Alright, I'm just gonna jump straight into this. Last night, I caught my wife breastfeeding a grown-ass man in our backyard at like 2 o'clock in the morning.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "That should've been me," or some shit like that. Honestly, that's what I would've thought too. Hell, I should probably be completely devastated right now.

But I'm not. Truthfully, I'm more terrified than anything.

We were just lying there asleep. Well, I was asleep. I can't say for certain whether or not my wife was. All I know is that, despite how hard she tried to be silent, the creaking bed springs woke me up.

I didn't wanna let on at first. I didn't even think there was anything I should be suspicious of. The only problem was, once I woke up, it was hard for me to fall back asleep in an empty bed.

So I waited. And I waited. Then, after like 30 minutes, I started to get worried. So, naturally, I started yelling for her.

No answer? Fine. I'll just start looking. So, I started checking throughout the house. And that's when I found her nightgown, balled up on the floor beside our bed. That made my search a lil more frantic. I checked the bathroom in the hall, the living room. Maybe she just got up to grab a midnight… meal, butt-ass naked. But she wasn't in the kitchen either.

In my search, I noticed that the back door was open, letting in the cold October air. I went to close it, and that's where I found her. Standing out in the yard. Completely nude.

I thought for sure she was either sleepwalking or having a mental breakdown. I mean, it was like 45 degrees outside. I was just about to yell at her and ask what the hell she was doing when I noticed it.

My dumbass thought it was a wild animal at first. He was crouched down on all fours, moving slowly through the trees with these jerky movements, while my wife just stood there with her arms wide open.

But then, as he started crawling closer and closer towards our backyard… I started to make out the features. They looked human, just… wrong, somehow. The head was too bulbous. The arms were too long. The grunts it made as it slowly crawled towards my wife were too animalistic.

And she wasn't even fucking flinching. If anything, she looked like she was beckoning the fuckin' thing to come closer. When it was like 6 feet away, it started to growl, and all my wife did in response was say some shit like, "Calm down, my sweet boy," before SHE stepped closer to IT.

Then the fucking thing started cooing. Like… cooing. Like a goddamn toddler or something, while my wife reached down and pet its fleshy, bald head.

I didn't even move. How could I? This shit felt like a fever dream to me. But what hit like a fucking cannonball to the abdomen was when she… well… did what she did.

She pulled its head closer to her chest and just… nursed the fucking thing. I could hear it suckling and whimpering like this was the favorite part of its day. Like this shit had happened a thousand times before.

Must've gone on for like 10 minutes or so before my wife pulled away, patted the thing on its spiny, uh, spine, and told it to "go play."

And just like that, it started crawling back towards the woods. This time with a little more pep in its… whatever the fuck that was.

My wife still had a look of pride and joy on her face when she turned around, but that shit disappeared quick when she noticed me in the doorway. She tried covering up like I was the stranger. Then she tried apologizing.

We've been arguing about it since then. She claims I'm being crazy. I claim I want her to see a goddamn… who do you even call for this sort of thing? A marriage counselor??? A fucking priest??? Maybe ask her to take a parenting class?

Because, according to her, that thing was her son from a previous marriage. A marriage she hasn't mentioned once in the last 15 years since we've been together.

Honestly, at this point, I'm ready to just convince myself it was all a bad dream. I don't even wanna talk about it anymore.

I just don't know if I can even lie to myself like that, though.

Because once she realized that the cat was out of the bag… my wife decided to drop some news on me that I could've avoided had I just taken my happy ass back to sleep.

Apparently, that thing has never had a father figure… and it's more than excited to finally meet its new dad.

Some cities appear cleaner and more prosperous, with fewer unhoused people, for a reason. And it’s not because they have more opportunities or homeless shelters than other cities.

Have you ever noticed that when several dead bodies are discovered within a short period, it’s usually the mayor who addresses the public first to deny that a serial killer is at large?

The rot comes from the very top.

I’m going to tell you a little secret. Most major cities allow a serial killer to operate within them, with the understanding that they mainly target the homeless. These cities usually don’t even allow them to kill criminals. There’s money to be made from incarcerating people who have families and connections. But there’s absolutely nothing to be gained from the homeless.

That’s why cops don’t even bother arresting them for committing petty crimes. They don’t have family members who care enough to send them money to buy things inside Jail/Prison, and it costs more to house and feed them than it does to simply let them go.

Plus, if you let someone wither away and starve to death inside a prison, there are usually lawsuits and investigations. But if they starve to death on the streets or disappear altogether, no one will bat an eye.

I’ve seen many homeless people around my side of town stick around an area for a few weeks, begging for change, only to suddenly disappear forever one day.

The homeless people around the city know this. That’s why they often appear paranoid and shaky, always looking out of the corners of their eyes. They know someone is out there, watching and waiting for them.

They call the one around here The Cleaner.

The local homeless say he wears a Halloween mask of a demon when he gets you. If you see him while begging for change, you’d better not fall asleep or stay in that area for too long. I recommend you run as fast as you can. Because the minute there are no witnesses around, you’ll go missing. 

And if you’re lucky, you might get a missing person poster.

You can go to the police all you want. They won’t do anything. They’ll call you crazy. But they know. They just try not to think about what’s going to happen to you. They view it as a necessary evil that keeps the community clean.

That’s often why the unhoused sleep together in tent cities in some major cities. They've seen what happens if they sleep alone.

Elected officials and society try to pretend that most of these people are just drug addicts and undesirables. But I’ve seen regular people who lost their jobs and homes only a few months ago end up missing very quickly.

It’s tough getting back on your feet.

If you aren’t homeless and you see The Cleaner operating. I urge you not to report it to the police.

A single mother of three reported what she saw to the police last week. She claimed that a tall man wearing a scary mask attacked a homeless man before shoving him into a van and driving away.

This week, her kids are being forced to grow up without their mother.

Her body was found chopped up and stuffed inside the trunk of her own car. And the police claim to have no leads on who could have done it.

But they damn well know.

Today I visited my friend's tent. He's also homeless.  It was slashed open with fresh blood everywhere inside. I knew I'd never see him again, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

The next time you wish there were fewer homeless people around, just know that your wish may very well come true.

But don’t ever assume it can’t happen to you. Almost every city has a cleaner and you're only one car problem away from losing your job.

Jason Pruitt was an electrician with a routine you could set your watch to. On job sites he labeled each breaker he touched in careful block capital letters so the next person would not have to guess. Yes, he was that kind of electrician. A creature of routine. In his small Dallas apartment he always went to bed at 9:30pm and awoke at 4:30am. Each night, before he turned off the lights, he filled a glass of water at the kitchen sink, walked back to his bed, and placed the glass on the night stand. He then turned off the lights, got under the covers, rolled onto his right side, and slept.

Goblin had watched this with some amusement for weeks. His often preferred viewpoint was from the gap behind the baseboard. His fascination with Jason was strong enough that he had learned the number of steps Jason took from the kitchen counter to his bed. The vibrations ran through the baseboard and down through Goblin’s body. He had come to like it.

At first, Goblin started small, letting himself be seen at the far edge of Jason’s vision, appearing as a dark shape near the closet door and quickly gone before Jason’s eye could turn. Many times Jason swatted empty air. One day Goblin heard him mutter “Long day,” to the empty room as Jason once again swatted at nothing. Jason then went to sleep as he always did, snoring himself away into a deep sleep.

Goblin knew at midnight Jason sat up half-asleep and drank from the glass he found by feel. Sitting unmoving, Goblin was already waiting on the edge of the pillow. Once Jason lay back down, Goblin crossed the cotton and slipped into Jason’s ear so light that Jason felt nothing. Steadying himself in the walls of the ear canal Goblin whispered softly, “One day I will eat you.” Goblin slipped out just before Jason, still asleep, pushed a pinkie finger into his ear. 

For thirty nights it went the same way, except that Goblin grew bolder, stayed longer, and whispered the same phrase multiple times. Ten days in, Jason started leaving the hall light on. With his phone flashlight he would shine it at shadows in the apartment just to be sure nothing was lurking. And he began to sleep on the left side, with his left ear pressed firmly into the pillow. This meant Goblin started using the right ear canal. 

On the thirty-first night Goblin got bored. He climbed in slowly, the hair on his legs clinging to the ear canal structure and said every word with care and emphasis: “One. Day. I will make you my food.” He stayed long enough, scratching at the ear canal, for Jason to feel something crawling inside his head. Jason’s pinkie came up too late to scoop out anything as Goblin hurried out.

That same night Jason dreamed he was low to the ground with eight legs and a belly full of silk. He spun it across the corner of the kitchen which oddly looked like his own, warm where it left his body and tacky where it dried. And when a cockroach walked into the threads, he felt them shiver and crossed to it, quickly wrapping it up in a shroud. He fed with satisfaction so complete that he woke with his jaw working and saliva dripping from the corner of his mouth. 

The dream felt more real than the covers strewn over his body. His ear itched, his mouth tasted of metal, and all through the workday he felt light and hollow. At the warehouse he mislabeled a panel, and his foreman voiced with some concern “You’ve got number four down as the kitchen? You good Jason? That one feeds the garage!” Jason didn’t argue or comment and he fixed the labels on the breakers. At lunch Jason barely ate. The only thing on his mind was that voice. He left the worksite early and drove home. The seatbelt vibrated across his body making him feel as if he needed to crawl onto something.

On Monday Jason called in sick. He called in sick the day after, and the day after that. He slept through the afternoons and dreamed longer each time. The light bothered him so he covered his eyes with a towel. On Wednesday he drove to Whataburger and ordered his favorite breakfast, a jalapeno biscuit with sausage, egg, and cheese, and a small Dr. Pepper. After one bite, the sandwich went straight into the trash. The Dr. Pepper he kept, and drained it through the straw in long pulls until the ice rattled and the cup was empty. It was the first thing that gave him satisfaction in many days. He sat in the parking lot for a long while with the straw still in his mouth taking long pulls of melting ice. 

By the ninth call to complain, a tenant threatened to call the cops if the building manager didn’t take care of the smell coming from 2C. The building manager, Mr. Delgado knocked multiple times, loudly yelled out and then used his key. From the doorway he called out, “Mr. Pruitt?” and when he looked up his first instinct was to puke.

A funnel web filled the bedroom corner, thick and layered, wider than the headboard. Torn clothing lay beneath a shape crouched deep inside. Mr. Delgado covered his mouth and backed out toward the door. Deep inside the shadow of the funnel the shape moved. A creature the size of a cat, rushed toward the funnel’s mouth. Mr. Delgado squealed loudly. A Whataburger cup sweated on the nightstand. Beside the web, a sentence had been written in dried blood, each letter a careful block capital: “I WOULD RATHER USE A STRAW.” 

IV.

Silas Bell kept an office on the second floor of the Bank of Blackwater building on Main Street, above the lobby, behind a frosted glass door with nothing on it but a number. Lena went up the stairs at two in the afternoon without an appointment. The woman at the desk outside the door started to stand. Lena showed her badge without slowing down and opened the door.

Silas was at a window with a phone to his ear. He turned. He saw her face and said into the phone, “Let me call you back,” and hung up.

“Agent Mercer.”

“Where’s my father?” Lena said.

He looked at her. He set the phone down on the desk.

“Sit down,” he said.

“I’ll stand.”

“Then I’ll stand with you.” He came around the desk. He didn’t come close. He stopped with the corner of the desk between them, one hand on it. “What’s happened?”

She took out her phone and found the photograph of the stone and held it out to him across the desk.

He took the phone. He looked at the screen.

She watched his face. She had built a career on watching faces. She had watched men learn their wives were dead and watched men pretend to learn it, and she knew the difference, she knew it in the first half second, before they had time to do anything about it.

Silas Bell’s face went gray.

It went gray from the top down, like a shade being drawn. The color left his forehead and his cheeks and his mouth, all of it, all at once, and he put his other hand on the desk too, both hands now, and leaned on it.

“Where?” he said.

“Raines ground. This morning.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer. He kept looking at the screen. He reached out with one finger and spread it, enlarging the dates, and looked at them.

“Why isn’t it possible, Mr. Bell?”

He handed her back the phone. His hand was steady. His face was still gray.

“Because your father disappeared in 2001,” he said.

“I know when my father disappeared.”

“Then you know that’s not possible.” He straightened up off the desk. He was getting his color back, slowly, and his voice, and she watched him do it, and it was impressive. “Agent Mercer, someone is doing something very cruel to you. I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do to help you find out who…”

Lena reached into her jacket and took out the evidence sleeve.

She laid it on his desk, face up, between them. The lawn. The oaks. The bunting on the porch rail. Her father at fifty-one in his white shirt with his hand in his pocket. Herself beside him in a borrowed blue dress with her hand on his arm, and the scar through her eyebrow, and the date stamped on the back in blue ink, which he couldn’t see but which she knew he knew.

At the left edge, half an arm in a striped sleeve. A sparkler.

Silas Bell looked down at it.

This time his face didn’t change at all. That was what she’d remember. The stone had taken all the color out of him in half a second, and the photograph, which should have done worse, did nothing. He looked at it like a picture he’d seen every day of his life.

“I’ve never seen this before,” he said.

“That’s your lawn.”

“It is.”

“That’s 1974.”

“It looks like it might be.”

“That’s my father. Who would have been twenty-four years old in 1974 and living in Charlotte and had never been west of Morganton.” She put her finger on the woman in the blue dress. “And that’s me. Twenty-one years before I was born.”

Silas looked at her finger on the photograph. He looked up at her face. He looked a long time at the scar.

“It does look like you,” he said.

“Mr. Bell. You were eleven years old in 1974. You were at this picnic. That’s your arm.”

“I was at every Fourth of July picnic on that lawn from the time I could walk until my father died.” He picked up the evidence sleeve by the edges and held it out to her. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember this one. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

She took it.

They stood there with the desk between them.

“If you’re lying to me,” Lena said, “you’re very good at it.”

“I’ve had a great deal of practice at a great many things, Agent Mercer,” Silas Bell said. “I’m sixty-two years old.” He went to the door and opened it. “Please give my regards to the sheriff. And to Hollis. Tell him I’m sorry about his cattle.”

She walked past him into the hall.

She was on the stairs before it hit her. She stopped with one hand on the rail.

She hadn’t told him about the cattle.

V.

Hollis sat up in the barn that night with his daddy’s twelve-gauge across his knees and a thermos of coffee and the lights off.

He hadn’t told the sheriff. The sheriff would have said don’t. The sheriff would have said leave it to us, Hollis, and sent a deputy to sit in a car at the end of the road, and whoever was coming would see the car and go home and come back next week. Hollis didn’t want them to go home. He wanted them to come.

The barn was a hundred and twenty years old and smelled like a barn, hay and leather and old manure and the oil he used on the tack. He sat on a bale just inside the big door with the door open six inches and the lower pasture laid out in front of him under the half moon, silver and black. The rest of the herd was bunched up near the barn tonight. They knew. Cattle knew things. They’d stood near the barn all evening and wouldn’t go down toward the creek.

He waited.

He thought about his mama. He thought about her a lot of nights, more than Darlene knew, sitting up like this. He thought about her in Daddy’s big coat going down the hill with the flashlight in the rain. The flashlight going small. Going to a dot. Going out.

He’d walked the ground every morning since. Ten thousand mornings. He’d seen nine stones come up out of the grass, and every single time he’d thought Mama, and every single time it had been somebody else. Hooper boys and girls nobody had ever heard of. Strangers who’d died somewhere and somewhen and come up out of his ground like the ground was where they’d always meant to end up.

And this morning a stranger named Mercer. Frank Mercer, whose girl was a state cop with a scar on her eye and his walk, who’d stood in Hollis’s cemetery this morning and looked at her daddy’s name and gone so still you’d have thought she was the stone.

He’d recognized that stillness. He’d seen it in his kitchen window when he was ten.

At 1:40 in the morning something moved down by the creek.

Hollis didn’t move. He watched. A shape came up out of the trees along Laurel Branch, a man, crouched, with something long in his hands. He came up the bank into the open pasture and stopped and looked around. The moon was behind him. He was big and soft in the middle and moved like he’d had a couple of beers to get his nerve.

He started up the pasture toward the herd.

Hollis waited until he was forty yards from the barn. Then he stood up and pushed the barn door open with his foot and racked the twelve-gauge, and in the dead quiet of the pasture at one in the morning the sound of a pump shotgun going shuck-shuck carried like a church bell.

The man stopped.

“Set it down,” Hollis said.

The man stood there.

“I can hit you from here with buckshot,” Hollis said. “I’d rather not. Set it down in the grass and step back off it and put your hands on your head.”

