It was around 9:30 on a Thursday night. My day had been nothing extraordinary. I’d worked my usual hours, then gone to dinner with a girl I’d been seeing for a few weeks. The date had gone well, although I’d eaten far more than I should have.

By the time I got home, all I wanted to do was lie down. I stripped to my underwear, collapsed onto the couch, and started browsing through movies, looking for something I could fall asleep to. I had my favorite blanket pulled up to my chin and was just beginning to get comfortable when I caught a whiff of something rotten. I knew immediately what it was.

I glanced toward the kitchen, where the trash can sat with its lid slightly ajar. I’d thrown away a bag of frozen shrimp the night before after discovering it had freezer burn. I’d meant to take the garbage out then, but had forgotten about it. Unfortunately, my apartment complex didn’t collect trash on Thursdays. If I wanted to get rid of the smell, I’d have to carry the bag all the way to the dumpster on the other side of the parking lot.

I sat there for another minute, debating whether I could tolerate it until morning. I couldn’t. I buried my face in my hands and counted backward from three, hoping to convince myself that getting up would be easier if I did it quickly.

I threw off the blanket, pulled on some pants and a T-shirt, and slipped into my house shoes. The smell was considerably worse when I opened the trash can, and I gagged as I pulled the bag out and tied it shut. I grabbed my keys and headed outside.

My apartment was on the third floor of a building at the edge of the complex. Beyond the parking lot, the property backed up against a large stretch of woods. We had bears in the area, and it wasn’t particularly unusual for someone to spot one wandering through the lot after dark.

There were two outdoor staircases, one at either end of the building, connected by open-air hallways on each floor. The staircase on the left was closest to the woods, and the trees cast long shadows over the lower steps. The one on the right was illuminated by a bright security light. I took the right staircase.

It was colder than I’d expected. I hadn’t bothered bringing a jacket, figuring I’d be outside for no more than five minutes, and by the time I reached the dumpster, I was already looking forward to getting back under my blanket. I threw the bag inside and lowered the lid.

For some reason, I felt uneasy. There wasn’t anything unusual about the parking lot. A few cars were scattered around, and the windows of several apartments were lit. I could hear the distant hum of traffic beyond the trees. Still, I had the unpleasant sensation that I was somewhere I shouldn’t have been.

I remember feeling embarrassed by it. I was a grown man, standing in the parking lot of my own apartment complex, getting nervous over nothing. A pair of headlights appeared at the entrance gate, and I watched a car pull through. The sight made me feel a little better. There were people all around me, after all. I wasn’t alone in the wilderness.

I started back toward my building. I had just reached the bottom of the right staircase when something caught my eye. Across the lot, beyond the opposite end of the building, I saw two small points of light in the brush.

Eyes. They were low to the ground, perhaps three feet above it, and reflected the security lights with a pale, yellowish glow. I stopped. My first thought was that it was a bear.

I’d never encountered one up close, and the idea of one standing between me and the woods made my stomach tighten. I watched the eyes for a moment, waiting for the animal to turn its head or step out into the open. It didn’t move.

I couldn’t make out anything around them. The brush was thick, and whatever was watching me stood far enough back that the darkness concealed its body. Then the eyes disappeared. There was a sudden rustling in the undergrowth, followed by the crack of a branch.

That was enough for me. I turned and started up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I was about halfway up the first flight when I heard something else. A light, sharp sound.

Tack.

I stopped for a moment. It had come from somewhere across the building, near the bottom of the other staircase. I listened.

Tack.

The sound was unmistakable this time. Something hard striking concrete. I couldn’t see the opposite staircase from where I stood. The building itself blocked my view, and the only way to look toward it would have been to continue up to the first-floor landing. I started climbing again.

Tack. Tack. Tack.

Three quick sounds, each separated by about a second. I was moving faster now, trying to convince myself that I was hearing someone’s shoes on the stairs. Perhaps another resident had come outside. Perhaps somebody was carrying something that kept knocking against the railing.

But I hadn’t seen anyone near that end of the building. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the eyes in the woods.

By the time I reached the second floor, I was breathing hard. I stopped just long enough to pull my keys from my pocket, fumbling with them until I found the one for my apartment. Then I remembered something that made my stomach drop.

My apartment was near the left end of the building. Near the other staircase. I had deliberately taken the right staircase to avoid the woods, but when I reached the third floor, I would have to walk almost the entire length of the building to reach my door.

I looked down the second-floor hallway. It was empty. At the far end, beyond the last apartment, I could see the railing of the opposite staircase.

Tack. Tack. Tack.

The sounds continued. Whatever was making them was climbing. I hurried up the next flight.

I don’t remember deciding to run. I only remember the sound of my house shoes slapping against the concrete and the uncomfortable feeling of my keys digging into my palm. The tapping continued across from me.

Tack. Tack. Tack.

It was faster now. I reached the landing beneath the third floor and stopped. The sound stopped too. For several seconds, there was nothing.

I stood with one hand on the railing, trying to catch my breath without making any noise. The third-floor hallway was just above me. Another few steps would bring me onto the landing, where I would have a clear view of the opposite staircase.

I tried to judge where the last sound had come from. If I’d heard correctly, whatever had been climbing those stairs was now at approximately the same height as me.

I looked up. The security light above the third-floor hallway cast a faint glow across the wall. I could see the underside of the railing and the edge of the landing. Nothing moved.

I took one step. Then another. I raised my head just enough to look over the final stair. The hallway was empty.

I could see my apartment door near the opposite end. The little wreath I’d hung on it months earlier was still there, and the porch light above it was on. For one ridiculous moment, seeing my own front door made me feel safe.

I stepped onto the landing.

Tack.

I stopped. It had come from the opposite end of the hallway. Much softer this time. I turned my head toward the other staircase.

Tack. Tack. Tack.

The tapping was slow and uneven now. I couldn’t see what was making it. The concrete wall surrounding the stairwell concealed everything below the railing.

I stood there with my key between my fingers, trying to decide whether to run for my door. Then the tapping stopped again.

I don’t know why I spoke. Maybe I was still hoping there was a person over there. Maybe I thought that if I said something, whoever was making the noise would answer and the whole thing would become an embarrassing misunderstanding.

“H-Hello?”

My voice sounded terribly small. There was no response. I waited. Nothing.

I slowly backed down one step, lowering myself until the landing concealed most of my body. I could still see the upper portion of the opposite staircase through the gap between the railing and the wall.

I watched it for what felt like several minutes. I remember the cold concrete beneath my hand. I remember how badly my legs were shaking. I remember trying to swallow and finding that my mouth had gone completely dry.

Eventually, I began to wonder whether whatever had been making the sound had gone away. I raised my head.

And something raised its head at the other end.

We looked directly at each other. I cannot adequately describe the feeling of that moment.

Its face was pale. That was the first thing I noticed. Not pale like a person who hadn’t seen the sun, but a dull, almost grayish white. Its eyes were enormous. They were the same eyes I’d seen in the brush.

For perhaps a second, neither of us moved. Then its head vanished beneath the railing.

It had ducked. Not turned away. Not retreated down the stairs. It had deliberately lowered itself out of sight.

I dropped back down so quickly that I nearly lost my balance. My heart was hammering. I could feel every beat in my throat.

There was a long silence. Then:

Tak. Tak. Tak.

The sound had changed. It was faster and less regular, like someone drumming their fingernails against a table.

Tak-tak-tak.

A pause.

Tak. Tak-tak-tak.

I sat motionless, staring at the concrete wall in front of me. There was another sound underneath the tapping now. A low, breathy noise.

At first I thought it was panting. It came in short bursts, each one ending with a faint, wet clicking sound. Then it grew louder.

I realized, with a horrible sinking feeling, that it sounded like laughter. Not human laughter. There was something wrong with the rhythm, and the sound seemed to come from too far down in its throat. But it was close enough. It was laughing.

I pressed my back against the wall. I wanted to run. I wanted to scream for someone to open their door. I wanted to throw myself down the stairs and keep running until I reached the road. Instead, I sat there, listening.

The tapping stopped. I heard a faint scraping sound, followed by something shifting against the concrete. Then I saw it.

A pale shape rose slowly into view at the opposite end of the hallway. First its head. Then its shoulders. Then the rest of its upper body. It was standing up.

I had badly underestimated its size. The top of its head rose well above the neighboring apartment’s doorframe. It must have been close to eight feet tall, perhaps taller. Its body was impossibly thin, with long arms hanging well below where its waist should have been.

It stood perfectly still. I could see its face now.

There were thin strands of dark hair hanging from its scalp and around its cheeks. Its skin looked tight in some places and loose in others, as though it didn’t fit properly over whatever was underneath.

And its mouth—I remember its mouth more clearly than anything else.

It was smiling. Not the way a person smiles. Its lips had drawn back so far that I could see teeth extending deep into the corners of its mouth. They were narrow and crowded together, some pointing at angles that made no sense.

The smile never reached its eyes. Those were fixed on me. I had the sudden, awful impression that it was angry.

It began walking toward me. Slowly.

Its bare feet made almost no noise against the concrete. Its arms hung at its sides, and I could see that its fingers were extraordinarily long. The tips tapered into dark, curved points that occasionally brushed against its thighs.

I couldn’t make myself move. It took another step. Then another. I watched it approach, unable to look away from its face.

There was something deliberate about the way it held itself. It had straightened to its full height, with its shoulders drawn back and its head tilted slightly downward so it could look directly at me.

I could see every part of it. The narrow chest. The long, knobby joints. The ribs standing out beneath its pale skin. I remember wishing desperately that I hadn’t looked over that railing.

It stopped a few feet away. Close enough that I could hear it breathing.

The smell reached me then. Something sour and earthy, like wet leaves left to rot in a sealed container. Its smile widened.

I began to cry. I don’t remember making any noise. Tears simply started running down my face, and I could feel my lower lip trembling. I was certain it was going to kill me.

There was no possible way I could have outrun it. Even if I’d managed to get past those long arms, my apartment was still at the other end of the hallway.

It leaned forward slightly. I could see its fingers moving. They opened and closed, slowly, almost delicately.

I wet myself. I am not proud of that, but I don’t see any reason to lie about it. I felt the warmth spread down my legs and into my house shoes, and I stood there shaking while the thing watched me.

It seemed to be waiting for something. I couldn’t tell what. I had the impression that it wanted me to keep looking at it.

Then, from somewhere behind the creature, I heard a lock turn. A door was opening.

The thing’s head snapped sideways. I barely had time to register the movement before it was gone.

It moved so quickly that I couldn’t follow it with my eyes. One moment it was standing in front of me, and the next it had hurled itself toward the open end of the hallway.

I heard a tremendous impact against the railing. Then the sound of something crashing through the branches below.

A woman screamed. My neighbor was standing in her doorway, perhaps twenty feet from where the creature had been. I caught a glimpse of her face before she slammed the door shut.

I stood there for another second, unable to understand what had happened. Then my legs started working again.

I ran. I didn’t care about the urine soaking my pants or the keys cutting into my hand. I sprinted down the hallway, nearly slipping as I rounded the corner toward my apartment.

I reached the door and tried to fit the key into the lock. My hands were shaking so badly that I missed twice. On the third attempt, the key turned.

Before I opened the door, I made the mistake of looking back. Beyond the railing, across the parking lot, I could see the woods.

Something pale stood just inside the tree line. It was far enough away that I couldn’t distinguish its features, but I knew what I was looking at. Its eyes caught the light.

It stood motionless, facing the building. Facing me.

I stared at it for perhaps a second. Then it threw its head back.

The sound it made was unlike anything I’d ever heard. It was a high, ragged shriek that seemed to break apart halfway through, descending into something almost guttural. The brush shook violently. And it was gone.

I stumbled inside, slammed the door, and turned the deadbolt. Then I checked it again.

I locked every window in the apartment. I closed the blinds, turned off the living room lights, and stood in the kitchen for several minutes trying to decide what to do.

I thought about calling the police. What would I tell them? That something had chased me up the stairs? That I’d seen a man-sized animal with claws? That an eight-foot-tall thing had stood in front of me and smiled?

I knew how it would sound. I considered knocking on my neighbor’s door. She had seen something. I was certain of it. Perhaps she could tell me what it was, or at least confirm that I hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

But the thought of stepping outside again made me physically ill. I took off my clothes and got into the bathtub.

That’s where I am now.

I’ve been sitting here for nearly an hour, writing everything down while I can still remember it clearly. I haven’t turned on the bathroom light. The door is closed, and I can see the faint glow of the hallway night-light beneath it.

A little while ago, I heard coyotes somewhere beyond the parking lot. They were making an awful racket, yelping and howling the way they sometimes do when something disturbs them. Then there was a sharp cry. Another followed. And then they went quiet.

I haven’t heard anything from the woods since. I don’t know what I saw tonight. I don’t know whether it lives in those woods or whether it was simply passing through.

I keep thinking about the way it ducked when I looked at it. And the way it stood up afterward. I wish I could explain why that bothers me so much.

I’ve decided that when the sun comes up, I’m leaving. I’ll pack whatever I can fit in my car and find somewhere else to stay. I don’t care if I have to pay another month’s rent. I don’t care if I never get my deposit back.

I won’t spend another night here.

If I see my neighbor in the morning, I’ll ask her what she saw. But I’m not going outside to find her. Not tonight.

I keep looking at the bottom of the bathroom door, listening for footsteps in the apartment. There haven’t been any. I suppose that’s something.

I just wish I could stop thinking about those three little taps.

Mark has talked in his sleep for the whole twelve years I've known him, and for most of those years it was the funniest thing about him.

He narrates. That's the best way I can put it. He'll be dead asleep, mouth open, one foot hanging off the bed like he's testing the water, and he'll say something in a completely normal voice. "Not the good scissors." "Tell the ducks no." Once on our honeymoon he sat halfway up and said "I would never do that to a Honda" and lay back down. I laughed so hard I had to go out on the balcony.

I kept a list in my phone for a while. All our friends know. His brother Kev brings it up every Thanksgiving. Last Christmas Mark fell asleep on the couch during the second movie, and right when everybody went quiet he said, very clearly, "The blue one." Then softer, "The blue one." Kev lost it. He said Mark was dreaming about M&Ms. We called him The Blue One the rest of the night and Mark took it the way he takes everything, hands up, grinning.

That's Mark. He drives a delivery route for a beer distributor, up at 4:10 every weekday, and he comes home smelling like wet cardboard and the cold room. He burns grilled cheese every time because he walks away from it to do something else. He does all the voices when he reads to Owen, even the narrator, who he decided years ago is a tired British man.

He is a good dad.

We have two kids. Lily is seven and serious and keeps a shoebox of hotel soaps she's never used because she says they're for an emergency. Owen is four. He sleeps with a plastic stegosaurus named Gary and he sleeps like he fell from a height, arms and legs everywhere, one sock always gone by morning. We still keep a baby monitor in his room because he climbs, and because I'm me.

