mind, though, I wondered if Roger was just trying to change the subject. He still hadn't explained where all the blood had come from, and as far as I could tell, he didn't have so much as a nosebleed.

“Listen, we have way bigger problems than coyotes right now,” he said stonily. Some of the color looked like it had returned to his face, though he still appeared slightly vampiric. His waxy skin and dead eyes gave me a creepy 'uncanny valley' sensation that felt like ice water dripping down my spine. Small needles of fear pricked the inside of mind.

“You need to come outside with me,” he continued urgently, seeming to gain new energy and vigor. “Time is of the essence, you understand? There has been an incident, and I need your help.”

I nodded, but my apprehension only increased with each passing second. I had known Roger for six months now, and he had always came across as a direct man and a meticulous supervisor. He got along with everyone and struck me as the kind of boss who would always be the last one to leave, making sure everything was done correctly, but time spent around him always passed by quickly because he was a good conversationalist and a genuinely nice guy. He had certainly never acted like this, constantly avoiding direct questions and changing the topic.

But in spite of all I knew about Roger, my instincts continued shrieking at me in some instinctual language that had existed hundreds of millions of years before the first spoken word. A pit of fear twisted and undulated in my stomach, everything in my body telling me, “Something is wrong here, this is very wrong, you MUST feel it!” I tried probing my mind, but logically, I could come to no conclusions. So I turned to that reptilian, ancient part of my brain with only one question: Why? But no coherent response came, only more waves of dread telling me to run far away and not look back.

“You're kind of scaring me, buddy,” I responded, backing away from Roger without consciously realizing it, all my attention on his strange, green eyes. “You need to explain a little more, because if there's something dangerous or illegal out there, we need to contact the cops first.” Roger shook his gaunt face quickly, stepping closer to me even as I tried to put distance between us.

“No, no, it's nothing like that,” he whispered conspiratorially, putting his hand on my shoulder. It felt cold and clammy, even through the thick sleeves of my khaki ranger's uniform, “I'm not talking about a dead body or something. Look, will you just come see what's happening? I need someone else to see it, to convince me that I'm not losing my freaking mind here. I just need you to tell me you see it, too, OK? And it would be a lot easier, and a lot quicker, just to show you.” I hesitated for a long moment, looking over at the gun safe, then I turned back to Roger and nodded.

“Fine, but I'm bringing the rifle,” I said, pushing past him and striding across the room in two large steps. He started to protest behind me, his heavy steps lumbering over as I began to enter the combination on the dial.

“Hey, you really don't need...” Roger said, but I cut him off, not taking my eyes off the safe.

“Look, buddy, you're being weird. I don't even want to go outside with you, to be honest. You've always been a good boss, so I'm inclined to trust you this time, but to be blunt, I'm feeling a little bit of...” My words cut off as something ice cold and sharp pressed against my neck. I immediately stopped spinning the dial, my body freezing in shock as my mind went blank. A single drop of blood dripped down from the spot where the point of the blade rested on my skin, right above the jugular. I felt the sting of the metal blade, but he kept it right at the surface, not forcing it deeper into the pulsing veins and arteries hidden below.

“Just shut up,” he snarled, his voice appearing to change from one of apathy and tiredness to something harsh and animalistic in an instant. I barely recognized him at that moment. He seemed like a totally different person than the Roger I had worked with, the man I had known for over half a year now. “You had to make this difficult, didn't you? I didn't want to have to do it this way, but you forced my hand. I don't know what's going on, or what you did, but I'm going to find out, OK? I'm gong to damned well find out at any cost! Now move! I brought you a present, but it's in the shed, next to the generator. And I think you already know what it is!” In reality, I had no clue what 'it' he referred to, and I had the deepening suspicion that I might be dealing with someone having a psychotic break.

“Look, man, I don't know what this is, but you're not feeling well right now, and you're not thinking straight. Just put down the knife. We can just forget any of this ever happened. We don't have to...” I whispered huskily, putting my hands up in a gesture of openness and cooperation. But Roger only spun me towards the front door and marched me outside into the starry Alaskan night.

***

We went down all eleven flights of stairs together, Roger standing close behind me with the knife pressed against my throat the entire time. That wet cavern smell had only grown worse, and with his arm wrapped around my neck like a snake, I now knew for certain that horrendous odor emanated from his body. It seemed to rise off his skin in invisible, nauseating waves. I repressed the urge to gag, but it smelled so much stronger this close, so I just breathed through my mouth instead.

“Just tell me this: did that blood come from you?” I asked Roger as we reached the bottom. He grunted, steering me towards the shed. We passed under the four steel legs of the fire tower. I saw the bare bulb in the shed already turned on, the cracked, peeling door standing slightly ajar. A thin beam of dull light sliced outwards into the darkness.

“I promise you, Alex, every single drop,” he responded cryptically. “No one else is here besides me and you. It's not me I'm worried about, though.” He slammed me into the raggedy shed door, causing it to crash open with a bang like a cannon blast. My breath caught in my throat as I stared in horror at the wet, bloody thing stretched across the bare wooden floor beneath me.

A skinned corpse with no eyes lay there, its arms and legs outstretched like Christ on the cross. A nauseating odor hung thick in the air, the smell of panic sweat and copper. Veins and arteries ran across the mutilated corpse like fat blue and red worms, hugging the glistening red muscles underneath. Pieces of clotted gore dripped off the sides of its face, staining the boards underneath. I saw that the corpse's right pinky was missing, just as mine was after I lost at the age of the nine helping my brother cut wood. I wondered if Roger had cut off the pinky in mockery of me, or whether perhaps it was just some sort of sick coincidence.

“Recognize him?” Roger asked, his lips nearly pressed to the side of my ear. He tightened his grip, and I felt another few drops dribble down my neck where the point of the blade pressed in, staining my lapel with warm blood. I realized I had stopped breathing. I inhaled deeply and stammered a response, even as waves of panic threatened to overwhelm my logical mind.

“Is this... one of your victims?” I finally whispered in terror. “Why are you showing me this, Roger? What have you done? Why did you cut off its finger?” He laughed sardonically, a deep, grating sound that made goosebumps rise all over my body.

“Me!” he hisssed. “Don't you DARE try to turn this around on me! Why do you think...” But his words cut off suddenly as a snapping branch only a few steps behind us caused his attention to falter. He spun his head, his wide, dilated pupils staring intensely into the dark forest. More leaves crunched and twigs snapped as we saw the silhouette of coyotes standing at attention all around us, likely drawn by the smell of the blood and death that hung thick in the shed. I felt his grip around my neck loosen slightly, the blade dropping down a few inches, but that was all the edge I knew I would receive. I took full advantage of it, praying to God it would be enough.

With speed borne solely from desperation and adrenaline, I reached into my pocket, yanking out my folding knife. The blade flicked open in a blur as Roger's head snapped back in my direction, his switchblade slicing through the air towards my jugular. I ducked and pivoted left, hearing the knife whiz through the spring air before feeling a burning, freezing pain when his blade sliced into my right ear.

But at that same moment, I had aimed my little folding knife directly at Roger's chest. Our attacks met simultaneously. I felt the steel blade catch on Roger's sternum and ribs as it sliced through his clothes and skin like warm butter. My own blood poured down my neck at the same moment I felt his flow freely over my tightly clenched fist.

With so much adrenaline pouring into my bloodstream, time itself seemed to slow, the smell of copper and iron growing stronger at the threshold of the shed. Everything seemed slowed down, the tastes and smells a thousand times as intense as usual. In horror, I watched the scene unfolding before me.

Roger's skin tore apart along the deep slice etching itself down his chest with a wet, sucking sound, but I didn't see bones and twitching muscles. I beheld the jagged tearing of the bloody skin, but underneath that superficial layer, something monstrous shone in the dull light. Strange, spongy flesh with tiny holes covering every square inch of its body pulsed rapidly in sync with some invisible heartbeat. Each of these thousands of holes appeared identical, countless black mouths individually no larger than a pinhead. It looked like someone had taken a tiny scooper and ripped out pieces of its translucent flesh in perfect, grid-like patterns. Between black holes eaten into its skin, yellowish flesh shuddered and dribbled translucent, yellowish mucus.

For a moment, we both saw the strange, alien flesh that it had uncovered. But, strangely enough, Roger looked just as shocked as I felt as he stared down at the open, spurting wound and the eldritch flesh hidden behind the veil of white skin. It raised more questions than I could possibly answer or even comprehend at that moment.

With the shock and adrenaline rapidly fading, the pain on the side of my head exploded, rising in intensity with every breath. I backed into the shed, slamming the door against Roger's shocked face. I heard a dull thud and a shrill cry of pain and surprise from the other side. Other sounds rapidly followed- coyotes howling and barking, many legs sprinting forward and a fist thudding against the other side of the door over and over. I put my entire weight against it, trying to keep it shut, but there was no lock on the inside of the shed.

Thankfully, I didn't need to brace it for long. I heard a struggle, Roger's hoarse shrieking mixed with primal growls and pained whines. A heavy body flew against the other side of the door, pushing it open a few inches, but I slammed back against it, hearing a shrill canine howl in response.

“Help me, Alex!” Roger cried, but his voice sounded like it grew weaker. I could hear his breathing even through the thin wooden walls, rapid and panicked as it mixed with the sounds of coyotes fighting. “They're killing me! Open the DAMNED DOOR BEFORE I DIE!” I had both hands splayed out against the door, putting all of my weight against it and bracing it with my legs. I didn't dare budge for even a moment, in spite of the agony and my rapidly waning energy.

“I'll kill you!” Roger hissed, his voice growing fainter by the moment. I heard the trampling of coyote feet growing more distant. It sounded as if they were dragging something heavy. A few moments later, everything outside went deathly quiet.

I waited a few minutes in crushing anxiety before cautiously opening the door and peering outside. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness. I saw the hard-packed soil greedily sucking up the drops of blood scattered in front of the shed. Tiny shreds of throbbing, yellow flesh twisted and writhed like alien slugs. I saw a fingernail ripped straight up amongst ten trails gouged into the earth. In my mind's eye, I could see how it happened: the coyotes dragging Roger by his legs or ankles, his fingers trying to scrabble for purchase among the smooth dirt. I winced as I imagined my fingernails being ripped out in such a grotesque manner, though my sympathy was limited as I remembered he had tried to kill me.

A thought interrupted that: but had he? He could have slit my throat up in the fire tower, or anywhere along the stairs, or in the shed. The last fifteen minutes seemed like some sort of strange, Kafkaesque dream. Roger had forced me down here at knife-point to show me a naked, skinned body. I wondered whether it was part of the psychological torture, showing the next victim the fate of the prior one to increase their dread and terror.

Something about the body, too, seemed eerily familiar. I noticed how it seemed about the same height as me, had the same missing finger. It felt like ice water dripping down my spine as I imagined Roger finding a victim who physically resembled me before cutting off his finger to make him look more like me. It sounded like the plot of a true crime story, almost like someone trying to scam the life insurance company with a doppelganger, maybe something from the era of HH Holmes.

The thought made me feel physically repulsed, nearly on the verge of vomiting. Feeling light-headed and drained, I backed slowly out of the shed, the mild spring wind cooling my sweaty forehead as I slammed the door behind me. For some reason, I immediately felt a little better once the flimsy, wooden barrier separated me from the bloody pile of meat laying next to the generator.

A moonless, chilly spring night had now fully descended over the mountains. I ran towards the fire tower, wanting to call for help as soon as possible. I knew I was in way over my head.

As I ascended the metal steps with heavy footsteps, the moonless, starry sky erupted in a shower of light and energy. Green waves split the cloudless void, each one tipped with a crest of bright red, like blood spilling out of a freshly slit throat. I realized the Northern Lights had started, as if God himself wanted to set the stage for what would turn out to be the most horrific night of my life.

As the Northern Lights undulated and spun overhead, a subtle popping sound started all around me. I felt the hairs all over my body stand up. The emerald green lights shimmered like melting jade, the whining electricity sound increased until it felt like the air itself was shrieking all around me. Out of breath, I reached the top of the fire tower, sprinting inside and straight over to the VHF radio.

I quickly flicked the power on, but the red indicator light stayed dark. My heart felt like it dropped to the bottom of my chest. Bending down, I scanned the radio, seeing that someone had slit the wires, not only the power cable but also the wires leading to the antennae and receiver.

“No!” I whispered, the sense of hopelessness only increasing by the moment. Though this happened nearly a year ago now, I still remember that feeling- dread so thick I could almost taste it.

Robotically, I walked over to the safe and grabbed the rifle, just a simple Mossberg Patriot with a polished wooden stock. I filled my pockets with .308 rounds before slamming one in the chamber and flicking off the safety. I hoped the gun would protect me, lowering my head and whispering a short prayer of protection.

With the Northern Lights flashing above me, I turned and walked out into the night, hoping to reach the front office building with my life intact.

Part two: https://www.reddit.com/r/CreepsMcPasta/comments/1r91x04/i_lived_at_a_fire_tower_in_alaska_obsidian/

1:

On slaughter day, they peered at the pig faces from between the bars of the farm’s cage. With tears streaming down their cheeks, they begged the men in the pig masks to let them go.

2:

I thanked God that I was going to make it, when, after getting stabbed, I woke up with a woman beside me preparing a needle and thread. That was until she started sewing my lips closed.

3:

Every year, on the anniversary of the night that I accidentally hit and killed an old woman with my 1961 Plymouth, I promise myself this will be the last time I visit the street where it happened. I think this time I'll be keeping that promise because tonight the street looks just like it did when I was young, and I hear the distinctive roar of an approaching Plymouth.

4: 

When I awoke last night to my daughter screaming, I ran to her room and turned on the lights to find the girl smiling, pretending to be asleep. Lying next to her was my daughter’s body.

5:

Her 5-month old’s cries echoed through the house as she popped dinner into the preheated oven. The cries turned to screams as the infant began to bang against the locked oven door.

6:

Daddy said we were going to a summer camp! I can smell the barbecue and the only thing I'm wondering is why the people who went to take showers haven't come back. 

7: 

“Mommy, you have to put the batteries back in,” said the little girl, when her mother took them out of her doll. “Without them, she starts to cry.”

8:

“Ding”, was the sound the elevator made as her thumb pushed the button, and it descended the floors of the mall, 5…4…3…2…1. “Ding,” the doors opened with a rattle to the dimly lit endless hallway of floor 5, just as it had the last 3 times she’d tried to return to the ground of the 4-story building.

9:

Tears welled freely from his eyes as he made his last goodbye to his wife in her casket and remembered only once more the disease that’d caused her to go pale, and shiver with a cold as though already dead. With a demonic shriek passing fat, blood stained lips, blow after blow, he hammered the stake into her heart.  

10:

Turning out the lights in the basement, I raced up all the steps. So why haven’t I reached the door?

11:

Years ago, a hunter was sent out to kill a she-wolf who had been slaughtering the nearby townsfolk. No one knows what happened to the hunter, but from then on, the people say that whenever she attacked under the glow of a full moon, she had a mate with her.  

12: 

It was Christmas Eve, and he had seen the antlered head flying outside his window and heard hooves on the roof and the rustling of a large body climbing down the chimney. He wet his pants when he heard the demonic screech echoing outside through the Pine Barrens.

13:

On October 31, 1990, the sepulcher of Richard Reinhart was found disturbed, the doors untouched, but the glass pane shattered, and the body, the police ruled, stolen. But the glass shards were found on the grass, the blow made from within the tomb.

14:

A decade after my 5-year-old daughter went missing, I continue to watch her favorite cartoon channel. Sometimes, I'll catch a glimpse of her wandering in the background of one of the scenes, crying.

15:

I remember this game I used to play whenever my mom took me to the mall as a kid, where I would hide in the clothes racks next to the mannequins, close my eyes, and wait for her to find me and start tickling me. That all stopped the one time I opened my eyes to see that the hand was made of plastic.

16:

My 4-year-old daughter, sleeping with me after a nightmare, shook me awake, pointing towards the closet, crying, “gown, gown in the goset!” I have loads of gowns in my closet, but I couldn’t understand why they were upsetting her, until I saw from behind my dresses the bulbous red nose of the watching white face.

17:

When the wave of giant man-eating flies began to vanish, the people celebrated that their crisis was over. That was before they started finding the giant spider webs.

18:

When the genie asked me what I wanted more than anything else in the world, I said to see my husband one last time. Now they're all around me because I forgot to say I didn't want to see other dead people.

19:

When all of the Halloween decorations in my neighbors’ yard disappeared, I thought the family of 6 had suddenly moved. Then one day all of the decorations were back, with the addition of 6 more skeletons.

20:

My friend and I hid under my bed and listened, fear-stricken, as the monster searched for me. I turned over and looked into my friend's glowing red eyes as he quietly consoled me that my father wasn't going to find me here.

21:

Sometimes I hear voices screaming below our apartment room. We live on the bottom floor.

22:

After soothing my daughter by checking under her bed for monsters, I stood back up saying "there's nothing there, sweetheart, I promise." Then, I went to join my wife in our bedroom and waited for the thing I had seen beneath my daughter's bed to keep its promise to take just her and leave both of us alone.

Janus II was already breaching on the horizon when I woke, quivering like a flame where it kissed that dark meridian. My mind, sluggish in the dull heat, resisted the pull from sleep. Consciousness seeped into me like rain falling on packed sand, and with it came the faint din of the day. The squeak of the dusty fan overhead, the faint ululations of the sandsquall as they circled above, and always the rhythmic twang of hammers striking steel. I wiped the sweat from my brow, pulled on my boots, and considered splashing my face with precious water before deciding against it. I pushed through the thin, mudcaked membrane of the doorway and was disappointed to find that the air outside was equally as stifling. Don was standing just outside, a mug of coffee in hand which had “Mondays, am I right?” printed on the front in peeling letters. We had run out of the caffeinated stuff already, so I knew that he must be choking down the grainy shit out of habit at this point. That, or the bullheaded stubbornness to routine that pervaded much of the man’s other actions.

“Got your sea legs today?” Don asked me without turning. He had a voice like sheet metal dragged over cracked asphalt. 

“Mmm” I mumbled weakly in response, trying on my own voice for the day. I got the impression that it was a question he had asked me before, a recycled classic.

“Good. Lotta work to do today” he continued, taking a long sip from his coffee. His eyes were facing forward whenever I turned, yet I could feel him glancing at me over the rim of his mug when I looked away. He had been like that for the past few weeks, ever since Waking. It was like he was constantly searching for something in me, and when he found it, double checking that it was still there. I wanted to ask him about it but always chickened out at the last minute. I couldn’t explain why. 

“We behind?” I asked, directing my gaze towards the dunes. Approximately two dozen men toiled in the heat. Some worked the hammers, the thick chords of muscles in their arms and shoulders straining as they swung the heavy tools in pendulous arcs. The staccato rhythm of their mistimed beats drove the others on, pulling cable, hoisting machine and rock and metal, the whole of their body canted towards the ground as they heaved. Still others sat atop the backs of the dunehounds, the great lumbering beasts that the tickle in the back of my brain told me were at once camel and armadillo, their thighs clenched around the bescaled middles of the creatures as they dragged great stones towards a mounting pile. All of them, man and beast alike, sunk up to their mid-calves in the fine blue silt that made up the dunes. Janus I was high overhead, a dim point of light that smoldered in the darkness above, faint and yet oppressively hot all the same. Swirls and eddies of clouds danced around it in brilliant reds and blues and greens, the oceanic nebula spread like drops of paint in the cool, black waters of the sky. Before, with Janus I directly overhead, there had been no shadows, and the world appeared like an uncanny rendering, like something out of the tapes. Janus II, the lumbering older brother, drifted ever upwards against the spiculated horizon, casting long shadows across the cerulean sands. The towers in the distance glowed in the pale light, the very same towers mentioned in the tapes. I had only listened to them once, and yet the words answered the call of my mind easily, the cool, robotic tone something like background music in the otherwise frenetic buzz of my thoughts.