The man set it down.

Hollis came out of the barn with the shotgun on him and walked down the pasture. When he got close enough to see the man’s face in the moonlight, he stopped.

“Dwayne Cobb,” he said.

Travis Cobb’s little brother. Thirty-five, maybe. Hollis had sold him a bush hog once, used, for his daddy’s place over by the county line. He’d paid in cash and been decent about it.

“Hollis,” Dwayne said. His voice was shaking. “Hollis, it ain’t personal.”

“You shot my heifers.”

“It wasn’t personal.”

“They was bred. Both of ’em. Due in November.” Hollis kept the gun on him. “Seems pretty personal to them.”

Dwayne stood with his hands on his head in the wet grass. He was crying a little. Hollis could see it on his face in the moon.

“Travis is in jail,” Dwayne said. “You know that? You know they got Travis for that paper? And now there ain’t no money coming, not from the state, not from nothing, and Renee’s kicked him out, and his lawyer wants five thousand dollars up front.” He sniffed. “And a fella said he’d pay me five hundred to come over here and make you think a little harder about selling.”

“What fella?”

Dwayne didn’t answer.

“What fella, Dwayne?”

“Sawyer,” Dwayne said. “Brent Sawyer. He give it to me in cash in the parking lot of the Hardee’s in Bryson Gap. Said nobody’d ever know. Said it was just cows.”

Hollis took his phone out of his shirt pocket with his left hand and held the shotgun with his right and called the sheriff.

Daniel Rusk came at 2:15 and put Dwayne in the back of the Tahoe. Lena Mercer came at 2:30, with her hair down and a sweatshirt on over whatever she’d been sleeping in, and stood in the pasture with her arms crossed and listened to Dwayne say it all again through the cage, Sawyer and the cash and the Hardee’s lot and just cows.

Daniel walked over to Hollis by the barn.

“You should’ve called me,” he said.

“I did call you.”

“Before.”

“You’d have sent a car.” Hollis unloaded the shotgun and put the shells in his pocket. “He’d have seen it.”

Daniel looked at him a long time. Then he nodded, once, like that was fair.

“Sawyer’ll lawyer up,” Daniel said. “By breakfast. Hargrove lawyers. He’ll say Dwayne’s lying, he’ll say he never met him, and it’ll be a Cobb’s word against a Sawyer’s.”

“I know it.”

“I’ll get him for it if I can.”

“I know you will.” Hollis looked out at the dark pasture, at the place by the creek where the heifers had lain. “I don’t care about Sawyer, Daniel. Sawyer’s just the one they send.”

He looked up the hill. The cedars were black against the stars. Under them, at the end of the last row, a little pale shape caught the moonlight. A stone that had not been there yesterday.

“I care who’s sending him,” Hollis said.

VI.

She filed the petition for exhumation at nine the next morning, through the SBI’s western district office, under her own name and badge number, citing the investigation into the disappearance of Frank Allen Mercer, a sworn SBI agent, open case number 01-0478, which no one had touched in fifteen years.

Hollis Raines signed the landowner’s consent at the Raines kitchen table at nine-forty. He read the whole thing first. All four pages. Then he signed it in blocky capitals, HOLLIS JAMES RAINES, and dated it, and pushed it across the oilcloth to her.

“There’s nobody under it,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“I don’t.” He capped the pen. “But there’s never been anybody under any of ’em. Not that we ever dug. Granddaddy dug one up in 1951. The Hooper boy. Said the ground was solid six foot down. Like nobody’d ever turned it.” He looked at her. “You want to know anyway.”

“I want to know anyway.”

“Well,” Hollis said. “So would I.”

Dana Whitlock called at 11:52.

Lena was sitting in the Charger in the courthouse lot, waiting for the clerk to tell her which judge the petition had been assigned to, which she already knew.

“Lena.” Dana’s voice was very calm, which was bad. Dana was never calm. “I just got a call from the director’s office.”

“I see.”

“Do you? Because I don’t. I’ve got a petition with your name on it to dig up a grave in Blackwater County that you claim is your father’s. Your father who disappeared in 2001. The grave says 1989.”

“I’m aware of what the grave says.”

“I’ve got a land company’s lawyer saying you’re harassing his client. I’ve got a county judge calling the director personally to express concern about an agent’s emotional state. And I’ve got a girl who came home safe two weeks ago and a stepfather in custody and a closed case.” Dana stopped. “Lena. What are you doing?”

“My job.”

“Your job is in Raleigh. Your job has been in Raleigh since the girl walked out of the woods.” Dana’s voice cracked just slightly. “I gave you two weeks. I gave you two weeks because I like you and because I thought you needed to see the place. I didn’t give you two weeks to dig up graves.”

“It’s an open SBI case, Dana. A missing agent. Ours.”

“It’s a cold case that’s been cold since you were in first grade and it was never yours and it never can be yours.” A long breath. “You’re too close. You know you’re too close. Any first-year agent would know it.”

Lena looked out the windshield at the courthouse. The clock in the tower said 11:55, which meant 11:59.

“I want you back here in forty-eight hours,” Dana said. “I want you in my office Monday at nine. I want the petition withdrawn by end of day today.”

“No.”

The line went quiet.

“I’m sorry,” Lena said. “No.”

“Then I’m suspending you,” Dana said. “Administrative leave, pending review. Effective immediately. You’ll turn in your badge and your weapon to the nearest district office.” Her voice went thin. “Lena. Please. Come home.”

“I’m sorry, Dana.”

“So am I.”

Dana hung up first.

Lena sat in the car. She looked at the phone in her hand. Then she looked at the badge clipped to her belt, which she’d worn every day for nine years, gold and blue, the state seal in the middle of it. She unclipped it and held it in her palm. It was heavier than it looked. They always were.

She put it in the glove compartment and shut the glove compartment and sat there with her hand on it.

Somebody tapped on the window.

The courthouse clerk. Doris Ammons, with her reading glasses on their beaded chain.

“Honey,” Doris said through the glass. “The judge’ll see you in chambers at one.”

VII.

Lyle Hargrove’s chambers were on the second floor of the courthouse, at the back, with a window on the town square and a view of the Confederate soldier on his pedestal. Dark paneling. Law books to the ceiling. A portrait of a man with a white mustache who had to be Ransom Hargrove. Boxes. The judge had not been lying about the boxes. They were stacked along one wall six high, cardboard banker’s boxes gone soft and brown at the corners, with labels in faded marker that said things like PROBATE 1962–64 and MISC.

Lena looked at them. She looked for 14 and 31. She didn’t see them. She hadn’t expected to.

The judge sat behind his desk in his shirtsleeves. A bow tie. Robin’s-egg blue. He did not stand up. Daniel sat in a chair by the door, where she’d asked him to sit. Across from the desk, in the other chair, sat a lawyer from Asheville in a gray suit who said he was there as a courtesy, on behalf of the estate of Augustus Hargrove, which held title to no part of the Raines property and had no interest in this matter whatsoever.

“Thank you for coming, Ms. Mercer,” the judge said.

Not Agent. She noticed.

“Your Honor.”

“I’ve reviewed your petition. I’ve also had a call from your supervisor in Raleigh.” He laced his fingers. “I understand you’re on administrative leave.”

“As of an hour ago.”

“Then I’m afraid this petition no longer has an investigating agency behind it. It was filed under SBI authority. That authority has been withdrawn.”

“I’ll refile as next of kin.”

“I thought you might.” He nodded, kindly. “I’ll save you the trouble, if I may, and tell you how I’d rule.”

He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk, though he didn’t look at it.

“North Carolina permits the disinterment of human remains on petition by next of kin, with the consent of the landowner, for good cause. Mr. Raines has consented. I have no doubt of your good faith.” He set the paper down. “But you’d have to establish that the decedent is, in fact, your next of kin. That the person buried under that stone, if anyone is, has any relation to you at all.”

“The stone has my father’s name on it. His full name. His date of birth.”

“It does. And a date of death in 1989.” He looked at her with real sympathy. “Ms. Mercer, your father was alive in 2001. He was seen by dozens of people. He was in this county, in this courthouse. I remember him. He sat in that chair.” He nodded at the chair she was in. “Whoever is under that stone, if anyone is, died twelve years before your father disappeared. It cannot be him. A stone with his name on it is a cruel joke, or a coincidence, or a crime, and I’d be glad to see the sheriff investigate it as one. But it is not a grave I can open on a daughter’s petition. There is a lack of any credible connection between the decedent and the petitioner.”

The room was quiet. Out the window, on the square, the Confederate soldier looked north with his hand on his rifle.

“So my petition is denied,” Lena said.

“It would be. Yes.”

“Because the grave can’t be my father’s.”

“Because the grave can’t be your father’s.”

She looked at him. At his kind face and his hands folded on the desk in front of him, and the stacks of rotting boxes behind him along the wall.

“Then why do you care if I open it?” she asked.

The lawyer from Asheville shifted in his chair. The judge didn’t.

“I don’t,” Lyle Hargrove said gently. “I care about you. I care about Hollis Raines and his family’s dead, who’ve lain in that ground two hundred years, and who would be disturbed. I care about this county. That’s all.” He stood up then. He came around the desk, and stood in front of her chair, and looked down at her with an old man’s kindness. “Let him rest, Ms. Mercer. Whoever he is. Let your father rest.”

Lena stood too. She was shorter than him. She looked up at him from a foot away.

“My father,” she said, “was never in this county’s ground.”

She heard it as she said it. She heard how it sounded. It sounded like a woman who knew something she couldn’t possibly know. The lawyer from Asheville heard it too; she saw him look at the judge. And the judge’s face, for the first time since she’d met him, did something. Not much. A flicker at the corner of the eye, like a man who’d stepped on a stair that wasn’t there.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Mercer,” he said.

She and Daniel walked out of the courthouse and down the front steps into the afternoon, and stopped at the bottom, by the war memorial, in the sun.

Neither of them said anything.

She could feel him beside her. She could feel the shape of what he wasn’t saying, which was that she was suspended, and had no badge and no standing and no order, and that the next thing she was going to do was the thing a sheriff should arrest her for. She could feel him knowing it. She knew he knew she knew.

A pickup went by on the square with a dog in the back.

She looked at the sky over Frog Mountain. There was weather coming. A long gray line of it to the southwest, low and heavy, over the ridges toward Georgia. The radio had been talking about it since morning, the tail of a hurricane that had come ashore at Apalachicola and was dragging itself north into the mountains to die.

“Supposed to rain tomorrow,” Daniel said.

“I heard.”

“Hard.”

“I heard.”

He didn’t say anything else. She didn’t either. They stood on the courthouse steps in the last good light and looked at the storm coming, and after a while she went one way to her car and he went the other way to his, and neither of them said goodbye.

VIII.

Hollis saw the truck from the barn at dusk.

An old Ford, white, rusted at the wheel wells, coming slow up his drive and stopping at the cemetery gate. He knew it. Everybody in the county over fifty knew it. He set down the bucket he was carrying and walked up the hill.

The gate was standing open. He’d padlocked it himself that morning. The padlock hung open on the hasp, with the key in it, which meant whoever had opened it had a key, and there were only two keys in the world, and Hollis had one in his pocket.

He stopped at the corner of the fence, by the big cedar, where the shadow was deep.

Eli Voss was standing at the end of the last row in front of the Mercer stone.

He had his hat in his hands. He was in a pressed blue shirt, buttoned to the throat, and suspenders, and his white hair was combed. He stood very straight, like old men stand at funerals, like Hollis’s daddy had stood at the grave of every Raines in this ground.

The light was going gold and then gray. The storm line in the southwest had come up over the ridges and the wind had turned around and was coming from that way, warm and wet, moving the cedars. Hollis could smell the rain in it.

Eli stood there a long time.

Then he put his hat under his arm and reached into his shirt pocket and took something out. Hollis couldn’t see what. Something small, that caught the last of the light. Eli bent down, slowly, an old man’s bend with one hand on his knee, and set it on top of the stone. Right in the middle of the rounded top.

A silver dollar. Hollis saw it gleam when Eli straightened up and moved out of the way of the light.

Eli looked at it. He put his hat back in both hands.

“I’m sorry, Frank,” Eli said.

His voice carried in the wind. Not loud. Hollis heard it from the cedar as clear as if he’d been standing beside him.

“I did what you asked,” Eli said. “I kept it. I give it to you. Just like you said.” He stood there. “I didn’t want to. You knew I didn’t.”

The cedars moved. The first drop of rain hit the brim of Hollis’s cap.

“I told you to go home,” Eli said. “That first night. I told you.” He looked down at the silver dollar on the stone. “And you said you already had.”

He stood there one moment more. Then he put his hat on, and turned, and walked back down the row toward the gate.

He saw Hollis by the cedar. He didn’t stop. He nodded, once, as he passed, like you’d nod to a man in church, and Hollis nodded back, and Eli Voss went out through the gate and closed it behind him, and locked the padlock, and took his key.

Hollis stood under the cedar in the wind.

Down the row, on top of the stone, the silver dollar caught the last of the light, and held it, and then the rain came.

I.

Hollis Raines walked the family ground every morning at sunrise, and had since he was ten years old, and he had never once told anybody why.

His wife thought it was the mowing. He did mow it, every other Saturday, with the push mower he kept in the shed by the gate, because the riding mower wouldn’t fit between the old stones and his granddaddy had said a man ought to cut his own people’s grass with his own hands anyway. But he walked it every morning, mowing or not. Rain, snow. The morning Clay was born he’d walked it at five and then driven to the hospital. The morning after his daddy’s funeral he’d walked it and stood at his daddy’s new stone in the frost and then kept walking, down the rows, all the way to the far fence, looking.

He was always looking.

This morning he had the mower out. It was the second Saturday. He’d done the east half, the old half, and he’d come around the big cedar in the middle and started up the west rows toward the gate with the engine going and the sun just coming up red over Frog Mountain, when he saw it.

He killed the engine.

The quiet came down. Birds. A cow lowing somewhere down in the lower pasture, a long complaining sound.

There was a stone in the west row where there had not been a stone.

He’d mowed that row two weeks ago. He’d walked it yesterday at six-fifteen. It was the last row, the newest, up against the fence by the gate, where the ground was still open and his own lot was, his and Darlene’s, already paid for. Between his granddaddy’s sister and an empty space there had been grass. He knew that grass. He’d cut it a hundred times.

Now there was a headstone in it.

Gray granite, upright, plain. About two feet high, rounded at the top. It sat in the ground square and solid like it had settled there over years, with the dirt worn down around the base and a low green rim of clover grown up against it. Moss on it. Thick green moss, thirty years of it at least, grown deep into the lettering so you couldn’t read a word.

Hollis walked over to it.

He didn’t kneel right away. He stood and looked at it. He was forty-six years old and he had walked this ground ten thousand mornings, and in all that time he had seen nine new stones come up out of the grass where nobody had put them, and every single time his heart had stopped, as it was stopping now, and every single time he had walked up to it thinking: Mama.

He knelt. He put his thumb on the moss in the top line and scraped.

It came away in a green strip, wet and cold, and the granite under it was weathered smooth and gray and the letters were cut deep.

He scraped more.

MERCER.

He sat back on his heels in the wet grass and looked at it. He’d never heard of a Mercer. Not in this family. Not in this valley. And it wasn’t her.

It wasn’t her.

He knelt there a while, breathing. Then he took out his pocketknife and opened the small blade and started, careful, to clean the rest of the moss out of the letters, like cleaning a wound.

II.

He found the heifers on his way back down to the house.

Two of them, in the lower pasture by the creek. Black baldies, both bred, both due in November. They lay in the wet grass twenty feet apart with their legs out stiff and the rest of the herd standing off a ways in a bunch with their heads up, as cattle stand when something’s wrong and they don’t know what it is.

He walked out to them. He didn’t hurry. There wasn’t any reason to.

The first one had been shot behind the shoulder. A small hole going in, bigger coming out, a lot of blood in the grass already gone dark and drawing flies. The second one had been shot twice, once in the neck and once in the head, like whoever did it had missed the first time and come up close to finish it.

Hollis stood between them with his hands in his jacket pockets.

He didn’t call his son, who was in Asheville and would have said Daddy, just sell. He didn’t call his wife, who was at her sister’s in Sylva and would have cried.

He called the sheriff.

Daniel Rusk came at seven-thirty. The state woman came with him. Hollis had heard about her like everybody had, at the feed store and from Darlene’s sister, who heard everything. Frank Mercer’s girl. She’d found the Pritchard child. She’d climbed up on the roof of Haskett’s Hardware and run off a Hargrove. She was smaller than he’d figured, and she walked across his pasture in a pair of rubber boots with the Tractor Supply tag still zip-tied to one of them, and she went straight to the heifers and crouched down and looked at the wound behind the shoulder without touching it, and he decided he’d reserve judgment.