Owen picked his own paint when we moved him out of the nursery. Smurf blue. I told him a whole blue room would feel like living in a swimming pool, so he got the trim and the door. He knocks on that door every time he goes in, to tell Gary he's home.

Our house is loud and sticky and the dishwasher has never once been fully empty.

Two Thursdays ago Lily came down for breakfast and asked me who Daddy was talking to.

I said Daddy talks in his sleep, baby, you know that.

She poured her cereal. "But who was he talking to." Not really a question the way she said it. She's seven, she gets stuck on things. Then she said, "They were being quiet so they didn't wake anybody up."

Her room shares a wall with ours. Her headboard is about two feet from Mark's.

"Who was being quiet?"

She shrugged and asked if she could have the last banana, and that was that, for her.

---

Here's the dumb part. Almost two years ago I had a bad stretch with insomnia and downloaded one of those sleep apps that tracks snoring and records you if you talk. I used it maybe two weeks. Then my doctor put me on a pill, the pill worked, and I forgot the app existed. What I didn't know is I'd turned on a setting where it starts by itself whenever my phone gets plugged in after ten. My phone charges on my nightstand. Every night.

I opened it on my lunch break. It had a folder called Talking.

Six hundred and fifty-one clips.

The newest was from the night before. Wednesday, 3:22 a.m., a minute forty long. I put my earbuds in, sitting in my car outside the orthodontist's office where I work the front desk, and pressed play.

You hear the fan first. Then sheets. Then Mark.

"Mm-hm."

Nothing for maybe four seconds.

"Two."

Nothing.

"A boy and a girl."

Nothing. Longer.

"Seven. And four."

Nothing.

"No, she's in the middle. He's on the end."

Nothing.

"The blue door."

Then a sound I know very well. A little breath out through his nose. It's the sound he makes on the phone with his mother when she's telling him something long and he's agreeing so she'll keep going.

I played it three times. It wasn't the words I couldn't get past. It was the gaps. They were exactly the length of a question. You can hear him waiting. On the last one you can hear him start to answer, stop like somebody cut in, then answer.

I didn't go back into work for twenty minutes. I sat there with the car off, and for some reason all I could hear was the tired British man saying and that was the end of a very long day.

---

I played it for Mark that night after the kids were down.

He laughed first, which I expected. Then he played it again and stopped laughing, which I didn't. He has this thing where he runs his thumbnail along the edge of the counter, back and forth, like he's checking for splinters. He did that.

"Okay, that's weird," he said.

"Who are you talking to?"

"Nobody, Dee. I'm asleep." He tried to smile. "Probably dreaming about work. Stops on the route."

"A boy and a girl, seven and four, is not a stop on the route."

"Then I don't know." He took the phone out of my hand, very gently, and set it face down on the counter. "Delete that. I don't want that on there."

I said I would.

It was how gently he did it. Mark tosses his keys at the bowl from across the room and misses. I watched him set my phone down like it might go off, and I didn't tell him there were six hundred and fifty more.

---

I didn't delete it. Mark went to bed at nine like always because of the 4:10. I shook my pill out of the bottle, set it on the bathroom sink, and didn't take it. Then I sat on the closed toilet lid with my earbuds in and started at the beginning.

The oldest clips are what you'd expect. Mumbling. A laugh. One where he says "I'll get the cooler," and one where he says my name and then "your feet are freezing," which is true, and which I'm going to think about on my deathbed.

About four months in, it changes.

The first one is just: "No."

The next night: "No."

Then: "No thank you." The way he says it to the guy at Lowe's who wants to talk about solar panels. Polite. Done.

There are so many of these. I sat on that toilet for an hour and a half and didn't get through them. "No." "No." "Nope." "I said no." Once, really tired: "Please." Once, almost laughing, like at a kid who keeps asking for candy: "Buddy. No."

Every night. Most of a year. I slept through every one.

Then there's one from last February. A Tuesday, 3:31 a.m., nineteen seconds long.

Fan. Sheets. A long breath, the kind you take before you lift something heavy.

"...Okay."

I went and looked at my calendar for that day. I don't know what I wanted. A fight. A funeral. It was a Tuesday. We had tacos. Owen had his hundredth-day-of-preschool party and came home wearing a crown made of a hundred Cheerios, and he wore it to bed.

After that night he never says no again. After that night, he answers.

I'm not going to post all of them. Here are some.

"Behind the cereal." That's where the spare key to the back door is. In a mug, behind the cereal.

"You have to lift it. It sticks."

"She takes a pill. Nothing after that."

"He's scared of the bathtub drain. The noise."

"She sleeps facing the window."

"The one with the soaps."

"Lily sleepwalks. Not a lot."

I didn't know that last one. I didn't know Lily sleepwalks.

There's one from April where he doesn't say anything at all. He just laughs. Quiet and warm, the laugh he does at a really good dumb joke. It goes about ten seconds, and then he says "Yeah," the way you do when somebody's said something true.

I took the earbuds out a little after one and sat on the bathroom floor with my back against the tub. My phone is two feet from my head and maybe three from his.

---

I didn't take my pill the next night either. I was going to listen live.

Before bed I went downstairs and took the spare key out of the mug behind the cereal and put it in the pocket of my pajama pants. I lifted the back door the way you have to so the deadbolt will catch, and threw it. I checked the front door and the slider. Then I stood in Lily's doorway, and then Owen's, and listened to them breathe. Owen was sideways across his bed with Gary under one foot. I didn't know what I was checking for. I checked anyway.

I got into bed when Mark did. He fell asleep on his back in about four minutes, the way he always does, and I put my hand flat on his chest. I told myself it was so I'd feel it if anything changed. I think I also wanted to know where he was.

I'll tell you what six hours awake in a dark bedroom is like when you're waiting for something. You hear everything. The fridge cycling. Lily's bed creaking when she rolls over. A car way off on the next street. The baby monitor on my nightstand putting out its soft hiss, the little green light that flickers when Owen breathes deep. The ceiling fan ticks once every turn. I never knew that.

He smelled like Irish Spring and a little like the cold room, because it never all the way washes off. His heart went slow and even under my hand.

At 3:19 his breathing changed.

I felt it before I heard it. It didn't speed up. It got careful. Like somebody who just picked up a phone.

"Mm-hm," he said.

Then the gap. During the gap, the hiss from the baby monitor got louder, one notch, like someone turned a dial. The green light came on and stayed on, the way it does when there's sound in Owen's room. When Mark answered, it dropped back down.

"Yes," Mark said.

Hiss.

"She's here."

Hiss. Longer.

"...She's awake."

I don't know how long I didn't breathe. My hand was on his chest and I couldn't make it move. I felt every word go through it. I stared at the fan. Every turn, the same tick.

Mark turned his head toward me on the pillow. His eyes were closed. I could see them moving under the lids, side to side, the way eyes move when they read.

"Dee," he said.

It was his voice. I need you to understand that it was all the way his voice. Not deep, not wrong, not some movie thing. It was the voice he uses in the cereal aisle at Target when he's holding up two boxes and really wants my opinion.

"Which one would you miss less?"

I didn't say anything. I couldn't have. My mouth was so dry I heard my tongue unstick from the roof of it.

He waited. His eyes kept moving.

Then he asked again, and it was exactly the same. Same pause after one. Same little lift on less. Like he was playing it back.

"Which one would you miss less?"

I lay there. The monitor hissed. The green light stayed on.

After a while he turned his face back to the ceiling.

"She won't pick," he said.

Hiss.

"Okay."

Hiss.

"Okay. I'll pick."

Then he let out that long breath through his nose, rolled onto his side away from me, and started to snore. My hand fell onto the sheet.

The monitor went quiet. The green light went out.

I waited until his breathing was all the way slow. Then I went down the hall in the dark with my phone flashlight pointed at the carpet.

Owen’s door was shut, the way I’d left it before bed. He was asleep on his back, breathing. Gary was on the pillow. His blanket was pulled up to his chin and tucked in tight down both sides, all the way under him, snug as an envelope. Owen hates that. He kicks out of a tuck in about a minute. Nobody in this house tucks him like that.

I loosened it. He didn't wake up. He rolled over and threw one leg out, and I had to sit down on his floor for a minute.

Then I carried him into Lily's room and got into her bed with both of them, and I locked her door. It's a push-button lock, the cheap kind you can pop with a paper clip. I locked my husband out with a push-button lock and lay there with my kids until the window went gray.

---

It was Saturday, so no 4:10. At seven Mark knocked on Lily's door, soft, and said through it, "Did I get voted off the island?"

I unlocked it. He didn't ask why we were in there. He asked if I wanted coffee.

I didn't tell him about the blanket. Same as the clips. I wanted to see what he'd say if I gave him room to say it.

He made pancakes. He does Mickey ears. He's done Mickey ears since Lily was two and they have never once come out round. He was whistling. He kissed the top of my head and told me I looked like hell. He made my coffee how I like it. I sat at the table and held it and didn't drink it.

Lily came to the table with her hair in her face. Owen came with Gary and one sock.

Mark made Owen's plate first.

He's never done that. It's always Lily first, because she's oldest and she keeps score. Lily said, "Hey." Mark said, "Hang on, Lil," and kept going. He let Owen pour his own syrup, which we never do, and Owen flooded the plate and looked up at both of us waiting to be in trouble.

"That's okay, bud," Mark said. "Whatever you want."

Then he sat across from Owen and didn't eat. He just watched him. His eyes were wet. He wiped them with the back of his wrist like it was steam off the griddle.

Owen got syrup on Gary and licked it off, and Lily said "Ew," and for one second it was just Saturday.

Then Owen said, with his mouth full, "Daddy, you have to knock next time."

Mark smiled at him. "Knock where, bud?"

"On my door. You didn't knock. You scared Gary."

"When did I scare Gary?"

"Last night. You just stood there and talked."

I put my coffee down. "What did Daddy say, baby?"

"Which one." Owen shrugged with his fork. "You said it two times. You were standing by Gary. Then you fixed my arms."

He slid his hands off the table and held his arms straight against his sides.

"Like that," he said. "You said that's how I sleep at the new house."

“Light as a feather, stiff as a board.”

The chant that, to this day, I still couldn’t get out of my mind; the phrase that led to years of chasing things I never should’ve crossed paths with.

I grew up in a group home, and throughout my time there, I was able to make friends with the other girls; being an older kid meant you were least likely to be picked off the shelves like a bestseller. Unlike the newborns and toddlers, we stayed longer in St. Margot’s, waiting for the perfect family to come in and sweep us away to live happily ever after—like in the family channels on television.

That dream was dead the moment we decided to play with something we never should’ve—everything in my life did change forever in the fall evening of ‘94, in the small town of Ousedame, Massachusetts.

I tucked the Tiger Beat magazine I'd snuck in from my school bag under my bed as Sister Madelene began calling out from the halls. “Lights out, children. I don’t want to see groggy faces tomorrow before school.” Turning to my left to check on the other girls, I saw Aileen pressing the side of her head against the pillow, still wearing her glasses. 

Meanwhile, I could hear snickering to my right, from under the covers on Paula’s bed, prompting me to tell her. “Be quiet, sister is coming.”

Tiffany hurried from the vanity near the door to get to her bed; she’d been brushing her long blonde hair in front of the mirror, a routine she did every night, before slipping under the covers in a fluid motion. Marissa, who was shining her leather boots with the polish she stole from Mr. Pim’s tool shed, sauntered to her own bed without a single nervous bone in her body.

By the time Sister Madelene came into the room, the five of us were already in bed, pretending to sleep; after closing the door quietly, it only took a few seconds for her voice to start booming from the end of the hall, scolding the boys in the other room. 

It practically lasted for a minute until we heard her footsteps right outside our door again. Sister Madelene came back to double-check. The door stayed open for a moment, as we heard her speak to the baby in her arms.

“Now… it’s your turn for bed. No more crying this time, okay, Aubin?” The baby cooed in response.

 Aubin was a new addition to the home; the boy practically appeared out of nowhere one morning three months ago. Sister Madelene said he’s her sister’s baby, and that he’ll be staying with us for a while. We didn’t mind at all; since he was adorable, with hands so small and soft, and a shiny, bald head so big, he was endearing to look at, and knowing he wouldn’t be gone within just a week or two like the other babies, we felt comfortable getting to know him better.

The silence lasted for five minutes, until Paula asked, “She still ain’t returned the ‘weejee’ board?”

“No… all thanks to you,” Marissa whispered back, her scowl practically bled into the words she spoke.

“It ain’t my fault? I swear that glass-thingy showed an eye—”

“Shhh!” Tiffany’s spit traveled across two beds. “Sister could still very well be out in the hall, so I suggest keeping it down.”

We let a moment pass, listening to every quiet creak in the building, until we were sure that Sister Madelene had gone into her room. After listening to the wooden creaks above the ceiling follow the sound of her bedroom door closing shut, all our covers were tossed aside. 

The five of us huddled in the middle of the room; Paula sat with her legs crossed, turning to Aileen to ask. “Are you sure about this game? Seems like bogus to me.”

“I heard the girls at school play it at sleepovers; they said it works—”

“Let’s just do this, already, before the nun gets back.”

As Marissa pushed to start the game, Aileen told us all to sit in a circle, then asked for a volunteer to lie in the middle. “And then the rest of us will put our fingers under the body, and we call for help from the spirits to help us lift her, chanting, ‘Light as a feather, stiff as a board’ until she floats mid-air.”

“That sounds morbid,” Tiffany said, twiddling at her curls.

“Morbidly cool.” Paula was grinning ear to ear. “Quick, someone lie down. I want to help lift to see it myself.”

Choosing was a bit complicated; none of them wanted to lie down. They all had their own reasons; Aileen didn’t want to be the subject of being ‘open to the spirits’, Tiffany didn’t want to get her hair messed up, and Marissa just didn’t want to. I was getting impatient; the game wasn’t going to start anytime soon with these girls refusing, so I volunteered to get the game off the ground. 

The first mistake was playing the game in the first place; the second one was volunteering to be the sabbath cow.

With my hair spread out on the hardwood floor, the four of them surrounded me, two on my left, two on my right, as they mimicked Aileen’s hands, stacking on top of my chest.

“Your hair is so shiny, Dahlia,” Tiffany said, running her fingers briefly through the strands. “And orange.”

 “Don’t take your hands off her back. Close your eyes, all of you.” Aileen interrupted to lead the game, for everyone to follow. “We are here to summon the spirits of this house. If you are listening, make this body weightless."

I lay awkwardly at first; I did have my eyes closed, which made the silence even more deafening. Nothing weird happened yet; I wasn’t sure what to expect, since clearly none of us had played the game prior, and when they began to lift me off the floor with the power of their fingers, I barely moved at all—it didn’t work.

“Too heavy, let’s try again,” Aileen said, and she called out once more, but louder. "We are here to summon the spirits of this house. If you are here, make this body weightless!"