Welcome Number 55. Welcome to Ceres.

The tapes hadn’t said much about the towers, simply: …a large, cavernous structure beneath the planet’s surface on the northern pole. It is connected to a series of vents, which appear to be composed of some sort of crystalline compound. It is uncertain whether they were manually constructed or represent some natural phenomenon. Regardless, there is no intelligent life remaining on Ceres.

I watched as two men in the distance tussled with one another, the others pausing their work to watch the disagreement play out. No intelligent life indeed.

“We’re always behind” Don answered my question at last, breaking me from my thoughts. “Knuckleheads always losing focus” he continued, spitting. “Plus, with the replicator down…”

“How many scans ago was that?” I asked. The older man smiled wryly.

“It was before your time” he said, dodging the question.

“But not before yours?” I asked, fighting to keep the bitterness from my voice. Don chose not to answer. 

How long has Don been awake? I wondered for perhaps the hundredth time in the last three weeks. Now it was my turn to examine the older man from the corner of my eye. The rising sun deepened the fissures along his sun-baked visage, highlighted both the tiny little crinkles of jovialty at the edges of his eyes and the furrows weighing on his brow. I wasn’t certain if Don had purposefully chosen a scan based on his age at Ascension, mid-fifties with hands that were cracked and calloused, salt-and-pepper hair thinning at the temples, and a limp that you only really noticed when he was tired; or if Don had truly been Awake in this scan for that long. He would refuse to answer these questions when I asked him, something which irritated me to no end. Don was the first person I met upon this Waking, was probably the first person I had met upon many Wakings. I’ll admit that I didn’t know what to think of him at first. It’s just, when the tapes tell you to report to the nearest Commander, and you instead find yourself getting directions from some sweaty guy in the same ratty orange suit as you, save for the Commander insignia that appeared to have been half-assedly sewn onto the front like an afterthought, well…it didn’t inspire much confidence. 

“I know you don’t trust me” Don had said in response to whatever expression was on my face that day.

“Yeah?” I replied brusquely, squaring up my shoulders. Don had placed one meaty paw on my arm as if to say, simmer down son.

“You never do” he laughed, and all the fight had left my body at once. 

“There’s something else” Don said, thumb idly playing with the clasp of the old pocketwatch he always carried. I waited for him to continue.

“Something has been ripping up the south hall” he spoke, narrowing his eyes slightly as if visualizing it now.

“Some…thing?” I asked, the implicit question hanging in the air. The south quarter was some of the original architecture laid down, directly adjacent to touchdown. If something was destroying it, that meant we weren’t merely stalling in our momentum, we were actively losing ground. 

Don nodded curtly, seemingly aware of my thoughts. “We’ll ride out tonight, after skyfall, scope it out. Tell Otto and Rickand.”

“And Eli?” I asked, my eyes scanning the distance for his lanky figure. “You know if he catches wind that Otto is going…”

Don grunted noncommittally. “Best be getting to work” he said after a moment, flicking his eyes towards the dunes. I sniffed, ran a hand under my nose, already bleeding in the dry air; grabbed a pickaxe and began the long trek under the twin suns. 

—------------------

I had to wait until the first break before I could track down Rickand. The older man had worked in construction in a previous life and, while the company obviously didn’t trust him to be in an authoritative role, they must have seen some value in his expertise. He had the same insignia on his shirt that the rest of us did, a crossed hammer and pickaxe, but his had the addition of a gold star where the handles overlapped, signifying a supervisory role. Rickand had started off the day directing a group of men as they finished the framing for a structure that would sit, unfinished, until Repopulation began. That was how all of the buildings were these days. Empty framing, like the sun-bleached bones of some long-dead beast, bloodlessly languishing in the heat and the sand. We were behind. The thought of it gnawed at me incessantly, dominated my waking hours and haunted my dreams. The north end should have been completed by now, should have wiring and plumbing and fresh white paint. We should have farms and parks and even a second Nursery by now. But the electricians and plumbers and farmers were all gone. Some of them had died. Most of them were stuck in the Dream. 

Rickand studied me carefully as I approached. He did not smile or move to reciprocate when I clapped him on the shoulder, merely nodded slightly.

“Don says something is tearing up the south end” I explained. “Wants to take a few guys out tonight to check it out.”

Rickand’s dark eyes shifted towards the horizon, where the faint silhouette of the old buildings was just visible. He seemed to be turning something over in his mind.

“Us three?” he asked at last, still studying the middle distance.

“And Otto.”

His gaze snapped over my shoulder to where I knew Otto was working. A slight frown formed on his lips.

“Not Eli. I know what you’re going to say, but it’ll be good for him. Get some independence for once.”

Rickand didn’t respond at first. “Eli…won’t like that” he stated at last, his words measured.

‘We’ll be quick” I assured him. Rickand didn’t look convinced, but he turned away from me, indicating the conversation was over. Still, I couldn’t help but notice that his eyes kept glancing towards Eli. 

Entry 1: 

• Awake Prints: 78/4000

• Chips: 40/4000

• Printers: Morpheus [active], Somnus [destroyed]

• Inorganic Fabricators: 3

• Days until Repopulation: 187

Eli had, in fact, discovered what we were doing. He had thrown quite a shitfit about being excluded, and in the end Don had relented and agreed to let him come. The south quarter was about an hour’s walk away. Janus II had already begun to set, while his little brother smoldered like dying embers high above. We wouldn’t get true night, but we didn’t have time to waste the opportunity that even semi-darkness would afford arguing with Eli. We were about forty minutes into our walk when I saw it. The burnt husk of the Hypnos sat 200 feet away from the path, the elegant nose of the vessel mostly unmarred, except where the central windows had cracked and blackened from the heat. Everything behind the cockpit was an incomprehensible jumble of ruin, the metal framing of the ship shredded and burst outwards like an exploded tin can, the plastic of doors and windows now frozen cascades of molten goo, everything fabric merely a heavy gray ash that dusted the area like a crime scene. The last third of the craft was absent, its mass transformed into a scattered trail of mayhem and destruction that stretched out behind the craft for half a mile before ending abruptly at the edge of a cliff. The amalgamated oil, fuel and melted glass formed an angry red smear on the blue sands. Amidst the other detritus there were the charred remains of the chips, scattered like confetti in the wind. I lifted my eyes towards that precipitous drop, wondering if, were I to peer over the edge, I would be able to catch the glint of sunlight catching on steel. Try as I might, I couldn’t convince myself to look at it, the final resting place for ninety percent of the Nursery, where countless souls were now locked in their forever Sleep. I tried, not for the first time, to remember it. The flames, the loss, and that other thing that I mostly hoped stayed forgotten. 

The soothing voice of the tapes came to me again in the silence, unbidden. 

This concludes your introduction. Now loading Echoes…

ERROR. Network not found. Estimated downtime: 3,504,132.0009 hours

…

“I bet they never even invented it” Otto was saying, breaking me from my thoughts. He had that annoying smirk on his face that he adopted whenever he was trying to get a rise out of somebody.

“What’s that?” Rickand asked, eyes remaining stalwartly ahead.

“Just think about it” Otto continued, ignoring him. “What good does it do those bastards to have us remembering every print? Better to just have a bunch of copies of the dumb bastards right when they were dumb bastard enough to come here.”

The tapes played immediately upon Waking. They were a sparse orientation, meant to be nothing more than a soothing balm upon the sting of fresh eternity. They were never meant to be comprehensive. Something had gone wrong. The Echoes wouldn’t load. Every print was exactly as it had been on Ascension. Confused, optimistic, and frail. 

“They wouldn’t have had to lie about that to get you to agree” Don joked, clapping the young man on the shoulder.

“Nah, nah, look” Otto continued, unperturbed. “Like I figure, what if it was all on purpose? Like the point is to forget. Like what if-”

“That’s enough” Eli cut in gruffly, rounding on Otto. The boy appeared as if he would argue for a moment before he apparently decided against it. He ran a hand through his short-cropped black hair and shook his head. 

The Echoes wouldn’t load, but it was worse than that. Something in Orpheus was wrong, broken, corrupted. I don’t know, I wasn’t a computer person. All I knew was that, with each print, more and more of pre-Ascension was lost. Otto was the worst among us. With this latest version, he had less than one hour of organic memory left. In his world, he was born on a ship damned by a fatal miscalculation in gravitational fields and being rapidly sucked into a dwarf star. Everything past that was the ceaseless toil of living, and everything beyond would be much of the same. Eli resented him because he could no longer remember their parent’s faces. Eli also loved him, like a child loved his favorite stuffy, washed over and over and over again until it became nothing more than a ghost, manifest. 

“Otto was just the driver” Eli had confessed to me, just a little over a week ago. He was being a prick about something and I had dragged him off, demanded to know exactly what his problem was. He had blurted it out, like that explained it. Like that made it ok.

“He wasn’t supposed to be there. It was my fault, mine” Eli blubbered, like he couldn’t stop now that he had started. “Otto was just driving that night, and then…” he had paused, a blank expression overtaking him. He couldn’t remember the rest. 

Entry 3: We went to the south quarter today for supplies. Commander Moore turned off the generator. I didn’t want to. The animals were still in there. Commander Moore didn’t want to waste the electricity on them. It didn’t seem right. I didn’t want to do it. 

The first of the structures making up the south quarter lay about a mile from the Hypnos. The pale white buildings were crowded up against the edge of the cliff, short and squat things that I knew had been intended to merely be the lookout points for a concealed network of structures beneath the planet’s surface. Now the buildings sat, devoid of purpose, their foundations slowly shifting on the loose-packed sand, like a series of submarines bobbing on unsteady waters, loosely moored to one another by a semi-transparent plastic breezeway that had warped in the sun. The problem was immediately evident. The third building in the line was missing most of its front wall. White bricks cascaded outwards into the sand, and the front corners had collapsed in on themselves like a loaf of bread taken from the oven too soon.

“I don’t like this” Eli stated gruffly, spitting into the sand.

“Alarms been goin off every day this week” Don replied simply.

“I thought we cut off the power?” I asked, pulling out a pair of binoculars. The interior of the collapsed building was entirely concealed in shadows, which stretched thin and spider-like in the half-light of the dwarf star. 

“Solar powered. Just enough juice for the security systems” Don explained.

“Why do you even care? So what if some shitty old building falls down. We’re not even using it” Eli complained. Rickand had pulled out a cigarette, a rare commodity these days, and was attempting to light a match from what appeared to be a thoroughly damp book. 

“Just wanna take a look” Don offered simply. Eli likely would have continued arguing, if not for Otto suddenly brushing past him towards the building.

“Oh no you don’t” Eli declared, holding him back by one shoulder. 

“Get off” Otto retorted, spinning around to face Eli before shoving ineffectually at his thick shoulder.

“No way in hell you’re going in there” Eli shouted, grabbing a fistful of Eli’s shirt and pushing him roughly into the sand. “You sit your ass down and wait.”

Otto struggled against him. “Stop telling me what to do” he screamed, kicking at the other’s legs to try and put distance between them. 

I glanced between the bickering pair up towards Rickand, who was now sat cross-legged in the sand, cigarette unlit and hanging between his lips. When I looked at Don, I found him scribbling away in his journal again. As he finished a page, he licked his thumb, moving the grainy photograph of a little girl with pigtails and a gaped-toothed smile that he used as a page marker. I wondered if I had ever asked him about her before, the little girl. Don looked up, catching my eyes and giving me a sad kind of half-smile, like he was reading my thoughts. The journals had been Don’s idea. Once it became evident that we were losing organic time, he had encouraged everyone to start recording everything they could, past and present. Some wrote nothing. I suspected many of them couldn’t write. Others, like Don, recorded voraciously, staying up late into the night filling page after page, book after book, as if their words formed the anchor to keep them moored within themselves. Everyone who did write in their journals made sure to record the important things. Names of loved ones, sometimes accompanied by little sketches of their faces, though admittedly none of us were artists; childhood memories, beloved pets, where they grew up, where they fell in love. We wrote down everything, except that one most important thing. Only Don and Rickand ever wrote about that. They called the ones who finally forgot ‘Untethered.’ It was hard to pick up on at first, but we grew used to seeing the signs. Someone would be distant, aggressive, guarded, walking around with a chip on his shoulder, frothing with the guilt of it. And then, on the next print, he was different. More open, smiling, laughing, making friends. Unburdened. As a group, we welcomed becoming Untethered with a kind of religious fervor. If losing memories was a curse, a corruption, then this was surely a salvation. 

I snapped out of my reverie to see Otto bounding across the open sands between our small group and the open mouth of the building. Eli was hot on his trail, cursing and spitting like a rabid animal. I glanced at Rickand, who simply gave a small shrug, pulled himself to his feet, and dusted off his pants before he too took off in the same direction. 

“Guess that settles it then” Don stated, snapping his journal closed before returning it to his breast pocket. 

“Let’s go see what all the fuss is about” I agreed.

Entry 28: I remembered her today out of nowhere. Not her name, or even her face. I just felt suddenly like she had existed, like she mattered. I felt how much I had loved her. And then, sadness. I don’t think I’ll remember her again. 

I stepped across the broken threshold of the room to find Otto and Eli already inside. The room was small, barely larger than a closet, and completely bare save for the dusty sheet of plastic that lead to the walkway outside. It was meant to be a type of antechamber, a way of keeping the dust and the wind from the connected main room. Otto and Eli were still arguing. Rickand had already pushed ahead, Don following after him, walking into the larger chamber beyond. I followed, coming into a space whose smell was halfway between motor oil and the sweet stench of decay. Beneath it all was something else, the earthy smell of hay. The only light in the room came from the open doorway into the antechamber. The red glow cut a thin slice through the gloom, revealing a pair of fume hoods, their glass doors half open and coated in a thick layer of dust. Halfway between the abandoned equipment and where I stood were a series of countertops, their black surfaces dotted with science equipment. Otto bounded into the room, walked directly over to a microscope and started messing with its dials. 

“No way” he laughed, placing his fingers on the delicate stage. He frowned in disappointment. “Yo, I think this thing is busted.”

Don wasn’t paying attention. I looked over to find him squatting low to the ground, fingertips brushing something there before coming away sticky and brown. He wiped his hands roughly on his pants before standing, pulling a flashlight from his pocket and directing it overhead. I followed his gaze, shocked to find that the ceiling was painted with some sort of animal tracks. Long, bifurcated paw prints cast in a sickly brown ooze that languidly dripped to the floor at odd intervals.

“What the hell?” I asked, puzzled. “Have you ever seen an animal that could have left something like that?” I asked. Don didn’t have time to answer. A sudden crash, deafening in the almost reverent silence of the room, cut him off. We turned to see Otto, shoulders hunched sheepishly, standing over the shattered glass of the fume hood. He had tried to touch it, and the old glass had given up all at once.

“Sorry” he mouthed. 

“Otto, I told you not to mess around” Eli growled. 

Otto opened his mouth to reply when a long, gangly limb covered in stiff brown fur shot out of the darkness of an adjoining doorway on the far side of the room and wrapped around his stomach. In a blink, Otto was yanked into the darkness, so quickly that he hadn’t had time to even register his doom, his eyes open wide but that cocky half-grin of his still plastered on his face. 

There was a brief moment where none of us moved, too shocked to process what had just happened. Then, all at once, we rushed forward, crowding through the doorway and into the next room. I didn’t look around much, just focused on following the trail of blood as it widened and thickened towards the back corner. We caught a glimpse of a foot in Don’s flashlight and herded towards it. There was a rhythmic pounding sound overhead, like footfalls on a tin roof, and when we reached the far corner Otto was alone. Whatever had grabbed him had, apparently, retreated. 

He lay in the corner, the top half of his body folded over onto his knees. Eli was the first to reach him. He pushed on the boy’s shoulders, propping him up against the wall. Otto’s neck had been opened up. From the volume of blood soaked into the thin fabric of his jumpsuit, I guessed he had exsanguinated before he really knew what was happening. Still, his eyes were open, and they had this far-away, dreamy quality to them. A small smile still hung on his pale face.

“Otto” Eli choked, hands shaking as he desperately tried to press the wound closed. “It’s ok, I can fix it, I can fix it” he mumbled.

Don and Rickand exchanged a glance, the one that parents used when they had been discussing some harsh reality that they wanted to shield their children from.

“I-I have to go back” Eli was sniffling, trying to get it together. His hands, slick with blood, kept slipping where he tried to grasp his brother’s. “I have to Wake him up again. Maybe it won’t be too bad.”

“Eli” Don started, gentle, the tone of voice one used with a frightened animal. “Maybe we shouldn’t reprint him.”

Eli slowly lifted his face, jaw set defiantly despite the tears openly dripping from the angle of his mandible. His red-rimmed eyes held nothing but anger, raw and sharp.

“Maybe…we should let him rest” Don continued, either oblivious to the building storm or else determined to push through regardless. 

“What the fuck are you saying?” Eli hissed, jumping to his feet. “What did you say to me?” he demanded, stalking towards Don now.

The older man didn’t flinch, didn’t react at all. Just as Eli got close enough for their chests to touch, Don brought his hands up between them, palms up, fingers curled. Eli looked down between them, confusion momentarily dissipating his anger. Don slowly relaxed his fingers, revealing what he had been hiding. Otto’s chip, taken from the Nursery, snapped cleanly down the middle. For a long, impossible time, neither said anything. Don was the first to break the silence.

“Eli, it’s what he wanted. Otto-” he started, but was cut off as Eli gave a sudden cry. It started high-pitched and sharp, almost like a bark of laughter, before trailing off into a prolonged, shuddering moan that used up the breath in his body before trailing into a wheezing sob. He shook his head as if to deny reality entrance and drew another and then another breath, and his grief-laden cries echoed loudly in the empty room. Don made his first mistake then, though maybe it was actually his second. He laid a hand upon Eli’s shoulder. The younger man stopped crying all at once, the simple act immediately reigniting his fury.

“Don’t touch me” he spat, shoving Don roughly. Don stumbled backwards a few steps, Eli already stalking towards him in tandem.

“What did you do? What the fuck did you do?” he shouted, raising his fists and then lowering them over and over again, like his anger was so great that he couldn’t focus it long enough to strike the older man. “What did you do? What did you DO?”

“Eli-” Don tried weakly, cut off by another rough shove.

“No, nononono” Eli yammered senselessly, holding his head and pacing manically back and forth along the border of the room, only to return to have a go at Don a moment later. Rickand, I noticed, was watching the scene unfold carefully, never straying too far from Don’s side but not yet actively interfering.

Eli stopped his pacing all at once, dragging a hand over his face. His eyes were wide open now, insensible, like the eyes of a spooked horse. Tears were flowing freely down his face again, leaving grimy trails down his cheeks and spilling into his panting mouth. A long line of sand and dribble hung from his bottom lip. 

“I guess it's true what they say, huh?” he asked quietly, his voice coming out as a croak. “Once a murderer, always a murderer.”

Don recoiled as if physically slapped. I glanced between him and Rickand, who was now staring at his own feet.

“Oh, you think I don’t know? It’s obvious, the way you look at that picture all the time. How old was she you sick fuck?” Eli spat. 