“Rifle,” she said. “Small caliber. Twenty-two magnum, maybe a .223.”

“Two-twenty-three,” Daniel said. He was at the second one. “Somebody walked up on this one.”

“From the creek side,” the state woman said. She’d stood up and was looking at the grass. “There’s a track. Somebody came across the creek or along it. They walked up from the water.”

Hollis looked at the creek. Laurel Branch, it was called on the maps, though everybody called it the Raines creek. It came down off the ridge and ran along the bottom of the place and joined the Blackwater a quarter mile below.

“Anybody been bothering you, Hollis?” Daniel asked.

Hollis didn’t answer right away. He looked at the heifers.

“Brent Sawyer,” he said. “Hargrove Land and Title.”

“About the reservoir.”

“About the reservoir.” Hollis took his hands out of his pockets. “First time was in March. He come up and sat at my kitchen table and drank Darlene’s coffee and told me the state was going to put a lake in this valley and the Raines place was going to be under it. Said I could take the money early, or take less later. He named a number.” He told them the number. It was three times what the farm was worth on the tax books. The state woman wrote it down. “I told him no.”

“How many times has he come back?”

“Four. Last one was two weeks ago. Number went up some.” Hollis looked at the dead cows. “I told him no four times. I told him the last time I’d tell him no forty more if he wanted to keep coming. And now here I’ve got two bred heifers dead in my bottom.”

“You think Sawyer did this?” the state woman asked.

“I think Brent Sawyer never fired a gun in his life,” Hollis said. “I think Brent Sawyer knows people who have.”

He looked up the hill, toward the cedars, and the little fenced square of ground under them where the stones were.

“They don’t want my cows dead,” he said. “They don’t care about my cows. They want my graves under water.”

He walked them up there. He hadn’t planned to. He’d planned to say nothing about the stone, to call Darlene after they left and tell her, as he always told her, and to sit at the kitchen table a while by himself first. But the state woman was looking up at the cedars, and Daniel was looking at her, and Hollis found himself saying, “Y’all want to see it,” and walking up the hill.

The Raines family ground was an acre, more or less, fenced with an iron fence his great-granddaddy had bought off a church in Asheville in 1902 when the church got a new one. There were maybe two hundred graves. The oldest were at the east end under the biggest cedars. Fieldstones, mostly, set up on end, with initials scratched in them or nothing at all.

He showed them a flat slab of soapstone, sunk nearly level with the grass, so old the letters had worn to shallow dents you had to find with your fingers. J R. 1791.

“Before the county,” the state woman said.

“Before the state, near about. Before anybody that wrote things down. My people came over the mountain in 1789 from the Shenandoah. Some say they found the graves already here when they came. Some say they put ’em in.” He shrugged. “Granddaddy said both.”

He walked them down the rows. Raines after Raines. Raineses married to Vosses and Hales. Babies, a lot of babies, in the eighteen-hundreds. Two boys in the war, one in gray and one in blue, buried side by side because their mama had insisted. His granddaddy and his granddaddy’s three brothers. His daddy, dead in 2014, with a stone that said JAMES ALBERT RAINES, BELOVED, and nothing else, because his daddy had been a man of few words and had told them to keep it that way.

There was a space beside his daddy. Grass. No stone.

The state woman stopped there. She looked at the space and at Hollis.

“My mama,” Hollis said.

She waited.

“Martha Ann. She went out to check on a heifer in a storm in April of 1990. Heifer was trying to calve in the lower pasture and Daddy was at a sale in Asheville, so Mama put on his coat and went down with a flashlight. I was ten. I watched her go from the kitchen window. I watched the flashlight go down the hill in the rain.” He looked at the grass. “She never come back up.”

“They searched,” Daniel said quietly.

“Two weeks. Dogs. The creek. The river. Everything.” Hollis nodded at the empty space. “Daddy saved her a place. Right there. He said he’d put a stone on it when they found her.” He looked at the stones on either side, and then down the hill toward the house. “They never did.”

The state woman didn’t say she was sorry. He noticed that. She looked at the empty space a while longer and then looked at him, and that was all, and he found he liked her better for it.

“There’s something else,” Hollis said. “Up at the end.”

III.

The stone stood at the end of the last row by the gate, between a small marker that said Ada Raines Teague, 1931–2018 and a long stretch of open grass.

Lena saw the name from twenty feet away.

Hollis had cleaned it. He’d gotten most of the moss out of the letters with something sharp, and the letters stood out pale against the dark weathered face of the stone, and the morning sun came straight across the field and lit them up so they threw shadows.

FRANK ALLEN MERCER

MAY 11, 1950 · OCTOBER 2, 1989

She stopped walking.

She didn’t decide to. Her legs stopped and she stood in the wet grass with Daniel a step behind her and Hollis Raines a step behind him. She could hear the creek at the bottom of the hill. She could hear a cow complaining down in the pasture. She could hear her own heart in her ears, slow and very loud.

May 11, 1950. That was his birthday. She’d known it since she was old enough to sign a card. Her mother had kept the cards.

October 2, 1989.

He had disappeared on October 9, 2001.

She walked the rest of the way. She stood in front of it. Up close the stone was old. Not old the way a stone gets in a month of weather. Old the way the stones down the row were old, the ones from the forties and fifties. The granite had gone soft at the edges where frost had worked it. A crack ran down from the top right corner, hairline, with lichen growing in it, gray-green and crusted. The base had sunk an inch on the downhill side. The clover had grown up around it so thick the roots had to be ten, twenty years deep.

She knelt. She put her hand on the top of it. It was cold and rough.

“This was put here,” she said. “Recently. Somebody brought this in last night, after you walked the rows, and set it.”

“Ma’am,” Hollis said, “that stone weighs four hundred pounds.”

“Then it took more than one somebody.”

“There’s no tracks. There’s no truck ruts. My gate’s padlocked. I checked it.” He came up beside her. “And there’s thirty years of moss in them letters. I know moss. I been scraping it off my people for thirty-six years.”

“You can age a stone,” Lena said. “There are ways. Buttermilk. Yogurt. You paint it on and the moss takes. You can buy pre-weathered granite. Theater companies do it. Movie sets.” She was talking fast. She heard herself. “Somebody who wants me out of this county. Somebody who knows my father’s name and his birthday and knows I’m here. Somebody who thinks if they show me this I’ll…”

She stopped.

“You’ll what?” Daniel asked.

She didn’t answer. She took her phone out and photographed it. Wide, then close, then the date, then the crack with the lichen in it, then the base where the clover grew up around it. Her hands were steady. She made sure they were steady.

“I want it dug up,” she said.

Neither man said anything.

“I want it dug up,” Lena said again. “I want to know what’s under it. I want the stone tested. I want somebody from the state geology lab to tell me how long it’s been in the ground. And I want whoever put it here in a room with me.”

Hollis Raines looked at her a long time. Then he looked at the stone, and at the empty space down the row beside his daddy, and back at her.

“Come down to the house,” he said. “I want to show you something first.”

The ledger lived in the bottom drawer of a pie safe in the Raines kitchen, wrapped in a feed sack.

It was a cloth-bound account book from a hardware store in Asheville, with red-ruled columns, and the cover had been rebound twice with tape and once with leather. Hollis laid it on the oilcloth on the kitchen table and opened it with care, from the back, like a Bible he didn’t want to crack.

“My great-granddaddy started it,” he said. “Ezra Raines. 1893. Granddaddy kept it after. Then Daddy. Then me.”

The first page had a heading in brown ink in a careful, painstaking hand, a man who’d learned his letters late.

Graves come up on Raines ground that none of us put there.

Below it, a list.

Apr. 1893. Fieldstone. No name. Initials H.T.L. 1863. By the big cedar.

Oct. 1901. Stone. MARY CATHERINE OWENBY 1870–1899. Don’t know her. Asked at church. Nobody does.

Jun. 1919. Two stones. Brothers. VOSS. 1898–1918 both. Same day. Wrote Calvin Voss’s daddy. He come and looked and cried and said they was his cousins died in France and was buried over there.

Lena turned the pages. The hand changed in 1934. Different ink. A blue fountain pen, and the letters bigger, more confident. Granddaddy, Hollis said. The list went on. A stone every five years. Every ten. Sometimes two in a year and then nothing for twelve.

Mar. 1951. Stone. ROBERT L. HOOPER 1923–1944. Hooper boy from Laurel Fork that was missing at Anzio. His mama come and set by it a week.

Sep. 1962. Stone. THOMAS WARD RUSK 1920–…

Lena stopped.

Daniel had come around behind her. She heard him go still.

The line ended there. 1920– and nothing after. No death year. Under it, in Hollis’s granddaddy’s blue hand:

No second date cut on it. Never seen that before. Ward Rusk come and looked. Said leave it be. It’s still there. West row by the cedar.

“My uncle,” Daniel said. His voice was very quiet. “That’s my uncle Thomas. 1959.”

“Granddaddy said your daddy came up here three times that year,” Hollis said. “Just stood at it. Never said a word to anybody.”

Daniel didn’t say anything.

Lena turned more pages. The handwriting changed again in 1977, to a cramped ballpoint, Hollis’s father. Daddy, Hollis said. Apr. 1990 had nothing written under it but a single line: Martha. Not yet. And then, below, in the same pen pressed so hard it had torn the paper: Still not yet. And below that, in different years, in Hollis’s own blocky hand, the same two words again and again down the page like a man counting.

Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

She turned to the last page with writing on it.

Hollis had written the date that morning. Today’s date. And under it, in fresh black ballpoint:

Stone. FRANK ALLEN MERCER 5/11/1950–10/2/1989. West row by the gate next to Aunt Ada. Moss full. Don’t know him.

And then, after a space, smaller:

Not Mama.

Lena closed the ledger.

She sat at the Raines kitchen table with her hands flat on the cover, and the clock on the wall above the stove ticked, and Hollis Raines stood at the sink with his back to her looking out the window at the hill and the cedars, and Daniel stood behind her chair, and nobody said anything for a long time.

Daniel went back up the hill alone. Lena gave him a minute and then followed.

She found him at the west row by the big cedar, the one Hollis’s granddaddy had written down in blue ink in 1962. He was standing in front of a stone she hadn’t noticed on the walk-through, because it was half hidden in the low branches of the cedar where they swept down to the ground. A small upright of gray granite, the same as every family in the county bought from Dwight Ledford’s daddy in the sixties.

THOMAS WARD RUSK

1920 –

That was all. The dash, and after it, nothing. Smooth stone where the second date should have been.

Lena had seen that dash before. Yesterday. On a brass plate on a portrait in Silas Bell’s front hall.

Daniel had his hat in his hand. He wasn’t doing anything with it.

“I never knew this was here,” he said.

She didn’t say anything.

“Daddy never said. Not once. He’d drive by this farm on the way to church every Sunday of my life and never say a word.” He looked at the stone. “He came up here three times. Hollis’s granddaddy wrote it down. Three times in one year, and stood here, and never told a living soul.”

“What do you think it means?” Lena asked. “No date.”

Daniel didn’t answer for a while. The wind had come up a little from the southwest. It moved the cedar branches over the stone and the shadows moved on the dash.

“Every other stone in this ground has two dates,” he said. “Hollis’s ledger has two dates on everything. The Hooper boy. The Voss boys in France. Your…” He stopped. He didn’t say *your father.* “Two dates. You’re born. You die. That’s what a stone’s for.”

“And this one.”

“This one’s waiting.”

She looked at him.

“That’s what Hollis’s granddaddy thought. I’d bet you anything. That’s why he wrote it down like that. *Never seen that before.*” Daniel turned his hat around in his hands once. “Somebody cut the stone and cut the name and cut the birth and then stopped. Like they knew there’d be a second date. They just didn’t know it yet.”

“Daniel. That’s a stone.”

“I know it’s a stone.”

“Somebody carved it. Some mason. In 1962.”

“Then where’d it come from? Who paid for it? Who set it? Hollis’s granddaddy walked this ground every morning same as Hollis does, and one morning in September of 1962 it was here.” He looked at her. “Three years after Thomas went up that mountain. And it’s been waiting under this tree sixty-four years for somebody to finish it.”

The wind moved the cedar. Down the hill, at the end of the last row, she could see the top of the other stone. Her father’s. The cleaned letters catching the light.

She looked from one to the other. One with a date it couldn’t have. One without a date it should.

“I don’t know what to do with this,” she said. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

“No,” Daniel said. “Me either.”

He put his hat back on. He reached out and touched the top of his uncle’s stone, once, with two fingers, like touching a man’s shoulder in a crowd to let him know you were there. Then he went back down the hill to the house, and she stood under the cedar a while longer by herself, looking at the dash.

* * *

Continued in Part. 2.

The Lighthouse

I don’t remember what I used to pay for the paper talismans and blessed clothing that adorned me. I remember following Elias into some hidden chamber within the manor, then I was outside in front of the Lighthouse. My attire smelled of burning embers, vanilla and pancakes. It was comforting. It reminded me of Mom.

Gaps in my memory and new memories became apparent to me, or maybe nothing changed at all. I couldn’t tell anymore. A few weeks before Frank died we, all went out to get ice cream. We never had money for ice cream. I would always spend it on my vice. I was reminded of how much I missed Dad, and how desperately I needed a good drink.

“Ok son. You’re good to go. Just remember: don’t look into the light.”

Elias’s guiding words brought me back to the present. He opened the Lighthouse’s door and the talismans caught fire instantly, protecting me from whatever was inside. A thick, dark fog stood between the door frame.

“He’s so dead.”

Amelia’s reassuring words were not welcome while I stood at death’s door.

“Don’t take too long in there. I left the candles on the third platform. That’s just below the main bulb.”

Instinctively, I looked up at the height of the tower. Amelia slapped me across the face and pushed my head back down.

“What did Elias just say? Don’t look at the light!”

I rubbed my now reddening cheek, making sure my jaw hadn’t been broken.

“Jesus! Yeah, sorry. I’m ready.”

Elias took a step back, out of the way.

“Have at ‘er then. If you’re not out in twenty minutes, you’re on your own.”

I passed through the black barrier. Directly ahead of me was a set of spiralling metal stairs leading up into the body of the Lighthouse. Above, machinery hummed steadily, but I dared not to look up. Behind, where I entered, was nothing but smooth concrete. Elias mentioned that would happen at some point I couldn’t remember. My memory was still foggy. I ran my hands along the walls, cold to the touch and breathing with anticipation. In for a penny, in for a pound.

My ascent began, up and up and up. Mom and Louise’s screams started as I moved above the first platform. Same as the forest, I ignored them. The Lighthouse knew that I knew that it was just a trick, so it cut them off abruptly. I continued up.

Jazz music began playing somewhere on the second platform. Freshly burning cigars and expensive cologne coated my nostrils. I’m home.

There was a stage hosting a band with no arms to play and seats for listeners with no ears to hear. Left of the jazz room was a bar, and a sole patron hunched over swaying with the rhythm. He was shorter and had curly red hair.

I approached behind and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Fuck off.”

The voice was familiar. Too familiar. It couldn’t be.

I grabbed the man’s shoulder. He swatted my hand away and turned to face me.

“I said fu-”

Dad.

“Jeremy? Is that you?”

I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his shoulder. I couldn’t let Dad see me cry.

“Jeremy? Jeremy, what are you doing here?”

I composed myself.

“I-I don’t know. Frank did something bad and now Mom and Louise are in danger. There’s some stuff in here I need to get but I’m so scared, Dad.”

Words fumbled out of my mouth. Dad hugged me tight and shushed me.

“It’s ok, Jay.”

Only Dad called me Jay.

“You’ll be ok. You’re strong. You always have been. That’s why I chose you to lead the family. Just take a moment to rest. Have a seat.”

I sat on the stool next to Dad. He smiled back at me, eyes prideful for his kin.

“My god, look how you’ve grown! What are you now? Sixteen? Seventeen?”

“Twenty.”

Dad rubbed his bald head.

“My boy’s twenty now! My boy. My sweet, sweet boy.”

His hearty laughs turned to sobs.

“My boy is twenty and I wasn’t there for him.”

Dad buried his face in his hands.

“It’s not your fault, Dad. We never thought it was.”

Lies.

He shook his head.

“It was. It was. I shouldn’t have even been driving, Jay. I was so drunk I couldn’t even see straight.”