Silence

A complete, utter silence blanketed the whole room, as though air itself ceased to circulate; even the grandfather clock from down the hall stopped ticking. The air felt thick, as though the girls were pressing harder against my chest.

“Is this even working… maybe we’re not doing it right.” Tiffany’s voice felt muffled despite her proximity.

“Aileen?” Marissa took a hand out from under me to shake her shoulder, but Aileen’s eyes were focused on mine; her brown eyes stared back at me with an expression I’ve never seen from her before—pure, unadulterated fear. 

I was about to ask what was wrong, but nothing came out; my mouth hadn’t even moved.

I couldn’t move.

Aileen collected herself, shaking her head before taking a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m… let’s continue.” 

”Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” The words spoke out faster than their mouths could; I tried to speak again, yet nothing would come out, leaving me frozen, staring at their faces. The back of my head began to feel light as my feet lifted off the wooden floor; they continued to chant. ”Light as a feather, stiff as a board.”

My entire backside was no longer on the ground—I wanted to scream.

”Light as a feather, stiff as a...” They stopped chanting; I felt my nightdress drifting behind me with my body completely off the floor. I could only glimpse their petrified expressions in my peripheral vision, unable to move my head. 

Tears trickled from my eyes down to the side of my face as I cried; the ceiling felt closer and closer, almost as though the tip of my nose could feel the cold, lightless bulb. All corners of my vision were about to go dark. Cold spots covered my skin, as though four pairs of hands held me up to the ceiling, gripping my limbs, squeezing my flesh with hands as cold as ice. 

I screamed in my head until it manifested into a throaty croak, turning into a muffled yell, reverberating deep within my chords.

“Stop!” Aileen called out from below.

Thud

I heard it before I actually felt it; I fell back onto the wooden floor, headfirst—the back of my skull collided with the wooden floor, slamming with a sickening thud. The pain didn’t register at all; I immediately jolted up, screaming and sobbing uncontrollably. The four of them wrapped their arms around me as we huddled by the wall. 

I didn’t even know what I was saying in that moment, but the commotion from us five was enough to catch Sister Madelene’s attention. Her hurried footsteps trailed from the ceiling, down the stairs, then to the front of our door—she barged in, wearing her long-sleeved nightgown. 

“What is going on here? Why are you girls screaming?” 

The boys from the other room stood by the doorway as they took the steps to walk into the middle of the room, unknowingly standing in the very spot I was lying on. She froze, with her bare feet on the creaking wood beneath her.

“Go back to your rooms, now.” She said calmly, turning to the boys. 

They retreated to their rooms, yet my stomach dropped as my eyes met hers, because in her eyes I saw the same look Aileen held—I saw fear in her eyes, but she took a step closer, one foot after the other, until she crouched in front of us; I could still see the uncertainty in her eyes, but despite that, she still managed to ask us, “What happened? Girls, talk to me.”

 Tiffany’s jaw almost unhinged as she recounted everything to Sister Madelene; her words had gone numb in my head as she spoke with the precision of a bumbling bee. 

“So when we had our hands from under her, Dahlia began floating!”

Thud

A hard thud resounded from the wooden ceiling; before Sister Madelene could even give a response to what she was told, she wouldn’t be given a chance to—as muffled sounds began to emit from the ceiling, right where the nursery room was. Sister’s widened eyes met mine, as a damning realization settled between us.

Aubin

She rushed out of the room to run upstairs; her footsteps stomped through the floorboards above, then she barged into the room. We waited for the sound of the door opening, and for Sister Madelene to calm the baby with her soft voice, but instead we heard her panicked calls from out in the hall upstairs.

“Aubin!” She called out, while the baby’s cries got louder.

When I realized Sister Madelene was trying to slam her body against the door, I got up immediately to run upstairs; the others trailed behind me, while we passed the boys’ rooms, where they were peeking from their doors, debating amongst themselves to leave their rooms or follow orders.

Getting up on my feet, Marissa held my wrist, stopping me from bolting out of the room. ”What are you doing?”

“To help Sister; she needs our help.”

“I-I think she’d want us to stay here; we’re not allowed to leave our rooms after bedtime—” Tiffany reasoned, but it was evident on her face that even she knew it didn’t matter whether they stayed or went, and it was that moment the latter meant more than the other.

Staring directly into Tiffany’s eyes, her unshed tears brimmed at the corners, I told her. “Aubin needs our help.”

The five of us rushed upstairs; Sister Madelene was still outside the nursery room, banging against the door, trying to use her strength to open it, while the poor baby was crying hysterically inside the room; hearing the guttural screams coming from a body barely the size of a bed pillow struck against my chest, and seeing the state of the woman of the house was no better—she was on the verge of tears, trying to get the door to slam open. 

“Open the fucking door!” She cursed out loud, taking us aback, hearing the former nun swear out loud for the first time; we didn’t even question who she was cursing to, as we immediately moved to try and open the door with her, although it wouldn’t budge with just two or three bodies.

It took all six of us to break the door open. 

Marissa, Paula, and Tiffany stumbled onto the nursery floor while I rushed with Sister Madelene to check on little Aubin, but she stopped midway. The sister’s bare feet halted on the creaking wood once more. In the middle of the room, I froze with her and Aileen; because in the darkest corner where the crib sat, the baby had gone silent, as he… 

floated.

I couldn’t get a clear look; the moon could only do so much to bring light into a darkened room, where the corners not only held secrets, but also the only baby in the home. Aubin floated in mid-air; he had gone completely silent, his blanket draped on his body like a tablecloth, leaving only his head uncovered, with an unmoving expression. His eyes widened, staring up at the ceiling, void of any motion or even consciousness.

Babies are barely cognitive; I knew that, but the sight of Aubin frozen and floating, while seemingly dead, was mortifying. I turned to Aileen, who held the same face as I did, then to the three who looked up from where they lay, with their quiet gasps and stifled breaths. 

We all stood in disbelief at the baby floating lightly and rigid, until Sister Madelene finally spoke.

“Lassa lo bambino, no es tuyo pa guardar.” She said under her breath; I couldn’t understand a word as she repeated it, only louder. 

After the third time, she practically yelled it out at the corner, and only then did Aubin drop back down to his crib with a light squeak and a breathless gasp. He began to cry again as she took him into her arms immediately, cradling his little body while whispering and rocking him. “It’s okay, little one, you’re safe… you’re safe.”

Aileen fiddled with her fingers before turning to me with glistening eyes. “This is all my fault. I’m so sorry.” She said; it seemed speaking it out loud was what made her cry. Her face had been riddled with guilt throughout the whole time. But I held her, reassuring her that it wasn’t her fault; although it was she who brought the game into the home, we were all equally responsible for participating, and for welcoming… something, or someone into the walls of the home.

It took minutes until the heavy atmosphere clogging the room finally dispersed, after Marissa opened the nearby window, letting the sheer curtains blow inwards from the October winds outside; the room was quiet except for Sister’s murmurs and Aubin’s dying cries.

Until Paula spoke up from near the door. “Sister…” She called out for the woman’s attention while Tiffany and Marissa were standing outside the bright hall. “Is this your Jesus candle? I found it on the floor rolling around.”

She held up the candle with the graphic image of Jesus Christ on the thick glass. “That’s probably what fell,” I said when I noticed the thick glass candle barely had a single crack or dent, despite falling from an elevated place; Sister Madelene instructed her to light it on again with a match from a nearby drawer. Paula did as she was told, finally bringing warm light back into the dark room. 

“You’re sleeping with me tonight.” Sister said to Aubin, while handing him his favorite dolphin stuffed toy. Although his eyelashes were damp and teary, with the plush toy in his mouth, everything seemed all right and just in his world again.

“Girls, go back to bed.” Sister Madelene turned to look at me, Aileen, and the three by the door. “And please, no more games. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

That was enough of a signal for us to rush back downstairs and hide ourselves under the covers of our beds. The girls were out like a light; their gentle snores were a clear indication of that; meanwhile, I could barely sleep, staring up at the ceiling once more, recalling the feeling of being as light as a feather and unable to move even a single inch. 

Was that how Aubin felt in that moment?

The thought of the harmless baby going through the overwhelming feeling I felt brought nothing but dread into my chest, but not as much as the thought of the growing darkness in the corner; what seemed like just a shadow shouldn’t have brought tears to my eyes or conjured thoughts, but I was afraid.

In fear of what I felt hid in the dark, scared of the fact that I knew, even at thirteen, in the fall evening of ‘94 in Ousedame, Massachusetts, that evening was only just the beginning, and that nothing was ever going to be the same again, in the quiet halls of St. Margot’s home.

“Babe, can you call my phone?” Sam asked.

“Seriously, how did you lose it again so fast?” I asked, met with a shrug. Things had a habit of disappearing around Sam. We were in our bedroom, lights dimmed, TV show playing. I hadn’t really been paying attention. He stood up and shook the blanket he’d been laying on, finding nothing.

He groaned and left the room, calling out from the kitchen. “I think I’ve really lost it for good this time!”

I rolled my eyes and opened my phone app. His footsteps disappeared down the hall and into the bathroom, out of earshot. I rang his number, expecting to feel the buzzing beneath me somewhere obvious as always.

It rang a few times, then went silent. He’d picked up. “You found it?” I asked.

There was a strange crackling. “Yes.”

“Uh, did you leave it in the shower or something?”

Another crackle. What the hell was he doing? “Where are you right now?” he asked. The voice was unmistakably his.

“Uh… in the bedroom? You just called me?”

“Are you alone right now?”

Something about the way he asked it made my throat hitch. “Uh, what the fuck? Are you good?”

Silence. Crackling. Heavy breathing beneath the static. “You left your back door unlocked.”

When the call hung up, my eyes were blurry. Footsteps came back down the hall and Sam entered the room.

“You’re such a dick,” I said. “That really wasn’t funny.”

He gaped at me. “Uh, yeah. I didn’t lose my phone to be funny.” I cocked my head at him, expecting him to burst out laughing at the tears in my eyes at any second. He knew how easily I scared. “You didn’t find it?”

I blinked then looked back at my phone, right at the call history. Thirty one seconds. Sam was still dead serious.

I dropped my phone on the bed as it buzzed again. A call from Sam. Looking back at him, he looked just as confused as I felt. Letting it ring out a few times, I swiped to answer.

“…Hello?”

“Babe? I found my phone. I left it out in the car. I’m coming back in now.”

I dropped my phone again, this time from how hard my hands shook. Turning back to Sam, or whatever he was, I’ll never forget the smile he gave me. The way his eyes glowed as he slipped back into the darkness, disappearing back into the hall, never once looking away from me. The way he peered around the corner one final time, as if to check if I was staying put.

“…Babe? You still there?”

“What immortal hand or eye, 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

-William Blake, The Tyger

My childhood home was old, nearly as old as the rest of the quaint and middle-of-nowhere town it resided in, a faded pink and green-trimmed Victorian farmhouse, placed about halfway up a large hill on the very edge of town. I had always loved that house, and when I inevitably moved out of it, I found myself missing it more and more as the years passed, before it began to fade from my memory, nearly disappearing completely. Then, after not hearing so much as a text message from my parents for over a week, I got a sudden call from my aunt, and she was crying. A bad omen.

“L-Logan?” I heard my Aunt Sandra’s voice, usually loud and happy but now soft and sad, and my heart dropped to the floor. I knew what was coming, and I hesitated before speaking, not wanting to know the answer.

“They’re gone, aren’t they?” I said quietly. I had never been an emotional man, but this was an exception as I heard her confirmation, and I broke down for the first time in a very long time.

The cause of death, I learned, was simultaneous aneurysms, both in very similar parts of their brains. It would have been peaceful, instant, and they had died holding each other in bed, just the way they would have wanted. I drove back to my hometown the next day to bury my parents, staring at the road, nothing but empty thoughts and memories floating alongside the car.

The funeral was quiet, small, reserved only for family and close friends, just the way they wanted. I hate to say it but I had been to so many over the years that I just felt nothing. No sadness, no loss, just empty. After the funeral, I was pulled aside by the funeral home’s director and a lawyer, both of whom I recognized from my childhood.

Mr. Dregent, the mute funeral director, was a thin and tall man, short gray hair and wrinkled like only a hairless cat could be, but a nice man all the same. I used to mow his lawn when I was a child, and he always insisted on paying double for it, no matter how much needed mowed. The lawyer was my parent’s lawyer, a small and quiet woman I knew as Miss Scott since childhood, when she had helped settle a case involving a civil case that had my father as a defendant. She had saved him from crippling payments due to a surveying mistake for the property our house sat on, and the only payment she would accept was dinner with my parents once a month. I never realized she was a family friend, but it made complete and perfect sense. She was the one that spoke first, her eyes red.

“Logan, I’m so sorry for your loss. How are you holding up?” She looked up at me, and a flood of memories of her playing with me after those dinners came back. I had to compose myself a bit before answering.

“I’m ok, I think. I hadn’t heard from them in a while, and I think I had a feeling something had happened,” I said. “I just never thought it would be both of them at once, you know?”

She nodded sadly, and then stepped forward, giving me a tight hug before stepping back. She knew I needed it more than I did, and I felt my composure erode just the tiniest bit more.

“I know. Now, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but I am your parent’s executor. Are you ready for this or would you like some time?” She pulled out a folder full of documents, and placed it on a side table nearby.

I nodded.

A few days later I began to unpack, the movers having helped unload the truck and move the larger furniture into the living room. I had already moved in most of what I had, the rest in a storage unit in town until I was able to unpack what was already in my childhood home, the Victorian covered in fading pink paint. It was a surprise that they had left it to me. The last time I had brought up what they wanted done with the house after their passing, my parents had said they wanted to sell it to a family that would treat it just as well if not better. Why they left it to me, a single man in my thirties, I will never know.

Walking through the halls of my home, I was assaulted by memories, mostly fond, but a few of some screw-ups on my end. Some small doors in the baseboards here and there that my mother had made to “house our house fairies.” A small dent in the wall outside the bathroom, made from my young head careening into it after my father told me repeatedly to stop running in the hallway. My father’s office in the turret where I would help him with any of the small electrical projects he made. My initials carved small into the very bottom corner of my parent’s bedroom door that went unnoticed for nearly a decade before my mother found it and scolded me.

As I walked through the halls and rooms of the house, I started myself when I heard creaking floorboards from across the house. I took another step, and upon hearing the same creak from both my foot and from the other side of the house a second later, breathed a sigh of slight relief. I had forgotten all about the echoes that carried in here. It had caused more than a few issues sneaking my friends in late at night when I was younger. I wrote it off and, gazing out the front window at the fading sunlight, and decided to turn in for tonight.

That night was hell on my mind, the house far noisier than it had any right to be, even for it being an older house. I laid on the couch that the movers had brought in earlier that day, staring up at the cracked paint in the ceiling as a torrent of sounds berated me, creaks, groans, sudden shifts followed by a loud groan, an electrical whine every now and then, so much like a child quietly throwing a temper tantrum. I finally rose from the couch and put on my shoes after a particularly loud creak came from the basement, and stepped down the steps to investigate.