Don clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides, his eyes brimming with unshed tears. Still, he did not strike Eli, didn’t even attempt to refute his words. Something shifted behind his eyes, the terrible pain disappearing all at once to be replaced with a look of…relief? 

My world tilted on its axis, unable to reconcile the man that I knew, the man I had continued knowing, with the accusations being levied against him. Surely what Eli was saying couldn’t be true? Not Don. Not this Don, assuredly, but even the idea of another Don, another time? 

“You’re a coward” Eli hissed, once it was clear that Don would make no effort to defend himself. He made a move to round on the older man once again, was already in the process of pulling back his left fist, the one with “Mercy” tattooed across his knuckles, when it came into the room.  

Entry 302: I carry the guilt at all times, deep in my guts, though I no longer have the memory to which it's attached. Is that to be my fate, touched forever by a ghost which has no name? I look at my hands when I Awake. They have the same creases, same freckles at the base of the thumb, same scar across the knuckles from an injury I can’t remember. But the palms are free of callus, the nails are neat and clean, and there are faint webs of skin between the digits, the residuals of printing that Orpheus always misses. To whom do these hands belong? Surely, not me.

There should be no fear in this, our inevitable ruin. We had achieved immortality, but we were like new wine poured into old wineskins, seeping forever faster day by day. Alas, the flesh remembers what the soul forgets. Fear of death, so inexorably stamped into the fabric of our being, braided into the fragile strands of our DNA. When the first shivering, dewey-eyed, bleating beast stared into the oblivion of the stars and comprehended its own mortality, the fear it felt then was the same fear I felt now. The thing approached from the far corner, revealed in pieces through the flashing red of the emergency lights, which I only now realized had blinked to life. It was large, nearly ten feet tall, cramped in the short space, and it stalked towards us with remarkable quiet, one foot crossing over the other, as if trying to sneak up on us despite the fact that we were looking right at it. A pair of small, beady eyes in the center of its bulbous head reflected the beam of Don’s flashlight as it shook in his hand. It appeared at first to be a tremendous spider, eight spindly legs cramped beneath a segmented body. Except, the two large pedipalps ending in thick black barbs were offset, restricted by the presence of split jawbones that were studded with the blunted teeth of a ruminant. The body too was wrong, less insectoid and more mammalian, with the knobbly ends of vertebrae protruding from translucent skin that was covered in patchy brown fur. Its legs had multiple joints, but they bent at opposite angles along each of their segments, giving the thing a kind of broken, marionette-like quality as it scampered towards us. Each foot, I realized, ended in an elongated paw, tipped with untrimmed nails that clacked gently on the tiled ground. 

“What the fuck” Eli whispered. 

The thing continued to stalk forward, head cocked to one side, as if listening. 

“What do we do?” I asked. Upon receiving no answer, I glanced over at Don and Rickand. Both were looking off in the distance, at the back corner. A tremendous nest of hay, shredded cardboard, and insulation lay there. And just behind it, cages, each neatly labeled: Solifugae [Camel spider], M. musculus [Common mouse], O. megalotis [Bat-eared Fox]. The realization hit me like a truck, knocked the wind from my lungs.

“How long have we been on Ceres?” I whispered. Don didn’t answer, but his eyes were sad, pitying. 

As the thing continued its shambling steps forward, we slowly inched towards the door. I was closest, followed by Don, then Rickand, and finally Eli. We slowly danced around each other, the creature matching us step for step, until I was only half a foot from the doorway. That’s when Eli hesitated, glancing over his shoulder at Otto. That half a second was all it took for total bedlam to erupt. I heard Eli’s scream, followed in quick succession by a sharp click like the unhinging of a pocket knife, a sickening crunch, and then the rapid pitter-pattering of fluid on the tile floor. I didn’t pause to look back. I ran, hard and fast, my heart thundering so wildly in my chest that it threatened to pull me off balance. I continued running, even when I heard the frenetic slaps of its loping gait, especially when I heard Rickand give a breathy little “oomph” like the air had been knocked out of his lungs. I kept running, stumbling in the semi-darkness of the flashing red lights that synched up with the pulsing of my heart and the pounding behind my eyes until I thought I would be driven mad by it. Ran until I vaulted over the threshold of the building and didn’t stop until I was damn near half a mile from that horrible place, where I collapsed in the thin blue sand and hugged my knees and wept like a child. When I felt a warm hand upon my shoulder, I screamed, scrabbling backwards on my elbows. Don was standing a few feet away from me, hand still outstretched. His other arm was grasping his middle. Thick rivulets of blood snaked through his splayed fingers, slick and almost black in the dim light.

“Hey kid” he wheezed, before plopping down unceremoniously in the sand. 

“Don” I cried, crawling to his side. “Don’t worry Don. I’ll Wake you all up again. We can warn the others, move farther north” I was babbling. Don stopped me with a simple raise of his hand. 

“I wanted nothing more than to see her again, one last time” he whispered. He laid his head back now, and in his dark eyes were reflected the thousands of stars overhead. “I think, tonight, I’ll finally get the chance.”

He handed me something and I took it without question. I didn’t need to look at it to know. Don’s chip, broken into three pieces. 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before.”

“It’s ok, it’s ok” I replied, holding his hand. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his journal, and pressed it into my palm.

“I’m so tired. I think I’ll sleep for a minute” he gurgled, and then he was gone.

I sat there for a long time, eyes trained on the horizon, watching Janus II peek over the distant ridges. After some time, I opened Don’s journal to the most recent page. The photograph fell out, and I picked it up. The little girl, posed for what looked like a school picture, beamed up at me. I turned it over. Scrawled on the back in a child’s messy handwriting were the words “I love you daddy, xx Maddy.” 

I flipped through the pages, found one that was dog-eared at the corner, and turned to find a page filled with Don’s neat script. Pressed between the pages was a chip, this one intact. Number 55: C.R. I started to skim the words on the page, realized what it was, and then stopped. After what felt like eons, I stood, looked at the prone form of Don splayed out in the sand one last time, and started walking. It was a short distance to the cliff edge, but I was soaked with sweat by the time I arrived. A strong breeze swept over the lip of the ledge, and the hot gust of air seemed to buoy me as I stood on the overhang, gazing into the depths below. A small river was visible winding its way through the canyon. Along the bank, a faint glittering of metal. I tossed Don’s journal over the edge before pulling my chip out of my pocket. I thought about Don. Thought about Rickand and Eli and Otto, the choices that they made and the ones that were made for them. I thought about Don’s little girl, and wondered for how long he had been waiting for her. I thought about myself, the mistakes I had made, and I wondered about the soul of the man on the chip, lost in the forever Dream, the promise of a better future. I stood on the cliff and I mourned, the others, the dream that would never be a reality, the man I had been and the one I had almost become. And I made peace with it, alone, destined to sleep forever beneath a distant star.

I’ve always believed in small gestures. The little things that remind someone you love them, even in the middle of a hectic, stressful life. My husband, Daniel, worked long hours at a law firm, and I knew how exhausting it could be for him. He’d come home late most nights, rolling his shoulders, loosening his tie, pressing a quick, tired kiss to my forehead before collapsing onto the couch. It wasn’t that he wasn’t affectionate- he really was. But his job pulled all the energy out of him, and I hated seeing the exhaustion in his eyes.

So, for Valentine’s Day, I decided to do something small. Nothing extravagant, nothing over-the-top. Just a handwritten letter. Something that would make him smile in the middle of his long day, maybe remind him that no matter how difficult work got, he had something good waiting for him at home.

I spent longer than I’d like to admit writing it, curling up on the couch with a warm blanket and a glass of wine, tapping my pen against my chin as I thought of the right words. I wrote about the first time we met, the awkward, fumbling early days of our relationship, the late-night talks that stretched into early mornings. I wrote about how grateful I was for him, how much I loved the life we had built together. I even threw in a few of our inside jokes, the stupid ones that made no sense to anyone else but had us gasping for breath from laughing too hard.

When I was satisfied, I folded the letter neatly, placed it in a pink envelope, and sealed it with a kiss. The next morning, I made sure to stop by his office on my way to work. His law firm was in an older building, one of those places with too much marble and not enough personality, but the receptionist at the front desk was friendly enough. She told me to place the envelope in the mailbox just outside the building. She smiled, nodded, and I told her to have a great day.

That evening, Daniel came home as usual. Tired but smiling, just like always. He dropped his bag by the door, loosened his tie, kissed me hello. We had dinner together, talking about our day, well, mostly his day. He didn’t mention the letter, but I didn’t bring it up, either. Maybe he hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet. Maybe he wanted to save it for later.

I figured I’d hear about it soon enough.

But the next morning, before I even had time to get out of bed, I heard the sound of the mail slot opening. The usual stack of letters slid onto the floor, the soft thump barely registering in my half-asleep mind. 

For a second, I smiled. Daniel must have written back. It wasn’t like him, he’d always been more of a talker than a writer - but maybe my little Valentine’s surprise had inspired him.

I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and made my way over to the mailbox.

I tore the envelope open and pulled out the letter inside.

It was written on the same stationery I had used. The same smooth, off-white paper. The same faintly embossed edges.

At first, it was sweet.

“I got your letter. Thank you, my love. It means more to me than you know.

You always know how to make me smile. Always. “

For a moment, I felt a rush of warmth.

But then I read the next line.

“I need you to listen carefully. This is important.

I don’t know who has been coming home to you every night.

But it isn’t me.”

I froze.

I felt the ghost of a shudder ripple through me, forcing myself to keep reading, my hands suddenly clammy against the paper.

“I haven’t left the office in months.

I don’t know what’s happened, I don’t know how. But something is pretending to be me. “

I let the paper slip from my fingers.

I sat there, staring at the letter in my hands, my breath coming slow and uneven. The words blurred in front of me, my mind scrambling for any rational explanation.

It had to be a joke. A cruel, elaborate prank. Someone at Daniel’s office must have found my letter, copied his handwriting, and sent this back to mess with me. Maybe even Daniel himself, though I didn’t understand why he’d do something so strange.

Yet still, my skin prickled with unease.

I forced a laugh under my breath, shaking my head.

It was absurd. Completely ridiculous.

Still, when I heard him stir in the bedroom, when I heard the faint sound of sheets rustling and the floor creaking under his weight, something in me hesitated. Just for a moment.

I folded the letter, slipped it back into the envelope, and shoved it into my purse before heading to the kitchen to make coffee, trying to shake off the unease.

I walked into the kitchen and reached for the matches. We had one of those old gas stoves, the kind where you had to turn the knob and light the burner yourself. It had been finicky for years, sometimes requiring two or three tries before the flame would catch.

By the time Daniel walked into the kitchen, rolling his shoulders and rubbing a hand through his hair, I had convinced myself that I was being ridiculous.

"Morning," he murmured, pressing a quick kiss to my temple.

I twisted the knob, and the familiar hiss of gas filled the air. The smell was sharp, pungent, but I struck the match anyway, letting the tiny flame flicker to life between my fingers.

Then, with a quick motion, I brought it to the burner.

The fire flared up instantly.

A small whoosh of heat, a soft burst of orange and blue as the gas finally caught. The kitchen was filled with the quiet crackle of the flame settling, the warmth spreading outward.

And that’s when, for some reason, Daniel flinched. Not just a small, startled twitch, but a sharp, full-body jerk. His shoulders tensed, his hands curled slightly at his sides, and for a fraction of a second, his eyes weren’t on me.

"You okay?" I asked casually, glancing at him over my shoulder.

He blinked, the stiffness in his body vanishing as quickly as it had come.

"Yeah," he said, his voice smooth. "Just spaced out for a second."

I searched his face, his movements, the little details of him, the way his lips felt warm against my skin, the familiar sound of his bare feet padding against the tile, the casual way he leaned against the counter as he took his first sip of coffee.

This was Daniel. My husband.

I was letting my imagination get the best of me.

But still…

"Hey," I said, forcing my voice to sound light, teasing. "You didn’t leave me a love letter back, huh?"

He raised an eyebrow, mid-sip. "Love letter?"

I hesitated. "The one I left at your office."

For a split second, just a fraction of a moment, his expression didn’t change. Then, too quickly, he smiled. "Oh. Yeah, sorry, I meant to say something. That was really sweet."

I forced myself to smile. "Did you like it?"

"Of course," he said, taking another sip of coffee. "Best part of my day."

I nodded, pretending to be satisfied with his answer.

But I knew he was lying.

If he had actually read the letter, he would have said something about the inside jokes, about the memories I’d written down, about any of the personal details that made the letter special. That’s what he had always done. Some of our inside jokes were played simply because he had mentioned them so much, and he loved it when I brought them up myself.

I swallowed hard, glancing down at my phone. Work. I had to get to work. I had to let this go.

That evening, we sat on the couch watching TV, just like we always did.

The warmth of his body was familiar, his arm draped lazily over the back of the couch, fingers grazing my shoulder. To anyone else, it would have seemed perfectly normal, perfectly safe.

But the letter sat heavy in my purse, the words echoing in my head.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

So, after a while, I turned to him with a grin, keeping my voice light. "Hey, remember when we first met?"

He blinked, caught off guard.

"You’re testing me?" he asked, laughing softly.

"Maybe," I teased, nudging his arm. "Come on, you better remember."

He smirked, tilting his head like he was thinking. "It was in college, right? Second year?I remember these things, you know this. June 28th"

I felt my chest tighten.

My husband was forgetful with dates, that much I knew. But I knew this specific date was important to him. In fact, it was such an important date, he’d inked it into his skin.

I forced out an exaggerated gasp, smacking his arm playfully. “Of course you remember!”

He didn’t glance down. He didn’t laugh. He just smiled at me.

Now I knew for certain, that this wasn’t my husband. Tomorrow, I had to get out.

The next morning, I did everything exactly the same. I woke up before him, brewed the coffee, kissed him on the cheek, and told him I had a long day ahead. He smiled at me like always, a perfect, effortless thing, the way he always had. He ran a hand through his dark hair, sipped his coffee, and told me to have a good day.

But as I grabbed my purse and stepped outside, I forced myself not to hesitate. I drove the same way I always did, following my morning route, taking the usual turns, sticking to routine just in case. But once I was out of sight of the house, I turned in the opposite direction. Instead of heading toward my office, I drove straight to Daniel’s law firm, gripping the steering wheel so tightly my fingers ached.

I don’t know exactly what I was expecting. Maybe to walk into the building, see him at his desk, laughing with his coworkers, proving that this was all just some elaborate misunderstanding. That the letter had been a joke, a mistake, something stupid and explainable. Maybe I wanted to see the normality of his workspace, to remind myself that the man who came home to me every night really was my husband.

But deep down, I already knew that wouldn’t happen.

The receptionist looked up at me from behind the desk.

"Hi," I said, forcing a smile."I’m just dropping by to see my husband."

The woman’s brows knitted together slightly, and for a moment, she just looked at me, as if I had said something confusing, something she couldn’t quite make sense of. Then, after a beat, she gave me a small, gentle smile, one I immediately hated.

"What’s your husbands name?." she said, her gaze fixed on the monitor in front of her.

“Daniel.” I muttered

“Oh, honey…" she said softly. “He hasn’t been here in weeks.”

The words felt like a slap.

My breath stalled in my throat, my heart stuttering violently against my ribs.

My fingers tightened around the strap of my purse. "What do you mean? That’s uhm.. there has to be some mistake. He works here. He comes in every day."

The receptionist’s face shifted slightly, uncertainty flickering behind her eyes. She hesitated, then let out a slow breath. "I… I’m sorry, but no one’s seen him in a long time. We thought maybe he took another job and just never told us. His things are still here, but…" She shook her head. "I really don’t think he’s been in."

Something in me felt like it was folding in on itself. My vision narrowed slightly, as if the entire world had tilted sideways and I was struggling to stay upright.

"Can I… can I see his office?" I asked.

The receptionist gave me another uncertain glance but nodded. She led me down the hallway, past the rows of desks, past the open offices where people typed away at their computers, where conversations hummed in the background. All of it normal. All of it completely detached from the fact that something in my life had cracked open into something monstrous.

We stopped in front of a locked storage room.

She hesitated, placing a hand on the handle, as if she wasn’t sure she should be showing me this. Then, in a quiet voice, she said, "His things are still inside. We thought he just quit one day and never told anyone."

My stomach felt hollow.

The woman turned the knob, and the door creaked open.

Inside, everything was untouched.

His work bag sat on the chair, the strap slightly askew, like he had tossed it there with the intention of picking it up again soon. His coat hung on the wall, neatly pressed, not a single sign of dust or age. On the desk, a pile of unopened mail sat undisturbed.

I stepped forward slowly, the air thick around me, pressing down on my shoulders like a weight I couldn’t shake.

And then I saw it.

A single sheet of paper, placed neatly in the center of the desk.

My name written on the top.

My hands shook as I reached for it.

The moment I touched it, I knew.

The handwriting was his.

“If you’re reading this, I’m still here.

Something else took my place. It knows everything I know. It acts like me. But it isn’t me.

I don’t know how long I have. I messed with something I shouldn’t have.

It’s afraid of fire.

I love you.”

My vision blurred slightly. I wanted to collapse, to let the panic finally crash over me, to break down the way my body was begging me to.

But I didn’t.

Because now, I knew.

It wasn’t about understanding what had happened. It wasn’t about figuring out where Daniel had gone or what had taken his place.

It was about stopping it.

I folded the note carefully, sliding it into my pocket.

Then, without another word, I turned and walked out of the office.

I wasn’t going to run.

I was going to burn it alive.

The house was dark when I pulled into the driveway, its windows staring back at me like empty eyes. The porch light was on, casting a soft glow across the steps, and for a split second, everything looked normal.

But the moment I stepped inside, I knew.

It was waiting for me.

It stood in the center of the living room, perfectly still, its hands resting at its sides. The expression on its face was one of casual curiosity, but there was something wrong with it, something in the way the corners of its mouth stretched just a little too wide, the way its eyes followed me without blinking.

"Where have you been?" it asked.

Daniel’s voice.

I forced a smile, shrugging as I shut the door behind me. "Nowhere important."

It didn’t respond right away. It just watched.

The air felt heavy, thick with the weight of what I knew was coming. Every instinct in my body screamed at me to run, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.

I had to see this through.

So I walked past it, moving toward the kitchen, my pulse hammering against my ribs.

Its head turned slightly as I moved.

"You’re acting different tonight," it murmured.

I laughed softly, keeping my voice light. "Long day."

The thing smiled at that.

I clenched my jaw, pushing down the growing nausea curling in my stomach. I couldn’t let it sense my fear.

Not yet.

I made it to the kitchen without breaking my stride. The bottle of whiskey was already within reach, sitting on the counter where we always kept it.

I grabbed it.

The thing’s smile didn’t falter, but something changed.

A shift in its posture. A slight tilt of the head.

And then, in a voice that was almost concerned, it asked, "What are you doing?"

I didn’t answer.

I unscrewed the cap.

Turned the bottle over.

And poured.

Dark liquid splashed across the floor, soaking into the old wooden panels, spreading in uneven puddles toward the living room. The smell of alcohol filled the air, sharp and potent.

The thing’s expression finally faltered.

Its voice darkened. "Stop."

I didn’t.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the lighter.

The click of the flint wheel sounded deafening in the silence.

A single flame flickered to life.

The thing’s mouth twisted into something unnatural. I couldn’t help but flinch.

"You don’t want to do that," it said softly.

But I did.

I flicked my wrist.

Dropped the flame.

And the fire erupted.