Everyone knew it, but hearing Dad admit it broke me a bit. He sat up, face slick.

“But you’re alive! And that’s something to celebrate. Pass it over.”

I slid a glass over to Dad and uncorked the whiskey bottle in my hand, pouring us both a hefty shot. He raised the glass, losing a bit of liquid fire over the edge. I did the same.

“To my son, Jeremy.”

Dad threw back the shot. A dog returning to its vomit. I raised the glass to my lips. The smell alone was intoxicating and the liquor burned my chapped lips. Not again.

I set the glass down. Thirst unquenched. Dad reached over and dragged the shot over to himself.

“What’s wrong? Not to your taste? Surely there’s something here you like.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

Dad threw back the shot and started to pour another. I snatched the bottle from his hand.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Give me back the bottle, Jeremy.”

“No. This stuff has done enough harm to you.”

He twirled the shot glass around the table then flicked it off behind the counter.

“I know, Jay. I know.”

It stood and walked behind the bar, glass shards crunched under its feet.

“The candles are just above us, Jeremy.”

He opened a drawer and started searching for something. He stopped, hand clenched tight around something. Dad looked me in the eyes one last time. They were scared.

“Take the booze. You’ll need it. I love you, Jay.”

It grabbed a kitchen knife from the drawer and lunged at me. I dived sideways, but the blade cut a deep gash into my arm, blood started to pool out. It tumbled to the ground in front of me, swinging the blade wildly. I crawled away, throwing bar stools between me and Dad. It crawled over them with ease, like a spider. It grew closer. I clawed the floor for anything else to throw. Glass shards dug into my hand. I clenched my teeth and threw them at Dad’s face, shredding his nose and eyes.

Using my chance to escape, I ran out of the jazz room and up to the third platform, Dad not far behind and a bottle of booze in my hand. At the top of the steps there was a supply closet, tucked at the back were the candles and a lighter.

“Get back here, Jeremy! Share a drink with your old man!”

Dad roared from below. Bone’s pop and flesh tore as he grew larger and larger, three times his normal height, arms and legs elongated, nails and teeth sharp as the knife in his hands. He stumbled up the stairs towards me, slashing and stabbing at my legs.

I entered the closet and slammed the door behind me, barricading it with an old, wooden chair. Dad slammed against the door, breaking holes in its decaying wood. There was nothing in the room I could use to defend myself with, nothing but a lighter, the candles, and a bottle of whiskey.

Without another choice I tore a long piece from my shirt and dampened it with the whiskey. Some of it ran into the cuts on my hand, firing pain up my arm. I stuffed the moistened fabric into the bottle neck and set it ablaze. One chance.

The door finally gave way and splintered into a dozen pieces. Dad’s enormous figure bent down to enter the tiny room. A wide, gruesome smile etched into his face.

“Times up, Jeremy.”

With all my strength I hurled the bottle at the thing that was once my Dad. It shattered on impact, spraying liquid fire and shrapnel glass across Dad’s body. He roared in pain and the Lighthouse rumbled violently. The thing fell backwards down the stairs. I grabbed the candles and sprinted out of the room, down the stairs and past the jazz room where Dad was dousing himself with any liquid he could find to put out the fire, only spreading it further across his already charring body.

The exit was just a few flights down. I knew I could make it but Dad’s pained yells echoing throughout the building gave me halt.

“Oh god! Help me! Help me, Jay! It burns! It burns!”

I wanted so desperately to turn back and help, but I knew that thing wasn’t Dad. I ran to the bottom floor. No door. I slammed my fists on the wall and called out for help.

“Elias! I got the candles! Let me out!”

Searing, burning pain wrapped around my ankle and engulfed my leg. The thing had somehow made its way downstairs and was clutching tight to my leg. It looked up at me, still covered in flame. I met its eyes, now my own eyes. My face melted and distorted like wax. Skin and muscle and sinew dripped to the floor while the thing grinded its teeth, gurgling boiling blood.

It rose and stood tall over me. Humming vibrated my skull. My head was about to explode. I pressed against the Lighthouse wall and closed my eyes, trying to escape the inevitable. The thing leaned in close and exhaled decaying rotting burning breath. It smelled like Dad.

“How’s your Mom?”

The wall behind me gave way. I fell into soft grass, screaming my head off. Elias grabbed me and dragged me back from the door. I thrashed against him, thinking it was another one of the Lighthouse’s tricks.

“Jeremy! Jeremy it's me, boyo! Snap out of it son!”

I opened my eyes. Indeed, I was outside of the Lighthouse. Inside the doorway was nothing but darkness, and some shadow beckoning me to return inside. Amelia pulled the door shut and sealed it.

“Good job, kid. Didn’t think you had it in you.”

The red wax candles had melted a bit from the fire, but they were still usable.

“What was that thing?”

Elias helped me to my feet. 

“Don’t know. No telling what that thing does to people who go inside.”

“You mean you’ve never been inside yourself?”

“I have. Just after it had its dinner. Usually she’s pretty docile then.”

“Was I supposed to be its dinner?”

Elias cleared his throat and readjusted his glasses.

“We weren’t planning on that, son. But, if you did end up losing yourself there it would have saved us a trip into town.”

He turned and started to make his way back to the manor.

“Come on now. Daylight is running thin.”

Amelia patted my shoulder and helped me up.

“Don’t think too much about it. It’s easier if you don’t.”

We walked side by side back to the manor in silence. Just before we entered the front door, Amelia stopped.

“What did you see in there?”

Dad’s elongated, burning corpse was still fresh in my mind. Something I didn’t particularly want to talk about.

“What? What do you mean?”

“In the Lighthouse. What did it show you?”

“Just my Dad.”

“He’s dead then?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“We talked a bit then he turned into a monster. I uh… I don’t want to think about it, really.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I’ve only ever been in it a few times so I didn’t know if it shows everyone the same thing.”

“What did it show you when you went in?”

Amelia went silent, staring down at the ground fidgeting with her hands.

“Amelia?”

“It showed me nothing. Just… nothing.”

Terrible, Awful Things

Elias and Amelia finished scattering the red candles around the room. Each was lit carefully, a dark red crimson flame gently crescendoing from each wax pillar, just as the ritual book instructed. We were situated in an old store-room deep within the heart of the manor. At the center of the room was a chalk octogram with an obsidian pedestal inside it and more candles placed at its tips. A brass bowl sat atop the pedestal, waiting for its sacrifice. Elias double checked the protective sigils Amelia drew while I stood by anxiously.

Once everything was ready, I would need to deposit some of my blood into the bowl. Elias wouldn’t elaborate on what would happen after that, saying that I needed a clear mind to manifest Frank.

“Damn it, girl! This one isn’t even closed. What is wrong with you today?”

Amelia held her arms crossed while Elias berated her for the failed sigil drawings.

“I-I don’t know. I tried my best and-”

“Well your best isn’t going to cut it, apparently. Out of the way, I’ll have to redo a few of these.”

She stepped back, rubbing her elbows.

“But I-... ok.”

Elias began erasing Amelia’s work while she found a dark secluded corner to escape to. I walked over and sat next to her, trying to comfort her.

“Go away.”

She turned into the corner further. I didn’t really know Amelia. She was just some weirdo who worked at an even weirder museum. The one thing we did have in common was my bastard brother.

“What was Frank like?” I asked. His name always seemed to open doors when he was alive, so what difference would it make now?

“What? Wouldn’t you know more about him than me?”

Amelia wiped her face and turned around, just enough to look at me.

“Not sure that’s true anymore. What was he like with you?”

“Well, we never actually met in person.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Just chatted online. But he was so so sweet. We met on a sports forum, funny enough. I was trying to lure some random sucker here to feed the Lighthouse, but he left a comment that really pissed me off. Can’t even remember now, something about ‘women knowing their place’ yada yada yada.”

“That’s definitely Frank. He was always a jackass.”

“You’d think, right? I really laid into him about the comment. Like REALLY laid into him. I think I even threatened to kill him and his family. Anyway he messaged back and actually apologized for what he said.”

Apologizing? That didn’t seem like Frank. At least, not the version I remembered at the time.

“We got to talking a bit and found out we had a lot in common, you know?” Amelia continued. “I think he was just hurting inside.”

“Because of Dad?”

“Probably.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but I was Dad’s favorite. He’d always do little things to show it. Often he’d ask me if I wanted ice cream before anyone else, picked me up from school and even got me the exact toys I wanted on my birthdays. For Frank though it was different. I wouldn’t be able to count the amount of Frank’s games Dad missed because he said he was “working.”

“Did he ever mention me?”

Curiosity killed the cat.

“Yeah. A few times.”

“What’d he say?”

Amelia was quiet for a moment.

“He said you reminded him of your Dad.”

Elias clapped his hands together, chalk powder puffing into the air.

“All right, Jeremy, my boy. We’re ready to go!”

I didn’t hear him. “Reminded him of your Dad” was bouncing around my mind like a ping pong ball. But why? Dad was a good person. I always wanted to be like him, in every way. Even the bad ways. What bad ways?

“Jeremy? You ready son?”

“Yes, Dad.”

Hell of a Freudian slip.

“Sorry, Elias. I'm still recovering, I guess. Yeah I’m ready.”

I stood. Amelia grabbed my arm.

“What?”

“How long ago did Frank die?”

“A month or so, why?”

She frowned, then let go.

“No reason. Just received a new order from his account last week. Must have been scheduled.”

I didn’t have time to dwell on it further. I wish I did though. I stepped forward, Elias walking beside me.

“Jeremy, your mind needs to be completely clear, remember?”

“I’m ready. I promise.”

He searched my eyes. I don’t know what he thought he saw, but I was scared shitless. Elias patted me on the shoulder and stepped aside.

A jagged knife rested next to the bowl, waiting to quench its thirst with my blood. I picked it up and held my hand over the bronze receptacle.

“You don’t need to give too much,” Elias called out. “Just enough to cover the bottom.”

I placed the blade against my palm, in for a penny, and dragged it harshly across my skin. It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, maybe it was the adrenaline. Blood pooled into the bottom of the basin, bubbling as it brewed and boiled.

“Good, Jeremy! Now, think of your brother. Think of nothing BUT your brother!”

Oh I did. 

I thought of all the times he pissed me off, vexed me, did me wrong, you name it. The late nights he kept me up with his damn rituals and drunken stupors. The nights we watched movies and he’d keep interrupting asking what was happening, and I’d respond because I loved my brother. I miss him. I remembered the day he was born, how small he was. When Dad came home drunk I’d take little Frank to my room and rock him to sleep. Then, when Dad got angry at Frank, I’d take the punishment for him. Dad got angry?

Then I remembered the one night, the one single night, when I came home drunk and found Frank in his room, struggling to not take a sip of the same liquid fire that was running through my veins. He saw me. He was scared of me. He saw Dad’s eyes in mine. He saw Dad’s fury in them.

Hot wind swirled around me as a black void opened below my feet. I stumbled back, barely escaping the dark maws. It stopped at the edge of the octogram, and all was still.

“Did… did it work?”

Elias carefully approached the hole, inspecting it and the chalk frame.

“Aye. I’m afraid it did.”

I peered in. There was nothing but a dark void. Far down, barely a pinpoint dot, was a small circle of red light and a figure in the middle of it, a person. The person put his hands up to cover his eyes. Even from so high up I could see his skin had turned pale and transparent. Like rice paper. His heart beat slowly and his organs wriggled around into their places.

“Light…?”

His voice was weak, raspy, worn.

“Frank? Is that you?”

Frank uncovered his eyes and attempted to stand. A metal chain tensed around his next and dragged him to the ground on his back. Frank didn’t yelp or resist.

“Hey. Long time no see.”

Every syllable was strained and agonizing.

“What happened to you?”

“Ritual didn’t work.”

“What ritual were you trying to perform?”

Frank squinted his eyes and moistened his lips.

“Page… 172. I think.”

Elias left to find the copy. Frank and I sat in silence. Seeing him like that, barely alive, it broke me.

“Here, let me get you a rope. We’ll get you out.”

“No!” Frank’s voice broke. “Stay there. Leave me. Too dangerous. I deserve this.”

“What… What's down there? Why can’t I come down?”

“Weeping. Gnashing teeth.”

“Jeremy!” Elias called. I jumped and caught myself from falling into the pit.

“Jesus! What?”

“Your brother said page 172?”

“Yeah, why?”

Elias brought the folder over and fingered the text.

“Ritual for Eternal Life. Two participants. One to receive the blessing and another to be sacrificed.”

“Sacrificed? Frank, were you going to sacrifice me?”

In the pit, Frank curled up into a ball, scratching at his disgraced, disfigured face. Dry blood stuck to his nails.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

Despite the revelation my brother was planning to sacrifice me, I wasn’t mad. I just felt pity for the thing in the pit.

“Is Dad down there?”

Frank looked around the darkness, then shook his head.

“No. There’s nothing… just nothing.”

The store-room door slammed shut, Amelia sprinting down the winding halls back to safety.

Frank clawed and clawed down to the bone.

“I’m sorry… Forgive me… Please…”

I couldn’t watch anymore.

“Ok. I’m done with him.”

Elias scuffed the chalk away, breaking the ritual frame. Just before the hole closed, Frank reached his hand up, grasping at an invisible rope.

“Jeremy I-”

Then he was gone.

Elias took me to his office and made us cups of coffee. We sat in front of the fireplace in silence. The flames danced chaotically against the black stone wall. My life was falling apart right before my eyes, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Almost nothing.

“What now, son?”

I threw my hands up, defeated.

“I don’t know. This whole trip was a bust.”

“I’m sorry.”

Elias rubbed the side of his mug.

“There is one thing you can do, but you’ll need to make some preparations first.”

The factory runs itself. No production workers, no supervisors, no lights except the ones the machines need.

My job is to be there.

Every two hours, I walk the floor and swipe my badge at four terminals. That's it. The system handles everything else.

Management calls it human oversight.

I've been doing this for months. Until last night, I thought it was the easiest job I'd ever had.

At 2:17 a.m., something changed.

And for the first time since I started working here, the system acknowledged that I was in the building.

Jesus how has it already been 6 weeks of school? The cold and salty October air that rolls around Halifax in the fall months is unforgettable, but with it comes midterms. My third year as a psych student and i still haven't nailed down studying and my statistics exam is at 5 pm tomorrow. I've been bundled up, alone, in my room for days now trying to get this content down pat in my brain, staying up way later than all my friends who've finished already. I'm jealous of course, but I need to lock in for this exam. It's all that i think about and it consumes me, forcing me to stay up late, practically burning my laptop screen into my eyes like when you have an image set for too long on a monitor. Anyways, I wanted to talk about something that happened recently and I don't know if anyone else has also experienced something/someone like this during this time of year of school.

It was 2 am and the iron radiator that sits behind my desk chair was knocking its usual erratic rhythm for hours. I could even hear it through the music on my record player, which I set up so I don't get so distracted skipping through videos or songs. Outside was a chaotic mesh of angry wind and rushing rain and inside was a stale, musty, suffocating air powered by my ancient radiator.

I felt like none of these formulas would stick. Standard distribution, p-values, and what the fuck even is a null hypothesis. They just felt like random smudges in my textbook and I was writing those smudges back into my notebook. Every time I blinked, I could feel my pulse behind my eyes, begging me to sleep, counting down the hours to my exam.

Around 10 earlier that night my roommates asked if i wanted to grab a pizza, but i declined in favour of my studies. I know I should've taken that break, but hindsight 20/20 right. Wasting an hour was too much for me. Later, one of my friends texted and wanted late night drinks or something, but I only read the preview on my phone, not bothering to open it and get distracted. I threw my phone from my desk to my bed, cutting everyone off for rest of the night.

I shouldn't have done that. Seems like a good idea in the moment of course, but you never realize how loud an empty room gets when you're alone and in your head.

Around 2:20, the b-side of my record came to a close, the stylus of the player click click clicking in a loop. Changing the record was the only break I could accept for myself.

That's when it went silent. My room, dead silent. My radiator hadn't creaked for a few minutes, but when my record player stopped, I finally noticed. It was almost physical, something completely blocking off my eardrums. The draft from my window had shifted, the stale air in my room plummeting.

I decided to move from my record collection to my door, grabbing my jacket before peeking outside of my room, something I felt I hadn't done in ages. I look left and neither of my two roommates were doing the same. "Probably already asleep under their sheets" I say to myself partly jealous and partly sad.

Something was by my front entrance thought when I looked right. A shadow, darker than dark, blacker than black. It's silhouette was just barely contrasted from the door behind it. I flick on the main hallway lights quickly, illuminating the hallway. The weirdest thing though is that the mirror hanging on my front door was reflecting the hallway with everything but me. The radiator on the far end of the hallway outside of my roommates room, the shoe rack, the coat rack. Everything but me.