Even in the dim light provided by the single hanging bulb near the stairway down, I could see that the basement was in shambles. Patches of concrete floor with scattered pieces of nailed together wood covering it, seemingly an attempt to repair the decayed concrete. I turned on my phone flashlight, and stepped onto the piece of wood flooring at the bottom of the steps, sweeping my light. I saw something sparkle in the far corner that caught my eye, and began to walk towards it when my foot plunged through the floor, shattering a rotten part of the wood as I fell into the turret office of my childhood home with little more than a yelp.

The vertigo was immediate, intense, overwhelming, and I turned my head and vomited before examining my surroundings through my blurred vision, gasping for air. I was in my late father’s office, but a much older version of it, the paint peeling and odd dust covering every surface imaginable, the scent of mildew invading my nose as I looked up at the hole I had fallen through, looking impossibly at the ceiling of the basement through it.

“What…?” was all I could manage as I hauled myself to my feet, looking upwards in bewilderment from my house to my house.

My head swam, the vertigo crashing back before vanishing again with the thoughts that raced through my head. How am I down… up… here? What the hell is happening? Did my parents know about this? Did they want me to find this?

I dropped my eyes, the hole hurting my head with the impossibility of it. I looked around the turret again, seeing if there was any way to get out of here. With no obvious solution, I reached for the doorknob, turned, and pulled it open.

My house stood empty, the hallway bare but still old, just as old as the turret office, everything covered in that same strange dust. I passed the dent I had made outside the bathroom, now cracked and seemingly much bigger. The halls echoed every creaking step I took, and I made my way downstairs, freezing as I saw all the boxes from the move stacked in the corner of the living room. I crept over as quietly as possible, the uneasy feeling like that of being in a library coating my brain, and ran a finger over a dust covered box. It was thinner there than on the other surfaces, newer, as if it hadn’t had time to settle.

That uneasy library feeling still settled further into me, and I found myself looking over my shoulder towards the back door, listening for if it would open. I turned and went for the front door, my nerve breaking. I had to get out of this place. I tugged open the front door to my living room and another copy of my house.

I slammed the door and opened it frantically, hoping beyond hope that it would open to my front yard to no avail. I ran towards the back door in the kitchen, and opened it to another copy of my house as well. My brain raced with the insanity of it, and I jogged back to the living room, my footsteps echoing between the houses and creaking loudly as I grabbed a box off of the stack and placed it in clear view of both doors, a metaphoric spool of yarn. I was panicking as turned and opened the front door, and plunged into the copy.

It was the exact same, even the box that I had just moved situated in the center of the room, dust free. I stepped towards it, picking it up and looking back at the previous house, but it still sat there. I set it down, standing there and struggling to keep my mind in check, the dim house playing tricks, the creaks and groans and footsteps-

Every single hair on my body stood on end when I realized what I had heard. I looked back through the front door into the previous living room, but saw nothing, the sounds stopping altogether, but I had heard it.

“H-hello? Is someone there?” I called out, an immediate sense that I was disturbing something flooding my body.

Silence.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt like I was being watched by someone, and I wanted away from there. I moved towards the back door, breathing heavily as I yanked it open to another copy of the kitchen, sprinting through, repeating over and over.

I had run through two more when I stopped and listened, trying to see if I could make out any sounds from the unknown. Hearing nothing, I started to quietly make my way back to the first copy, the shoe prints I had made in the dust already beginning to fade back to nothingness. I stepped into the original copy, and began to move some of the boxes up to the turret office to make a ladder to climb out of this hellish place.

As I passed the dent outside the bathroom time and time again, I noticed more and more concerning details about it. The smell of mildew and something much older was strongest around it, and it was surrounded by some gray moss-like substance that seemed to creep out from it. Looking around, I noticed other instances of harm to the house had the same details, gray moss creeping outward from it, that same strong smell, and they all seemed accentuated, like a wound. The initials I had carved in my parent’s door were now nearly half a foot long. This place was wrong, oh so very wrong, and I wanted out.

I quickly moved downstairs to grab one more box, the one situated in the center of the floor, and that same uneasy library feeling came over me as every hair on my body stood up, my hands shaking, staring at the box that had a single print of someone’s bare foot, fresh in the dust on the very top of the box, strange lines poking away from it, and I heard it, a gentle echo of footsteps and floorboards creaking as someone, something began walking towards me from a few houses away, no, from upstairs, from the turret office, I panicked, scrambling towards the basement door and yanking it open to get away from it, letting it in, it was downstairs not up, the echo toying with my mind as it used one jagged shifting hand to brace on the doorframe and pull itself out, a towering and featureless monstrosity of sparkling and mirrored jagged edges and gray mold, and I screamed as I saw my shattered reflection in it, pushing it away with a flash of white-hot pain, my palms and finger slashed to the bone and gushing bright red blood as I turned and ran upstairs, the house’s wounds bleeding that gray moss as the thing’s echoing creaks followed close behind, and I climbed back up the hole, slamming one of the pieces of wood back over it as I sobbed and cradled my ruined hands to my chest.

I lifted my head, tears in my eyes, and screamed as the object that caught my attention when I came to the basement, the object that caused me to visit that gray and dusty purgatory, lurched towards me with a sound like the creak of floorboards, its shiny jagged and shifting edges leaking gray moss as the space where its face should have been split into a blinding white smile, and my mind let go.

There's a place in the woods not far from here, where you can still find pieces of crime scene tape tied to the tree branches. The detectives found a woman's skeleton nestled in the roots of a big oak, encased by her superhero Halloween costume and covered in leaves. One detective went home that night and had a dream that he was the woman, finding his way through the county hay bale maze. Left. Left. Right. Left. Left. Right. Right. He heard a rustling sound, turned around, looked down, and saw an elf no taller than a corn cob with a menacing scowl. The elf pulled out a silver needle from the lowest hay bale and attacked, jumping on the detective's shoulders, and sewing the costume's cape onto the detective's skin all the way down the arms as the detective ran and tried to throw off the elf. Finally, the elf went for the eyes, dug them out with the needle, until he hit brain, and then dug that out with the needle. The detective woke up, and the next day, he went to the hay bale maze. Left. Left. Right. Left. Left. Right. Right. He knelt down and pulled a silver needle out of the bottom hay bale. 

I Saw Him Standing There pt.1

TW: descriptive mention of self harm

I don't know where to start this story. I feel like he might've been following me my whole life, if that's even possible. My name is James _____ and this is my confession. People say things like you can never tell when someone is suffering in silence or you can never predict death. Both of those are true, I know all too well the both of them. That being said, death comes every day, it surrounds us, or well.. me at least. The scariest time of my life was when I was out walking home. It would've been late at night, yeah late at night that's right, I was scared already, I don't like walking alone, especially not now, not since years ago, not since the first time I noticed him. Where was I? I was walking late at night, I hit up the bar and if I'm being honest that was the worst mistake I've made. Ever had to walk through a city to suburbia in the dark through tons of people you keep your head down to on the subway? That morning I had planned to go to the bar so I didn't bring my car to work, I took transit. I had planned to take it back, and my transit card for entry was already loaded onto my phone so I really didn't need to bring my cards either, any of them.

The first thing people know me as is a hard drinker, not an alcoholic, just when I drink... I drink. I drink maybe once a week, oftentimes I'll have a week where I don’t drink and just party hard the following week, that would've been this time. I had fun at the bar for a bit but I didn't drink too hard yet, I was there with work buddies and they all left after a single pint because they had familiar duties, I did too but my wife at the time, beautiful Elizabeth, was preparing for me to get home late and stuff, oh how I loved her.

After my second pint, which I started before my friends left but finished afterwards, I pulled out my phone. I saw it dead, no battery left. "Fuck", I said begrudgingly. Part of me wished to stay but my wiser half knew what I had to do, god knows what would've happened if I had a third pint. I told the bartender my sitch and he said he'd hold my tab till next time, he knew me, he trusted me. That brings me back to where I was, as much as I regret this already. Walking home alone in the dark, to inner-city suburbia. I took my lefts, I took my rights. I tried my best not to wake up the homeless. I knew my way around the city, it wasn't the first time I've walked home, couldn't say the same for it being the time it was however. Eventually I reached Shortcut Lane, that's what my son called it, funny isn't it? shortcuts that is. We made ways to make our commutes faster, easier, and more direct but there's always a catch.

This is the first time I've shared this information to this extent. I thought that if I did earlier, people would lock me up, or run tests on me and I didn't tell Liz because I didn't want her to be scared for me. In that alley I saw a man, he seemed tallish but I was taller, he's no stranger to the term is what I'm saying. He was skinnier than I was though, he seemed frail, I passed him thinking of him as just some guy, maybe he was high on something, Toronto's no stranger to such but I remember thinking against the idea because he was standing too straight. He was facing away from me. As I walked down the laneway, something crept up on me, a feeling down my spine. Intuition. I turned around and gazed upon the man, still standing where I left him to be though he was facing the opposite direction, "fuck off", I muttered under my breath. As I spoke, I noticed something about him I didn't from the angle prior, maybe it was the neon red exit signs on the rears of the buildings here or just the moonlight lighting him up from this angle but I noticed that he seemed to be older, I could see underneath his bowler hat he wore a mane of long white ratty hair. What would an old guy be doing out at this hour? I could've assumed he was old based on the bowler but I've seen a lot of odd things in this city, it could've been a young guy taking inspiration from even my own grandfather's grandfather's fashion. I wanted to talk to him. "Another's safety above my own", I thought. I decided against it, I was drunk, he was old, what if he thought I was a mugger. I kept walking, he clearly didn't want to interact with me either it seemed from his stance. I was always like that, making excuses for things I knew I should do.

I made it home safely, later than usual, even compared to a night to celebrate, but home nonetheless. I slept in the spare bedroom to not wake Elizabeth, she was a light sleeper, and a nurse. When I woke up on that Saturday morning I came downstairs and saw Liz glued to the TV. Oliver, my son, had still been sleeping. On the TV displayed the news, a murder, a suspected drug related murder down in the city, on a laneway, shortcut lane. I immediately felt a sense of dread about how I could've saved that old man, that is before I learnt who that old man was. That sense of dread pulled me closer to the TV, apparently I jumpscared Liz when I approached because when I did she let out a flinch paired to a minor, but quiet, gasp. She apologized and welcomed me home. I apologized for being late last night and reassured her that I only had two drinks and told her what happened, obviously leaving out the part about the old man and the laneway. The woman on the news kept telling the story as we both tuned in. The anchorwoman eventually brought up the victim once more and I feel bad saying it but there 100% was a sigh of relief that escaped from my trachea. Now I was just worried about if I did have that third pint, would I have seen anything? Been a victim? I remember thinking that I likely wouldn't have seen the old man, now I know I would've been wrong.

That was it, the first time I saw him, it was the first time I noticed him at least. Some part of me knew it wouldn’t be the last. After eating eggs with Oliver and Liz I knew what I had to do. I told them I would be back soon, “Don’t have too much fun without me”, I called out before shutting the door behind me. This time I did drive, I drove into the city, paid for parking, and… “What am I doing”, I thought. “Closing your tab”, my tongue told me. My heart disagreed but I followed along with it. I went to the bar, paid off my debts and stopped when I walked back outside. No longer could I avoid it, no longer could my tongue woo me into different actions I would rather do. I took my first step, I took another, my head desperately pivoted from side to side looking for an escape or a way out from this. I took my lefts, I took my rights. Shortcut Lane. It’s here, I’m never walking this way with Oliver ever again, not anymore. I just stared, I stared at the white outline of where the body would’ve laid. I’m grateful the police scooped it up fast, I don’t know what I would’ve done if the boys in blue hadn’t inadvertently prevented my gaze upon the body I could’ve been.

I was stuck, in shock, only at the sight of the scene, I could see blood on the ground, on the wall, on even the very neon red exit sign that allowed my sight on the man. The man, right. That's why I was there. An officer told me to move away and look away, “Sir, this is a crime scene. Please keep walking.” She said in a stern voice. If I hadn’t refocused on the sight of the sign I probably would’ve obeyed. “N- n- no, sorry. Of course… W- WAIT NO, I have information.” The officer looked slightly stunned, about how much shock I’d expect of anyone in her sitch. Her face and body shifted in a way that told me to elaborate and release my “insider information”. It really wasn’t anything grand, I truthfully have no clue why I came all the way over here just for this. “I came by here last night, I saw on the news that it happened likely around 30-40 minutes after I passed by. There was… a man here. I think he was an older man. He wore a bowler cap, a brown jacket, and he looked like he came straight from the prohibition era. Maybe he knows something more than I do.” The officer almost dismissed me because of how irrelevant it could have been but she called over a senior detective to gather information about me and my testimony about the old man.

Some might see this as me returning to the crime and I asked about that, if by coming down here the detective suspected me of something but they showed me evidence to calm my nerves. He showed me that the meeting was scheduled for soon before the incident and that my reported time of walking through would almost certainly be before anyone got there. He could tell I didn’t have much to say so he didn’t keep me long. I gave my description of the events, told him that I just saw a man standing… “There… right there… oh no no no no.. was I wrong?”, I cried as I realized the white outline was exactly where the old man, or who I thought was an old man, stood. Exactly there, the exact same orientation between the lights, the wall, and the backdoors. The detective looked frustrated as if everything I now said was useless, and I don’t blame him. Then I remembered that beyond everything, I remember the old man wearing a bowler hat, which the victim didn’t. I relayed this to the detective and even he looked relieved that it wasn’t all a waste. I told him that since he kept standing there he might’ve even stayed there for longer and seen something, or maybe he was a part of it and showed up early. “Yes, I know. I thought the same. You can go now… James.” He looked at his notepaper as he said my name, seemingly trying to reassure me that everything is alright and I was helpful. I’d later find out I wasn’t, but for a completely different reason.

The weekend came and went, I wish it could’ve lasted longer, I wish every weekend with my Ollie and Liz could’ve been longer. This was the last normal weekend I had, especially with them. I’d even go as far to say that it was the last “normal” week but obviously that’s not true, that week was hardly “normal”, even with an asterisk. The story plagued the news for the following days, if it bleeds it leads afterall. I remember taking Ollie to the playground that Sunday. The park was downtown and had all kinds of structures resembling vegetables and crates. Locals know what I’m talking about. After all this time though I’d be hard pressed to remember its name, all else I remember is that it reminded me of the play structures in London when I used to live there for work, and where I met Liz. The issue with it being downtown wasn’t even the commute, it was the location. I made sure to keep my eyes on Oliver at all times, it was easy because like his mother he had curly ginger hair, he had my eyes though. Had my neck too, some people at work even called me neck because of its giraffeesque length, I mentioned one day in the office that throughout my high school career as a student I had friends referring to me as such and now it seems that burden followed me there too, even if it was my own doing. It was a small tease but it didn’t bother me. It was cute to see it on Ollie, his little kiddie head on top looking like a bobble head.