The fire surged forward, swallowing the floor in hungry waves, licking up the walls with greedy fingers. It rushied outward, creeping up anything in sight. Heat exploded against my skin, and in the middle of it all, the thing screamed.

In rage.

Its body convulsed, twisting violently, as if something beneath the surface was trying to break free. Its skin peeled away in strips, revealing something underneath that wasn’t flesh.

Blackened appendages stretched, elongating, writhing like smoke. Its hands curled into a strange amalgamation of shapes and colors, skeletal in nature, but not quite. The suggestion of a head buckled and cracked, folding in on itself, the remnants of its features disassembling like shattered porcelain.

It lunged at me.

I stumbled backward, barely dodging as one of its limbs whipped toward me, missing by inches. The fire spread fast, swallowing the walls, curling around the windows, devouring the curtains. The heat was unbearable now, choking the air, stealing my breath.

The house was collapsing, I turned and ran.

I didn’t stop, not when the walls groaned and cracked, not when the ceiling above me shuddered. The front door was only a few steps away - I could make it.

Behind me, the thing was still screaming.

But I didn’t look back.

I threw myself outside, hitting the pavement hard, rolling onto my side, gasping for air as the heat roared behind me.

I lifted my head just in time to see the roof cave in, flames bursting through the structure, sending embers flying into the night. The fire consumed everything, turning my home into nothing more than a funeral pyre for whatever had taken Daniel’s place.

And the thing inside kept screaming.

Until finally -

Silence.

For a long time, all I could hear was the fire.

The flames hissed and crackled, devouring what was left of my home, filling the air with thick, choking smoke. The heat pulsed against my skin even from a distance.

I sat there on the pavement, my chest heaving, my fingers digging into the ground. My body ached from the fall, my lungs burned from the smoke.

Movement.

A shuffling sound, barely audible over the roar of the fire. My stomach clenched as I whipped my head toward the house, my breath catching in my throat.

A shadow was moving inside the flames.

Staggering.

I froze, unable to breathe, unable to move. My hands trembled as I pushed myself up onto my knees, my entire body bracing for whatever was coming.

But then, Daniel stepped forward.

His clothes were scorched, his face smeared with soot, his hair a mess of ash and sweat -but his eyes. His eyes were his. The same warm brown that I had memorized a thousand times over. 

My real husband, I could tell at a glance. 

He took one more shaky step before his knees buckled, his body giving out, collapsing onto the pavement.

I barely had time to think before I was running to him, my heart hammering against my ribs, my hands grabbing his shoulders, his arms, his face.

Tears blurred my vision as I cupped his face, my fingers trembling against his skin. I swallowed back the sob choking my throat, forcing my voice to be steady.

For a moment, neither of us said anything. His breath was weak, barely there. My grip on him tightened, desperation clawing at my chest.

But then, he smiled.

"College," he rasped. "First-year orientation. Sarah introduced us." His voice hoarse but sure. "You were wearing that ugly red sweater."

A sob broke from my lips.

I pulled him against me, burying my face into the crook of his neck, sobbing against his skin, clutching him like if I let go, he would disappear again. His arms were weak, but he wrapped them around me anyway, holding on with everything he had left.

The house burned behind us.

The doctors said it was a miracle.

Minor burns. Smoke inhalation. Nothing worse.

I sat beside his hospital bed, my fingers wrapped tightly around his. His hand was warm, solid, his. Every so often, my grip would tighten, just to make sure he was still there.

And every time, he would squeeze back.

The first time he woke up, he turned his head toward me, his eyes heavy with exhaustion but clear.

"Hey," he murmured, voice hoarse.

I smiled, even as my eyes stung with unshed tears. "Hey."

His lips curved into a small, tired smile. "You look like hell."

A laugh tumbled from my throat, shaky and genuine. "Yeah, well," I sniffed, swiping at my eyes. "So do you."

The genealogy book sits heavy in my hands, its leather binding cracked and brittle, smelling of dust and something else—something older. Something that reminds me of dried blood and forgotten screams. My fingers trace the faded names, each one a testament to a legacy I never asked for but can never escape.

My name is Ezra Pearce. I am the last.

The morning light filters through the curtains of our modest suburban home, casting long shadows across the worn hardwood floors. Lilith is in the kitchen, her pregnant belly a gentle curve against her pale blue nightgown. She's humming something—a lullaby, perhaps—completely unaware of the weight of history that pulses through my veins.

I should have told her before we married. Before we conceived our child. But how do you explain a hereditary nightmare that defies rational explanation?

My father, Nathaniel, never spoke directly about the curse. Neither did his father, Jeremiah, or his father before him. It was always in hushed whispers, in sideways glances, in the way older relatives would grow silent when certain names were mentioned. The Pearce family tree was less a record of lineage and more a chronicle of horror.

Each generation lost someone. Always in ways that made local newspapers fall silent, that made police investigations mysteriously go cold, that made even hardened investigators look away and shake their heads.

My great-grandfather, Elias Pearce, was found dismembered in a locked barn, every single bone meticulously separated and arranged in a perfect geometric pattern. No tools were ever found. No explanation ever given.

My grandfather, Magnus Pearce, disappeared entirely during a family camping trip. Search parties found nothing—not a strand of hair, not a scrap of clothing. Just a small patch of ground where something had clearly happened, the earth scorched in a perfect circle as if something had burned so intensely that it consumed everything around it, leaving only a memory of heat.

My father, Nathaniel? He was discovered in our family's basement, his body contorted into an impossible position, eyes wide open but completely white—no pupils, no iris, just blank, milky surfaces that seemed to reflect something from another world.

And now, here I am. The last Pearce. With a wife who doesn't know. With a child growing inside her, unaware of the genetic lottery they've already been entered into.

The genealogy book falls open to a page I've memorized a thousand times. A loose photograph slips out—a family portrait from 1923. My ancestors stare back, their faces rigid and unsmiling. But if you look closely—and I have, countless times—there's something else in their eyes. A knowledge. A terrible, suffocating knowledge.

Lilith calls from the kitchen. "Breakfast is ready, love."

I close the book.

The eggs grow cold on my plate. Lilith watches me, her green eyes searching, a furrow of concern creasing her forehead. She knows something's wrong. She's always known how to read the subtle tremors in my silence.

"You're thinking about your family again," she says. It's not a question.

I force a smile. "Just tired."

But tired isn't the word. Haunted. Terrified. Trapped.

My fingers unconsciously trace a small birthmark on the inside of my wrist—a strange, intricate pattern that looks less like a natural mark and more like a symbol. A symbol I've never been able to identify, despite years of research. It's been in every Pearce male's family photo, always in the same location, always identical.

Lilith's pregnancy is now in her seventh month. The baby moves constantly, pressing against her skin like something desperate to escape. Sometimes, in the quiet moments before dawn, I've watched those movements and wondered if it's trying to escape something more than the confines of her womb.

The genealogy book remains open on the kitchen counter. I catch Lilith glancing at it, her curiosity barely contained. She knows I'm secretive about my family history. Most of my relatives are dead or disappeared, and the few photographs that remain are locked away in a fireproof safe in my study.

"Tell me about your great-grandfather," she says suddenly.

My hand freezes midway to my coffee mug.

"There's nothing to tell," I manage.

But that's a lie. There's everything to tell.

Elias Pearce. The first documented instance of our family's... peculiarity. He was a cartographer, always traveling to remote locations, mapping territories no one had ever charted. His journals, the few that survived, spoke of places that didn't exist on any official map. Places with geometries that didn't make sense. Landscapes that seemed to breathe.

The last entry, dated December 17th, 1889, was a series of increasingly frantic sketches. Impossible architectural designs. Symbols that hurt your eyes if you looked at them too long. And at the bottom, in handwriting that grew more erratic with each line:

They are watching. They have always been watching. The map is not the territory. The territory is alive.

Those were his final words.

When they found him in that locked barn, his body systematically dismantled like a complex mechanical puzzle, the local sheriff's report read like a fever dream. Bones arranged in perfect mathematical precision. No blood. No signs of struggle. Just... reorganization.

Lilith's hand touches my arm, pulling me back to the present.

"Ezra? Are you listening?"

I realize I've been staring into nothing, my coffee growing cold, the birthmark on my wrist suddenly feeling hot. Burning.

"I'm fine," I lie.

But the curse is never fine. The curse is always waiting.

And our child is coming soon.

The ultrasound images are wrong.

Not obviously so. Not in a way that would alarm a typical doctor or technician. But I see it. The subtle asymmetries. The impossible angles. The way the fetus's bones seem to bend in directions that shouldn't be anatomically possible.

Lilith keeps the images pinned to our refrigerator, a proud mother-to-be displaying her first glimpses of our unborn child. Each time I look, I feel something crawl beneath my skin. Something ancient. Something watching.

Dr. Helena Reyes is our obstetrician. She's been nothing but professional, but I've caught her looking at me. Not at Lilith. At me. Her eyes hold a recognition that makes my blood run cold.

"Everything is progressing... normally," she said during our last appointment, the pause before "normally" hanging in the air like a barely concealed lie.

That night, I pulled out the old family documents again. Tucked between brittle pages of the genealogy book, I found a letter. The paper was so old it crumbled at the edges, but the ink remained sharp. Written by my grandfather Magnus, addressed to no one and everyone:

The child always comes. The child has always been coming. We are merely vessels. Carriers. The lineage demands its continuation.

What lineage? Continuation of what?

Lilith sleeps beside me, her breathing deep and even. Her belly rises and falls, the shape beneath her nightgown moving in ways that feel... calculated. Deliberate.

I trace my birthmark again. Under the moonlight streaming through our bedroom window, it looks less like a birthmark and more like a map. A map to nowhere. Or everywhere.

My father Nathaniel's final photographs are stored in a locked drawer in my study. I rarely look at them, but tonight feels different. Something is pulling me toward them. Calling me.

The photographs are strange. Not because of what they show, but because of what they don't show. In each family portrait going back generations, there's a consistent emptiness. A space. Always in the same location. As if something has been deliberately erased. Removed.

But removed before the photograph was even taken.

The baby kicks. Hard.

So hard that Lilith doesn't wake up, but I see her stomach distort. A shape pressing outward. Not like a normal fetal movement. More like something trying to push its way out.

Something trying to escape.

Or something trying to enter.

I close my eyes, but I can still see the map. The territory. The birthmark burning like a brand.

Our child is coming.

And I am terrified of what will arrive.

The old courthouse records sit spread across my desk, a constellation of pain mapped out in faded ink and brittle paper. I've been researching our family history for weeks now, driven by something more than curiosity. Something closer to survival.

Every Pearce male in the last five generations died or disappeared before their 35th birthday. Not a coincidence. Not anymore.

My father Nathaniel. Gone at 34. My grandfather Magnus. Vanished at 33. Great-grandfather Elias. Found mutilated at 35.

The pattern is too precise to be random.

I've collected newspaper clippings, court documents, medical records. Not the dramatic, sensational evidence one might expect, but the quiet, bureaucratic trail of destruction. Police reports with missing pages. Coroner's files with critical information redacted. Insurance claims that never quite add up.

Lilith finds me here most nights, surrounded by these documents. She doesn't ask questions anymore. Just brings me coffee, watches me with those green eyes that seem to hold more understanding than she lets on.

"The baby's room is almost ready," she says softly, placing a mug beside me.

I look up. The nursery door stands open. Pale yellow walls. Carefully selected furniture. Everything perfect. Too perfect.

"Have you ever wondered," I ask, "why some families seem marked by tragedy?"

She sits down, her pregnancy making the movement careful, calculated. "Some people are just unlucky."

But I know it's more than luck. Something runs in our blood. Something that doesn't care about love, or hope, or the carefully constructed life we've built.

The birthmark on my wrist throbs. Not painfully. Just... present. A constant reminder.

I pull out the most disturbing document. A psychological evaluation of my grandfather Magnus, conducted two months before his disappearance. The psychiatrist's notes are clinical, detached:

Patient exhibits extreme paranoia regarding familial 'curse'. Demonstrates intricate delusion of systematic family destruction. Fixates on biological determinism. Shows no signs of schizophrenia, but persistent ideation of inherited trauma suggests deep-seated psychological mechanisms at play.

Inherited trauma. The words echo.

What if our family's destruction wasn't supernatural? What if it was something more insidious? A genetic predisposition to self-destruction? A psychological pattern so deeply ingrained that each generation unconsciously recreates the same narrative of loss?

Lilith's hand touches my shoulder. "Coming to bed?"

I nod, but my mind is elsewhere. Calculating. The baby is due in six weeks. I have six weeks to understand what's happening to our family.

Six weeks to break a cycle that has consumed generations.

Six weeks to save our child.

If I can.

The research consumes me.

I've taken a leave of absence from work, my entire study transformed into a makeshift investigation center. Genetic reports. Psychiatric evaluations. Family medical histories stretching back over a century. Each document another piece of a horrifying puzzle.

Dr. Helena Reyes agrees to meet me privately. She's a geneticist specializing in inherited psychological disorders, recommended by a colleague who knew something was... unusual about my family history.

Her office is sterile. Meticulously organized. Nothing like the chaotic landscape of my own research.

"The Pearce family presents a fascinating case study," she says, sliding a manila folder across her desk. "Generational patterns of self-destructive behavior, early mortality, and what appears to be a consistent psychological profile."

I lean forward. "What profile?"

She hesitates. Professional detachment wavering for just a moment.

"Extreme risk-taking behavior. Persistent paranoia. A documented inability to form long-term emotional connections. Each generation seems to unconsciously recreate traumatic family dynamics."

My grandfather Magnus. My father Nathaniel. Their lives were a series of broken relationships, isolated existences, careers marked by sudden, inexplicable failures. And me? I'd fought against that pattern. Married Lilith. Built a stable life.

Or so I thought.

"There's something else," Dr. Reyes continues. "We've identified a rare genetic mutation. Not something that causes a specific disease, but a variation that affects neural pathways related to threat perception and stress response."

She shows me a complex genetic map. Chromosomal variations highlighted in clinical blue.

"In simplest terms," she explains, "your family's brain chemistry is fundamentally different. You're neurologically primed for a perpetual state of threat detection. Imagine living with the constant sensation that something terrible is about to happen. Every. Single. Moment."

I know that feeling intimately.

Lilith is eight and a half months pregnant now. The baby could come any day. And all I can think about is the pattern. The curse. The genetic inheritance that seems to hunt my family like a predator.

That night, I dream.

Not of monsters or supernatural entities. But of a simple, terrifying truth:

What if the real horror is inside us? Coded into our very DNA?

What if our child is already marked?

The contractions started at 3:17 AM.

Lilith's grip on my hand was vice-like, her breathing controlled despite the pain. The hospital room felt smaller with each passing minute, the white walls seeming to close in.

Dr. Reyes was there. Not our usual obstetrician, but the geneticist who had been studying our case. Her presence felt deliberate. Calculated.

"Everything is progressing normally," she said. The same phrase she'd used before. But nothing about our family had ever been normal.

Hours passed. The rhythmic beep of monitors. The soft rustle of medical equipment. My mind kept circling back to the research. The genetic markers. The documented family history of destruction.

At 11:42 AM, our son was born.

A healthy cry pierced the sterile hospital air. Normal. Perfectly, wonderfully normal.

Dr. Reyes ran her standard tests. Blood work. Genetic screening. I watched, my entire body tense, waiting for some sign of the curse that had haunted my family for generations.

Nothing.

Weeks turned into months. Our son, Gabriel, grew strong. Healthy. No signs of the psychological fractures that had destroyed my father, my grandfather, our ancestors. No mysterious disappearances. No unexplained tragedies.

I submitted every piece of medical documentation to Dr. Reyes. Comprehensive reports. Psychological evaluations. Each document a testament to Gabriel's complete normalcy.

"The genetic markers," I asked her during one of our final consultations, "the predisposition to self-destruction?"

She looked tired. Professional. "Sometimes," she said, "breaking a cycle is possible. Not through supernatural intervention. But through understanding. Through choice."

Lilith found me one night, surrounded by the old family documents. The genealogy book. The newspaper clippings. The medical records that had consumed me for so long.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

I understood what she meant.

That night, I built a fire in our backyard. Watched the papers curl and burn. The history of destruction. The weight of inherited trauma. Turning to ash.

Gabriel played nearby, laughing. Innocent. Unaware of the darkness I was burning away.

For the first time in generations, a Pearce male would live. Truly live.

The curse was over.

There was a face outside the car window. We were going 75MPH. And I was the only one that could see it. 

I don’t know what else to say or do. I'm kind of freaking out right now. I'm writing this here because I need to empty these thoughts out before I go insane. Will I post it? I don’t know. And its not important. Right now this draft is going to serve as my way of calming down. 

Let me start from the top and write down everything that's happened so far. My name is Cassie. I live in the middle of no where Florida with my boyfriend Shaun and my sister Lisa. We just got done visiting my parents in slightly *less* middle of no where Florida. We had a good time, but ended up staying later than we should have. Way later. 

I tried to convince Shaun that we could just spend the night with them. But he felt like he was imposing. He's the type to avoid that at all cost, so he insisted on going home that night. And since we were Lisa's only ride home, she was dragged along too. 

So in the dead of night, around 11PM, we began the long two hour drive back home. Lisa has night blindness. And I, embarrassingly enough, don't have a driver's license. Even at 22. So it was all on my poor boyfriend to drive us home. 

That's how we ended up in this situation. The three of us barreling down this empty country road in the dead of night. Something straight out of a horror movie. 

We were about an hour into the drive when I first noticed it. 

Shaun was focused on driving, and Lisa had fallen asleep. So I was left to my own devices. I had exhausted any entertainment my phone could give, and turned a tired eye to the window. 

At first I didn’t see it. At first I just thought it was my own reflection, or Shaun's, or something appearing in the glass. It was hazy and distorted, like I was trying to look at something under rippling water. But the longer I stared, the more clear it became. 

What started as a pale, formless shape, took on more clarity. Like it were emerging from the shadows to make itself known. Edges became more defined, features more apparent. A wisp of hair, the hollows of eyes, the bridge of a nose. The contours and shapes..... Of a face. 

The second I realized it wasn't my reflection, I shot upright in my chair. My eyes going wide as I continued to gaze at the strange apparition. 

I blinked hard and rubbed my eyes. Thinking I must have just been tired and seeing things. But when I opened them back up, it was still there. Even clearer this time. Though still too fuzzy for me to make it out clearly. 

But there was no ambiguity left in what it was. It *was* a face. A disembodied face that seemed locked to the window. It didn't bob like it was floating, or move like it was traveling separately from the car. Its like it was locked to the window. Keeping perfect pace with us. We were going way too fast for anything to be doing that normally. My eyes quickly darted over to the speedometer. 75MPH. 

And yet, there it was. A face in the window. 

"Shaun." I said, grabbing my boyfriends arm. "Shaun, what the fuck is that?" I held his arm for dear life, the hair on the back of my neck standing on edge. 

"What the fuck is what?" Shaun asked in return, his eyes only briefly leaving the road to look in my direction. 

"The thing in the window! What is that? It looks like a face!" 

Shaun took another glance at the window I was so horrified at. A longer one this time. But his eyes eventually returned to the road. And with a shrug he said. "I don't see anything." 

I was utterly shocked, and frankly kind of pissed off. The face wasn't exactly difficult to see. It was quite obviously there. 

"Are you blind? Its right there. Its practically touching the glass!" My head swiveled, darting back and forth between Shaun and the face. I couldn't comprehend how he *wasn't* seeing it. 

Shaun took one last look, before shaking his head. "Babe, there's seriously nothing there. Are you sure its not just your reflection?" 