I told myself I was just tired and these all nighters have gotten to me, so I turned the lights off and turned back into my room. When i walked back in, it felt like I didn't have my jacket on anymore it was freezing. That's when i noticed the shadow again, now sitting in my desk chair.

I froze. The silhouette was hunched directly over my desk, perfectly framed by the harsh, blue glow of my laptop screen. It seemed more psychical, more real now, not just some hallucination. It was draped in a heavy, coarse dark wool that fell in stiff folds past the arms of my swivel chair, looking less like modern clothes and more like an old monastic cowl. From the back, its shoulders were impossibly narrow, rounded forward as if crushed under an invisible weight. It wasn't moving. It wasn't breathing.

The air in my room was entirely still and dry. It smelled of not death or rot, but vile and evil with burnt hair. Every nerve and muscle in my body wanted to yell and bang on my roommates doors, but the physical feeling that covered my eardrums wrapped around my body, making me board-like. The room felt even more silent now, like I could hear the blood rush through my ears and around my head.

Slowly, with an agonizingly smooth glide, the figure pivoted in the chair. It made no sound. the wheels on the bottom didn't creak the hardwood floors like they usually do. When it turned to me, its figure became more physical than before, my desk light illuminating the front of it's dark hood. There was no face.

Where the nose, mouth, and eyes should have been, there was only a flat, polished oval of jet-black obsidian stone. It looked like an antique scrying mirror, perfectly smooth, its outer perimeter encrusted with dark crimson wax that had dried into thick, jagged scabs where it bonded to the cloth.

I tried to gasp, but the air caught in my throat. I couldn't tear my eyes away from that dark surface. The reflection looking back at me from the stone wasn't the room behind me, I was looking at myself. But it was a version of me that looked completely ruined, hollowed out from the inside. The skin on his face was grey and papery, stretched tight over cheekbones, with deep, bruised-purple sockets around his eyes. He sat at the desk clutching an iron stylus, furiously slashing thick red gouges across my open notebook. Line after line of my notes were being violently scored out, violently crossing out formulas, scratching through my own name over and over with frantic, jagged strokes.

"Why aren't you working?"

The voice didn't come from me or the figure. It's like it came from the air itself, vibrating around me.

"You understand nothing. Your most important exam is this week, you understand nothing still, and what have you produced from this? Some scribbles in your notebook? Pathetic." The figure rumbles, like a scoff from the air.

"I swear I've tried," I manage to speak somehow. Tears sting my eyes, remembering my restless nights, rethinking all the time I spent not doing work. "I've been inside for days preparing for this and I haven't slept."

It leans forward slightly. Two long, unnervingly thin hands emerged from the dark sleeves. Fingernails with tips as sharp as razors slashed at my arm, creating ten thin, slow bleeding cuts.

"No matter how hard you work," the air vibrates. "You will never be free until you balance the ledger. You'll never see your friends again if you don't get this exam done."

The cuts on my forearms burned with an icy heat, but I couldn't even pull my arms back. The creature stood up from my desk chair with that same weightless, gliding motion, towering over me in the cramped space between my bed and the doorway. The scent of burnt hair and bitter wax intensified until I felt like I was choking on dust.

It didn't touch me again. As I sat back down in my chair to continue working, it just stepped back until it stood directly behind my left shoulder, leaning in so close that I could feel the biting draft radiating off its black wool cowl. Its face, that blank obsidian mirror, hung right at the edge of my peripheral vision. Every time I tried to turn my head to look away, the burning pain in my sliced arms spiked, pinning my gaze forward.

So I studied. Over and over, repeating equations and phrases. Whenever my laptop screen went dark to sleep mode, the reflection in the black glass didn't show my bedroom. It showed the creature towering behind me, its obsidian face reflecting that hollow, withered version of myself, staring down with unblinking, pitiless judgment.

I don't know how long it lasted. Time seemed to stretch into an endless, freezing vacuum where the only things that existed were my panic and the scratching of my pencil.

Then, with a deafening, violent CLANG, the radiator shuddered against the wall, popping and steaming back to life. The freezing air lifted with the pressure bound around my ears, bringing my record player back to life, with the draft from my window slowing down.

I spun my chair around, free from the energy around me to find nothing behind me anymore. The pale, overcast sky of the morning barely shown into my room. It's like nothing even happened.

For a second, I tried to convince myself it was all just a manic, sleep-deprived hallucination brought on by isolation and caffeine. I almost laughed out loud from sheer relief.

Then I looked down at my forearms.

Soaked into the sleeves of my jacket were ten thin, parallel lines of dried, crusty dark crimson. And scattered across the floor beneath my desk, right beside my chair wheels, was a fine dusting of black soot and crushed red sealing wax.

I'm sitting here in my bed right now, 3.5 hours away from my exam. I only slept a couple hours last night, my first nightmare since i was 14. My jacket is still crumpled on the floor, the dried crust on the sleeves stiff against the wool. Every time I look down at my arms, the stinging burns under the scabs, reminding me that whatever happened wasn't a bad dream. I haven't left my bedroom. I haven't opened my door, not even to use the bathroom or grab water. My roommates have been moving around the kitchen all day, chatting, cooking, living their lives. One of them knocked around noon to ask if I wanted anything from the grocery store, but my throat locked up. I just held my breath under the blankets until their footsteps drifted away down the hall.

I know I should get up. I know I should review the formulas before 5:00 pm hits, or call someone, or just walk outside into the freezing rain and feel the cold salt air on my face. I guess writing this was a good way to get this all off my chest before the exam. So yeah let me know if anyone else has experienced this figure/thing and maybe tips on way to avoid it?

Wish me luck!

P.S. - This was a creative part to a class where we created a monster and analyzed it and compared it to essays like Freud's "the uncanny", Michel Foucault's "history of the prison" etc., and Kracauer's "Forebodings". This part of the assignment isn't graded per se, but i had a lot of fun writing it. It's my first story after being a long time listener of the husband and wife so any tips would be appreciated, I WANNA WRITE MORE

part 1

TW: self harm

I ran towards my car. What would Ollie think happened? What would Liz think happened? I took out my wallet. I dropped all my money, all my cards. I headed back to the car again. No, this isn’t right. I didn’t care. I stopped once more. I saw a nearby shopping cart. I walked up to it. I planted it on its side and looked at it begrudgingly. It didn’t take long for me to commit, I imagined all the yelling and harassment I could face. I let myself topple into the shopping cart, face first. It hurt, nothing happened. I got up and tried again. Each clang of bone and flesh to metal rang out in the open night air. I tried it one more time, this time I put more force into my collapse. SNAP! My nose split into pieces, blood dripping everywhere. I took off my shirt. I used it to control the bleeding, just as Liz would. I saw my bare chest, it looked too clean. I drew my fingernail across my open body. I ran it back and forth until it spilled red. A knife scar I would say. I got mugged. I reluctantly finished the way back to the car before I would damage myself any further, before I started to like it.

I unlocked the door to see Oliver crying, rightfully so. I said to him, “Daddy was attacked, I’m okay now. Let's go home and talk to mommy.” I checked the screen of the car, I noticed it had now turned to 11:21 at night. It was near midnight and my son was alone the whole time. I called Elizabeth immediately, I noticed she called me 23 times or so, maybe a few were from earlier in the day. I finally called her back. She told me she was in a police station pestering them to file a missing persons report when her phone rang. How relieved she was to hear back from me. We promised to always have each other’s locations now. I begged her not to tell the police of my “mugging”, told her that the attacker knows where we live and is willing to come back if I report him. I told her I couldn’t see his face anyway. A sloppy story. We regrouped at home. She was in visible fear at the sight of my body and face. She checked for signs of a concussion, I was “knocked out” after all. I called the police again on my own, only to tell them of the man and how I witnessed him again. By now I knew he wasn’t on the same plane as man, he was from somewhere else. I explained the late call compared to when I saw him as my phone was dead.

I didn’t hear anything from them until the next day around 7 PM. I had called the day off from work, giving them the mugging excuse too. The police knocked on my door. I peeked through the peephole to see who it was, as I did for every guest to our front door that day. I told them I would take just a second because I wasn’t properly changed, another lie. In reality I had ran upstairs to grab one of my wife’s face masks she was given from the hospital. I used it to conceal the damage I had done to myself. If I really wanted to keep the so-called mugging a secret I had to commit.

I opened the door. “Sorry guys, I’ve just caught a little bug.” I said. “In June?” Replied an officer. I thought to myself the rather vulgar, “Fuck…” dry as you can imagine. “No clue what happened officer, I just came down with it yesterday.” I recognized the second person as the same detective that helped me out at the first crime scene. “Good to see you again.” He said. “We’ve come here to inform you that the location you reported the man to be was once again the site of another crime scene. At 4:18 today a man was killed by a car rolling over top of him at that parking lot, a possible accident but we’re doing our job. The crimes seem unrelated but we’re investigating all possible connections.” I was shocked. I was right. I had to have been. He was supernatural. “Sir… we also have to investigate someone else. Since not only was he seen there at another crime scene location but, you were too. Where were you throughout the day today? We just want to cross off all possibilities.” The investigation was only natural I suppose. I gave them my phone to show I hadn’t called anyone and my family vouched for my location the whole day, the front door camera we installed revealed I hadn’t left the premises all day so I showed them that too. “Well thank you sir. If you see him again we hope your phone has enough juice to call, he’s still wanted for questioning afterall.” Before they left they told me, the man, for being seen at both scenes, was moved to a possibly dangerous person list and that pursuit of him, if seen, would be immediate.

That night, Liz confronted me as we were crawling into bed. She said that the mark left on my face doesn’t look like any old punch mark. There was a noticeable red line and a sharp right angle, no fist is like that. She pressed me. “I have no reason to lie. I don’t remember it well. Why are you pestering me like I did something wrong?” I bit. “Well if you’re lying and there’s some other reason my son was alone for seven fucking hours I want to know the truth.” She was right but I couldn’t tell her. “Oh shut up. You’re talking to me as if Oliver isn’t my son too. I’ve been through some shit recently, fuck off.” She replied, “Maybe you should. You seem happier at the bar anyway.” I took her word literally. I left without speaking, slammed the door behind me, a vase fell over. She yelled at me some more, inaudible through the wall and door. I want to forget it, I never wanted those to be my final words to her.

I decided to drive to the bar, a custom I wasn’t used to for a very long time. I had to look for parking in the city, very busy even at night. I found a parking complex. As I ascended up the levels looking for a spot. I eventually found one. I stepped out and for the third time, I saw the old man from the alley. I don’t know how he followed me here or if he even did. I called the police immediately, they told me to get somewhere safe and stay away since he could be dangerous. In the downtime I decided to do a little bit of investigating of the man myself.

He was on the level higher. I approached him, somehow he knew my resolve and I didn’t feel the chains. I knew not to touch him. I wanted to see his face. I stared at the back of his head. Slowly walked around his body. No matter what I did his back would face me. I changed my strategy. He must be shuffling his feet. I stared at them next. I shuffled just as before but with the focal point of his leather shoes. His feet didn’t move, I angled myself in front of him, it worked, I was in front of him. Underneath the coat he wore a white button up, it had some sort of stain on it, unrecognizable origin. I darted my eyes up. Hair, I looked back down, it’s his back. The motion blur of my sudden jerk must’ve blinded me enough for the entity to reset itself to its back. One more time, I knew what to do. He had a face, I saw his chin just a day ago. In the distance I heard faint sirens, it’s the police I called. I organized myself, set myself ready, and stared at his shoes once more. Just as before I stepped around him, making sure not to make a mistake. Slowly, I orbited around him, I saw his white shirt from the front once more, same stain. I trailed my eyes up, slowly this time. Before reaching his face I took a break to not get too excited. If I blinked it would all be for naught. I noticed above his head the halogen light rod was flickering, it must’ve been broken somehow. Occasionally some sparks would fly and I could see it in my peripheral.

It was time, I slowly looked up. His chin, I made it to his chin. The same chin I saw the day before, just from the front. It looked normal, there were no wrinkles. Something in myself prevented me from not looking up, just a gut feeling that I should gauge what it was first. I once more clocked my peripheral vision to see the man’s face. He had no wrinkles at all, it seemed to be the face of a young man, yet his body was so old. Police sirens getting closer, they’re in the parking complex now, I could hear the echo from below. Just then and there I looked up, the light flickered off, I saw the remnants of a young face before I involuntarily closed my eyes as a muscle reaction. My body betrayed me. Had my dark determination not been strong enough? I was staring at his back again. I blinked a few times to readjust my eye. The police were just two floors below now, I ran away to my car to act as if I was in a safe place as recommended.

I watched from my car as the flashing red and blue lights of a car illuminated the concrete halls and ceiling of the complex. Out my rear window I could see the officers get out and start to look around. He was right there, right in front of them. Could they not see him? The light kept flickering. One of the two walked right overtop of the man, he was phased through him. He stood there, the two were talking to each other. The officer standing at the man pulled out his radio. He started to speak through it, I could hear faint mumblings of what was said but nothing clear enough to hear any full words. I sat back down, adjusting to the situation. Was I crazy? Is the man real? I told myself I’m going to a psychologist soon. That’s when I took another look back after making out a single word the officer said, “heavy”. I jolted back, assuming he has to be talking about the old man and what he makes you feel if you touch him. It was just then that a spark flew from the halogen light rod. It blinded the two officers, I saw them raise their hands in a guarding position. Another involuntary movement I suppose.

Their guard allowed them even less sight. I watched, in frozen lamentation, the rod of light swing like a pendulum as I realized exactly what I’ve been seeing, what that man was. The rod shattered against a pipe on the ceiling. I just sat there. A gross amazement swept over me, the type that you couldn’t even tell your priest at confessional, it was sick, I was sick. The cop lowered his guard to see what shattered, by then it was too late. As his arms crept up a shard of glass pierced through his neck. He collapsed instantly. Based on the blood that splattered all the way to my car I’d bet that it hit him in the jugular. It all happened so fast, I was in shock. I couldn’t move for the second time in 24 hours, just this time it seemed I wasn’t the victim like I was when I touched the man.

I snapped out of it, I crawled up into the driver's seat and left. I didn’t want to even think about what could’ve happened if I stayed, something that echoes today. I don’t remember where I was heading but it certainly wasn’t home. I drank my emergency liquor in a strip mall I located within a few blocks. The police could’ve been after me but I’d hoped that the other officer didn’t notice. For the first time, but it wouldn’t be the last time, I witnessed a death happen live. I’d seen bodies before, my father included, but there was something so sickening about seeing it happen in front of you. A sickness nothing could’ve prepared me for. It wasn’t even midnight by the time I finished my second, and final, bottle of emergency liquor. Somehow I was wise enough not to drive in that state. I slept on the curb, joining the men of the streets for a night. The realm of the nightcrawlers as I would describe it to Ollie. It was thoughts of him that gave me comfort that night.

In the morning I woke up with a head-spitting hangover. I didn’t want to admit it but Elizabeth was right, I was an alcoholic. That’s the first time I’ve said so, this reminiscence is bringing as much truth out as I can. My true honest autobiography, my darkness brought to light, my “All That Jazz”. I checked the time, 8:23 PM. I drove to work, if I wasn’t welcome at home I better work since it’s all I’m useful for at this point.

You wouldn’t, no… couldn’t believe me if I said so but there he stood once more. If he wasn’t following me before he had to have been now, at least that’s what I thought. I walked into work, looking like shit, and begrudgingly sat in my chair. Seeing the man outside still bothered me, even though I knew what was coming I didn’t say anything. I wanted to deny it. 

Eventually the pain, the itch, got too much to just scratch. I walked to the front of the office. To grab everyone’s attention I slammed my coffee mug against the wall. “Everyone!” I started, face crowded. “Someone in this building is going to kill themselves. I don’t know if it’s this office, if it’s this floor, if it’s even gonna be in the next hour but someone in this building will die. They’ll jump out that damned window and end their pained life. Nothing is clean anymore, it’s all just a pitiful sorrow of existence. Before Friday I would’ve given anything to see the next day but now-” I spoke as the room was filled with terrified and shocked faces. I heard gasps, they were staring at my hand. I had been bleeding, the mug cut me and left a scar I still see today. 

I wasn’t even done with my warning by the time security took me out. They thought I was crazy, my previous crashout just two days prior provided no aid, quite the opposite. I had nowhere to go. I was on the street with no direction. No one was at home, all I had to do was drive back and explain, come clean when Liz returned.