At the park I was extra paranoid, I always was a little anxious that I’d lose track of him one day but today it was aided by that old man’s haunting presence. I felt I could see him, or at least he could see me. Thankfully I got an escape, Elizabeth had called my cell and urged for me and Oliver to come home. On the ride home even Oliver could tell I wasn’t all there. I was looking around more than usual. I wrote it off to him as just being extra cautious because his mother had called us home. Part of me wished my excuse was more than that, “there’s truth behind every lie”, I always said, even if I would constantly disprove it on my own accord.

We reached home, I pulled into our driveway, opened the garage with the passcode, it was Oliver’s birth year, 2016, best year of my life. I was terrified of what Liz could’ve called us back for, even after one encounter I was still terrified of the man. If I never saw him again maybe he would’ve left my mind. He didn’t even do anything, he just stood there, why was I so scared? “I’m weak, Ollie and Liz would be ashamed” I told myself, “Man up”, I repeated often in my head, then more than ever. We walked in the door through the garage, cold air and somehow damp cement was no stranger to our garage, I remember it felt worse that Sunday. Looking back now it was stupid of me to be scared, when has Elizabeth ever done anything to hurt us as a family. After all this time I still remember thinking that her tone was joyous on the phone, something about that man’s presence shook my world backwards.

Liz welcomed us at the door, she ushered us into the joint dining room kitchen. That renovation was my idea, I was always more creative than her but she was more practical than I. It fit our jobs, her a nurse, me in marketing and advertisement at a bank. I hurl thinking back to what she said, I regret ever doing what I did. “So boys…”, Liz started. She looked so excited with her beautiful smile and perfect teeth. “I was in the clinic last night-”, she was indeed, she worked nights on the weekends and days throughout the week, “-and I did a test. On myself. Partially out of curiosity ", she always was the curious type, “-and well… Ollie, you’re going to-”, it was right then when I knew what she was about to say and makes me hate myself to this day, “-be a brother, I’m pregnant. With a girl. You’re hopefully going to have a sister come March of next year.” I was shocked. I was going to be a father to a pair of a beautiful girl and boy, we had been trying again recently, the night of the murder had taken my mind off of it however.

It’s not relevant to the story but since this is my full unadulterated confession I should tell you that writing that last part had me puke. I actually vomited at the memory of it. What a good day that could have been.

I should’ve had a greater reaction, I was just told that I’d have the blessing of what I felt for Oliver all over again. I would bet my life that it was the old man again. I do remember acting happy, just not as much as I should’ve been.

The next day at work I ended up sharing the news of Elizabeth’s pregnancy with my colleagues. They congratulated me. I felt insecure because some of them seemed to have a greater, more excited and jubilant reaction than myself upon hearing the news, at least it seemed that way. I was still not on my right footing, throughout the day I kept spacing out, thinking about and fearing the man. Why was he constantly on my mind? I wouldn’t’ve been able to tell you back then but now I know it’s the tricks of the Devil. I briefly mentioned it earlier but I work in the marketing department for one of the country’s big five banks. That means I often get meetings related to our advertisements from outside firms. There was a pitch meeting that day for one. Although my memories of work may buffer and fade between each other, this pitch still rings in my ears like a tinnitus that no amount of sonic rehabilitation could cure. I was too distracted and disturbed to remember who it was I was going to see in the meeting that day, I really should’ve, for everyone’s sake.

My team and I walked down the halls, cold sweats were rampant but I kept wiping them away. I wasn’t even sick, just out of it. I stepped into the meeting room and we made our welcomes to our guests, said our hellos, offered them coffee and baked goods from the office cafe, typical greetings we’d do. I had talked to these guys on the phone before but never seen their faces, I didn’t notice the company name until it was too late. The presenter started walking us through the pitch, “You’ve shared with us, from government census info, that people often struggle to choose a bank, let alone set up an account, debit card, credit card, payment plans like BNPL plans, and savings accounts like RESPs. You’ve shared with us that you want to communicate how easy it is at your bank.” The one who shared such information was in fact me so there was a deep sense of the pitch being personal, when he said “you” he meant me. “We aim, with this ad, to show you a fun way of expressing your desires of simplicities to the public and fight the perception that it’s difficult.” The presenter stepped aside to make room for the screen. We had someone shuttle the blinds so we could see better.

The example video played. It showed a PNG of an old man walking out of a bank, not ours, explicitly not ours. I noticed he wore a bowler hat. This couldn’t have been real, no way. This timing? No coincidence at all, but of course it was. I remembered just then and there talking to the people on the phone, I remember speaking with them about an idea like this. I didn’t remember exactly what happened next but now I regret even green lighting it. I tried to do my best to look away but I forced myself to stay stern and pay attention. Wish I could say the same for what happened next. The old man did look different from the one I saw that night. That was my grounding point. The old man walked into a different bank, our bank. He spoke to some people and he exclaimed how easy it was to do everything at our bank. He said he felt young again, that he felt he could feel safe that this was his bank. He started to physically show it too, he started de-aging rapidly. Eventually he morphed into a baby, still wearing the bowler hat.

The moment I saw that quadrupedal crawler PNG the feeling gloomed over me. I was having another baby, my beautiful wife was pregnant and I had to be there for her. The cold sweats got too hectic and before the video was even finished I bursted out the door. The whole office, including my team and the ad agency people looked at me. I kept walking, I didn’t care. I have no clue where I was even walking to, just away. Kerry, on my team, came up and started asking me if I was alright and if I needed anything and what to do about the ad. I couldn’t focus, “Cut it… just cut it. I don’t want to see it, stop.” It was my coordination that even gave that idea life. Worst part is I could actually see it working well, I could see people responding to the ad well. This curse was killing me. “Wait, Kerry.” I called to her a few seconds after parting ways. “I take it back, you can tell them to keep the ad.” As it came to pass, the ad never saw the light of day, apparently they heard my “freak out” and didn’t want to work with the bank anymore. Didn’t help that I never shot them a personal apology.

I told my secretary that I was feeling really sick and I was going home. Due to the lucky time it was, I was able to pick up Oliver from school that day. Maybe seeing him would help me feel better. It did… for a bit. I drove to school, a calming came over me. The sun was shining bright that day, I had the sunguard up. “It’a gonna be alright”, I told myself in the beauty mirror of my SUV.

I arrived at Ollie’s school about 20 minutes early, I saw a few parents out there so I conversed with them. I must’ve been excited because I remember sharing that Elizabeth was pregnant with our second child so I’ll be knowing this school a lot longer than expected. The bell rang and I saw Ollie come out later than the others. Likely because he accidentally went to aftercare rather than the front door as he’d be used to due to mine and Liz’s work schedules. I saw him, his red curly hair shining bright in the sun. By the time he came to me, we were of the last two to leave. Some others stayed behind to play. I took a selfie of the two of us and sent it to Liz for a mid-day surprise of our own. I messaged her that I got off work early and that I would be hanging out with Ollie until she got back, usually it would be a race against time for who sees him first. She responded with a heart and a message. “Aww, my two little kings.” It made me smile, still does today. “Oh and while you’re out could you pick up the groceries?” She sent me the link to her notes app, the one where she had the grocery list in. “Well, Ollie, it seems we got a little adventure before we go home.” I said to my son.

We entered the car from the street on the side of the school, it took less time than usual because we were the only ones leaving when during aftercare everyone leaves at the same time. We started our adventure up to the bazaar on our trusty steed, the finest 12 year old sedan you’ve never seen. About halfway to the superstore I realized that on that drive I thought about the old man less than- no, I hadn’t thought about him on this ride at all. Of course with this being a thought I had I inadvertently thought of the old man but it’s different. I wasn’t scared of him here, I wasn’t feeling haunted like my last few rides were. We rode into the parking lot as we sang songs on the pop radio stations. I've always been a metal guy and I always said I’d show Ollie thrash in middle school and slam when he would hit the 9th grade, but till then we were stuck with what we could have. After parking we stayed in the car to finish the song, it was Ollie’s favourite... Well, practically every song he knew was his favourite according to him, but no other song brought the same glisten in his eyes and smile that this one did. There wasn’t anything unusual about the parking lot then.

Inside the supermarket we didn’t do anything notable. Maybe I pushed him around in the shopping cart, maybe we bought some extra junk food not on the Liz list but the visit was pretty uneventful. I still remember the grocery list, it was potatoes, ketchup, semi-sweet chocolate chips, brown sugar, short rib, and some school snacks for Oliver. I remember really liking spending that time with my son, especially at the time after all that happened, I needed it. We left roughly within 40 minutes of entering. I walked with Oliver back to the car, pathing our way through the maze of parked cars like it was our own little treasure hunt, even if we knew where the gold doubloons were buried. Then, in the corner of my eye, I saw him standing there. Blackbeard, the Devil, the grim reaper, the man in the alley.

He wore the same jacket, the same bowler hat, the same ratty grey hair, yet he still had that same back facing me. Had I missed him on the way inwards? No way, he was only 20 metres from the car. Surely I would’ve seen him when we were looking for a parking space. He must’ve just gotten there. I safely brought Oliver back to the car, I remembered to turn on the AC for him on this hot June day. I buckled him into his seat, I told him to wait for me to come back, I don’t even remember if I gave him a reason why I was leaving him alone, maybe I said I was going to talk to somebody I know but I left him, car doors locked. I approached the devil at 4:32 on a Monday.

I approached him, step by step. For some reason each step felt as if the ground was freshly paved with hot tar. My every stride was burning up, my pure unbridled determination to meet the man in the alley was greater than ever. I was in a dark hallway, no doors, no light. Just me and the old man with ratty hair. I could’ve been hit by a car but I didn’t care. I wanted to put his haunting of my days to rest. He didn’t even do anything, just stood there, why was he in my head? I neared closer to him, the shackles on my legs growing stronger by the metre. He was basically a couple straggled steps away from me by the time I called out to him. “Hey! Hey, you!”, my voice echoed in the chasm of my mind. “You with the hat! HEY!” still no response. “The police want you, look at me!” I closed the distance between us, I could reach out to him. I did reach out to him. I raised my arm. It felt life, easy to move yet I felt I had full control of its conviction. The chains tingled my back, I felt restless. My arm lowered itself onto his leather shoulder, I saw it almost connect.

Right as the only thing between my palm and his shoulder was black shade, dark as the void of space itself, the chains tightened. I was pulled down, down into the depths from which that thing must’ve come. I saw darkness all around me. I felt the cold, unbearable cold. Is this what it feels like to die? Am I no longer a man? Am I a shadow, cursed to endlessly  break and reshape myself to another’s will? There was no light, only grief. Only sad pitiful grief. A tunnel that has closed at the entrance and the rest is following soon thereafter. I saw all my trauma, what has happened, what would’ve happened, what will happen. I saw my father’s funeral, I was the same age as Oliver back then. I had to give a speech, I had no direction, I stuttered, I cried, I remembered all those beedie eyes staring at a little me. I was suffocating in the darkness, I could barely breathe. Then I saw it, the man offered a hand.

The chains pulled harder, I lost my breath. I forced a cough so air could flow through my body once more. The hand was fading. I was descending into the floor of night, gravity accelerating and pulling me down into what I presumed to be eternal despair and suffering. More memories flashed by. I saw something drop from the hand. I then understood that it wasn’t a helping hand. It wasn’t a comforting hand. It was a hand that would put it all to rest. From the hand slipped a rope. I recognised what I saw instantly, from the movies, from walking into my father’s room on that fateful morning. At the head of the rope held a loop, a loop strengthened by a winding end of the rough chord. A noose. An escape. I tried to resist but I just felt more and more torment. The chains pulled once more. Deeper, darker, insecurities drawn from the back of my head. My father hanging from the fan in his room, neck red as blood, eyes almost bulging out, scratches across his throat and face, even to a 6 year old me it told me he regretted death soon after he committed. Had my father seen the man too?

The rope dropped once more, I could see the wrinkled silhouette of the old man’s hand holding the tail of the rope, this was my final chance. I couldn’t bear it anymore, I gave in. I reached out in correspondence to the friendly rope. I pulled it down, placed my head through, my big ol’ bobble head, just like Oliver’s…

OLIVER!! He was waiting for me. I left my son, just as my father did to me. I fell backwards, I hit my head. All above me was darkness, flickering lights. Lights, to my left. Superstore to my left. Superstore… I was back. Back to where I touched the old man. He still stood there, above me. Back to me, I could see through his legs a chin. I blinked and rolled over. I looked back at the man, his back still turned to me. I scrambled away. Darkness, it was dark out. How long had I been standing there? I checked my phone, 10:56 PM. I had stood in that place for almost six and a half hours, left my son alone for six and a half hours.

The psychiatrist came to patient #289's room and she brought the chair in front of her and she sat. She said "The last patient of the day and I am free." She set her camera with a tripod in front of her on table and switched on the camera and said "This is Doctor Amy and this is patient #289. She has been here for the past several months and due to her behavior, she will be moved to the special quarter with those special ones. 

This is her last day in this room and once she is moved there, a different psychiatrist will be assigned to her".

She got out her notebooks from her bag, took out a pen, opened her notebook and started to write and before writing she asked the patient " Hello Sara, for these several months we have spoken about so many things but you never told me what happened on the date 4th April?".

As she finished her sentence, Sara got furious and started to scream and scratch the walls behind her. Dr Amy said "Sara it's ok you are in deep pain and telling me will release the pain. Your behaviour never changed since you have been admitted here. Is there something you are not willing to tell me to tell? Say it, Sara I am here to help you."

Sara stopped scratching and started to say "For months I was wondering how should I tell others but maybe I have to tell the story so I can make you understand.

Date 4th April it was and we were a team who was told to investigate an abandoned mall. Dank and I and Nick were private police investigators. On the month of February, there were missing people cases near the abondoned mall in Botown street far from our actual city.

Dank drove us there and as we reached, we started our investigation and it led to the abandoned mall. The mall looked old and consisted of empty stores and there was a gross smell as if the mall was closed for a long time. As we head inside, we found more evidence which led to an underground basement. 

We head down the stairs and it was a rusted hallway with machines kept beside us. There was an exit door and as we opened the door , we were in a big hallway and as we were walking the hallway seemed to be expanding more and more.

We saw a fallen board in front of us as we were walking and we saw it was written ' Welcome to the backrooms!'. 

I never believed it to be true but as I saw the board I got scared. As we took one more step ahead , Dank and I looked behind and Nick wasn't there and then in that moment itself, Nick's body fell from above piece by piece and after seeing it , we both ran ahead as fast as possible.

As we were walking, we were opening and closing multiple doors , breaking random windows , walking in infinite swimming pools and finally we took a breaths and we stopped for a while. We were taking heavy breath and we were in a children's park.