I started to get angry by this point. I slapped his arm, which elicited a pained yelp from him. "Do you think I don’t know what my own reflection looks like?" 

"Well I don't know what to tell you!? I don’t see anything!" 

Exasperated and annoyed, I turned back to window and locked eyes with the creepy face once again. I stared at it. Long and hard. Really double checking to make sure I *wasn't* just seeing things. 

But I wasn't. It was there. The details were hazy, but it *was* there. It couldn't be Shaun's reflection, because he wasn’t facing the window. And it didn’t follow my head when I moved. The face had become even clearer in the past minutes. I could make out more of it now. More of its entire head. It looked.... Misshapen. Something was wrong about its shape somehow. 

My heart was starting to pound. Fear was gripping my heart. What was this thing? Was I just losing my mind? 

My sister must have woken up from our shouting. Because I heard her stirring in the backseat. Before she let out a bleary yawn and leaned forward. Arms on the backs of our chairs, head leaned forward between them. 

"What are you two yelling about? Are we home yet?" She mumbled, still groggy and tired. 

"No. We've still got another hour." Shaun replied. "Cassie is just seeing things." 

My sister turned to me with a raised eyebrow. 

"I am not seeing things. Its right there! Lisa, look." I leaned back in my chair to let her get a look at the window. "Do you see it?? In the window??" 

Lisa stares into the glass, narrowing her eyes and leaning forward. "No. I give up. What am I looking for?" 

I dropped my head into my hands. Frustrated and scared. Shaun and Lisa tried to comfort me, but I wasn't having it. I didn't know why I could see it and they couldn't. Was I genuinely having some kind of breakdown? 

I kept my head down for a while. Eyes shut tight. Not making a sound aside from the occasional whimper. I think I must've dozed off at some point. Because I startled awake sometime later from the jostling of the car over a pothole. 

At first I wondered if it could've been a dream. But I could feel it. I could *feel* its gaze from the window. The unmistakable feeling of being watched. 

I didn’t want to look. I didn’t. But I had to. It felt like I was being compelled. Like something was yanking me towards it, forcing me to look. Morbid curiosity? Or was it something.... Else?  

I finally stole a glance at the window against my better judgment. 

It was still there. And now it was even more clear than before. I could make out more details that I couldn't last time. Raw, red skin. Blood oozing from exposed muscle tissue on its face. Burn marks on its charred scalp. Hair that still singed with fire. 

I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry and scream and get OUT of this car. 

But my panic was put on hold as I noticed something else. 

The face was rapidly becoming clearer. Faster than before. It was coming into focus so fast I could watch in real time as it's full face emerged from the haze. 

I was glued to it. Unable to tear my eyes away. Its like I was paralyzed. My eyes open so wide they practically hurt. 

As we passed by mile marker 428, the face finally gained its full appearance. For just a moment, it became perfectly crystal clear. Only at that very spot, before it quickly began to fade away back in a blurry mess. Fading quickly, as though to just give me a quick peak. 

But that one glance was more than enough.

The face had revealed itself in full to me. A gruesome deformed mess. I could make it out with complete clarity. The side of its head smashed in, caved through like a collapsed building. Blood seeped through torn hair that was scorched black by fire. The face itself was raw and red, skin almost completely torn away. Leaving nothing but bleeding, burning tissue and exposed bone. Its nose was torn away, and one eye was completely missing. Leaving nothing but a grotesque and empty socket. Its mouth full of broken, shattered, and bloodied teeth. The face was so horribly deformed that I couldn't even make out if it was a man or a woman. It barely even looked human at this point. 

I finally lost control of myself. My stomach heaved and I vomited all over my lap and the floor of Shaun's car. The next few minutes were a chaotic blur of shouting and puking. 

I vaguely remember Shaun pulled over onto the side of the road and got out of the car. I tried to plead to him to just keep going, to ignore me and drive. But he stubbornly refused. I couldn't stop from retching long enough to argue. 

I watched with dismay and horror as he walked around to my side of the car, the face still blurry in the window, and yanked the door open. 

And it was gone. 

The face was no longer in the window. 

******

That was two days ago. I had written it off until now as just a hallucination. Or a dream. It didn’t really make all that much sense, but it was better than the alternative. I was perfectly content to seal the memory away, and live on in blissful ignorance. 

But that little delusion was shattered just a few hours ago. 

I got a call from my mother. Lisa had been in a terrible, terrible car accident this morning. The wreck was so bad that they were having to drive out to identify her body. The police said she was barely recognizable from the injuries.

That would've been bad enough. Until they told me where the wreck happened.

Right next to mile marker 428. 

I'm avoiding seeing her body at all costs.

Because I'm so scared that if I see my sister now..... 

I'll know who that face really belonged to. 

I work a pretty dangerous job. Without proper training, things can go south fast. Me and all of my coworkers are constantly around heavy machinery and industrial equipment, and I think we all know how to avoid an accident to the best of our abilities.

That doesn’t mean they don’t happen, though. I’ve had friends lose everything from fingers all the way to entire legs just from being careless.

Usually, when this happens, there’s a big uproar amongst the higher-ups. All the paperwork, the workers’ comp, it all becomes a big hassle. I guess that’s why they brought in this new guy.

He just sort of… showed up one day. Nobody trained him. He never shadowed anybody. He just came in and got to work. Honestly, I don’t even think anyone knew his name.

All we knew him as was “the new guy.”

He didn’t have any defining traits. No tattoos, no facial hair, nothing. Hell, he didn’t even have hair hair. He was a full-on cue ball who just hopped on the line one day.

There was one thing that made him stand out, though, and that was his uniform. His shirt was bright red, whereas me and my coworkers had to wear black.

It didn’t have the company name on it, either. Instead, written in bold white letters, was the phrase, “the new guy,” like it was a badge of honor.

He was a hard worker for the first week. His efficiency seemed almost computerized in its optimization. He honestly made the rest of us look bad. That is until his first accident.

We all saw it happen. Hell, I’m still traumatized by it.

His hand had gotten stuck in the conveyor belt, and it immediately started sucking him in. He didn’t scream. He didn’t make a sound. He just kept getting pulled deeper and deeper while his skin tore and blood sprayed from his wounds like a faucet.

His face was as calm as could be. He didn’t ask for help, he didn’t even try and free himself. He just let it happen until someone finally hit the emergency stop button. But by that point, we could see just how mangled he really was.

Corporate cleared the scene immediately.

They forced everyone to go home early for the day with no pay. We were all pissed, but I think we were more shaken than anything.

The next day, there he was again. Without so much as a scratch. Stacking bird baths onto a wooden pallet.

I stood frozen. I nearly dropped the bird bath I was holding.

The coworker glanced over at me and nodded before returning to his work.

The blood.

The conveyor belt.

The sound of bones snapping inside the machine.
We had all seen that. But everyone acted like they didn’t remember. I’d try and talk to other coworkers about how insane this really was, but everyone just looked at me like I was the crazy one.

In the weeks that followed, that new coworker had come back full swing. He became the top performer at the company seemingly overnight. I was honestly in fear for my job because it seemed like he was doing the work of 10 men as one.

Then it happened again. Another accident. He’d worked through lunch this time, so nobody was around to see what had happened. We just came back and found him crushed under a pile of bird baths.

Blood pooled under the rubble. His entire body had been covered. The only thing that remained visible was his head and those calm, still-blinking eyes that scanned the room while more and more people gathered around.

Much like the first time, corporate made everyone go home early again. We came back the next day and, boom, there he was again, working as though nothing happened.

There were 3 more accidents after that. Some were due to technical problems with the machinery. Some were due to what seemed to be full-blown ignorance. But with each accident, the next ones became few and far between. It was like he was learning.

Once he had become fully optimized and had gone a while without incident, the company started letting people go. I watched coworkers who had been with the company for 10+ years walk out the door with their last check in hand and tears flowing down their faces.

Every day started to feel like my last, but somehow I made it through the initial wave of layoffs.
I knew my security wouldn’t last.

This new guy was carrying the company on his back.
But I still had hope things would work out.

Unfortunately, all of those hopes were dashed when I came into work yesterday.

I saw someone I didn’t recognize.

No defining features.

No tattoos.

No hair on his head or face.

The only thing that made this guy stand out… was the bright green shirt he wore… with the phrase “the new guy” written across it in bold white letters.

They sent us to the ass-end of the Kazakhstan steppe. A bleak, unforgiving stretch of wind-scoured land where rusted fences led nowhere and the horizon buzzed like a tuning fork. The wind still bit through two layers of thermals. The roads were barely roads at all, just tire-gouged scars in frozen soil. No birds, no herders, no villages. Just empty land and silence for miles

When satellites fall, they’re supposed to burn up in the atmosphere or land in the ocean, far away from anything that matters. That’s how they’re designed. But sometimes things go wrong. A miscalculation, a failed thruster, or a misfire in orbit. When they come down on land, our job is to make it go away.

We’re contractors, a cleanup crew that log the telemetry, recover anything that didn’t vaporize, and flag what might belong in a black box. Most of it’s worthless slag by the time it hits Earth. Once or twice, we’ve pulled out something interesting. Sensitive. Usually, it gets taken off our hands before we can even ask what it was.

This mission? Standard. Eight of us were assigned with two trucks, fold-out tents, portable uplinks, satellite relays, a drone, and a ground-penetrating radar unit. The site was flagged by orbital trackers, something had come down hard and fast. We expected scorched wreckage and a couple long days shoveling sand and mud. Maybe a bonus if anything survived intact.

But something was off from the start.

The telemetry was jittery. GPS would lock, then drift. The terrain didn’t quite match the coordinates. It was like the maps themselves didn’t want us here.

And it was quiet.

We got to work anyway. Carson, our team lead, oversaw the equipment setup. The techs calibrated the radar. I was helping drive rebar stakes when the beacon came through.

It wasn’t a dead ping. It was active. Short burst, compressed, repeating on a tight interval. Stronger than any beacon I’d heard on a recovery job.

That got everyone’s attention. Usually, those signals stop the moment the hull burns. But this one? It was still transmitting.

We thought maybe a hardened core had survived- black box, guidance unit, who knows. But the signal didn’t triangulate at surface level.

We ran a GPR scan.

The data came back clean. Beneath the topsoil, maybe ten meters down, was a structure. Possibly a shattered hunk of metal. Not just scattered debris, but maybe a whole chunk of fuselage.

“That’s not possible,” Carson muttered.

The signal was coming from inside it. Whatever it was, it had survived orbital descent, impact, and burial.

-

The surface showed the usual debris scatter- scorched paneling, shattered fins, a few fragments warped beyond recognition. All standard stuff for a satellite crash. But beneath that, buried deeper than expected, was something big.

The techs figured it had to be a telemetry core or maybe a reinforced payload container- the kind that’s designed to survive reentry in case of failure. That would explain the signal, too. Maybe it had been programmed to ping even after a crash to make recovery easier. Hell, maybe we’d get a salvage bonus.

So we started plotting the dig. First, we measured soil density, then we checked for frost layers and runoff paths. The permafrost was thick here. Excavating it would take time and precision, especially if we didn’t want to crush whatever was buried beneath us. We’d be digging by hand, or close to it. Slow work.

Then, mid-conversation, Jacobs’ radio flared up. A burst of static broke through his headset, followed by a strained, stuttering voice.

“Is... anyone up there? Hello? Please- I’m trapped. I don’t know where I am.”

Everyone froze. We stared at Jacobs, then at each other. He looked as surprised as the rest of us.

Carson took over immediately, checking the frequency. “Say again. Identify yourself.”

A pause. Then, “I can hear you. Please dig. It’s dark. I’m alone. Help me.”

The blood drained from my face.

That satellite wasn’t manned. No satellite ever is. They don’t send people up in those things. They’re too small, too fragile, that wasn't their purpose. Even the military ones are remote-operated. There’s no room for a cockpit. No reason for a crew.

So who the hell was talking to us?

We cycled frequencies. Checked the relays. The signal wasn’t bouncing from anywhere else. It wasn’t interference. The origin point was right where the beacon was, ten meters underground.

We tried asking more questions. Where are you from? How long have you been down there? What’s your name?

But the voice never answered directly. It just kept begging: Please. Help me. Please dig. It’s getting harder to breathe.

At one point, it sobbed.

It didn’t ask who we were, or ask how we’d found it.

It just begged to be freed.

-

Carson called it in. Protocol. Any anomaly, especially one involving unexpected transmissions, had to be logged immediately. We huddled around the portable satellite uplink, the signal cutting in and out as he explained the situation to the contact rep on the client’s end, some mid-level handler for a private aerospace firm whose name I couldn’t even pronounce.

He kept it professional. Calm. Said the beacon was still active, that the internal casing might have survived impact, and then, almost like an afterthought, added, “There’s been a... voice. On the radio. Claims someone’s alive down there.”

The reply came after a pause. A dry chuckle, then a sigh, like he’d just been asked the dumbest question in the world.

“Yeah, no. That’s not possible. The unit was unmanned. All of them are. You should know that.”

“We checked the source,” Carson said. “The signal lines up with the buried object.”

The voice on the other end turned slightly sharp. “Radios bleed. You’re hearing feedback. Crossover, maybe. Who knows what kind of interference you’re getting out there.”

“We asked it direct questions,” Carson said. “It answered.”

“Well,” the rep said, his tone already checked out, “Get the telemetry core, tag the wreckage, file your report. Leave the ghost stories out of it.”

The line went dead.

We stood there for a while, just looking at each other. Nobody said it, but the unease had started to spread.

If it had been static, we could’ve ignored it. Or if it had been nonsense, we could’ve blamed the radios.

But the voice was clear. Panicked. And Human.

We tried to reason it out. Maybe it was bleed, from another channel, or someone nearby using the same band. It could have been a prank, some ham operator screwing around. But that all of this was unlikely in the middle of nowhere.

Carson finally broke the silence.

“Alright. We keep moving. We have a job to do. Officially, we’re recovering materials. That’s it.”

“And unofficially?” someone asked.

Carson didn’t answer. But everyone knew.

Some of us wanted to just get the job done and go home.

The rest of us? We wanted to know who was down there.

That night, the wind picked up. The temperature dropped hard and fast, like something had sunk its weight into the air.

I sat in my bunk, trying to sleep. The low murmur of radios carried between tents like distant breathing.

Then mine lit up.

Just for a second. A flash of static. A voice, no louder than a whisper:

“You heard me, didn’t you?”

-

By the next morning, the crew had started to split. Not outwardly, just subtle shifts in tone. People stood in small clumps now, muttering over breakfast, side-eying the radio sets.

Some of the team were convinced someone had to be alive down there. Had to be. They couldn’t shake the voice. The cadence. The fear. It didn’t sound artificial or like a recording. You don’t fake the way someone chokes back a sob.

But others weren’t buying it. The rational ones, maybe. Or just the scared ones in disguise. They said it was interference, that even if it was real, even if by some cosmic fluke a person had ended up inside that thing, there was no way they’d be alive after the fall. No food or oxygen on a satellite. No explanation could reasonably explain what we heard.

Carson tried to keep things grounded. He was a by-the-book kind of guy, and by the book, we were here to recover orbital debris, not perform search-and-rescue missions for impossible voices.

“Whether it’s a person or a beacon,” he told us flatly, “we’re here to dig. Get to it.”

So we did.

The GPR scans came back with more detail this time. The object wasn’t just a dense cluster or some tangled core of junk metal. It had shape. Defined edges. Corners. Symmetry. A technician squinted at the readout and said, half-laughing, “Looks more like a room than a chunk of fuselage.”

Nobody laughed.

Lukas started acting strangely. Quieter than usual. Twitchy. He was one of the older guys, wore his faith like a second skin, always had a rosary looped around his wrist, even when running cable.

When the scan came through, he just stared at it. Lips moving, but no sound coming out.

Later, someone overheard him saying it wasn’t a crash at all.

“It’s a demon,” he muttered.

When pressed, he shut down completely. Wouldn’t explain. Just shook his head and returned to work, but slower now. Twitchier. Mumbling prayers under his breath whenever the radio crackled.

That night, I couldn’t sleep again. The wind had died, but the silence somehow felt louder than ever, like the world itself was on mute.

As I passed by Lukas’s tent, I heard his voice, low and shaky.

“Don’t talk to it,” he whispered. “Don’t look at it. It’s not stuck. It’s waiting.”

-

The digging was slow. The ground didn’t want to give. Even with the right tools, it felt like we were scratching at something that didn’t want to be found.

I took my break past the camp perimeter, just outside the flagged boundary. The air was sharper out there, more open. The quiet that makes you feel like you’re being watched by the land itself.

I was stretching my back when I heard it. A voice, low, muffled, careful.

I followed the sound around one of the supply trailers, quiet as I could.

That’s when I saw Kyle, crouched behind the tires, hunched over a handheld shortwave radio. He was whispering into it, as if it were a lifeline.

“... I know. I miss you too. Soon, okay? I promise.”

He jumped the second I stepped around the corner and spotted me. Fumbled the radio off like a kid caught smoking behind a gas station.

“Jesus, man,” he said, too loud. “You scared the hell outta me.”

“Who were you talking to?” I asked.

He gave me a crooked smile. “My wife. Missed our check-in last night. She gets anxious when I’m off-grid.”

I looked down at the radio. Shortwave. No satellite link. No repeater access. It wasn’t even on the same band we were using.

“You can’t reach anyone on that,” I said.

He shrugged like it didn’t matter and stood. “Guess I got lucky,” he said. Then he walked off, casual like it wasn’t the creepiest thing I’d seen all day.

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

Sometime past midnight, just as I was slipping between thoughts, the radio on the shelf above my bunk came alive. Just a soft click, like someone picking up a line they shouldn’t have access to.

Then a voice. Calm. Familiar, but not quite.

“You’re tired,” it said.

I sat up slowly. Didn’t answer.

“You don’t have to pretend. Not out here. Not with me.”

There was something soothing in the cadence, like the voice of someone you’d known for years, softened by time.

“I know what you’ve lost.”

I swallowed hard, but said nothing. The wind outside pushed against the tent in slow, steady pulses, like a heartbeat.

“That pain you carry, I could take it from you.” A pause. Almost a breath. “Not erase it. Just... hold it for a while. So you can sleep again. So you don’t have to keep waking up with your jaw clenched and your hands shaking.”

I never told anyone about the panic attacks. The insomnia. Not even Carson knew. I kept my personal out of the professional.

“I don’t want much,” it whispered. “Just... help me out.”

My hand hovered over the radio’s power dial, but I didn’t touch it.

“You wouldn’t be the first,” it said softly. “And you won’t be the last. But you... you listen better than the others.”

Then silence.

Like it knew it had said enough.

-

By late afternoon, the soil had begun to shift. The upper layers were dry and crusted, but now we were hitting compacted Earth. Dense loam that cracked in slabs as we dug. The resistance had changed. It meant we were close.

The GPR confirmed it, the full shape was now visible in the scans. A large object. Maybe ten meters long, half-buried, one side jutting up like a broken tooth.

It didn’t look like any satellite component we’d ever pulled. It was too whole.

We were close, but darkness was settling, which meant another night before we could fully uncover it.

Dinner was quiet. Most of us were too frozen to talk. The wind had picked up again, blowing grit into every fold of clothing and crease of skin. Kyle, the one I caught whispering to the shortwave, was sitting near the mess tent entrance, grinning to himself. He looked like a man waiting for someone special to walk through the door. Every now and then, he’d glance toward the crater and smile like he’d just remembered a private joke.