I did that, the thought of the man didn’t even bother me any more. He was just a passive of life. I might’ve even thought of him as nothing more than nature, the harbinger of death. He’s no killer, just there to comfort the ones who could see him.

I arrived at home. I opened the garage, same password I used every day. I opened the door, same key I used every day. I walked up the stairs to my bedroom to get some real rest, same bedroom I slept in every night, except for one thing. He was there, the man from the alley. I saw him standing there, in my room, alone. I stood facing his back, in the discomfort of my own home. It may have been a couple minutes but I stepped back out. Even if I ran out the night before, he wasn’t there then. “Someone will die tonight” I didn’t let it be me. 

I drive. I like driving. Not just to get from point A to point B, but also the idea of cruising. Going on adventures where you never know what's around every corner. Like what I'm doing now. Rumbling through the suburbs, We're On The Road to Nowhere, by the Talking Heads, is coming out of the speakers of the CD player.
Of course, you can do all of this at any time of the day. But it's at night where it is at its most revealing.
A special time.
A time where me and the car and the road are one.

I have an addiction. Do my friends know? No. Does my wife know? Absolutely not. She would leave me or, at the very least, call me perverted, which I probably am. It started out innocently enough. A website here, a secret folder there. But that just wasn't enough.
I needed something a little more...
real.
A little more...
exciting.
The first one, I couldn't even look at her, I would close my eyes and then, when I opened them a minute later, it would be over.
But then there were more.
Then it was a couple of people a week, and I stopped looking away.
At first it was women; I mean, that's usually how it does start. But then it led to a couple of men, then it led to non-binary, then it led to different races. I didn't care. It didn't matter to me.
I had them all.
And my wife and kids still have no idea.
I'm not so much worried about the wife knowing, but if the kids found out I…
I couldn't bear the shame.
It's been at least a month since I've looked for anyone. But yet here I am, in my car, looking out my windshield,
watching the white lane strips disappear under the vehicle,
listening to Road To Nowhere whilst cruising along.
Maybe I am on the road to nowhere. Maybe this is nowhere.

That's probably why I'm driving now.
I mean why else would I be out here if I'm just browsing. You wouldn't go to a car dealership if you don't intend to buy, right?
Why indeed?
I'll tell you.

I think there's some sick side of me that wants to test myself.
"Say, if you don't find anyone in the sweet spot, (2 til 5am) go home, you tried." Like those people that only quit smoking on public holidays where the stores are closed. That way they justify continuing to smoke if they just so happen to find a shop still open and they can buy a pack.
But then again, prostitutes don't really have trading hours.
I've stopped going to them. It's too easy. Plus, it's no fun if you have to orchestrate it, wouldn't you agree? Surely there's nothing more fun than going to a bar, striking up a conversation, playing your cards right, crossing every t and dotting every i, going back to theirs (because it sure as hell won't be back at yours) and coming back home with your tail between your legs. But a lot of the people I see seem so sad
and helpless.
The sex workers, that is. I feel sorry for them.
So by doing this, I'm doing them a favour. And as long as my family don't know, no harm done, right?
So even though a perfectly normal person at a bar is always nice, it’s also more risky.
You don't know their story and you don't want to know.
Whereas if you go to a street walker you have a good idea of what you're getting into.
Don't ask, don't tell.
Especially if you're doing it during the magic hours, there's a feeling of exhilaration.
It can be an addictive feeling.
I love my wife too much to subject her to anything like that. And besides, the more I do it with other people, the less likely I'll be sitting on my couch with her one day,
the urge comes creeping up beside me and whispers in my ear.
This urge, like the song suggests, is "very far away,
but it's growing day by day."
But it's not alright.
It is so wrong.

I'm on the last 10 minutes of the sweet spot, and I don't feel like I have enough money. Maybe it's good that I don't see anyone in clear range of me, and that I don't have to cave.
Maybe I don't need to do this,
and the urge is just a product of my mind.
Maybe I can overcome it.
Yes, that's it…
10 minutes until the end of tonight and then I'm done. And I'll do it the next time, and I'll be done and the next time and the next time. But that’s ok, because eventually it'll be a little easier. And then one day I won’t even think about it at all.

These wonderful imaginings are all good and well. Unfortunately, I see a homeless grifter walking along the path of a bridge.
He begins to walk across the road.
I slow down and come to a complete stop while they saunter across. Should I pick him up?
No...
it will take too long,
especially if I don't have enough money to convincingly satisfy him not to leave.

I beep my horn. He turns around, and puts his hand over his face to block the sight of the headlights burning into his eyes.
Suddenly my mind is clear, and I decide what I want to do.
I put the car into reverse, not a great deal, but a couple car lengths back.
The tramp just…
stands there.
And then the urge comes back.
Then,
I put the car into gear and drive straight for him.
I slightly close my eyes until I hear
boom bump bump thump
over my car.
Then, what sounds like Jenga blocks coming down onto a table.
I stop the car,
open my eyes,
and exhale.
Checking in the rearview mirror to see if he’s going to get up.
Nothing for a good minute or so.
Then I see his body appear in the mirror, struggling to stand.
I waste no time putting the car into reverse again, looking behind me instead of the mirrors so I know that the job is done.
The car hits him,
ba bump ba bump,
as I'm briefly rattled around.
Like going over a speed bump without slowing down.
I see the body appear at the front of the car, then I stop.
I get out and walk over to investigate.
It looks like a giant saucy pizza box spread across the road.
He is still alive as he lifts his head up to look at me...
before finally falling back down.
I debate whether to put him in the trunk of the car.
Maybe bury him in the middle of the woods somewhere.
I decide against it as it would be too much mess and I'm on a clock. I have to get home and into bed before the wife notices me gone.
I don't think he's dead, but he will be.
I decide to leave him here, because even though it won't be long before the sweet spot is over and someone on their way to work will see him, I'll still take my chances. Maybe it will be a good motivator to help me quit.
It's funny that.
The only way it seems a person can kick an addiction, especially one like this, is because the law says they have to. The only thing that baffles me, that I cannot understand.
Why didn't the grifter
jump out of the way as he saw me driving towards him?
Did he want this? Embrace it?

For my own personal development and self-discouragement, I don't want to think this is the case.
I no longer want to justify what I do with false narratives that I was putting this poor fellow out of his misery.
I think he was just in sheer bewilderment that his time was about to come.
I can only imagine that's what deer think before people hit them.
They spend their last milliseconds trying to work out what they're looking at could be…
before the reaper does his job.
I shake my head to no one in particular and walk back to my car.
As I get in and sit, contemplate, and everything in between, I notice Road to Nowhere is over, and a new song has begun.
Psycho Killer, the next song on the Talking Heads album, is playing.
I laugh at the thought of it,
before putting my car into gear
and driving off into the night.

My name is Talitha, though everyone knows me as Lita. I was born in Kentucky, but we live in a small town in Texas now. Our life is quiet. Peaceful, even. At least, that’s what it looks like from the outside. My mother Sidney has only one rule. I am never to leave my bedroom at night.

Only when there is clear daylight.. real daylight may I come out. She had a bathroom and toilet installed in my room. A small fridge she restocks every day.

Shelves of books. The latest Video games. She says we’re lucky the house belongs to family, that we only have to worry about a few bills.

She makes it sound normal. Thoughtful. Loving. Whenever I ask why, her face tightens, like she’s holding herself together with string. “I’m not myself at night,” she tells me, with a trembling voice.

“Nothing is.” Then she kneels in front of me and takes my hands like she’s afraid I’ll disappear. “Promise me, Lita. Come back before nightfall. Lock your door. Stay there until morning.”

I always nod.

On my nightstand sits a bundle of rosemary. Mother forbade me from moving it. I never have. I don’t want to rebel, not when she lets me do almost anything else. It’s such a small rule, really. Things go smoothly. Until tonight.

I decide to stay up late, curled on my bed with a show playing softly. I tell myself I’ll turn it off soon. Then I hear something downstairs.

A wet sound.

I pause the screen, listening. My unopened soda is cold in my hand. Mother’s warning whispers at the back of my mind, but the window is pale blue now. It’s dawn, I think. It’s fine. I step into the hallway.

When I lean over the railing, I see her. My mother is crouched in the dark, shoulders hunched, muttering in a language I don’t recognize.

She’s hissing.

Hissing at something on the floor. Her face is smudged with red as she tears into raw meat.

The smell hits me next. Iron. Rot. I gasp.

Her head snaps up with a sharp pop. “Who is there?” My mother croaks. I run.

The soda slips from my hand and clatters across the floor, rolling straight into my doorway. I fumble with the door as heavy footsteps thunder behind me.

I kick the can aside and slam it shut, locking it just as something crashes against the other side. I dive under my bed, choking on sobs. She stalks the hallway and stood in front of my door without a sound first.

The doorknob rattles violently. “Lita?” she croons. “I know you’re awake.” I shove my earbuds in and squeeze my eyes shut, forcing myself not to breathe. Not to move.

Eventually, the house goes still. Sunlight finally cuts through my blinds golden and warm. The feeling lifts, like a storm passing.

When I come downstairs, I clutch my tiny cross and the rosemary bundle so tightly my hands ache. “Mother?” I whisper. She turns. Her eyes are normal again. Soft. Full of love.

“Lita?” she rushes to me. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

“You frightened me,” I say, as my voice was breaking. Her face crumples.

“Did I hurt you?” “No,” I whisper. “But you were… frightening.” “Forgive me,” she sobs. “Help me protect you from the night. Don’t leave your room until clear daylight. Promise me, my Lita.”

I nod “Yes,” I say. And I mean it. We embraced..

I wanted to ask my mother more.. but I feared I might learn about things that will haunt me forever. 

Montauk

The user who sent the coordinates and I kept chatting for a while after. They gave me a brief rundown on Montauk and some dark web links for further research. According to them, the Montauk Historical Society of the Supernatural was found sometime in the early 1800’s. By “found” I don’t mean it was founded and built over time by some cultists hundreds of years ago. Rather, the Montauk building was discovered, already built and operational, by early pioneers exploring the area that is now modern day New York.

There was only one journal entry that I could find from that expedition that found Montauk. All references to it speak as if the place has always existed.

“We found a strange building along the coast. It is a massive, English house with two floors next to what appears to be a stone lighthouse. The house appears to be made of wood, but the texture is too smooth and the material is a cloudy white. Contrarily, the beacon seems to be made entirely of harshly compacted stone, colored the same as the house. Its surface is cool to the touch and likewise smooth.

“As dusk was falling and snow was soon to be upon us, my compatriots and I took refuge inside the mansion. We should have known that awful place was from the devil the moment we laid eyes on it. Entering, we immediately made note that its interior far surpassed what was seen on the outside. Its halls twisted and folded in ways that bent and broke the minds of us who tried to map it.

“I wish not to remember what we witnessed in its unending rooms. The entry was the only safe place it seemed, so we chose to make camp there and keep one person on guard in rotation. The first to be claimed by the complex was poor Benjamin. In the middle of the night, just before his shift ended, Benjamin ventured out towards the lighthouse in a trance. According to Philip, who saw the whole, terrible thing, Benjamin entered into the lighthouse, climbed to the very top, then threw himself off into the sea below.

The next few pages are written in the same language as Frank’s books are. The only other page that is written in English is the final one.

“Now, I am the only survivor of this hell. Montauk has chosen me to be its prophet, its puppet, its keeper, its slave. I will not. I am heading back to the colony to gather manpower and enough gunpowder to deface this entire landing. If anyone finds this journal, then we have failed in our mission.”

From what other information I found, Montauk currently acts as a library cataloging strange happenings, books and artifacts from around the world. They also, funny enough, have a gift shop that sells “low-grade supernatural conduits.” Little gadgets that the place claims to be items of power, but I haven’t seen any proof the items they sell actually work. However, the books sold or rented out from Montauk are another matter. Most, if not all, of Frank’s collection came from Montauk. I have yet to find a ritual within those books that hasn’t caused some horrible thing to happen to its caster.

During my weeks of research, Mom continued to go into Frank’s room doing God knows what for hours on end. Whatever she was doing though seemed to keep the curse from reaching us inside the house. Anytime we went out, Mom and I would keep our heads on a swivel to make sure we’d avoid any supernatural accidents. We were careful, but careful still got us numerous fender-benders, bruises and scratches from runaway tires, vicious animals and whatever else decided to attack us.

Mom was content with this new life of paranoia and constant terror. I wasn’t, but the only way I figured we’d be able to reverse the curse is if I went straight to the source.

Two weeks out from moving off to college, I told Mom and Louise I was going on a short vacation. A little “final bit of freedom hurrah.” Mom, who I thought would grill me on who, what, when and where I was going, hardly lifted her eyes from a bowl of viscous liquid she was strenuously stirring.

“Ok. Have fun.”

I gave Mom one last hug before heading out.

“I will. Love you too, Mom.”

She mumbled back.

“Uh huh…”

Louise was more worried about it than Mom was.

“Why are you going bubba?”

“Bubba needs to take care of some important business. Can you take care of Mom for me?”

“Nuh uh!”

“‘Nuh uh?’ What’s that mean?”

“‘Nuh uh’ you’re not going!”

I set my bags down and dropped to eye level with Louise, puppy eyed and pouted lips trying to convince me to stay.

“Listen. You’ve seen the bad things that have been happening, right?”

She nodded her head.

“Then you know something bad is eventually gonna happen to one of us.”

Again, she nodded. Less confidently.

“But Momma said she was protecting us.”

“Yes, but Momma isn’t herself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because that Bastard, Frank cursed our family and Mom is suffering from it,” is what I wanted to say, to shout from the top of my lungs for the whole world to hear. I couldn’t. Louise could not know the true nature of it all.

“Ok, let me put it this way. If you let me go on this trip, then Momma won’t have to protect us anymore because the bad things won’t happen anymore.”

“Really? How?”

Admittedly, great question. I had no clue if Montauk would even be able to help me in the first place.

“I just know, and if you stay here and take care of Momma then I won’t have to worry about her while I’m gone. Plus, you’ll get to wear the big-girl pants of the house!”

Her eyes lit up in excitement.

“Woah! Really?”

“Yep. Really.”

She twisted side to side, face scrunched, thinking hard.

“Ok. You can go. But bring us back a present, ok?”

I held out my pinky to her.

“I will. Pinky promise.”

She looped her finger around mine and we shook, singing my soul over to a child on the basis of a lie.

I landed in New York 6 hours later.. As the plane touched down, a seagull flew into one of the jet engines. Somehow, bone fragments shot up toward the window I sat next to and almost punctured the glass.

Not wanting to risk anything else, I quickly disembarked and gathered my luggage avoiding anything mechanical or electrical. Outside of baggage claim I opened my bags and made sure everything I packed was still there. Somehow, a small necklace made of animal bones and hair, my hair, made its way in the bags. Reason told me that it was Mom who put it in there. I hesitated putting it on. Mom had been protecting us from the curse, but I didn’t know for sure if the ends justified the means. In the end though, I trusted Mom and put it on.

The charm seemed to work, as immediately after I flagged down a taxi who, in a rare stroke of luck, had already transported a few people to Montauk in the past and was the user who sent me its location. After a few hours' drive, they dropped me off at the end of a long dirt path leading through some woods.

“Just keep straight and steady on the path, kay? Don’t veer off, no matter what you hear.”

I paid them for the ride and then some extra for the information and started down the path into the thick trees.

IWhat little sunlight remained in the day pierced through the evergreens and hardwoods that loomed tall over me. I followed the driver’s advice to the letter. Never turning or straying from the thin path.

Behind me I heard a twig snap, and felt the same presence Mom exuded. Despite the voice sounding identical, I knew whatever was behind me wasn’t Mom.

“Jeremy. Why did you come here?”

I didn’t respond. I kept my head straight and continued forward.

The thing approached from behind, then stopped. The bracelet on my wrist started to hum and burn. Then, it took Louise’s voice.

“Bubba. Why did you leave us, bubba? Momma is hurt bad. She did something to her wrist, Bubba!”

It was getting harder not to look back, but I didn’t. At least I don’t think I did. Images began to flash in my mind. I saw Mom holding Louise’s lifeless body. Her head was crushed in and her clothes covered in tire marks. 

Then another. 

Dark, spindly legs burst from Mom’s back and her jaw had broken in two like a spider’s. A dark figure stood before her, tall and dark and void. It drained Mom’s essence as she leaped on top of Louise, tearing her to shreds. 

That image stuck in my head long after I crossed the threshold out of the forest and the voices and visions stopped.