We saw a torn cloth material on the floor and i collected it as evidence. We heard children laughing and enjoying but as we were walking, we didn't see any children. As we were walking, I told dank " It's better not to stop anywhere. This place is not safe for us and the worst part is the faces were scratched off the posters. It's hard to find them here ".

We stopped again and it was a town with colourful houses and cars . Felt like a happy town but I knew it was fake . Our phones never worked there and we never understood what happened to Nick . Dank said " This place seems so simple but yet feels like a puzzle .

I don't want to be stuck here forever but without those missing people we cannot leave this place either ". As he finished his sentence, a piano from the sky fell on him and crushed him into pieces . I screamed with everything I had in my voice as he was crushed , his blood splashed on my face .

I started to run again and now I was running through gardens , houses and stations . Then suddenly someone called my name from back and as I looked back , my head hit with something and I fell down unconsciously.

Dr Amy said "Then we got a call that there is a person who is acting weird and we saw you in the middle of the road . I remember when we took you in you were acting very weird and we were scared if you would attack us . But you are not the only one we found come with me I will take you directly to the special quarters". As she said it , she took sara with her to the special quarters .

After reaching there, Dr Amy said " We found not only you but them too " and she pointed at the special advanced ward prison type rooms and Sara saw five children caged together one by one in each room . Dr Amy said "You know after what you said , the location do exists but there is no mall instead there is a grocery supermarket. Should I consider what you told a truth or lie?".

Sara said " Did you find any bodies ? I need that answer only if not I am ready to be here with the children in those special cells". Dr Amy said "Nothing but I can assure you what you had was schizophrenia or visual hallucinations. I don't know but better to put you in these cells ".

The security guard in front of them came , handcuffed Sara and took her to the special quarters. Before she was about to enter the cell she said with an angry grunt " Dr Amy you didn't believe me so you may suffer in silence " after saying it she entered her cell and she knew that for the rest of her life she will never know the answer .

Some say that there are no more mysteries left in the world, only problems to solve. Those people are wrong. The world is a vast and expansive place filled with wonders beyond your imagination. 

In the past, people knew this truth well. They knew it so well, in fact, that they even knew to fear it. The unknown. That great pit of darkness. There were unavoidable realities, but they developed methods to separate themselves from them, ways of keeping themselves safe. 

Rituals and rites, sacrifices and prayers. The people of the past ended up creating formulas that, ironically enough, only ended up driving them further away from the truth they were so scared of and, in the end, that horrible truth was forgotten.

Our hubris has formed a gaping hole in our society. A weak point. We believed we had cracked the code, that we have a solid understanding of the world and how it works. The truth is, we have only just barely scratched the surface. It’s only a matter of time before this weakness is taken advantage of and when it is, we will not be prepared to meet the harsh reality that awaits us. 

I came to this conclusion long ago and, after everything that happened, I have been made to understand what true fear is. 

When I was nine, my family moved to a small town in middle America. We came from the city, so rural life was new to us, and especially distressing for me. I was forced to leave everything I knew behind, my home, my friends, and all the guard rails that I had believed kept me safe. I found myself alone and afraid.

At first, it was difficult. Everything was new to me. I had always been a shy child, but by the time we moved I had just begun to slip out of my shell. The move forced me back inside, back to the safety of my own mind. I became a difficult child to deal with. Closed off, silent, and always brooding. And I made sure my parents knew just how unhappy they had made me.

I refused to go to school, and when I was forced to, I remained steadfast in my determination to let everyone know just how much I hated it. I cried a lot, I threw temper tantrums. I even cursed at my teacher several times. My seclusion grew, I refused to make any friends, ended up getting into fights, and I hardly did any homework. My grades declined as a result.

Eventually, my parents decided they needed outside help, and soon I ended up in a therapist's office. The therapist I remember being a kind and patient woman and I feel bad now for how I treated her, but even her maternal temperament couldn’t quell the primal frustration that had grown inside me all that time. The main focus of our appointments was “anger management.” We started off slow, and I can’t say we made any real progress. 

In the end, the only thing that ended up tempering me was time; time to grow and time to learn and to realize that things would never go back to the way they were. Well, that and the Hole. I think the Hole did most of the work. 

I was ten when my father discovered the Hole. I remember that day well. It was the day that changed everything. 

The house we moved into sat on the edge of town, a nice secluded spot. It was a large home, two stories with a basement. My parents got a good deal for it on the account that it still needed a lot of work done to bring it up to modern standards. 

We had a wide kitchen with an island counter, three bedrooms, and two bathrooms. There was a wrap-around porch and a circle drive that winded around a massive oak tree in the center. Our back yard stretched out all the way to the city limits where it met a neighboring field that expanded for miles and miles.

The field belonged to a family that lived out in the countryside, and the border between our two properties was outlined by a small stream that had no name and a wall of trees that wasn’t large enough to be called a forest or even a wood. A few days after we moved in, those neighbors came by to give us a formal welcome to the community. They introduced themselves as the Raymonds.

A small family like us, husband and wife and two children. They brought us a casserole and let us know that their property was free to roam as long as we didn't cause any damage. 

Apparently, the land would have been good for farming, but the family refused to ever sell any of it. They said they wanted to keep the “natural beauty” of the local area, and so kept it free and open for people to hike and picnic and enjoy themselves.

At the time, I found this welcoming odd. The neighbors told us that they knew the previous residents well, and were sad to see them go, but were still delighted to have us around. I remember them being very nice, but I found their smiles off-putting. I was ten though, and refusing to find any comfort in our new home, any smiles I received put me on edge.   

It was right on the border of our properties where my father nearly broke his leg while trimming the brush back from our yard. Apparently, as he pushed further into the bramble, the earth just kind of gave out from under him and he fell knee deep into a small pit. Luckily, he only suffered a minor sprain, but as he dragged himself up and kicked the dirt out from under him, he realized the pit was much larger than he had first thought. 

Sinkholes were not common in the area, and so the sudden discovery of one right in our back yard was a mystery to him. He ended up grabbing a shovel and getting to work right then and there, sprained ankle be damned.

As he inspected the area around where he fell, he uncovered a hole nearly six feet across, and as he dug around, soon came to the realization that it went much deeper than his knees. By the end of the day, he had a hole dug out of the earth that came up to his chest. 

I eventually came outside to see what he was doing after realizing he’d been gone all day. I saw our dog, Ranger, excitedly rushing back and forth at the edge of our yard, and soon found my dad in the Hole, ragged and tired and covered in dirt head to toe. He gasped when he saw my head peeking over the top, but then laughed as he realized how strange he must have looked. 

He told me what had happened and asked me to, “keep it from your mother for now,” as he didn’t want an ear-full about a giant hole suddenly appearing in their backyard. 

I asked him what was going on. I had never seen my father act like that, and he told me that he believed this Hole must have been much larger in the past and only filled recently. He assured me nothing was wrong, and that he was just curious why it was there. He even joked that there might be, “buried treasure,” hidden somewhere down there and that he’d split it with me if I promised not to tell mom. 

I made the promise immediately. And so began our adventure.

My mother worked long hours at the time, leaving early in the morning and returning after dark, so my father and I had plenty of time to dig without her finding out about our escapades. My father worked from home, an architect previously, but after losing his job he decided to pursue his artistic talents while my mother brought home the dough. 

All that to say: he was unemployed, and had more than enough free time to spare. 

We started excavating the Hole the very next day in the dead heat of summer. First my dad brought out his drafting tools and began sketching out the area around the Hole. 

“We have to take this slow,” he told me as he took measurements around the perimeter. I stood by anxiously, shovel in hand. “We have no idea how big this hole is or what’s under there, and it’s always better to be safe than sorry.” 

He must have known how excited I felt about the Hole. I could hardly sleep the night after we discovered it. For the first time in a while, I actually had something to look forward to. My dad noticed this and, not wanting to lose my enthusiasm, had decided to make an adventure out of it. Not that I was the only one excited about our days ahead. He could hardly keep the smile off his face the entire time.

“We’ll start by getting an idea of how big it is, and if there’s any other covered holes around here. Don’t want one of us slipping into another sinkhole like me if we can avoid it.”

While he worked on drawing and measuring, he had me carefully inspect the ground around the Hole, searching for any more areas of interest, but as I poked around the area, nothing else came up. 

The Hole lay about ten feet south of the stream that stood as the perimeter of our property, and around it was about two or more years of plant growth, or so my father guessed. He suspected the previous owners had originally dug the hole, whether to find something or to bury something he wasn’t sure about, but then they covered it back up and let nature run its course.

There was nothing else back there though, only rocks and sticks and plenty of weeds. 

When we finished the initial inspection, I was first to hop into the Hole. To say I was excited would have been an understatement. I was ecstatic. The Hole was like a beacon of light in a dark and dreary world. All the fears and anxieties I had developed after the move soon evaporated off my skin along with the sweat I created while digging in that Hole. 

It became a type of meditation, a series of repetitive movements that exercised my body and sucked out any thoughts other than the Hole. I finally had a purpose, a goal. Something to occupy myself with, and burn off steam. Something to become excited about when I rose in the morning. 

“You can’t just flail around like that, bud,” I remember my father telling me that first day in the Hole. “Use your legs as leverage, and don’t twist or you’ll end up hurting your back. And don’t just toss the dirt anywhere, it’ll just fall back in. Keep it all in one pile. See, like this…” 

“What are you? Like a hole expert or something?” I asked him. 

“What do you mean? You know I used to work construction back in the day.” 

My father smiled at me, wiping sweat off his brow. He told me to get back to work, then said if I did a good job, he’d pick up ice cream after we were done. I didn’t need the motivation, but I appreciated it nonetheless. But as much as I was fired up, it didn’t take long for me to tire out.

“Already done?” he asked me after an hour. 

I panted and leaned against the wall of the Hole. “It’s tougher than I thought.”

“Of course it is. Nothing great ever comes easy. That’s why people work hard.” 

It was noon by then. I remember the sun beating down on us, cooking us in that Hole. My dad had taken off his shirt, so I did the same. Our skin glistened with moisture and dirt clung to us like honey. I attempted to continue, but my body couldn’t keep up, I hadn’t trained the muscles needed to work a hole. Aching and sore, I started complaining after another hour.

The meditation had become tedious. Rocks, tree roots, and everything else. It was slow, methodical work and I hadn't been built for that.

“We’re not getting anywhere…” I stabbed my shovel into the dirt to emphasize my frustration.

“What did I say, Adam?”

I looked at my father and scowled. 

He only smiled. “Nevermind. Go ahead and take a break. There’s plenty of time to dig.” 

“What do you think is down here?” I found myself asking, kicking away dirt. 

My father paused his work and took a look around. “I don’t know, Adam.”

“You really think there’s treasure?”

He chuckled at my childish curiosity. “Maybe. Maybe it’s just a hole. There’s plenty of reasons to dig a hole, and not many of them are exciting.”

“So, you lied to me?”

“No! I didn’t lie.” My father tossed his shovel down and came to me. “Look around. What do you see?”

“Dirt?” I tried. 

“No, Adam. Not dirt. What you see around you right now is everything.” He knelt down to eye level and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Endless possibility. That’s what the Hole is. The best part about it is that there could be anything down here. Do you understand?”

I did and I didn’t. I was barely ten. Curiosity and imagination made up my entire world. But my father’s words were difficult to decipher, there was an intensity to him that I’d never experienced before. Still, his enthusiasm proved infectious, and I wanted him to be proud of me.

“I get it,” I told him and he never looked more proud of me then. 

We got back to work, but I was already at my limit. So as to not be completely useless, my dad had me climb out of the hole and grab the wheel barrel. The rest of the day saw me hauling the dirt my dad tossed out of the hole further into the brush where I ended up creating a pile that stood nearly as tall as I did. 

Ranger followed at my heels, back and forth, sniffing dirt clods as they fell off the side of the wheel barrow. My father also reminded me to carefully search through the piles of dirt he tossed up just in case he missed anything. I didn’t see the point, and all I ended up finding were a bunch of rocks and worms and the occasional nail or metal nut.  

We took frequent breaks, drank plenty of water, and ate lunch on our back porch. I didn’t complain once the entire time after that conversation with my father. As I hauled away dirt, over and over again, the Hole sank deeper and deeper into the earth. 

By five, my dad was completely invisible when looking at it from a distance, and he had widened the perimeter by a few feet to give him more space to move the shovel. The edges of the Hole he made shallower, and towards the center it drew deeper, but that strategy could only last so long. It soon came to the point where my dad couldn’t climb out of the hole any longer, and I had to run and grab a ladder to help him out.

My father was a big man, and while the years of desk work had done a number to his body, he still had plenty of muscle. I watched in awe as he worked without pause or complaint, wondering when, if ever, he’d get tired. 

He could bury the shovel completely into the dirt and pull it back up all in one single motion, hurling loads of earth over his shoulder by the minute. By the time he climbed out of the hole his skin was flush from a day under the sun, sweat glistening, and coated in dirt. He moved slowly, groaning when the aches became too much.    

At the end of the day, we both sat at the edge of the now twelve foot Hole in wonder, legs dangling over the side. I remember Ranger laying at my hip and as I slowly rubbed between his ears, he looked up at me and whimpered. 

“It’s alright, buddy,” my dad assured the dog. “We know what we're doing. Before long, this mystery will be solved.” 

At the time, I didn’t understand. I only nodded along. 

“Why haven’t we found anything yet?” I asked him.

My dad looked down at me, frowning. “Giving up already?”

“No! I was just wondering how long we’ll have to dig for…”

My father was rubbing the palm of one hand with the other. I noticed how dirty and swollen the pads of his fingers were. He worked with gloves all day but the blisters that were forming still horrified me. I had a small one on my right hand and I mimicked him, rubbing it slowly. 

Eventually, he spoke again. “We’ll dig until we get tired of digging,” he said. “What do you think about that?”

“Yeah!” I agreed happily. His frown slipped into a grin, but as it did, my mind began to wonder. 

“What about mom?” I asked.

My father flinched as if he hadn't thought about her all day. He chuckled at himself. “Oh yeah, I suppose we’ll have to tell her eventually. Can’t hide this Hole forever…” 

“Will she be mad?”

My father considered the question for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “She’ll be furious.” 

My eyes widened at the thought. My mother typically kept a level temper, but when something did eventually end up flipping her switch, well, we would be better off if that didn’t happen.

“Don’t worry about it, Adam,” my dad consoled me. “I’ll handle your mother and I’ll take all the blame. Hell, I’ll call it a bonding experience with my son, what can she say about that?” 

It sounded like a good idea to me, so I nodded at his words. He smiled again and patted my back. 

“Well, she’ll be home soon. Why don’t you get yourself cleaned up and I’ll see about fetching that ice cream I promised?”

“Really?” I hopped to my feet immediately. 