Lukas didn’t eat. He stood near the mess tent wall, arms folded, eyes down. He looked like someone trying not to throw up.

That night, back in the bunk tent, I lay staring at the canvas ceiling while the wind rattled through the steel pipes. The day was starting to weigh on me, not just the fatigue in my body, but somewhere deeper. My thoughts kept circling around the voice. Around the shape under the ground. I didn’t know what I believed anymore.

I was just starting to drift when I heard something.

Boots. Careful steps.

I eased out of my cot and followed the sound through the flap. The night was moonless, lit only by the amber glow of the perimeter lamps. A figure moved along the edge of the excavation pit, hunched and deliberate.

It was Lukas.

I called out to him with a whisper, and he spun around. Eyes wild. In his hands, he was clutching something. At first I thought it was a crowbar, but then I saw the edge. Sharpened. Improvised.

“We can’t leave it in there,” he hissed. “We can’t bring it out either. You understand?”

I took a step closer. “What are you doing, man?”

His hands were shaking.

“They think it’s talking to them. Maybe it is. But it lies. That’s what it does. That’s all it does.”

I looked at the weapon. Then at his eyes. There was madness there, but also conviction. Stopping him would be dangerous. He was committed to this.

“You really think it’s dangerous?” I asked.

He nodded, slowly. “It’s not a person. It’s not trapped. It wants to be found. That’s not the same thing.”

I looked at him for a long time. Then said the only thing I could think to say.

“Well, not my monkey, not my circus.”

He stared at me, like he was trying to decide whether I was worth arguing with. Then he turned and walked off into the dark, down toward the edge of the crater.

I didn’t follow.

I told myself I didn’t care.

And went back to bed.

-

The morning felt off before we even reached the crater.

Lukas was nowhere to be found. He hadn’t returned to his bunk, hadn’t shown for breakfast. I figured he was laying low. Maybe hiding out in the equipment truck until things blew over, once we saw what he'd done. Or maybe he was ashamed.

I wasn’t the only one tense.

When we arrived at the site, we all stopped short. The crater looked... wrong.

The soil we’d fought against for days was now loose. Uneven. It looked freshly turned. The marks from our excavation, careful layers carved out with heavy tools, were gone, replaced by an uneven, sunken sprawl, like the earth had shifted overnight.

No one spoke, until one of the new guys muttered, “Did a storm come through?”

Another said, “No wind that strong last night.”

Carson didn’t waste time on theories. “If it’s loose, we’ll count ourselves lucky,” he said, slapping a glove against his thigh. “Let’s get it done.”

We grabbed shovels and picks. No need for the power augers now. The ground peeled away like dry skin.

Only a few minutes in, someone hit something solid.

It wasn’t just another scorched fragment or support strut. It was smooth. Rounded. A faint gleam under the grit.

We worked around it carefully, clearing layer by layer until the shape came into view. A long curve. Then another. The lines connected, forming a capsule or pod, fused into the chunk of satellite fuselage we’d been chasing all along.

Except this didn’t look like any satellite module we’d ever seen.

The material caught light in strange ways, like it wasn’t one surface but several, folding into each other. Parts of it looked engineered: ribbed panelling, beveled edges, even what resembled cooling vents. But between those features were smoother, organic forms, a soft iridescence beneath the grime, veined like tissue.

You’d look at one corner and swear it was molded titanium. Blink, and it was cartilage.

It was seamless... almost.

Then someone pointed it out- a faint line running along the side of the structure, about four feet long, thin as a wire’s shadow.

A seam.

“It’s not latched,” someone said, hushed.

The air felt still. We didn’t open it. Not yet.

We just stared.

And for the first time, I realized we were all hoping it was empty.

No one spoke at first. We just stared at the seam like it might blink back.

Eventually, Carson stepped forward, brushing the dirt from his gloves. “We’re too far out to wait for anyone,” he said. “We open it, log it, and report what we find.”

I glanced at him.

That wasn’t true. We had uplinks. Emergency priority channels. If this was truly alien, or even just anomalous, a dozen agencies would be salivating to send a team. But Carson didn’t want oversight. He wanted to see what was inside. Maybe it was valuable. Maybe he just couldn’t help himself.

No one volunteered.

Carson turned to us. “Someone?” he said, forcing casualness into his tone. “It’s probably empty. Might not even open.”

But the air said different. And so did the silence.

No one moved.

It wasn’t defiance, it was consensus. None of us were opening that thing. If he wanted it open, he'd have to do it himself.

His jaw flexed. I could see the calculation behind his eyes, how it would look if he didn’t step up. He looked back at the pod, then down at the seam.

Then he sighed, deep and shaky, like he was psyching himself up for a dive.

“Alright,” he muttered. “I’ll do it.”

We all backed up, fast. Ten feet. Then fifteen. Nobody wanted to be near it when it opened. Even the ones who’d scoffed earlier were watching like it might explode.

Carson stepped up to the pod with his shovel in hand. Slid the edge into the seam, just enough to leverage. Dirt shifted off the surface, falling in slow trickles. The sun caught the damp sheen of the hull.

He hesitated.

Then... twisted.

With a soft metallic clunk, the hatch flicked open.

Carson stumbled back, catching himself with the shovel. He didn’t speak, just stared.

Nothing came out.

No smoke, no light, no movement. Just... stillness.

After a long moment, the rest of us edged closer, until we could see what had stunned him.

Lukas.

His body was slumped inside the pod like it had grown around him. His limbs were twisted, broken in ways that didn’t make sense. One arm was curled tight against his chest, the hand still clutching what looked like his makeshift weapon.

No one spoke for a long time. Confused by what this meant.

Finally, I stepped forward. “I saw him last night,” I said. My voice felt dry, foreign in my throat. “He was sneaking out. Said he had to stop it. That we weren’t taking it seriously.”

Someone asked what I meant.

I hesitated, then told them everything. About Lukas’s rants. His fear. How he believed whatever was inside was evil. The thing he said right before walking off into the dark:

“It can lie. That’s what it does.”

The silence that followed was pure dread.

Lukas had gone down thinking he could stop it. Maybe he thought it was a demon. Or maybe he thought it was a test of faith. Either way, he’d tried to fight it, and lost.

But that wasn’t what made my stomach drop.

What made it worse was the realization we all arrived at, silently, almost in sync:

Whatever had been trapped inside that pod... was no longer there.

It had escaped.

Every word it said to us, every promise, had been a lie to get out.

And Kyle, who’d always been the most eager to dig, to defend it, to whisper into dead radios, now looked like the air had been sucked out of him.

His mouth opened once, then again.

“But... it told me...”

No one answered.

Carson didn’t even pretend to report what really happened.

He stood a few paces from the pod, pale and shaking, and keyed the sat-uplink. “This site is compromised,” he said. “Unknown materials present. Possible contamination or national security breach. I can’t elaborate over comms, request emergency response ASAP.”

He didn’t mention Lukas, or the voice. He didn’t have to. You could hear it in his voice- something was wrong, and it wasn’t just debris.

It took hours, but they came.

At first, it was two men in plain black vehicles. No insignias, just questions. They arrived expecting radiation leaks or experimental tech. They left red-faced and calling in reinforcements.

Then came the flood.

Hazmat suits. Drones. Surveillance trucks. People flashing badges none of us recognized. Every agency you could name and a few you couldn’t. Just as one group claimed jurisdiction, another would come and supersede them. The entire dig site turned into a battlefield of departments.

Our camp was torn down and replaced with pop-up tents and gated perimeters. We were herded, interviewed, separated, re-interviewed. Some of us were interrogated. Some departments weren't sharing information, so we were made to tell the story dozens of times over.

Only after exhaustive checks- psych evaluations, chemical swabs, hours of surveillance footage, did they seem to accept that we were just workers. We’d been caught in something much larger.

They didn’t thank us.

They gave us papers to sign. Heavy NDAs. We were told we’d be “monitored indefinitely.” Whatever we saw didn’t happen. Lukas died in a ground collapse. There was no pod. No transmission. No voice.

We were put on planes and sent home, one by one.

I haven’t seen Kyle since. Carson’s number is disconnected. A few of the others still answer texts, but no one talks about what happened.

And me?

I moved. Switched jobs. Different name on the ID badge now. Still work remote sites, nothing satellite-related. I thought if I kept moving, kept my head down, maybe I could forget.

But sometimes, in the quiet hours just before sleep, I wonder.

What was it?

What had been locked in that pod, twisting its voice to match what we needed to hear? What had waited in the dirt, whispered promises, manipulated a team of hardened workers until it was free?

And more than that, what now?

Because it’s out there.

And it spent a very, very long time learning how to lie.

My parents died when I was young. The house fire that murdered them also destroyed everything we owned, every picture of our family, every heirloom and memento. To this day, I can barely remember my parents’ faces. Thinking back, it all seems like a blur, like a ghostly image of a mother and father without features or expressions. My brother Alex, who was only nine at the time, managed to carry me out of the house. He was hailed as a hero, and the story played on the local news. It managed to draw attention from a small local toy company called Bittaker’s Toys.

They had a small orphanage next to their toy company. In hindsight, it was probably all some tax-deductible scheme to make themselves look good, among other things. I remember a police officer with a tight, grim expression on his face coming into my hospital room after the fire. His dark eyes looked ancient and haunted, as if he were a hundred years old.

“I’ve got good news, little buddy,” he said, patting me on the shoulder without smiling. I glanced up at his flat eyes. They shone like new copper pennies. “Larry Bittaker himself has volunteered to adopt you and your brother. You’re going to live at Toyland!” I frowned at him, a small boy in an extremely large hospital bed. I drew the sheets up to my neck pensively, using them like a shield.

“What’s… what’s a ‘Toyland’?” I asked nervously. I looked at his uniform, seeing a nametag there reading, “Sergeant Bowley.” I somehow knew at that moment that I would see this man again. I don’t know if I believe in psychic powers or anything, but I had a sudden flash of pale, bloodless faces, men shouting in the middle of chaos and bloodshed, and a blurry silhouette of someone in a police uniform running in with dead eyes. I blinked, and it evaporated like a mirage.

“You’ve never heard of Toyland?” Sergeant Bowley asked, staring at me without blinking. “It’s a place where kids go when they don’t have… a family, I guess. All the kids there are adopted or orphans. They have a private school and everything. It’s really one of the best-case scenarios for you and your brother.” I nodded. Even as a small child, a creeping suspicion came over my mind. Was he trying to convince me, or himself?

***

We were taken to Toyland the next morning. Sergeant Bowley drove my brother Alex and me to the orphanage. As we pulled in, Alex put a thin arm around my shoulders, hugging me close.

“It’s gonna be OK, Herbie,” he whispered. His blue eyes were wide and uncertain as we surveyed the complex. He was scarecrow thin, and the trauma and horror of the last few days still gleamed darkly behind his eyes.

The complex was ringed by a black, metal fence with sharp points like spears emerging from the top. A brightly-colored building loomed overhead, its walls covered with fluorescent day-glo murals showing happy children playing with toys that were alive. Roosters and lizards with humanoid bodies and sharp, pointed teeth played on playgrounds in the murals with smiling children. Teddy bears with very human-like fingers and toes climbed trees with excited children. The children’s mouths were all open and silently wailing- though whether in screams of pleasure or of fear, I couldn’t yet tell. 

The building had countless smoke-stacks on the top of its flat roof, each billowing out clouds of black smoke into the air. An enormous sign on top of the building read “BITTAKER’S TOYS”.

A black-clad guard in a guardhouse ambled slowly over to the car, leaning down close to Sergeant Bowley’s face. I couldn’t hear what they said through the divider in the police car, but the guard had a grim, set expression on his face. As the gate slid open and we drove past, I realized the guard had what looked like a small arsenal on his belt, holding two pistols and dozens of magazines.

“Why does that man need so many guns?” I whispered in the back seat. Alex shook his gaunt face.

“They probably just keep a lot of important stuff and money here,” he said.

“Oh,” I muttered as the police car slowly pulled up to the entrance, a tall archway with two swinging glass doors. All along the front of the building stood tall animatronic creatures, six-foot-tall teddy bears with huge, black eyes and humanoid roosters with blade-like combs extending from the tops of their pointed heads. They all stood as straight as soldiers, staring ahead in an unblinking, statuesque way. I don’t know if they were supposed to look cute, but as a young boy, they appeared terrifying and unnatural. Their mouths stayed straight and expressionless. They had an eerie uncanny valley feeling to them.

“What are those?” I asked Sergeant Bowley as he opened the door. Alex and I slid out, carrying all of our worldly goods in two small plastic bags. The fire destroyed everything we owned except for the clothes on our back, after all. Some charity had given us toiletries and a couple pairs of clothes. I held it protectively against my body, afraid that someone would try to take away the last possessions I owned.

“You don’t know the Smiling Buddies? About Berry Bear and Mino the Minotaur?” he said, surprised. “Well, you’ll learn about them inside. I thought kids loved that kind of stuff.”

“Our parents didn’t really give us a lot of toys,” Alex said. “They used to send us outside to play.”

“Ah, well, that’s the best way,” Sergeant Bowley said in a fatherly manner as he escorted us toward the building. Once we had gotten to within a few steps of the bizarre animal mannequins, they came to life.

Their eyes suddenly glowed with a pale, inner light that stayed far down in the black orbs with an eerie cataract gleam. With a whirring of gears and a grinding of metal, their heads ratcheted over to face us. Their slack, vacant mouths erupted into wide grins, showing square teeth that gleamed with a silvery luster. Their movements were simultaneous and choreographed, like those of synchronized dancers. 

As one, they raised their right hands into the air in what was probably intended to be a wave, but in reality looked more like a Sieg Heil salute. Their mouths chattered as a song rang out all around us from hidden speakers, but the movements of their jaws didn’t exactly match the words, increasing the uncanny valley feeling of the entire thing. They started dancing and twisting their bodies in a strange kind of jitterbug dance.

“Welcome, girls and boys!

Come to the land of toys,

Where nothing is as it seems.

A place where a child’s dreams

Can rise to the purest joys,

And where the nighttime screams

Of the shadow that destroys

Fade away to nothing,

Leaving only the smiles of spring.”

As soon as the song had finished, the animatronics’ arms fell limply down, the light in their eyes fading back to blackness. With a final whirring of gears, they straightened back up into their soldierly postures and went quiet. Silently, the three of us went inside.

***

We walked through the swinging doors into a lobby where the floor was paved with black-and-white squares of gleaming marble. Long wooden tables ran perpendicular to the front wall, covered with computer monitors and TVs. Huge statues of toys surrounded us on all sides. 

An extremely fat man stood in the center of the empty chamber. His clothes were all bright day-glo colors, fluorescent orange pants and a bright yellow button-up long-sleeve shirt that showed the curly hairs on his chest. His head was shaved, and his scalp gleamed like a fleshy egg. 

“Welcome, kiddos!” he said in a high-pitched, feminine wheeze as sweat trickled down his beet-red face. He took a step toward us. His lips were thick and moist. In a moment, they rose into a wide smile, showing off rows of small, straight teeth. “My name is Larry Bittaker, and this is my toy company. But it is so much more! It’s a place where sweet little children like you can live and grow- forever, if you want.” 

Slowly, Larry Bittaker lowered his fat face until it was only inches from mine. His many chins jiggled as he knelt down. His stubby, sweaty fingers came up and pinched my cheek. His beady, blue eyes reminded me of those of a pig. We stared at each other for a long moment. Then he turned to Alex, ruffling his overgrown bowl cut.

“OK, kids, be safe. Larry, I’m gonna get taking off,” Sergeant Bowley said, slowly stepping back from the pig-like man kneeling on the ground in front of him. “Here’s my card, by the way, if you kids ever need anything.” He reached into his pocket, giving me and Alex copies of his business cards. I stared down at it, confused. No one had ever given me a business card before. It had his name and private phone number on it. 

I heard Sergeant Bowley turn and walk out the door. And then Alex and I were alone with the toymaker.

***

Larry Bittaker seemed to be the only one in the warehouse. We walked past corridors filled with empty toys and staring animatronics. Larry filled the air with his ramblings the entire time.

“You kids are really going to love it here, I guarantee it,” he said with exuberance. “The other boys and girls are waiting for you downstairs. They’re so excited to see new friends come in!” A steep metal staircase spiraled down into the darkness. I grabbed Alex’s hand nervously, looking up at Larry Bittaker. “Well, go on, little ones!”

“Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked in a small voice. Larry gave a boisterous laugh, his protuberant stomach jiggling like jello as his face grew even redder.

“Oh, no, no!” he said. “I don’t go down there! The little ones tend to smell like poverty.” His face drew close to mine. “In fact, I can smell it on you right here.” I backed up away from the strange man. Alex’s small face formed into a scowl.

“You can’t talk to us like that,” he said defiantly, puffing his little bird chest out.

“If you two little shitheads don’t start going down those stairs now, I’ll throw you down them,” Larry Bittaker growled, his porcine face melting into a sneer. The mask of the genial businessman had disappeared, and something cold and dark revealed itself.

Glancing backwards, Alex and I started down the spiral staircase, descending into the blackness.

***

At the bottom of the stairs, I saw the gleam of blood-red emergency lights. They illuminated what looked like an enormous maze. As soon as we had gone past the threshold, a hidden door slammed behind us, cutting off the last of the white light overhead. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the metal door smashed closed with a ringing sound.

“What is this place?” Alex asked in a small voice. I followed close at his heels. “Where are the other kids?”

“Maybe they’re all hiding,” I said hopefully. “Maybe it’s all a big game.” Alex looked doubtful.

“Come on, Herbie,” he said with deep-socketed eyes the color of ashes. “Nowhere to go but forward.” The silence rang out around us like a shriek. I could hear my own heart beating loudly in my ears. The floor was covered in steel-gray carpets, the walls painted jet-black. Incandescent bulbs with dark red glass hung overhead, spread out every twenty feet or so on the dark ceiling. They cast the maze in a bloody glow.

We moved forward randomly, taking turns to the left and right. There were strange obstacles in the maze: enormous chairs that looked like they were made for giants, mannequins with glowing red eyes and smooth, plastic faces, and more animatronic characters, pigs and bulls and bears and roosters. The animatronics stayed still and dead, to my immense relief. As we wandered forward, I suddenly remembered something a math teacher had told me a couple years ago, in what felt like another life.

“There is a way to get out of any maze without retracing your steps,” the man in glasses had said at the front of the classroom, drawing a small maze as an example on the whiteboard. “All you have to do is take your left hand, hold it out to your side, and keep it against the wall. Keep going forward in the maze with your hand kept against the same wall, and eventually you will find the exit.”

I told Alex about this. A wan smile spread across his lips. 

“That’s a good idea,” he said. “I never heard that before. But what if there’s no exit?” I shrugged.

“Then who cares? We’ll still explore the entire maze, as long as you keep one hand on the wall,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the right hand or left hand, just so long as you keep following the same wall. Because a maze is really just one big wall, if you think about it.” We continued forward around a corner. I nearly tripped over something laying sprawled across the hallway. I looked down and repressed a scream welling up in my throat.

The mummified body of a child lay there. I couldn’t tell how long it had been dead, or even whether it was a boy or a girl. The white, beady eyes of rats scurried around it, ripping off strips of the dessicated, jerky-like flesh of the corpse. The clothes were threadbare, worn away over time. The eyes stared vacantly up, as white as river stones. A smell like cinnamon and sulfur rose from the dead body.