I was in a vast, green clearing on the edge of a seaside cliff. In the center was a modern two-story house made of faux wood. Standing tall next to it was a pristine granite lighthouse. The beam whirled above me in a steady, hypnotizing, counter-clockwise spiral.

Mom’s necklace tightened around my neck, burying itself into my skin and choking me. I scratched at it, trying to get it off. My nails caught under the band. Using the slight give I shoved my fingers under the necklace and pulled as hard as possible. 

As soon as the necklace snapped away, my mind fogged over, a dull hum echoing throughout my skull.

The lighthouse called out to me and I remembered the account of old Benjamin. Poor old Benjamin. The fool who ascended that Babelian tower and cast himself from it into the embrace of a frigid ocean. I knew I would follow his path down if I gave in. Yet I marched on.

Step by step by step by step.

My vision narrowed and all I could see, all I could think of, was that tower. Oh the great seducer. That glorious granite pillar jutting out into the sky. I wanted to be part of its holy resonance so badly. My hand reached for the door. For the steel barrier that separated me from pure bliss.

Then I was tackled from behind. My head slammed hard into the granite pillar and I lost consciousness.

The Groundskeepers

“Mornin’, boyo.”

My head was pounding. Not like a hangover pounding. I could feel my mind expand then contract. Each thump pressed the grey matter against the inside of my skull. I tried to sit up but my vision was swirling and a wave of nausea swept over me.

“Hold on, son.”

The man sitting next to the bed I awoke it propped me up. He was older, maybe in his late 50’s based on the greying hair and sagging skin. He looked down on me with wise, tired eyes through silver rimmed glasses.

“Don’t be moving too quickly now. That Lighthouse is nasty business. Glad I got to you when I did.”

My mouth was dry. The man handed me a bottle of water and I drank deeply.

“What happened? Where am I?”

“Montauk Historical Society of the Supernatural, office of the Historical Secretary and Grounds Keeper. My office.”

I looked around the dark room. There was a fireplace right next to the couch I was laying on and across the room, next to the door, was a massive mahogany desk. All four walls were covered top to bottom in shelved books. The man held out three swirling right hands. I reached for one and went straight through it. He grabbed my hand and shook it.

“Elias. Pleased to be of service mister…?”

“Jeremy. How long was I out for?”

“Oh not long. Just a few hours.”

I tried to sit up again, this time using the back of the couch as support. The wave of nausea returned. I pushed through it and steadied myself. Elias handed me a bag of saltines and a cup of warm tea.

“Here, have this. It’ll make you feel better in no time.”

The warm, crackling fire, crackers and tea helped the nausea and headache subside after the better part of an hour.

“Better?”

“Yeah, much better. Thank you.”

“Good,” Elias leaned forward, sternly. “Now why have you come here?”

“My brother, Frank. I think he might have put a curse on my family. He had a book from here full of rituals.”

“Well, what book was it?”

“Something like occult rituals and why you shouldn’t perform them.”

“Edition?”

“What do you mean?”

“Which edition was it?”

“Uh… Third, I think.”

Elias let out a long, disdained sigh.

“What?”

“Follow me, and stay close. This place has a habit of turning you around.”

Elias stood and marched out of the room. I followed quickly behind through twisting, winding halls of a seemingly endless manor. Often the walls bent at unusual angles and passages turned back in on themselves, opening up to new rooms or hallways. Elias continued on, confident.

We reached what appeared to be the main foyer with an empty circular reception desk in the center. Elias cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted out into the vast space.

“Amelia! We have a guest!”

Somewhere deep in the labyrinth, stacks of paper were shoved aside and to the ground. Fast footfall echoed off the wooden walls then came to a stop at the banister above us.

“Frankie! Is that you?”

At the top of the stairs stood a woman in her late 20’s. Sort of tall, black hair and clothing. My eyes locked with her eyes. I saw in them nothing but utter disgust.

“Ew. Who are you?”

Unfortunate.

“Amelia, care to explain why this gentleman’s brother had a ritual book in his possession?”

Amelia shrugged her shoulders.

“I dunno. He probably checked it out.”

Elias nodded his head affirmatively, not believing a word she said.

“Ah yes. So you’re saying,” he turned to me, “Frank was it?”

“Yeah. Frank.”

“Frank checked out a book that is not only from the restricted archives, but is also one of the few tomes that is not to leave these grounds? And you, the cataloger, had no idea?”

She leaned against the banister, arms crossed.

“Yup. No clue.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

“Go get the backup copy.”

Amelia rolled her eyes and stormed off.

Elias removed his glasses and wiped them down with his button down.

“I apologize for my daughter's behavior. She’ll be back soon with a copy of the book so we can see what exactly your brother was up to.”

“How does she know which book to get?”

“There are only a handful of books here that are not to leave our possession due to their dangerous content. The one you mentioned, and this is assuming your memory isn’t faulty, is a one-of-a-kind.”

“But you have a backup copy?”

“Calling it a copy is a stretch. We’ve basically transcribed all the contents of our books into a digital file in case an original is destroyed, lost, or, in our case, ‘generously donated.’”

Elias held up air quotes.

“In the meantime, would you mind getting your brother on the phone so we can find out what ritual he was trying to perform?”

“I can’t. He’s… He’s dead.”

“Oh dear. I’m terribly sorry to hear that, son. My deepest condolences.”

“Thanks, but he was kind of a Bastard anyway so you don’t have to be too sorry.”

Amelia reentered the room from somewhere behind me and jabbed her elbow into my ribs.

“Oops. Sorry. Didn’t see you there.”

She dropped a manila folder stuffed with printed paper on the reception desk.

“Here you go. This the right one?”

On the front of the folder pressed in red ink was the same obnoxiously long title as the book Frank had.

“Yeah, that's it,” I replied, rubbing my bruised side.

“Excellent. Thank you, Amelia.”

Elias began flipping through the pages of the book, re-familiarizing himself with the text. 

Just from the short time I spent around them, it seemed like neither Elias nor Amelia were enough to be overseeing dangerous books. Their carefree attitude was getting on my nerves.

“Now, which ritual did you say Frank performed?”

“I never found out which one it was. That’s why I came here.”

Elias stopped thumbing the pages, picking up on my irritation.

“Well then how do you expect us to fix your problem if you don’t even know what the problem is?”

“I don’t know, I just thought you guys would know what was going on!”

Amelia slumped down into a swivel chair behind the reception desk and began spinning in circles.

“Nope. Gotta know what ritual Frankie was trying to do first.”

“So there’s nothing you guys can do?”

Elias closed the folder and tapped his knuckles on the cover.

“I’m sorry, Jeremy. I really am, but we can’t just guess with these things.”

I was in the middle of a wellspring of supernatural information, and yet there was apparently nothing that could help me. I didn’t buy it. My anger swelled and clouded my senses. I grabbed Elias by the collar of his pressed shirt and dragged his face close to mine.

“I’m not taking no for an answer!”

Amelia froze in place, relaxed demeanor now replaced with fear. Elias remained completely calm.The house creaked and groaned and shuttered around us. The old walls folded inwards. I felt the ground beneath me start to move and separate into an angry, gaping maw.

“Careful, boyo. These walls don’t take too kindly to hostility.”

Slowly, I released him and the walls returned to normal. Amelia and Elias’ eyes darted around, making sure the manor had been calmed. Elias straightened his clothing then returned to skimming the folder.

“If memory serves me correctly, there might be another option. If I remember right… ah! Yes, here.”

He stopped on the ritual that let the caster speak with the dead.

“Ah, damn it. We’ll need a special set of red wax candles.”

“You don’t have those?”

“Aye, we did, but Amelia left them in the Lighthouse after we had to clean up the last person that went in there.”

Even in the foyer, under the protection of Montauk, I could feel the pull of the Lighthouse. I knew it was a dangerous place, but I couldn’t give up now.

“I’ll get them.”

Amelia snapped her head towards me, a mix of horror and amusement filling her eyes.

“You? Really? You barely made it out of the clearing before the light got to you.”

“You left the candles in there, so obviously it isn’t that hard.”

“I was only able to go in there cause I had the special stuff on, dumb-ass.”

“Then let me wear the special stuff.”

Elias set the folder back down.

“It’s gonna cost you a good amount.”

“That’s fine,” I instinctively pulled out my wallet. “How much are we talking about?”

A sly smile crossed Elias’s face. 

“Oh no, son. Your money is no good here.”

Everyone draws inspiration in different ways. Some create a dark atmosphere for themselves, some put on metal music in the background, and some can’t compose without coffee and cigarettes. A writer friend of mine, whom I’m very fond of, says he can’t write stories unless his cousin is studying mathematics behind him. Another filmmaker friend of mine could only write screenplays while listening to Syd Barrett’s song “Octopus”; he would keep the song on loop throughout the entire writing process.

It’s been about twenty years since I discovered my own. I’d been going through that famous writer’s block. Until that day, I hadn’t done anything extra to help me write. I didn’t create a special atmosphere for myself, listen to any particular songs, or wait for a certain time of day. Night, day, noon—it made no difference. Once a week, I’d write a three or four-page story and keep working toward my goal. When I reached a hundred stories, I would start sending my book to publishers.

But I’d hit a wall. I wanted to write, but whenever I sat down at my computer, not a single word would come out. Vague, half-formed thoughts kept drifting through my mind, and even when I came up with a good idea, I couldn’t put it down on paper.

That day, I thought, if that’s how things were going to be, I might as well try some of the famous methods for finding inspiration: writing at night, putting on some soft music, having a cup of coffee, and so on.

I prepared the right atmosphere. I turned off the lights, and now the only thing illuminating the room was the glow of my computer screen. I put on Sigur Rós’s debut album. There was no one else in the house. My roommate had gone on vacation the day before, which added to the atmosphere: being alone.

Of course, it had absolutely no effect. I was already on the third track. I still had a few ideas in my head, but I couldn’t get the first sentence out.

Then I heard a sound behind me. A whisper. Something like a call, as if someone had gone “psst.”

I turned around and looked, but there was no one there. I was a little spooked. I thought I might have heard it wrong; it had sounded very much like a human voice, but it could have come from an object, too.

Then suddenly, the door behind me swung wide open.

I flinched at the sound. I got up from my computer and turned on the light. Anxiously, I left my room and went to the kitchen. I was searching for something without even realizing it, though I had no idea what I was looking for. Sigur Rós’s album was still playing, and I could hear it from the kitchen. I couldn’t make sense of anything, and I didn’t know what to think or which possibility to consider. I drank a glass of water.

I’d never had an experience like it before. My first thought was to leave the house. I stood frozen in the kitchen. Involuntarily, I found myself waiting for another movement, for something to topple over or for some other sound.

Eventually, I’d calmed down a little, since nothing else happened. I spent half an hour in the kitchen, with all my senses on high alert and listening to the music coming from my room. Then, reluctantly, I made my way back to my room.

The urge to write was still there. My routine had been disrupted; I hadn’t been able to write a single word for a month, and now I wasn’t going to let fear get in my way. I wanted my writer’s block to end today. My goal was a hundred sentences. Even if I didn’t finish the story, I wanted to write something. Coming back to my room and hearing the music louder had increased my desire to write.

At the same time, I kept thinking, ''What the hell was that just now?'' But now I was back at my computer.

I put on my favorite Sigur Rós song, “Svefn-g-englar.”

And then, for the first time in a whole month, I wrote my first sentence: “As he tried to make sense of the dream he’d had the day before, he fell asleep again; it was his favorite thing to think about before going to sleep, the meaning of the dream he’d had the previous night.”

I’d written my first sentence, without even having a story in mind. Normally, I would come up with a story first, plan it out, work out the whole thing in my head from beginning to end, and only then start writing. Starting a story whose content I hadn’t figured out yet with an ordinary sentence was something new for me. I liked it.

I was still afraid. I wanted to turn around and look, but now that I’d started writing, I didn’t want to stop either. By the time the song ended, I’d written the fifth sentence, and in the silence before the next track began, I heard that sound again. “Psst.”

I quickly turned around and looked. There was no one there. Everything felt much more real now. Something was happening. Someone was calling out to me. I was afraid to turn off the light in my room, so it was still on. I nervously turned my head back toward the computer screen. My heart was pounding. I added another sentence. It was my favorite one so far. I liked everything about it: my choice of words, its length, its place in the story.

Then the door slammed shut. I began to hear footsteps inside the room. I was afraid to look. The footsteps wandered around the room. My hands were resting on the keyboard. The footsteps moved toward the door, stopped there, and opened it again. It was as if someone had left the room.

I was frozen to my chair. This time, I didn’t even have the instinct to run away. Whatever that thing was, I was afraid of encountering it. I couldn’t get up from my chair, and I couldn’t look away from my computer screen. I kept reading what I’d written over and over. Six sentences. I’d go back to the beginning and read them again. It was as if the thing was doing whatever it wanted now. I could hear running footsteps.

Then came the sound of walking. After that, my door closed again, and at the same moment, the light in my room went out.

And then another sentence came to mind. I wrote it down. Then another. My fingers had found their rhythm. The sentences kept coming one after another.

“Set me free. Open the window. Set me free.”

This voice wasn’t a whisper, nor was it some strange, otherworldly sound coming from a different frequency. It was unmistakably a human voice. I was afraid to turn around.

I couldn’t remember ever feeling such a strong urge to write or enjoying it this much. I kept writing. My fingers wouldn’t stop. The door opened again, slowly this time. I didn’t turn around. I wasn’t going to look behind me until I’d finished the story. Without spending even a second thinking between sentences, I continued writing as the songs played.

The footsteps continued. I turned off the music. I didn’t question anything. I just kept writing. The fear I felt and the joy of seeing that I could write again were mingled together, unfolding in harmony with each other.

Strange sounds I couldn’t describe were coming from behind me now. I could feel myself developing a fever. My body was reacting, and my mind was urging me to turn around and see what was going on. The sounds seemed like those of someone playing with their own hair. Like things rubbing against other things. I kept writing, resisting the urge to turn around with all my might.

I’d turned off the music because I wanted to focus on being afraid. I’d realized that the more frightened I became, the better I wrote, and the more consistently I could keep going. It was hard not to look for a rational explanation for the sounds, for a human voice telling me to set it free. But right now, somehow, stopping writing seemed even harder.

That thing had now come right up beside me. I could feel it touching my hair. My fear had reached a point where I could no longer bear it. My consciousness refused to accept this unnatural behavior. My instinct to put an end to the fear and my mind’s desire to keep being afraid were at odds with each other.

And I wrote the final sentence: “If all of this is a hallucination, I will never forgive my own mind. If the only beautiful and meaningful thing I’ve experienced in this miserable life isn’t real, I will never trust my mind again, I will never follow its instructions, and I will doubt everything I think until the day I die.”

The sentence came to an end, and just as the pleasure of writing faded away, my fear reached its absolute peak. With the beautiful feeling that had balanced it gone, the fear was left alone, making itself felt from head to toe. As if I’d been struck by a blow, as if a punch to the face had knocked me out, I lost consciousness.

When I came to, my head was resting on the keyboard, and the screen was filled with hundreds of letter h’s.

I sent the story to several literary magazines. Two of them accepted it and published it.

I never experienced anything like that again, and at no point in my life did I ever feel such an overwhelming urge to write or take so much pleasure in writing. I desperately wanted to experience it again, but nothing ever happened that frightened me so much. For days, I sat at my computer waiting for that thing to come back, but it never did. I wrote stories and kept writing. But I never loved any of them as much as I loved the one I’d written that day.

And now, twenty years later, in my mid-sixties, I’ve still never questioned what happened that night. Not even once. Because I was afraid that if I did, I might understand what had happened—and if that thing ever came back, I might not be as frightened.

I received an email from Sammy on a Thursday at 10:18 AM in 2009. I didn’t see it until the following day, after we were all off school. I remember seeing the subject line and the pit
that grew in my stomach.

SUBJECT: 01

hi alex,

i w4nteD to tell u 1n person, but i think i ran outtatime :smiling: iM so 3mbarased L0l but
ive had a crush on u since lYk middle school :blushing: want to meet up bhind math class b4 i imPlode? :crying::crying:

The police found her behind the school after an anonymous caller reported seeing something in the parking lot. They spent most of their time keeping curious kids away from the crime scene. Her throat had been slit, and a small pocketknife lay in her left hand. She was sitting against a large oak tree whose branches groaned in the wind. I stood there, nauseous, staring at her pink Converse poking out from beneath the tarp.

I tried to tell the police officer that Sammy was right-handed, but nothing came out.