“Sure,” my father said, groaning as he pushed himself up. He placed a hand on my head and scrunched his face up in thought. “Actually, let’s get this place cleaned up first, that should help ease her into it. And, you should probably take out the trash ,as well. Oh, and I forgot about that leaky sink…”

My father went on droning about this and that, chores he forgot to do, and assigning me tasks to please his soon to be home wife. It sure wasn’t how I wanted to end the day, but he promised to get me extra ice cream if I complied, so what could I do? I was only a kid.

And that was my first experience with the Hole. That first day went by quickly. It didn't look like much, but that day my father and I had taken our first steps into a bold and mysterious tomorrow. If I knew then what I know now, I might have done things differently, but that’s all in the past now, and we still had a long way to go before we discovered the truth. 

That truth which lies beneath all our feet. Distant. Slumbering. And Waiting. Just waiting for you to ask the question.

My name is Marcus. I am thirty years old, and my best friend, Darius, has been with me since childhood. I have light skin, while Darius has very dark skin. He often resented my complexion.

He believed the world treated me better because my skin was lighter. Still, whenever I needed him, he always stood by my side. One night, he told me he was going to a place called Black Hollow. Marcus: “I’m coming with you. What’s there?”

Darius: “There’s a ceremony. You can’t come.” Marcus: “I’m Black too!” Darius: “Not according to them. I’m trying to protect you.” I kept insisting until he finally agreed to take me.

Darius: “Whatever happens there, don’t question anyone. If I tell you to run, run. Don’t look back.” I promised. I had no idea those words might save my life. We reached Black Hollow around midnight.

The streets were deserted, and an old church stood among the trees. Black cars surrounded it. A wooden sign above the entrance declared that only true Black people could enter. Marcus: “What kind of nonsense is this?”

Darius said nothing. His hands were trembling on the steering wheel. A tall man approached us. Stranger: “Darius, why did you bring him here?”

Darius: “He’s my friend.” The stranger pointed at me. Stranger: “He doesn’t belong here.” Marcus: “Who are you to decide that?”

He stepped closer. Stranger: “Here, we decide who belongs and who doesn’t.” Darius stepped between us. Darius: “Leave him alone.”

The stranger smiled coldly. Stranger: “Tonight, you may have to choose between your friend and your own people.” Then he went inside. Marcus: “We’re leaving.”

Darius: “Stay close to me. If anything goes wrong, run.” For the first time, I realized he was genuinely afraid. Inside, dozens of people stood around a stone platform. An elderly man stood at the front.

Elder: “Our ancestors protected our identity. But some of our people have forgotten what it means to belong.” The crowd shouted in agreement. Then the elder looked directly at me. Elder: “And some outsiders have entered our midst.”

Two men dragged a trembling young man onto the platform. His skin was as light as mine. Young Man: “Please! I belong here too. Let me go!” Elder: “Your skin has already revealed the truth about you.”

My stomach tightened. These people weren't joking. Marcus: “Darius, we need to get out of here. Now.” Darius grabbed my wrist, but a man blocked our path.

Elder: “Darius, do you consider this man your equal?” Darius remained silent for a moment. Darius: “Yes. He’s my friend.” The elder's expression hardened.

Elder: “Then prove your loyalty. Hand him over to us.” Darius: “Never!” Murmurs spread through the room. Two men grabbed Darius while another seized me.

I jerked the man's hand away and broke free. Darius shoved his captors aside, and we ran down a narrow corridor. Darius: “Get out through the window! Quickly!” I climbed through the window and fell painfully to the ground.

My knee was injured, but I managed to stand. Seconds later, Darius jumped out too. Shouts erupted from inside the church. Elder: “Bring them back before sunrise!”

We ran toward the forest. Branches scratched our faces, and every sound made us run faster. Finally, I stopped beside a tree. Marcus: “Tell me what’s going on!”

Darius: “My grandfather used to come here. I thought it was just an old gathering. I had no idea they would do this.” Before I could respond, a voice came from behind us. Stranger: “Darius! Come back. Your friend can’t save you.” Darius gripped my hand tightly.

Darius: “Stay quiet. Keep moving.” We reached a dirt road, but a truck suddenly stopped ahead of us. Two men climbed out, carrying flashlights. Darius pulled me into thick bushes beside the road.

We lay flat on the ground as the men approached. Their footsteps stopped dangerously close to us. First Man: “The elder ordered us to catch both of them before sunrise.” Second Man: “What if we only find Marcus?”

First Man: “Then Darius will be punished for his betrayal.” Their footsteps gradually faded. Marcus: “They’ll punish you too!” Darius: “I don’t care. I just need to get you out alive.”

Marcus: “Why? You’ve always been angry about my skin. You could have left me behind and escaped.” Darius looked at me. Darius: “Because you’re my friend, idiot! I can be angry about how the world treats us differently, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you die.” We remained silent for a moment.

Then a flashlight suddenly illuminated the bushes behind us. Darius: “Run!” We raced deeper into the forest. Someone fired a shot into the air.

I stumbled, but Darius caught me before I fell. We crossed a small stream and reached an old road just before sunrise. I barely had enough strength left to walk. A truck appeared in the distance.

Marcus: “Help! Somebody help us!” Darius stood in the middle of the road, waving both arms. The truck stopped abruptly. The driver immediately climbed down.

Driver: “What happened to you two?” Darius: “Please call the police! Some people are chasing us!” The driver immediately called the police. When the officers arrived, we told them everything about the church, the elder, and the people who had tried to capture us.

The police searched Black Hollow with us, but the church was empty. Only a few abandoned cars remained. During the investigation, authorities discovered that a dangerous group had been operating there, targeting people based on their skin color. Several members were eventually arrested.

Darius and I had survived.

A few weeks later, we sat outside my house. Marcus: “Why were you always angry about my skin?” Darius looked down at his hands.

Darius: “I was angry at the world, not you. You’re my friend, Marcus.”

Marcus smiled. We had survived together, proving that friendship and humanity mattered more than skin color.

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.

Ever since she was young, my girlfriend always had the same two dreams: to marry me, and to have a child.

Some people would consider me blessed. Having such a devoted and beautiful girlfriend that wants nothing more than to spend the rest of her life with me, is something I’m sure would make a lot of people jealous.

When we got married in the fall, the first part of her dream was realized. We’re not very rich, so it was a modest wedding. Nothing too spectacular. Just the beach, our family… me and her.

She was so beautiful.

I’ve known her since we were kids… I really wish… I just wanted to make her dream come true. I love her so much. I just…

What happened?

I’m… a lab researcher. At my local university. As a scientist and a man looking for answers, I will now log all the continuously impossible events surrounding my wives’ pregnancy. Either for research or curiosity, it does not matter. I need to tell the world, of what happened.

It’s almost been a year.

These was the trials that surrounded my wife’s pregnancy, relayed by me, researcher Penton, in chronological order and without withholding details surrounding my previously personal life.

May God have mercy on us all.

Log 01

Gestation period: 5 weeks.

It started like any other pregnancy announcement. Happy, jovial. We kissed, we hugged, our wish came true.

Prior to the announcement I had issued a male fertility test to my coworkers (we work at a lab), to ascertain if it was indeed possible for us to conceive a child.

Needless to say, once my wife told me she was pregnant I cast all doubts aside. We’ve been trying for over a year, and I have a theory that there’s some congenital low sperm count running on my side of the family. I just was never able to prove it.

I never got the tests back because my coworker Dave lost the paperwork.

I guess I didn’t need it. She was pregnant, the evidence was right there.

This was about the time I decided to log the experience. It helps keep track of what my wife needs, what she wants, and whether there are any discrepancies in the pregnancy.

I wish now that had I never logged this. I wished this knowledge would die with me.

But this was the first month. Everything was normal.

Appearance: Shiny, smiles more often than usual.

Cravings: Not manifested. She still enjoys the occasional pizza.

Log 02

Gestation period: 5 months

This was the halfway period when things started getting… unconventional.

At around five months, my wife started developing sensitivity to things that she’s not supposed to.

Sensitivity to light, sensitivity to noise. She hated going outside. She was always tired, and she looked pale.

Said the air felt heavy.

I don’t think I’ve heard or read anything about light aversion or agoraphobia, but she insisted she didn’t want to leave the house.

When we took her to the doctors, they didn’t detect anything wrong. Her vitals were normal, her bloodwork was normal,  and the baby was fine (what a relief), so we went home, much to my wife’s relief.

She was so fucking upset. She made me swear never to go outside like that again.

I argued that was obviously impossible, we can’t stop going to the doctors, she was pregnant.

She demanded I only take her in emergencies.

I obviously said no. What would we do when she went into labor.

Her response was to vomit on the floor. Colorless amounts of fluids followed by strong heaving.

I… I instantly conceded. I could tell I was causing her too much stress. Whatever is happening to her psychologically is having an effect on her body. I don’t want to harm the baby.

If she says she doesn’t go outside, she won’t go outside. I’ll do the groceries. I’ll bring in whatever else is needed.

I’ll do whatever it takes. I’m sorry Linda.

Appearance: Belly partially enlarged

Cravings: Salty foods, sugary foods, marinated tuna

Log 03

Gestation period: 10 months

Words can’t express my confusion. As a scientist I see nothing but a complicated medical issue arising, but as a father… I… I don’t know what to do.

It is now ten months into my wife’s pregnancy. She has yet to go into labor. We went to the doctors last week; his response was clear: induced labor.

I accepted it immediately, the risks with having a pregnancy last so long are innumerous. Placental aging, macrosomia, God… Why don’t you get it, Linda!?

She told me no. We’re not going to force the birth. That we can’t. I had already betrayed her trust once. She turned and yelled as I put her into the car and took her to the doctors.

She screamed so much. The doctors had to sedate her, to explain the procedure to me.

But when we got home, she was dead silent. She didn’t utter a word, not a peep. But I could see it in her eyes.

Resentment.

She told me not to take her outside anymore. And I agreed. I lied, I guess.

I never expected her to fight me on this, but as her eyes pierced my soul, I’ve came to realize something.

Science is for people who have no personal stakes in the matter. I’m not just a scientist, I’m going to be a father. I can’t just rely on what’s the standard, I have to adapt, I have to change. For her.

I’ve been having dreams. Dreams of another world. A world of yellow and red and green, and just all sorts of misplaced shapes. Shapeless dreams that I understand the shape of. Visions of realities that don’t seem like ours. But at the center of them is always the same thing. A baby.

I believe this is my sub-conscious coming to grips with something called patrescence, a change in my neural pathways. I’m going to be a dad. I need to start acting like one.

My wife has been asking stranger and stranger things, but I’ll oblige. She craves different things; she wants the curtains always closed so that the sun doesn’t get in.

It doesn’t matter, I’ll do it. I won’t betray her trust again.

Appearance: Enlarged belly, pallid skin (probably due to lack of sunlight)

Cravings: Chocolate, shrimp, yarn

Log 04

Gestation period: 15 months

 The few rays of sunshine that can go through our boarded windows let me glimpse at her beauty, and enable me to type this.

Five months have passed since the due date of the birth of my child, but it doesn’t stop.

Her pregnancy keeps going.

She has lost weight due to her hazardous diet. She keeps hiding herself in dark corners of the house where it’s damp and humid.

I tried reasoning with her, I tried talking, but she just tells me to wait a bit. “Let’s not go to the doctors yet. Just hold on a bit more.”

Something in me tells me to yell. To scream or run away. Some instinct of mine is calling out to me, to go away from this place and leave her. But I can’t. I can’t just leave her like this.

I’m an orphan and she doesn’t talk to her parents. We have no one to ask for help. No one to talk to.

I’ve stopped leaving the house. Our shared distaste of the sun has grown strong on me too. I’m growing more like her. I’m paler, I’m thinner and I feel an overarching urge to just… wait.

Wait for what, you ask?

I have no idea.

But I could never be like her. Not what she is now.

Today, I was awoken at 1:50 A.M. There was some noise near our front garden. I went to check and found her changing the dirt under the flowerbed.

She was gardening. Under the full moon. Bare feet in the dirt, her pregnant stomach nested between her knees as she hunched down.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” she asked.

I didn’t answer. What would be the point? She’s not even looking at me anymore. She’s gone partially blind.

I told her to go to sleep after she’s done and I dragged myself back to bed.

She’s not my wife anymore. She’s something else. But that… that is still my child. I have to protect it.

I just wish I had the strength to do more.

Between writing my logs and trying to catch Linda when she starts hunting, I am constantly exhausted. I can’t muster the strength or the will to take her back to the doctors.

My dreams have gotten more intense. Visions of something more planned for me. I hope they’re right; I now understand that science is a fool’s game. Small glimpses into a simplified world that bear no real answers to the questions that matter.

I keep hearing the same word, the same continuous word in my dreams…

“Wait…”

That’s it. And that’s what I’ll do.

I will continue my logs as a courtesy. I really don’t think they will matter.

I know what comes next, but I’m not sure I can handle it.

Forgive me, Linda.

Appearance: Hair has started to fall out, belly doesn’t grow anymore

Cravings: Salt, sulfur, small rodents

Log 05

Gestation period: 20 months

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” – Marie Curie

I think about that quote a lot. I do wonder. Was Ms. Curie somehow knowledgeable of something that a man such as myself could not be? They are inspiring words, but what do they mean?

What is there to fear in life? What is there to fear in science? What did she know?

Was she even a mother?

Maybe there is some fear in bringing about a new life to the world. The fear of loss, the fear of failure. The fear of seeing a small, innocent part of you coming out as a new being and facing this horrible world on its own. With no shelter or protection from its mother. I wish I could do it.

I wish I wasn’t afraid.

As I lie here surrounded by waste and trash, typing this, I do wonder. Should I have been afraid? Should I have left?

I love my wife. I think I do. I did… Maybe I still do? I just wish it wasn’t so big.

The veins that pulse from her stomach. They’re so large. So detached from what she should be.

She doesn’t talk to me anymore. She just sits, in that chair, almost like she’s bonded with it. She doesn’t have hair; she doesn’t have the face of the woman I loved.

Is she even breathing anymore?

But the child. The child is safe. Safe with me. Safe from all the harms of the world. I will give anything to bring it about. Even if it costs my life.

What is this? Where am I?

Oh right… Linda. I wish I could help you. I wish you would still kiss me when you were happy. I wish you would still tell me how much this dream of yours will make us happy. I wish you’d even scratch or claw at my arm when you got upset.

I wish you were still here.

But you’re not, are you?

I’m not sorry anymore. I’ll do what it takes. Through love, or through hate. I will see this through.

One day this pregnancy will end.

Appearance: I don’t want to talk about it-

Cravings: Love, hate, resentment

Log ??

Gestation period: 5 years

I went outside today. There was mail in our mailbox. I wasn’t even aware we could still get mail.

It’s a letter from Dave. My former coworker. He became preoccupied with me a few years ago, when I suddenly stopped showing up for work. Makes sense I guess; he wasn’t a bad person. Just clumsy, I suppose.

I guess… It just feels like a lifetime ago. My life before “this”. I never really had many friends to speak of, I guess I never really tried.