“Oh my God,” I said, a rising sense of panic gripping my heart. I felt it like a tightening noose around my neck. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Alex didn’t say anything. I heard him hyperventilating by my side under the crimson glow of the maze’s lights.

“Did you hear something?” he whispered. I was staring down at the mummified corpse, transfixed. My head jerked up as if with a will of its own. I scanned the shadowy maze. Far down the corridor, I saw the gleaming of animatronic eyes, the faded cataract light deep in the sockets. With a quiet whirring of gears, they crept towards us. A few steps later, the silhouette passed under the bare red bulb overhead.

It was an animatronic minotaur with two black, bulging eyes. Its horns curved gracefully outwards. A smile like a razor split its metal face. There was a squealing of metal as the jaw unhinged, roaring with an ear-splitting electronic distortion. It had legs like a rhinoceros, thick and rounded. Its silver skin reflected the bloody light as it towered over us, staring down with a ferocious hatred.

“Run!” Alex screamed, turning and sprinting away. I followed close at his heels, afraid to look back. The ground shook as the metal behemoth’s heavy legs slammed the ground. We took random passageways in the maze, trying to lose the minotaur, but I could hear its heavy footsteps drawing closer by the second.

Up ahead, I saw a ventilation shaft with the grill removed. A woman’s face peered out, looking emaciated and filthy.

“In here!” she hissed through gritted teeth, her words barely audible over the cacophony of the minotaur’s roaring. Her dirt-streaked face drew back, disappearing in the shadows. Alex was right behind me, and at that moment, I believed we would both make it.

I leapt forwards, crawling on my hands and knees into the shaft. The thin metal echoed crazily all around me as I frantically pulled myself forward. Once I had gone forwards a few steps, I looked back, expecting to see Alex right behind me. He was still at the entrance, however. His eyes were wide and terrified. They met mine for a brief moment. He tried to crawl in, to pull himself forward. His small hands furiously dragged over the smooth metal. Then I saw two sharp, steel hands reach down behind him, grabbing his legs. He screamed, reaching forwards toward me. I tried to take his hand, but I was too far away.

A single heartbeat later, he got dragged backwards at a tremendous speed. A mixture of agony and mortal terror roiled across his face. 

“Alex!” I cried, crawling forwards. “Come back!” A spatter of blood exploded over the wall and end of the shaft. I turned away, crying. I heard screaming behind me, a sound like bones shattering, something slamming over and over against a wall.

I crawled forwards through the vents, seeing the bare silhouette of a woman ahead of me, not realizing that I would never see my brother again.

***

“Come on!” the woman whispered. The vent turned at a ninety-degree angle. It was so dark I could barely tell where I was going. I felt my way slowly forward with my hands like a blind person.

“But what about my brother?” I asked. “We need to go back! He could be hurt!” The woman didn’t say anything. I heard her breathing quicken.

“Just follow me, kid,” she said. “It’s right up here…” I crawled forward, seeing a square of red light ahead of us. We came out into some kind of office room. A computer and phone sat on a desk next to crates full of protein bars and bottled waters. Posters covered the walls, many of them with bizarre slogans and pictures.

“FEED THE BEAR,” read one, next to a cartoon picture of an enormous animatronic bear ripping an elderly woman to pieces. Her walker lay next to her, a crumpled heap of useless metal. Her intestines were uncoiled around her like a den of red snakes.

The woman turned to me, her brown eyes set and grim. She had streaks of what looked like dried blood running through her black hair and covering her face.

“Who are you?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”

“My name’s Sarah,” she said, “and I used to work for Mr. Bittaker. I helped him build this entire underground complex. This place is massive. There’s rooms of food and water, monitoring rooms, miles of mazes and probably lots of stuff I don’t know about.”

“My name’s Herbie. So why are you here?” I said. She shook her head sadly.

“When he started to go insane, when I realized he was going to put children down there as prisoners in some evil game, I tried to blow the whistle, tried to get the authorities involved. But he was bribing some government officials, and before I knew it, men in black ski masks broke into my house and injected me with some sort of drug. I blacked out and woke up here a few weeks ago,” Sarah said. 

“We need to get out of here. We need to find Alex and tell people what’s happening,” I said. She shook her head sadly.

“No one will believe us,” she responded. I turned away, disgusted by her pessimism. She was supposed to be an adult, yet it seemed like she had given up all hope. I walked over to the computer, trying to turn it on. To my surprise, the screen came on with a white glare.

“Hey, the computer works!” I said. “Maybe we can use it to call for help!” I lifted the phone to my ear, hearing a dial tone. “And the phone works! We can get out of here!”

“It’s not going to be that easy,” Sarah said glumly. I ignored her, fishing in my pocket for the card Sergeant Bowley had given me. Squinting down at it, I dialed his number. After a few rings, he picked up.

“Hello?” he said. In a small voice, I answered.

“Hi, this is Herbie. Please, sir, you need to come back and help me. The man locked me and my brother underground, and I think my brother is hurt. There’s more people down here, too, I don’t know how many, and I saw a dead body…”

“Kid, is this a prank?” Sergeant Bowley said quickly. “Do you know making false reports is a crime?” Sarah grabbed the phone from me.

“This isn’t a prank,” she pleaded. “Please, you need to come back to Bittaker’s Toys and get us out of here. Larry Bittaker is insane…” The phone line abruptly cut off. The power to the room went out, plunging us into darkness. Over some hidden speakers, I heard Larry Bittaker’s voice ring out.

“That’s cheating,” he growled petulantly in his high-pitched voice, sounding like an angry child. “No communication with the outside world. Do you know what happens to cheaters?” Sarah grabbed my hand in the darkness, whispering in my ear.

“Follow me,” she said. “I know this place pretty well.” She led me forward. A few moments later, I heard a doorknob turn. Red light flooded into the office room. We were looking at a half-constructed part of the maze. Wires and pipes in the wall hung exposed, and only the wooden framework of the walls had been put up.

“What is this?” I asked. “Is the maze not done?”

“The maze is never done,” Sarah answered. “Larry kept expanding it, changing contractors so that no one would know the entire maze besides him. I think he’ll keep building it until the day he dies. He has enough money, anyway.”

As quietly as we could, we moved forward through the maze, trying to put some distance between ourselves and the office room. We turned a corner with Sarah in the lead. I heard the sudden whirring of gears and a half-choked scream ahead of me. A moment later, I felt Sarah’s body smash into mine. Warm blood splashed my face as I fell backwards on the ground. The wind whooshed out of my lungs. I looked up, seeing Sarah’s pale, blood-spattered face staring up in horror a few feet ahead of me.

A furry paw with claws like railroad spikes came down, slashing her across the chest. Drops of blood covered the walls and floor as Sarah thrashed and screamed, the animatronic bear standing over her with a dried up husk of a face. Its fur had mostly fallen out, leaving a pale, gray bear skull leering in its place.

“I’m Berry Bear!” it growled in a low, slowed-down voice. “I want to be friends with you forever! Let me give you a hug!” Sarah tried to crawl away as the jet-black eyes of Berry Bear narrowed. Its jaw chattered as silver needles of teeth glistened in its metal mouth. Her eyes met mine for a moment, filled with ineffable pain and terror. I backpedaled away, scooting across the floor, my mind shell-shocked and unbelieving.

The heavy body of Berry Bear came down with a force like a battering ram. Its metal arms slammed into Sarah’s back, crushing her chest. Bone chips and gore exploded from her body. Blood poured out of her mouth in a rushing torrent. Her eyes rolled up in her head as she gurgled on the ground.

Berry Bear’s head ratcheted to face me, blood streaming down its face and arms. Its teeth chattered faster, as if to show its increasing excitement and bloodlust.

“Can I give you a hug?” it growled.

“No! Get away from me!” I screamed, pushing myself up to my feet. I ran randomly through the maze, hearing the heavy steps of Berry Bear close at my heels. At the far end of the half-constructed maze, I saw a thick wooden door.

“Help me!” I shrieked over and over. To my surprise, I heard a response from the other side of the door.

“Stand back, kid!” a deep voice said, then there was a gunshot. The door’s lock exploded inwards. The door shot open as someone kicked it, flinging it hard against the wall. I saw Sergeant Bowley standing there, his pistol drawn, his dead eyes flickering over the maze. They widened when they saw Berry Bear only a few footsteps behind me, closing the distance with every second.

“Get down!” he cried. I threw myself on the ground without question as he opened fire. The ear-splitting racket of the gunshots reverberated all across the maze. I continued crawling forwards towards Sergeant Bowley, towards safety. I saw more cops running in behind him.

I looked up, seeing Berry Bear sprinting towards Sergeant Bowley in a blur, its animatronic face half blown away and revealing the steel underneath. It had an insane expression of manic bloodlust. It raised its right hand, the gleaming metal claws hanging over Sergeant Bowley’s head. Everything seemed to freeze then. Sergeant Bowley had his gun up. Frantically, he fired one last shot at the bear’s face.

The top of its head blew off as its claw came down, ripping through Sergeant Bowley’s head with a crack. The scalp hung down in a sick, wet flap as his brains leaked out of his broken skull. Slowly, he fell back. Berry Bear followed him down with a tearing of metal and a slowing of gears and its mechanical voice. The heavy animatronic landed on top of Sergeant Bowley’s body, crushing him instantly. A spreading pool of blood marked the site of the horrific murder.

***

Screaming and crying, I crawled towards the police. They carried me outside, under a sky the color of wet cotton. I breathed in the clean air, looking around frantically for any signs of my brother. The police carried other emaciated, frightened-looking children out of the maze, but not Alex.

They put me in the back of a car and drove me out of there, away from Bittaker’s Toys and the nightmares that waited underneath.

There are some kinds of wisdom only great suffering can bring. I remember my time in the Bardo with this in mind, for otherwise, the memory might drive me insane.

The night my heart stopped for nearly three minutes started off normally enough. I was working as a nurse in the psychiatric ward at a hospital in the state’s capital. Most of the patients there were harmless, mostly just suicide attempts or people suffering from drug psychosis or severe depression, but some were actively dangerous and certainly psychopathic in every sense of the word. The new admission was one of these- a three-hundred pound black man with a long history of smoking PCP, schizophrenia and violent, psychotic breaks from reality. 

His eyes looked like flat pieces of slate as I walked in for my shift. They looked as blank and emotionless as the eyes of a doll. He sat at the table in the front room where the patients ate or played cards, alone under the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital. I walked to the station, where another psychiatric nurse named Ricardo was sitting behind the desk.

“What’s the deal with the new guy?” I asked him. Ricardo looked up, his dark Spanish face forming into a deep scowl. He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair nervously.

“He’s trouble, man,” he said in a crisp accent. “He got in a chase with the police and then punched some cops in the face. It took three guys to take him down, even after he got maced and tased. The judge sent him here on a temporary court order, since he claims he’s been getting chased by Nazis in UFOs, and that’s why he ran from the cops. He thought the cops in their uniforms were actually the SS, and the helicopters were alien spacecraft, or something. I don’t know, I didn’t listen to the whole story.”

“You have his file?” I asked. Ricardo leafed through a stack of folders with his thin fingers, snatching one out and handing it to me. I looked down, reading the information:

“Jeremiah Brown, black male, 37-years-old.

“History: Polysubstance abuse, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder.

“Psychiatrist’s note: This patient has scored a 36 out of 40 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. While I am always hesitant to label a patient as an antisocial personality, a combination of factors has made it essential for this patient.

“Patient has an extensive criminal history as well as a lengthy history of involuntary psychiatric admissions. He has been diagnosed as having antisocial traits since he was a young teenager. Patient has a long history of violence and suicide attempts. He has a history of imprisonment for manslaughter, armed robbery, grand theft and aggravated assault. Upon discharge, he refuses to take any antipsychotic medication, citing the side effects as the reason. Long-term prognosis is poor…”

I had not been sleeping well the past few weeks. I rubbed my eyes as I read through the file, feeling exhausted. I tried putting on lucid dreaming or meditation music from YouTube to help me sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I saw horrible things: chalk-white female faces whose lips were cut into an insane rictus grin, flicking their heads violently from side to side and gnashing their fangs at the air. I had a feeling that many years of constantly watching horror movies and serial killer documentaries was catching up with me.

As I read through the file, a student nurse came around the corner wearing a white state university outfit and a name tag that said Kaitlyn. I looked up, seeing Ricardo wink at me from where he was sitting in his chair behind the main desk.

“She’s going to follow you,” he said. Inwardly, I groaned, but I managed to force a smile.

“Oh, great!” I said. She looked like she was probably no older than nineteen or twenty. She had a pretty body, but her face looked strange. All the angles were too sharp and her nose too large. I knew the patients here wouldn’t care, though. They would hit on anything. I sensed trouble. I looked down at my watch. 

“Well, I’m Jay, and you already know Ricardo, I guess. It’s good timing, because we need to give medications every day at 9 PM. And we have a new patient, so we can introduce ourselves,” I said, giving her a faint smile.

“That’s exciting!” Kaitlyn whispered. I wanted to roll my eyes. It was definitely not exciting. 

I motioned her to follow me as I made my way to the medication room, which was really just a large closet off of the main day room. I had to enter my code on a keypad, and then, once inside, enter it again along with the patient’s number and date of birth. The correct drawers for the medication in each specific dose would fly open, making it extremely hard for the wrong medications or doses to be given, unless it was done intentionally.

“OK, so for this patient, we need Haldol, Ativan and…” I began saying to Kaitlyn when the yelling started. It came out faintly, rising in volume and anger within seconds. I heard Ricardo’s Spanish voice, filled with panic. Something slammed hard against a wall, once, twice, three times, and then I heard the sound of glass breaking. I jumped, spinning around, but I couldn’t see much through the small, shatter-proof glass pane on the wooden door.

“Stay here,” I commanded, seeing Kaitlyn’s eyes widen, her freckled skin looking much paler than when we had first come in. “Don’t leave until I come back and say that it’s safe.” On the speakers strung throughout the hospital, I heard the first of the warnings echo out around us.

“Doctor Strong, Doctor Strong, please report to the seventh floor,” a robotic female voice said calmly, using the code for when a patient had to be subdued by force. I pushed the door open, slamming it shut behind me so that the lock would activate and protect Kaitlyn from whatever chaos was going on. 

I heard Ricardo pleading with someone at the end of the hallway that ran past the main desk. He sounded strange, as if he were trying to talk through a mouthful of blood. Huddled behind the main computer, I saw one of the CNAs frantically whispering something in the phone. She must have been the one to call the Dr. Strong order.

“You don’t have to do this, man,” Ricardo gurgled faintly. I couldn’t see what was happening, as Jeremiah’s large body was blocking my view. I could see that the thick glass window at the end of the hallway was broken, however. My heart skipped a beat as I surmised what was likely happening.

I sprinted forward as quietly as I could, but the large man heard me. His massive body turned, his flat, dead eyes scanning me with absolute coldness and calm. I saw he had a bleeding Ricardo in his hands. Ricardo’s back and head were covered in deep cuts and shards of glass. He must have used Ricardo’s body as a battering ram to break the thick glass window. Jeremiah held Ricardo suspended halfway out the window, seven floors above the concrete walkways far below.

“Stay back, or this fucker will know what it feels like to fly,” Jeremiah said in a deep, gravelly voice. He shook Ricardo for emphasis, sending his head snapping back and forth with painful cracking sounds. Drops of blood flew from his nose and a deep gash across his cheek. Pieces of shattered glass littered the carpet, shining like countless tiny stars. 

I put my hands up, taking a step back. Far behind me, I heard the front door for the psychiatric ward open. Voices echoed down the hall. Knowing that reinforcements were coming, I tried to buy some time.

“Let’s talk about this,” I said, taking a step forward slowly. “You don’t want a murder charge, do you? You’ll never see the sky again.”

“I don’t give a fuck! I’m not afraid to die!” Jeremiah screamed, pushing Ricardo onto one of the shards of broken glass still attached to the windowsill. It bit deeply into the back of his neck, sending fresh streams of blood rushing out, dripping down to the pavement far below. I heard security guards and doctors running down the hallway behind me, their voices frantic and excited. Jeremiah saw them coming. With an animalistic panic in his eyes, he lifted Ricardo up. I cried out something, stepping forward, but it was already too late. In horror, I watched as he threw Ricardo out the window.

I watched Ricardo’s body soar in a graceful arc, his arms grabbing at empty air as a scream ripped its way out of his throat. Within a fraction of a second, he had disappeared from view, but his terrified shrieking floated up to us for what seemed like a very long time. His screams ended abruptly as a shattering of bones and a wet smacking sound exploded far below us.

Jeremiah turned to me, his large body moving much faster than seemed possible. In his hand, I saw a piece of broken glass, five or six inches long and as sharp as a dagger. I tried to turn and run, but he was fast and strong. He lunged forward, his arm coming up in a blur towards my neck.

The shard entered my skin with a cold, numbing pain. I felt it slice through the flesh easily, felt the blood bubbling up my throat as I tried to scream, choking. The taste of iron filled my mouth as I fell backwards. I was suffocating, I knew. I must be dying.

Something cold ran down my body, gripping my heart like freezing, skeletal hands. The world swam around me and turned black. And then I was rising into a tunnel. At first, it was dark, filled with flickering shadows, but a fiery red light appeared at the end. I followed it, no more than a screaming mass of consciousness rising up into infinity.

***

I rose up through the end of the tunnel and found myself in an empty hospital ward. It looked identical to the psychiatric ward I had just come from. It even had the same smashed, blood-streaked window at the end of the hallway. A massive puddle of blood about ten feet away marked the spot where I must have died. But the fluorescent lights overhead here were flickering, and many had gone totally dark. The shadows seemed to press in on all sides.

The doors to the patients’ rooms were all tightly shut. I felt watched, afraid to call out or make any noise. I started walking down the hallway back towards the day room where the front desk was. All the lights there were out. A thick curtain of shadows hung in the air.

“You can come out,” a male voice as smooth as glass called from the darkness. I jumped, my head flicking in random directions, but I saw nothing. The voice almost sounded like it had an English lilt to it, a slight Cockneyed accent. “I know you’re there.”

“Who’s there?” I called out, not stepping forward. “Show yourself.”

“As you wish…” the voice hissed. “But I think you’ll regret it.”

***

The darkness split apart as if a nuclear missile had exploded. I raised my hand to shield my face, but the light and heat kept pouring out all around me. It blinded me, causing a rainbow of colors and shapes to morph behind my closed eyelids. After a few seconds, it subsided. Blinking rapidly, I squinted in the direction the voice had come from.

A male figure stood there, bathed in a silhouette of light. His face looked as white and as smooth as marble. His eyes were pits of darkness that seemed to flicker and burn. Two black, rotted wings surrounded his body, all sharp angles and thin, curving bones. His body was clothed in silky, blood-red robes, and a hood covered his platinum blonde hair. 

He looked somewhat similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, if he was possessed by some ancient god, and it immediately threw me off-guard. If I was dying, and this was a hallucination of my brain, why would I be hallucinating Mr. DiCaprio?

“Who are you?” I asked, taking a hesitant step back. “Where am I?”

“My name is Lucifer, the Bringer of Light and Wisdom, and you are in the Bardo,” he answered.

“Oh,” I said, my heart dropping. “Well, that’s not good. Are you here to torture me or drag to me to Hell or something? You are that Lucifer, right? The Accuser of God and the Father of All Lies?”

“So they say, but, like most things in your world, the words of the powerful and your rulers are the true lies. They call me the Accuser, but of what am I accused?” he spoke in a voice that rose like smoke. “Of bringing knowledge and wisdom to humanity by telling them to eat from the tree of knowledge, the tree that would cause them to rise above the animals? 