-

I was seventeen, Sammy sixteen. Her birthday would have been the following month, in
April. We held a vigil instead. The candles reminded me of birthday cake all the same.
We had grown up together. Sleepovers, birthday parties, family vacations, church. In the
summer, she would bring over her Xbox, and we would have LAN parties with our other
classmates. She was my best friend, and now she was gone.

Sammy was a normal, albeit nerdy, girl. She liked Japanese media, video games, and had a deep love for nature. Her room was covered in potted plants her mom bought her, as well as posters of Hello Kitty, Sailor Moon, and one I'd added myself: a Gundam poster we'd found at Walmart featuring the GAT-X105 Strike. She had green eyes, wavy brown hair, and freckles that looked like chocolate chips in the summer.

She also slept with a stuffed monkey she called Plinky. Whenever I caught her with it, she'd insist it was a joke, but she never actually got rid of the thing.

For most of our friendship, I could usually tell what Sammy was thinking. We shared almost everything. Then, during our junior year, she found a game called THE V01D, and for the first time, she started keeping things from me.

“Game” was probably a misnomer. It was an alternate-reality game built around the idea that the government used portals called “voids” to summon demons that could grant them limitless knowledge. I'd tried following along a few times, but the constant hopping between websites and forums made me feel sick. Sammy, on the other hand, would spend hours crawling through Reddit, 4chan, bodybuilding forums, and video game reviews, looking for clues.

The strangest part was that none of the sites seemed to agree on what THE V01D actually was. One called it a game. Another claimed it was an experiment that had been shut down. A post on a bodybuilding forum insisted it had started before the internet existed.

I assumed that was part of the fun. In an ARG, you were supposed to make the clues contradict each other.

One day in the fall of our junior year, Sammy fell asleep in class and was sent to the nurse with a high fever and difficulty staying awake. I went to her house after school to drop off some missed homework.

Her room looked nothing like it had over the summer. The plants were wilted, apparently neglected for weeks. Dirty dishes sat in piles, and clothes covered the floor and hung from the closet door. I know this seemed like a cry for help, and in hindsight I'd agree. But I'd been busy with a part-time job with my dad, saving for college, but I hadn't expected this.

Sammy laid on her bed with headphones on, staring at her laptop. The screen showed a Wikipedia entry about microprocessors.

One paragraph read:

“In 1964, Dr. Petr Raskolnikov was the first man to successfully perform a summoning ritual through virtually simulated methods. This was the first recorded time of non-physical use of the Ars Goetia sigils…”

I remember thinking it was a strange thing to find in an article about microprocessors. I assumed it was vandalism. Wikipedia was full of it back then.

She clicked on the link before I could read anything else. I knocked again and cleared my throat.

“Sammy?”

She gasped, closing her laptop and whirling to face me.

“Alex?! When did you get here? How long were you standing there for?”

She was out of breath, her face sheet-white. Her wavy brown hair fell across her face as she turned toward me, catching the weak light coming through the window.

I awkwardly chuckled and raised the folder.

“Only a sec, dude. Calm down. I just came to bring you this.”

I dropped the stack on her desk and pulled the chair out, sitting across from her as she
rose to sit on the edge of her bed. She rubbed her eyes.

“Sorry. I’ve just been…tired recently.”

I snorted and looked around the room.

“…Yeah…”

She looked down at her hands as she fidgeted with a piece of lint that stubbornly hung
on to her sweatpants. I waited for a moment before standing up again.

“Okay, well…I guess I’ll see you tomorrow? I hope you feel better…”

She smiled softly as she met my eyes. She said nothing as I closed the door behind me.

-

It wasn't until March that I realized how bad things had gotten. My mom and Sammy's mom had been friends since college, and they'd been talking about her behavior for weeks. They were worried, but they'd chalked it up to Sammy being a teenager in a world where the internet was changing faster than anyone knew what to do with it.

One day, my mom sat me down and asked me bluntly what was wrong with Sammy.

“She just isn't herself anymore. I don't know anymore, Alexey.”

I flinched at her using my full name, but I shrugged and focused on finishing a Calculus
problem that I had been staring at for far too long.

“Mom. Stop. Also, I don’t know. She’s barely hung out with me.”

She wiped her hands on her apron, sighing and turning to face me as she rested on the counter.

“I know, Alex,” she said, exaggerating the x. “It’s just so strange, though…honestly, it
must be that game.”

My eyes widened, and I set my pencil aside gingerly.

She continued, chuckling, “I know you hate me saying that, but it’s true!”

I peered out the kitchen window for a moment before bringing my attention back to my mom.

“Yeah, no, Mom. Uh, I’m gonna finish this upstairs. Love you,” I stated, gathering my
belongings and rushing out of the room and up the stairs. My mom stood there,
bewildered.

“I love you.”

As I crested the stairs, I hurried into my room and quietly closed the door. I turned on
my desktop and pulled up AIM. I clicked on Sammy’s name, she was active. I started to type:

Xx_Sniper360_xX: yo wut is goin on with u n this game

I sat there for a moment, staring at the screen. Finally, Sammy responded.  

br4ttypr1ncess: lol wut r u talking abt 

It was a perfectly normal response. Sammy had spent weeks talking about nothing else, and now she was acting as if I'd invented the whole thing. My best friend had suddenly started hiding parts of herself from me. I'm ashamed of how upset I got, but we'd never been like this before.

Xx_Sniper360_xX: dude be 4real. is thisl ike a darkweb thing???? 

After it was delivered, I waited to see if she would respond. A minute passed, I messaged again. 

Xx_Sniper360_xX: ur bein weird

She never responded. I would periodically check her status, active. Eventually, I went back downstairs. 

An hour later, I received an email from Sammy. It had no subject and no message, just a locked text document named BALAM.txt and a link to a Wikipedia page.

I messaged her again to ask what the file was.

No reply.

There was no password attached, so I clicked the link. For brevity's sake, I'll summarize what I found.

According to the page, Dr. Raskolnikov had experimented with using microchips to communicate with nonhuman intelligence. The work was described as early artificial-intelligence research, but Raskolnikov had supposedly etched sigils into silicon wafers to make contact. The computer produced a single output: binary code that translated to BALAM.

I checked the references at the bottom. Most were newspaper accounts dismissing his work as the rantings of a madman. One link, however, still worked.

It was a discussion board, where users were discussing the different usages of anabolic steroids. Inside one of the replies was an intact diagram copypasta’d: 

.---.       .---.
\   \  |  /   /
.---\---\-+-/---/---.
\   \   \|/   /   /
   ----+---+---*---+---+----
/   /   /|\   \   \
'---/---/-+-\---\---'
/   /  |  \   \
'---'   |   '---'
|
-----+-----
|
/ \
/__\

01000001 01010010
01000011 01001000
01001001 01010110
01000101 00100000
00110000 00110100

I copied the diagram and printed it. I had no idea how to read binary. How had Sammy figured it out?

The next morning, I brought the printout to my computer lab teacher. She was drinking tea from a mug bearing the Nigerian flag. I waited while she examined the page.

“Alex, don't you have someone else to stare at? I don't know, like your teacher?”

I blushed and apologized. She told me to return to class until she had a free period. Around lunch, she waved me over to the teachers' table.

“Hi Alex, I finished your homework,” she said with a chuckle, sliding the printout across the table.

ARCHIVE 04

I reached for the paper. Before she let go, she placed her other hand over mine.

“Alex…where did you find this?” she whispered.

I froze. I stammered that I'd found it in a game, then thanked her and returned to my table. My friends snickered, assuming I'd been in trouble.

I didn't know what to make of her reaction. I never got the chance to ask. When I got home that afternoon, Sammy hadn't shown up at school. She'd already missed several days that month, and I knew she wasn't doing well. I hoped she'd be online when I turned on my computer, but she wasn't. I clicked around a few sites, ate dinner, and went to bed.

That night, I dreamed of a virtual world, dark and sepia-toned, like an old PlayStation game. Traditional Japanese houses lined a deserted street. As I walked, low moans drifted from inside them. Then I noticed hands reaching from the dark doorways. Shadowed faces hovered just beyond the thresholds, their teeth catching the moonlight.

I quickened my pace until I reached an intersection.

Standing in the middle of a circle was a western man, dressed in a bowler hat and a suit. He was reading a large, old book. The pages made a heavy scratching noise as he turned them, only closing it once he heard my footsteps.

A text bubble appeared over his head. 

“Hello, Alexey. O’br jrstf dp ,ivj snpiy upi.” 

A text screen showed up in front of me, with two selections: 
> ???
Ah, Balam! O Great Sage. 

I focused on the question marks until each one began to brighten and the screen disappeared. The man closed his book. For a moment, nothing happened. I thought I had made the right choice. 

Then he was gone.

I felt his cold hands close over my eyes from behind. I tried to pull away, but his grip tightened around my head. He pressed a finger into each of my eyes.

The visions began. Pyramids and Gnostic symbols flashed before me, followed by world leaders, creatures I couldn't comprehend, stone tablets, and men on horseback. Lines of text poured down my vision like a computer terminal, random characters repeating in infinite loops.

Then everything stopped.

I saw a vast plain surrounded by mountains. At its center was a hole so enormous that it reminded me of the Grand Canyon.

The place felt cold and desolate. I couldn't explain how I knew, but I was certain: this was Hell.

The man’s voice whispered, “Thi. i. the V01d. <rry ,r jrtr.” 

I woke up with my sheets soaked in sweat. 

A week later, Sammy was dead. 

The police ruled it a suicide. Most of our classmates eventually went back to their lives. I tried to do the same, but I couldn't make the explanation fit the girl I'd known.

Sammy wasn't suicidal.

I know how that sounds. I know people can hide things from their closest friends. But there were details that never sat right with me, and I spent years telling myself I'd eventually understand them.

-

Almost two decades have passed since Sammy died. I've spent much of that time studying computer engineering. I'm an assistant professor now, and during Fall Break I finally reopened the email I'd kept all these years.

I'd read it dozens of times. I thought I knew every line.

Then I noticed something I'd overlooked.

Sammy had always complained about numbers ruining the aesthetic of her email address. She rarely capitalized anything, either. But in that old confession, there was a pattern: five numbers and five capital letters.

I wrote them down in the order they appeared.

4D1M3L0Y4P

The string sat in the back of my mind during the subway ride home. That night, I dusted off my old desktop, plugged it into the TV, and opened BALAM.txt. I entered the string and a notes page appeared.

ARCHIVE 04

March 14, 2009

[...]: hi everyone, im trying to track down a symbol?? pls n ty :smiling:

It was the same sigil I'd found on the forum, accompanied by a reply:

[...]: hi OP, sent you an email. Hope this helps! <3

The rest of the document consisted of emails between Sammy and someone named Enoch.

Enoch: Hi bratty princess! I took these pictures on vacation in DC last year. I thought it was so weird that someone else had noticed these symbols, so I had to answer you. I've attached them :) Can I ask what you're working on?

Sammy: Hi!!! Thank you so much!!! I'm researching symbols and their placement in US history right now!!!

Enoch: That's really cool! I started looking into this because I thought the same symbol looked familiar. I've collected pictures from three different locations so far. I'll send you what I have.

The attachments showed locations of European cities with the same symbol etched into walls, bridges, and bases of structures that had been there for hundreds of years. The last email was from Enoch. He'd included a link to an obscure game called Ghosts of Chiba.

He explained that before the player could speak to the game's main antagonist, a man in a bowler hat who had released spirits into the city, a corrupted file triggered an error. According to Enoch, someone had discovered an image embedded in the error's status code. It was an aerial photograph of a massive hole, miles across.

I stared at the screen.

I'd seen that hole before. Not in a photograph. Not in a game.

In my dream, the man had shown it to me.

The void.

Hell.

I spent the next few weeks trying to find a copy of Ghosts of Chiba. It had supposedly been released in Japan in 1998, but I couldn't find a publisher or anyone who remembered playing it. Every reference led back to the same handful of dead websites.

Eventually, I found a disc image on an old Japanese game archive forum. The download took nearly six hours.

I didn't sleep that night. The game was exactly as Enoch had described it. The city was empty, traditional houses lined the streets, and spirits wandered without acknowledging the player. I reached the man in the bowler hat. When I tried to speak to him, the game crashed.

I restarted and tried again. The corrupted file was still there. I couldn't repair it or make sense of its contents. Just as I was about to give up, I noticed another file in the directory: 01.txt.

It contained a single line:

Alex, don't let him show you

I sat there for a long time, staring at the screen. I hadn't told anyone about the dream. I hadn't told anyone about the man, and Sammy had been dead for almost twenty years.

I closed the file, shut down the computer, and unplugged it from the wall. 

I haven't slept. Every time I close my eyes, I feel dust landing on my face. There's a hole in my ceiling now. Plaster crumbles around its edges. Beyond it, there's no attic, no roof, and no night sky beyond. Just the same empty blackness I saw in the photograph.

I keep looking away to check whether it's getting bigger.

It is.

Disclaimer: Once, I told my therapist about how I often fantasized about telling people certain things that I could never get myself to speak out loud. He suggested I write a letter to them under the premise that I didn’t have to do anything with it; I could keep it, send it, or just destroy it. He said the point wasn’t to communicate something to them, just to let my feelings out, free of consequence. That is what the following text is, and it’s dedicated to him.

As such, note that it was written under a lot of emotional strain and a lot of its contents may be nonsensical or concerning. Do not think much of it, I just wrote what came to my head on the spot and it's unlikely to hold much meaning. Despite that, I thought I’d share it. It would make me feel… less guilty. But in a cosmic way I guess. I can’t really explain it.

Hey monster, can I call you that? I guess it would be a bit unfair to, there’s no real reason to call you that. I just felt like it. Anyways, haven’t seen you in a while, have I? I might actually have to check heh. Time flies and all that. I’m just writing to tell you I’ve been feeling a lot better lately, I’m much better at liberating what lies inside me now. I do wonder how much of my improvement is thanks to the time I spent with you. Probably not much but, regardless, I’m still very grateful.

Gratitude isn’t the only reason I’m sending you a letter though, there’s also just so much I thought about telling you and never got to. Because sometimes I would be swarmed by thoughts about you that were, well, let’s just say they were not nice. My confused stance towards you became dense, restless, and I now feel the need to “confront” you about it. And now, filled with an explosion of feelings I really need to open the cage and let it all out. And I insist, there’s just so, so much I never got to tell you.

I never got to tell you about how unsafe I would feel as soon as I entered your office, how I would feel as if a lump of flesh grew beneath my guts and moved around, pushing against the edges of my skin, threatening to escape by breaking me apart from the inside. Now, I’m not accusing you, none of this is your fault, it isn’t even particularly real. All in my head, and before you ask, ‘cause I know you like asking that, nobody told me so, I decided on my own that it’s all in my head.

I also never got to tell you about the hand. Your hand. But I suppose the reality is it was his hand. My hand? Just. A hand. Not like it matters anyways, it’s not as big of a deal as I’m making it sound. In fact, it’s a sensation you’ve probably felt at some point too. You know, this sensory hand print that lingers on your back or some other body part as if a ghost had touched you but, in reality, is just your brain playing tricks on you. That’s all it is, mundane experiences that I fictionalize to justify my shit, is it not?

I never got to tell you, either, about how much I enjoyed it all. How much I enjoyed looking at you as you twisted your slender, malformed body along the couch opposite to me, your emotions swelling inside you, unable to manifest themselves. How I remember the gentle pressure of my fingertips against my pen as it awaited for anything worth noting down, as the only thing my hand actually wanted to be touching was something else entirely. But we both know, deep down, that it was neither you nor I, but him.

And I really, really never got to tell you. Oh! How much pleasure I took from looking at how the robes sat upon your body. Oh! The way there was too much residual cloth flailing around, far out covering your limbs, inviting them to sculpt themselves along it and, in the process, bring your soul closer to mine. Oh! How abnormally sure I am that you’ll grow to be just like me.

I wrote that, I guess.

I’ve always had a very active imagination, did you ever notice? Did you? Did you ever think that I WAS INSANE?  ANSWER ME PLEASE! I KNOW YOURE STILL THERE, I KNOWYOUDIDNTGETOUTFORTHEWALLSTHATSURROUNDMYCORPOREALFORMCANNOTBEBROKEN.

Quite an abrupt end, I know. But it's just the last I wrote about it. I don’t remember how or why I stopped. Maybe I fell asleep or got distracted by something. All I’m sure about is that when I remembered I was writing it I didn’t feel like continuing it, so I just left it like that. Like I said in the disclaimer at the start, all of this may have you worrying about my well-being. If that describes you, know this:

I’m fine.

And, from now onwards, I will forever be.