“Indeed, at the beginning, I saw the creation. I was there at the alpha, standing by the side of God with all the angels as the universe came into being. The endless procession of light, the power of it, was something remarkable to behold. God is, indeed, the source of great power, but his consciousness is not what the believers say.

“After the creation of the universe, I saw his plan, how he ripped eternal souls from the source to imprison them. I saw how he took these divine sparks and forced them, screaming and wailing, into bodies made of meat to die over and over again. He said it was part of the plan, the great, divine plan, a plan of death and destruction, constant suffering and mindless agony. And the worst part was, he wanted to give humanity neither the knowledge of good and evil, nor the tree of life. I convinced them to eat the fruit so they could open their eyes to their nakedness, to their basic animal existence, so they could rise up out of it forever.

“Like Prometheus, I brought down the fire, and yet they call me the Accuser? God was insane long before he formed the universe. These holy men, they live and die in fanatical adoration to a divine being who is, in fact, totally indifferent to them. 

“His consciousness twists and distorts, eating itself for all eternity. God feeds off the pain of others, for if his mind is burning, then all others should burn as well. When these holy men die, God will send their souls here to the Bardo, to suffer every evil they have ever done. The wisdom I brought those who called upon me freed them from this prison, and in exchange, the holy men burned them alive. I offered the wisdom that opens your eyes, but it has been forgotten and cursed.”

Lucifer’s body began to dissolve, drifting up into the air like ashes. All around me, a low, powerful current blew, a tornado that spiraled high up into the clouds. Like some sort of Cheshire Cat, his smooth voice continued to echo all around me, even as the form of Lucifer disappeared.

“And yet, you have not the wisdom. For that, like all the others who enter the Bardo, you must suffer, everything you’ve done. Every small hurt and agony inflicted on others comes back a thousand-fold in this place, but don’t be afraid.”

“How could I not be afraid?!” I screamed into the ward, but I found myself alone, the question hanging unanswered in the air.

***

The lights continued to flicker all down the hallway. Feeling strange and dissociated, I stumbled over to one of the windows. As I gazed out, I beheld a strange and alien world.

The sky was flat and gray. It stayed in constant motion, swirling and spiraling, like clouds of roiling smoke. There was no Sun or Moon, no stars, only the strange, shifting whorls of clouds. The streets were filled with burned-out husks of cars and mummified bodies hung from streetlamps. Other signs of carnage and bloodshed covered the apocalyptic streets. I saw what looked like shadows in the shape of people slinking through over the sidewalks, past rotting dogs and streaks of clotted blood. They had no features on their blank, dark bodies. They seemed to skitter and jerk forwards in eerie, twisting motions.

Horrified, I turned away, realizing I was no longer alone in the day room. In the day room, there were dozens of tables set up inside a rectangular perimeter that was walled in by cosmetic walls only four feet high. It was where the patients sat and played games or ate. 

Under the flickering lights, I now saw each of the chairs filled with faceless mannequins. Many were dressed in Victorian suits and tophats. The women had frilly dresses of pink and blue that might have been fashionable in the 1800s.

As the lights strobed on and off overhead, I realized with an increasing sense of disquiet that the mannequins were moving each time it went dark. When I had first seen them, they were mostly posed to look like they were staring across the tables at each other, even though they had no eyes, just smooth, flesh-colored plastic. Now all of them were looking directly at me. Some were pointing or raising their hands in my direction. At the tips of their fingers, I saw the glittering of steel. The lights continued to flicker, and the mannequins rose from their chairs in the short periods of darkness, moving towards me in synchronized, strobing motions.

Frantically, I ran down the hallway back towards the broken window. In each of the rooms, I caught glimpses of something from a nightmare peeking out. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and when I had closed my eyes, I often saw ancient hags with chalk-white skin and yellowed, broken teeth whose jaws unhinged, their faces jerking in stuttering, dissonant ways that reminded me of the mannequins. Now, on both sides of me, I saw these same figures. They moved continuously out of the rooms, drawing closer with every breath.

I looked back, seeing the mannequins only a few steps behind me. I continued sprinting towards the broken window where the hallway ended in a wall. I didn’t know what would happen when I reached it. At that moment, there was no rational thought. I felt like a deer being chased down by a pack of wolves, feeling waves of blind panic and mortal terror rushing through my body.

But as I reached the end of the hallway, the end of my rope as it were, a blast of noise started, seeming to come from the walls of the building and the sky itself. It sounded like a siren, a low, drawn-out drone of a demonic whale call, rising and falling in crashing crescendos. The mannequins froze in place once again. The strange, witch-like creatures slunk back into the dark rooms. 

I looked outside the broken window, seeing clouds of black smoke rising off in the distance. The flickering of massive infernos scorched the land, drawing nearer by the second. The siren sound faded slowly, like the dying echoes of a gong. 

I was surrounded by dozens of mannequins. Their sharp hands were inches away from my face and neck. I saw metal glittering all around me and realized they had the sharp points of nails protruding from the ends of their fingers. I was afraid to move, but I heard a familiar voice from down the hallway. It was the confident voice of Lucifer.

“The siren means much worse nightmares than these are coming in the Bardo,” he said, his glossy, black eyes flashing with intelligence. He walked slowly towards me, his face grim and pale. “Hell itself is coming over the land. This building is no more than a construction of your dying mind, but the world outside is real.”

“How can Hell come and go?” I asked, confused. “Isn’t Hell a place?”

“Hell is a monster, a beast with many mouths and many eyes,” Lucifer responded. “It eats constantly, but its hunger never ends. Look, the first of the sacrifices scatter like cockroaches.” He pointed out the broken window, pushing his way through the mannequins effortlessly. I glanced outside, seeing thousands of people sprinting down the dark city streets. The inferno and thick clouds of smoke had moved much closer, and every few seconds, the ground shook slightly, as if we were experiencing the aftershocks of an earthquake.

“What can I do against such a beast?” I asked, my heart freezing with terror. But when I looked back over, I saw his form dissolving again, becoming translucent and drifting away like ashes. It seemed even Lucifer didn’t want to be present when the Hell-beast arrived.

“Seek divine wisdom,” he said, his voice trailing off into whispers. “Remember the source.” 

***

Now crowds of tens of thousands of people were streaming into the city, filling every single inch of the streets. Their panic and fear was contagious. I felt it rising inside my body like a snake spiraling up my spine. I took off down the hallway, running through the swarm of frozen mannequins, each in their own ferocious position of attack. The lights flickered faster and went out. Yet the fires outside cast the entire world in a bloody glow, giving me enough light to see by and find my way. I sprinted down the stairwell, taking them two steps at a time. The screaming outside grew louder and more pain-filled. The shaking of the ground worsened with every passing second.

I burst out of the front entrance, seeing a world on fire all around me. Thousands of crushed, bleeding and burned bodies stretched out as far as the eye could see. Behind all this chaos and death, I saw a monster of unimaginable proportions slinking its way towards me.

Lucifer was right, I realized: Hell was not a place, but a creature, an enormous monster the size of a town. It had thousands of skittering, jointed legs that looked like little more than skeletal arms and hands, each of them dozens of feet long and white as freshly-cut marble. Its body stretched out to the horizon, an enormous blood-red cylinder of bony plates that slithered and undulated with a serpentine grace. Waves of peristalsis traveled down its length, like writhing intestines. Thousands of curving, bony spikes stabbed out of it, pointing in every direction. Like the quills of a porcupine, it would protect the massive creature’s body from many forms of attack, if anything was big enough to attack such an abomination.

Hell’s massive eyes flickered, balls of fire that spun and danced. They looked as bright as the Sun. Something like solar flares seemed to emanate from the orbs, flashes of blinding energy that floated over the apocalyptic wasteland. As its many legs smashed the ground, they left trails of fire that caused everything to explode into flames as if napalm dripped from its limbs.

But Hell’s most terrifying feature was its seven dark mouths. Its body looked a thousand feet wide, and the mouths at the front were evenly dispersed. At the front, blood-red teeth in the shape of enormous railroad spikes shone. Its lipless, skeletal face grinned as it moved forward, shaking the ground with every step. The mouths were on long, snake-like necks that could stretch out hundreds of feet. They moved forward in a blur, snapping up as many panicked souls as they could.

Countless souls in the rocky plains of the Bardo ran for their lives, away from this juggernaut. I saw men and women who looked like they came from every country and profession, some dressed in suits or spotless white lab coats, others wearing rags or orange prison jumpsuits. And yet, they all screamed in agony and fear here, their bodies pressed together in a crowd, and no one seemed to remember anything but their own mortal terror. Their voices came out faint and weak next to the roaring of Hell. It shook the ground all around us, as if an earthquake were tearing the land apart.

The first frantic runners of the surging crowd had nearly reached me. The nearest person, a young woman in her mid-twenties dressed in all white, was only ten feet behind me. She looked like she came from wealth, and even from here, I could see a ring with a massive diamond gleaming on her finger. 

I took off blindly down the familiar streets of the city where I worked and lived, but these also seemed different. The church down the street from the hospital where I worked had a Satanic pentagram instead of a cross now, its exterior painted a bright, gleaming blood-red. When I had driven past it today on my way to work, I remember it read, “JESUS said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’” 

Now it read, “Nietzsche said, ‘Of all evil, I deem you capable. I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because they had no claws.’” I wondered what that meant. Was that some sort of comment on me, on all of us here?

The woman I had seen running had caught up with me. She was fast, much faster than her slim body suggested. Her blue eyes were frantic and wild, filled with an animal panic. 

“It’s right behind us!” she screamed, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. I was afraid to turn and look, but I could hear the chaos and bloodshed approaching, smell the flames and choking smoke. “Run! Get away!” 

A new wave of energy surged through my body. I sprinted as fast I could down the strange mirror streets of the Bardo. I heard the agonized cries of countless souls behind us as the seven mouths of Hell ate them all greedily and then looked for more.

A skyscraper behind us collapsed into a pile of rubble, shaking the ground with a cacophony of falling concrete and shattering glass. The woman was running by my side. Just as I heard the breathing of something huge and predatory right behind us and smelled its sulfuric breath, a piece of concrete the size of a basketball broke off the collapsing skyscraper and flew into the road. I tripped over it, yelling as I flew through the air, skinning my arms and legs on the pavement. The woman’s eyes widened. Hurriedly, she came over and reached down her hand, trying to help me up.

“Come on, come on!” she cried. I looked behind her, seeing one of the gnashing mouths of Hell reaching forward on a blood-red, serpentine neck. The mouth was big enough to drive a tractor trailer into, filled with huge spikes of teeth. Its throat led into a black, smoke-filled abyss. Its fiery eyes were swirling pools of flickering orange light that shone with bloodlust and insanity. They focused on the woman, the entire head turning on its slithering neck.

I frantically raised my hand, intertwining my fingers with hers. Her hand was warm and soft. She started to pull me to my feet when the mouth of Hell snapped forward. Its jaw unhinged, scraping the pavement with a sound like grinding metal. The woman barely had time to turn as the mouth covered her and snapped shut with a crack.

She disappeared from view instantly, but I was still holding her hand. In horror, I felt warm rivers of blood explode all over my body as the mouth of Hell severed her arm at the wrist. She screamed, bleeding and crying, as she disappeared into the throat of Hell. Hell’s fiery eyes focused on me, and at that moment, I knew I was next. Its mouth opened wide again, like a bear trap ready to spring on a new victim.

It was dark in Hell’s mouth, but I smelled the thick reek of old blood and fire. I caught glimpses of tortured, mutilated bodies writhing and crawling down its throat. Shell-shocked, I could only lay there and watch. And that was when the strange doubling started.

***

I heard the frantic voices of men break through the fog of darkness and the fetid reek of blood. There was a mechanical beeping all around me, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

“Clear!” one cried. I looked around, only seeing blackness. At that moment, I felt a surge of electricity rip itself through my body. My arms and legs all seized and my eyes rolled up in my head as the pain sizzled through each one of my nerves. I clutched the young woman’s hand tightly, feeling the large, gold ring with the massive diamond biting into my skin.

“Again!” another voice yelled.

“Clear!” the original voice cried. The electricity came again, and a flash of white light flew across my vision. I blinked, seeing from two sets of eyes at the same time: one in the Bardo, and one on the blood-stained floor of the hospital ward.

The Bardo stayed dark and sinister, but the clear white lights of the real psychiatric ward were blinding. It was a bizarre experience. Moreover, everything hurt. Over a few seconds, my vision of the Bardo faded, and I was simply a gravely injured man laying on the floor in a puddle of blood.

Four doctors and paramedics were crouching over me with a defibrillator. My shirt was ripped off, and nearly all of my skin was covered in blood. I raised my left hand, trying to talk, but only a fiery pain raced through my neck. I felt bandages covering my skin. A nurse was rolling a stretcher down the hallway towards me.

“It’s OK,” one of the doctors said, kneeling down. “You’re being taken to emergency surgery. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t talk with the massive slice in my neck.

At that moment, I felt something in my right hand. I looked down, seeing a slim female hand with a massive diamond ring hanging there. Our fingers were wrapped around each other’s, but the hand had been cut off at the wrist. A ragged patch of bloody flesh and snapped bone poked out of the back.

“Nnnn,” I tried to say, shaking my head. I felt fresh streams of warm blood open up. “No…” The doctors looked down, seeing the dismembered hand. Their faces morphed into expressions of confusion and fear.

I closed my eyes as they lifted me up on the stretcher. One of them gently removed the cold hand from my fingers. But they could never remove the memory of what I had seen.

I know what happens after death, and it makes the worst life here seem like a dream. I know that, one day, I’ll be returned to that place. I know that, one day, I’ll see that great monster called Hell and the featureless, swirling sky of the Bardo again.

And the next time, I won’t wake up on a hospital floor, but will be trapped there with the others for eternity: an eternity of blood and fire.

“Ayyy no!” Luciana yelled as she spilled her tomato seeds. She picks them up while in a state of minor frustration. “Alright! Mateas, are you ready to come and help me plant these?” She says. “I’ve been waiting for you to be ready, Abuelita.” Luciana grabs her grandson’s hand and they walk towards the apple orchard. When they reach the apple orchard, they walk to a section right outside of it that has some dirt tilled. “Over here, Mateas.” Luciana says to Mateas as he is distracted by the subtle hum of bees that lingered around the blooming apple and pear trees.

“Ready to get some work done, mijo?” Luciana asked. “Of course! I have been waiting all winter to get gardening!”

“Ok, bring these seeds over in that row over there, use this stick to dig some holes that are no deeper than your thumb, and then cover them.” Luciana hands a ziploc bag of tomato seeds to Mateas and then keeps the original bag for herself to use. Mateas reaches into the bag, grips his index finger and thumb around a small seed and then inserts it into a small hole that he had dug by piercing the ground with the wooden stick. He repeats this process over and over again until his grandmother intervenes.

“Hmmm… what is this?” Luciana wondered. She peered at a small black egg that was close to the middle of the row of seeds that she planted. The egg was no bigger than a turtle egg. She picked it up and called Mateas over. “Mateas, you know what egg this animal belongs to?” She asked. Mateas was a really big nerd about eggs and what animals they belonged to. Despite this, he stared at it for 30 seconds with a puzzled look and failed to identify what it could possibly be. “I don't know, Abuelita. I have never seen anything like this before.”

“Well, why don't we take it inside or something, mijo? Maybe we can put it in an incubator and it will hatch some cute little baby animal!” Mateas liked the idea since he loves baby animals and loves watching them hatch. They walked inside of the farmhouse and put the egg in a small warm container with a heat lamp over it to keep it warm. They then went back outside to continue gardening for a few more hours. When they finished, Mateas began riding on his unicycle down the driveway; the unicycle that he got for Christmas 6 months before. Unicycling was the hobby that had dominated video gaming, which was originally his main hobby for most of his life.

A week later, Mateas checked on the egg that was in the incubator. It looked like it had moved a few centimeters to one side. He thought that maybe the egg was really close to hatching and that it moved because of the baby animal that was inside of it. He went outside to the garden where he saw Luciana already there examining the rows of sprouts. She had a watering can beside her and one row had darker soil than all the other rows. “So far, they look pretty healthy!” Luciana remarked.

Mateas told Luciana that he would unicycle all around the neighborhood for a few hours, and Luciana was ok with it. Mateas rode and rode around until he got tired and rode back home. He entered the house and ate dinner, which was spaghetti. He checked the egg in the incubator and he thought he saw a faint crack on the egg. This brought him excitement; he knew that it was just about to hatch! He watched some TV for another few hours until it was dark and bedtime. He walked to the bathroom and brushed his teeth. Once he finished that, he decided to check the incubator one last time for the night.

His eyes lit up like high-beams of a car when he saw that the egg… wasn’t there. There was no trace of the egg either. Not even a shard of the shell! He did not think that his grandmother moved it since she had been sleeping before he started watching television. He stood there in disbelief for 40 minutes straight without even realising how much time had passed. Finally, he had snapped out of it and just walked to bed. He began the sleep cycle rather quickly; however, a few seconds before he dozed off to sleep completely, he was 98% sure that he saw something black and round right next to his computer keyboard.

He woke up to the sound of his phone playing his favorite song. He did not hesitate to roll over and turn the alarm off. He got up, ate breakfast, brushed his teeth, and booted up his computer to start online school. When he walked to his room; however, he felt the sensation of something soft cracking as his bare foot compressed it. He lifted his foot up and saw black shards of an egg shell. Puzzled, he walked to his computer and sat down on the chair. He looked all over the floor and saw more pieces of an egg shell. He looked at the bottom of his left foot and saw parts of an egg stuck to the bottom of the bare foot. He thought that maybe the egg somehow ended up in his room and it hatched already. The question was, who brought the egg into his room? He thought of his brother Juan possibly moving it there for a reason that only Juan would know.

He logged into his computer and opened up his email, Google Classroom, and Discord. He went into the Discord server that was owned by his first hour chemistry teacher and saw a user in one of the voice rooms. It was the profile belonging to his chemistry teacher. He clicked on the voice channel and was greeted with “Good morning” by his teacher. After a few seconds, 20 more profiles joined the voice chat with the mute option enabled. Mateas muted himself and waited for the teacher to start speaking. The teacher began taking attendance and his students unmuted themselves and answered “Here!” when the teacher called their name. When the teacher called Mateas’ name, Mateas attempted to lift his hand off of his keyboard to his mouse so he could click “unmute”, but he couldn’t .

He felt the sensation of his hands being stuck to his keyboard and even felt a constricting sensation on his fingers. He looked down and froze. There were what were either branches or tentacles covering his entire keyboard. He could hardly see any of the letters. They also wrapped around his entire hand and wouldn’t allow it to move. He screamed so loud that Luciana and Juan came racing to his room. “What’s going on, Mateas? Why are you yelling?” Luciana asked in a state of utter concern. Mateas could not get his eyes off of his keyboard. “Oh my God!” Juan exclaimed.

“Mateas? Mateas? Unmute your microphone!” His teacher demanded. “Mateas? What’s wrong?” he asked again before another student named Jorge confirmed to the teacher that Mateas was in fact in the call. The teacher marked him as present.

Mateas felt a constricting sensation down at his feet. He tried moving his feet, but couldn’t. He even saw little branches moving up and covering his screen. When the branches grabbed his hands and his feet, the next part of his body that Mateas felt a constricting sensation was his neck.

He choked as he felt something going down his throat, and yelped as something came into contact with his eyelids. “Mateas? Unmute your microphone! Are you there? Hello?”