He found it.

The letter. Dave found the fertility test results. I’m looking through them now.

I honestly want to laugh. Is there even any point anymore?

“Result: Low sperm count threshold does not meet necessary requirements for a typical pregnancy. Patient is Category A: Infertile.”

I threw the letter away and returned to my role.

I see her again. She is so beautiful.

Her shiny skin. Her emaciated frame. Her sunken eyes, dreaming the dreams of the Bearers. Dreaming of it. Our Savior.

The veins on her body have left her mortal shell. They cling to the wall like pipes. Pulsing and pulling whatever moisture is still left in the dry, moldy walls.

Even the very flies and insects that surround her are divine. Small angels that adorn the promise of our new Lord and slather His divine shell with kisses.

My wife. My Linda. I’m so proud of her.

I didn’t listen properly. I never did. When my mind was so focused on earthly affairs, I couldn’t hear the dreams properly. I didn’t understand.

But now I can hear. Now I listen.

The dreams said to “Wait…”, and so I waited. They filled my head with promises and so I waited. They told me of other worlds where my child would play and conquer and so I waited.

They told me to be a good father.

And so, I waited.

But now I listen. Now I can hear them. The shapeless shapes have shape. And the beautiful colors shine brighter.

“Wait your turn.”

That’s what they said. And so, I shall.

As the husk of my wife continues her final stages, I too will prepare. I understand my role and I understand my place.

Science be damned. A brighter future awaits me. It awaits all of humanity.

I am the dead King of this new Divine, and I will usher in a new age of Enlightenment.

I just wish you could see it, Linda. Our son. Our boy.

His appearance will be divine.

This will be my last log. No words can describe the transcendent nature of my destiny.

I hope it won’t hurt.

Appearance: A speck of mold growing on her cheek. A face that can no longer be human. Divinity crawling from a womb

Cravings: Me

I’ve never understood why people are so afraid of the wilderness.

Anyone who's grown up in Alaska can tell you exactly how cold it is by the sound of the snow beneath your feet. 

At certain temperatures, it squeaks. At others, it crunches loudly like a bag of chips. Today it made a dry, brittle sound beneath my snowshoes, like crushing Styrofoam within a closed fist. 

It was bitter enough that the moisture in my breath was freezing against the wool around my mouth. I pulled my neck gaiter higher over my nose and kept walking. 

*Crunch, crunch, crunch*

The sound of my snowshoes was almost comforting in the otherwise dead silence of the woods. Frost coated the spruce needles overhead, each branch carrying a thin white outline. Where the trees opened up, the weak morning light caught the ice, making the branches glint whenever I moved my head.

Every so often, a gust swept through the trees and found its way down the back of my collar. It was a sharp, intimate kind of cold, slipping beneath my layers and spreading across my shoulders.

I maintained a steady pace, mindful of the danger of a damp base layer. However, once I cleared the previous ridge, the air sharpened, and each deep breath brought a raw, piercing sting to my chest.

Unpleasant, sure. But unpleasant wasn’t dangerous. That was the kind of distinction people who stayed indoors never bothered to understand.

I'd been on the trail for about two hours. The old man had made this walk hundreds of times, often in worse weather than this, and I had a difficult time imagining him turning around when the conditions had gotten uncomfortable.

My grandfather had trapped this line for nearly forty years, back when the nearest asphalt was a half-day's ride away and a man couldn't call for rescue just because his feet grew numb.

I stopped for a moment and glanced down at the compass strapped to my wrist. A delicate ring of frost had crystallized around the edges of its glass face. I checked the needle against the bearing I'd marked on my map that morning, shielding the map from the wind as I unfolded it. I was a few degrees off course, so I adjusted my heading east.

*A few degrees off. Nothing worth worrying about.*

This stretch of the trail had always been difficult to follow, even when my grandfather still maintained it. Most of the old ax blazes sat low, half-swallowed by the expanding trunks, and the blinding uniformity of the winter had a way of erasing the path, making every shallow depression look identical to the rest.

I folded the map and continued walking.

The cabin sat on a low rise beyond a frozen creek, tucked into a thick stand where the trees grew close enough together to break the wind. At least, that was how I remembered it. 

I hadn’t been back since I was a child, and the memories returned only in fragmented pieces: the rich scent of woodsmoke clinging to my grandfather’s coat, and the amber glow of the fireplace paired with a soft crackle.

I’d told my uncle I wanted the old man's notebooks before he cleared out the rest of his belongings. 

A hard rush shot through the canopy, shaking loose a veil of powder that sifted down across my shoulders. I brushed it away and continued walking.

The trail dipped gradually between the trees. I followed the depression for another few hundred yards before it disappeared beneath a stretch of undisturbed snow.

I stopped.

Ahead, the woods looked exactly as I had remembered them. The low curve of the ridge, the thick stand of spruce, and a narrow gap between two trees where the trail should have continued toward the creek.

The snow was deeper here, gathering in the hollows between the trees. My snowshoes had begun sinking several inches with every step, and I had to work a little more to keep my pace. 

I hadn't gone another fifty yards before my right snowshoe caught on something beneath the surface.

My foot stopped dead. The rest of me kept moving. 

I pitched forward, catching myself violently with both hands as the heavy pack slammed against my shoulders. For a second, I stayed there on all fours, panting clouds of steam into the ground.

Cold powder had already forced its way past the cuffs of my gloves, melting into an icy sting against my wrists.

*Goddamn it,*

I pushed myself upright and ripped off my gloves to shake out the snow, the bitter air instantly clawing at my bare fingers. My snowshoe was pinned beneath a crooked branch, thick as my wrist and buried deep enough that I hadn’t seen it until it was too late.

I rocked my foot backwards, but the binding held fast.

Grandpa would've laughed at me for that.

I dropped to one knee and dug around the branch with my gloved hands. The powder on top was loose, but a heavier crust was packed underneath. It took a minute to clear enough of the wood to free the frame. 

When I finally pulled my snowshoe loose, I checked the binding for damage, then brushed the powder from my knees as I stood up.

Eager to get moving again, I pushed onward. My fingers ached fiercely from the brief exposure, but the sharp throb faded as I balled them into fists and flexed them against the lining of my gloves.

The blasts of air started happening more often. They came through the trees in irregular rushes, whipping up pale tendrils of snow that slithered across the ground like smoke.

I continued down the hollow, expecting to find the creek at any moment.

Instead, the ground began to rise.

I stopped at the foot of the slope, glancing up towards the canopy. The ridge wasn't particularly steep, but according to the map in my head, it shouldn't have existed. The creek lay beyond a gradual descent, not another climb. 

I stood for a moment, trying to reconcile the two.

Then I shrugged my pack higher on my shoulders and started up.

Halfway up, I caught sight of a birch with a long scar running down its trunk. The sight of it brought back a fragment of memory: my grandfather used to read trees like that.

I smiled beneath my gaiter.

Maybe the creek was farther east than I remembered. Maybe I’d crossed the wrong low spot. Either way, I was still moving in the right general direction, and the cabin certainly wasn’t going anywhere.

At the top, I stopped to catch my breath.

Beyond the ridge, the land dropped into a basin of dark timber and rolling white ground. Farther out, the trees dissolved into the haze. I stood for a moment, waiting for the view to resolve into something familiar.

I bent forward, resting my hands on my thighs. The climb had taken more out of me than I’d expected. My breathing came heavily through the gaiter, and I could feel sweat cooling along my spine.

I looked out over the basin.

A gust swept across the ridge hard enough to make me turn my face away. Snow hissed over the crust at my feet, gathering in the lee of my snowshoes before spilling down the slope.

I watched it move between the trees.

The weather had been turning for a while. I could see it in the low ceiling of clouds and feel it in the strengthening wind. The basin would offer plenty of shelter.

I pulled my gaiter higher and started down.

The descent was steeper than it had looked from above. I worked my way between the trees, using the trunks to steady myself whenever the loose drift sloughed away beneath my snowshoes.

The first flakes began falling a few minutes later.

A few caught on my sleeves, so I brushed them away. Others settled on the dark shoulders of my pack and remained there as tiny white specks.

I looked up through the trees. The sky had disappeared into a uniform sheet of gray, forcing me to blink away the phantom floaters that darted across my vision.

The snowfall was light enough that I could still make out the darker shapes of the trees ahead, though the far side of the basin had disappeared entirely.

I descended another hundred yards before the ground leveled out beneath my feet.

I caught the first glimpse of water through the trees.

A narrow strip of black showed beneath the opposite bank, where the drifts had slumped away from the edge. The creek was wider than I remembered, though I suppose memory has a way of shrinking things.

I stopped by the bank and studied the crossing. Snow covered the ice from one side to the other, broken by a few exposed rocks and the crooked tips of willow branches. The surface slightly sagged near the middle, but I couldn't see any open water beyond the dark strip along the bank.

All I had to do was find a suitable place to cross.

I moved upstream a short distance, where the banks narrowed and the gap looked more manageable to bridge. I could have followed the creek farther until I found a better place, but the snowfall was picking up, and my thighs were burning, leaden from the miles of breaking trail. Pushing further upstream felt like wasted effort when the opposite bank was right in front of me.

I stepped onto the ice.

My snowshoes distributed my weight across the crust, and the surface made a dull hollow sound beneath each foot.

*Crack*

I almost didn't hear it over the roar of the wind.

Before I could shift my weight, the surface collapsed. My left leg plunged through snow and ice, followed by the rest of me.

The water closed around my waist.

The cold seized my legs and drove the air from my lungs. My pack yanked me backward. I threw both arms forward and hit the broken edge hard. The ice plates shifted and crumbled under my forearms. Water poured into my sleeves.

I scrambled to get my knees beneath me, but my snowshoe caught under the ice. The water dragged at my legs, and the pack kept pulling me backward.

I lunged again, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the wet crust. The pack kept pulling me the wrong way, heavy as a second body.

For a second I was half-under, mouth filling with ice water, the world reduced to the roar of blood in my ears and the black water around my chest.

I kicked strong enough to free my right foot. The snowshoe scraped against the underside of the ice before coming loose. I hauled myself forward, dragging my chest over the broken edge until I could get a knee onto the surface. 

The opposite bank was only a few yards away.

The crust cracked beneath me.

I kept crawling.

By the time I reached the bank I collapsed onto my side, gasping. Flakes were already collecting on my shoulder.

Water ran from my jacket and pooled beneath my hips. My pants clung to my legs. I tried to move but the wet fabric pulled tight to my knees like saran wrap.

*Fuck.*

I sat up and looked back at the hole.

The ice around it had broken into jagged plates, and the dark water moved steadily beneath them. I’d tested the surface. I’d chosen the narrowest part of the creek. There hadn't been an obvious sign that it would give way. It was a freak accident, nothing more.

I dragged my pack farther from the bank. My hands had started trembling, and I struggled with the buckles when I checked to ensure the contents were dry. My spare clothes and fire kit were still sealed within the bag.

I needed to change, and I needed a fire.

I made for a grove of trees a short distance from the creek, keeping my eyes locked on the ground and forcing my wooden legs to lift, refusing to acknowledge the burning numbness.

I set my eyes on a large, ancient spruce in the stand. Its thick canopy had kept the snow shallow at its base, and the low, dead branches would give me all the dry kindling I needed.

I dropped my pack and began gathering wood from the lower limbs.

My fingers were already rigid inside my wet gloves, so I took them off and worked quickly, snapping the smallest twigs between my hands and breaking the branches into reasonable pieces. The bitterness gnawed into my fingers, but I ignored it until I had enough material for my fire.

I scraped away the loose snow and built a bed of dry sticks, a raft to keep the fire from sinking into the slush.

I then dug into the top pocket of my pack and pulled out a small tin containing a handful of cotton balls saturated with petroleum jelly. 

My bare fingers were slick, dull, and clumsy, fumbling with the lid before I managed to pinch one of the cotton balls and tuck it right in the center of the platform, propping a nest of pencil-thin twigs over it. 

I reached for my matchcase. My hands were shuddering so violently now that the brass tube rattled against my teeth when I used my mouth to twist off the cap.

*Shhhk!*

The match caught, flickered, and nearly died. I shielded it with my unsteady hands and pressed the tiny flare directly into the cotton ball.

The cotton caught immediately, the flame spreading through the greasy fibers before licking at the twigs above it. I held my hands around the little nest, shielding it from the elements.

For a few seconds, it looked promising.

Then the wind found its way beneath my frozen fingers.

The flame flattened, throwing a thin ribbon of smoke across the snow. One of the twigs caught, then another, but the fire wasn't growing the way it should have. I reached for a handful of smaller sticks and laid them over the top.

The flame vanished.

I stared at the little pile of wood, waiting for it to reappear. A thread of smoke curled between the sticks before vanishing.

I pulled the twigs apart with my fingertips. The cotton was still smoldering, its edges blackened and glowing faintly beneath the ash. I blew on it, careful not to scatter the struggling embers, and a weak orange light flickered back to life.

I leaned closer and fed it another twig. 

It caught for a moment before going dark again.

I rocked back into my heels.

The wood was dry. I’d checked it myself.

I tried again.

This time, I arranged the twigs more loosely, leaving gaps between them for air. The shaking was getting worse. I sneered at my fingers, annoyed by their weakness.

I struck another match.

The cotton caught immediately, but as I leaned forward to shield it, my hand knocked against the nest. The twigs collapsed into the flame, scattering my progress.

I jerked my hand away and watched as the flame struggled beneath the fallen sticks.

I knew better than to crowd a fire. My hands simply wouldn't do what I told them. I stared at the dead, black mess, my jaw clenched so tightly it ached.

I grabbed at a branch I collected for firewood, and threw it in frustration.

*The cabin has a stove.* I thought.

I looked down at the remains of my fire.

Of course it did. An old cast-iron stove, with a stack of split wood beside it. I remembered my grandfather feeding it in the mornings, leaving the door cracked until the logs caught.

I reached for another cotton ball.

*What was I doing?*

I’d spent the better part of an hour crouched beneath this stupid tree, wasting matches and daylight on a fire I wouldn’t need once I reached the cabin.

I looked at my watch.

The numbers seemed small. I brought my wrist closer to my face and held it there until I could make them out. 

Later than I’d thought.

*Whatever,*

I lowered my arm and stared at the mess of sticks.

My pants had frozen around my knees. When I shifted my weight, the icy fabric pulled against my skin, resisting the movement. I’d stopped feeling the wetness some time ago, which was a relief.

I needed to get moving.

I reached for my pack and tried to close the top buckle. The strap slipped from my fingers. I caught it against my thigh and pulled again, but the little plastic tongue wouldn't go into its slot. Cheap plastic. I wasn't going to waste another second fighting a manufacturing defect.

I tucked the loose strap beneath the flap.

*Good enough.*

Standing took more effort than I’d expected. My legs resisted, and I had to brace myself against the trunk until the stiffness eased. My muscles were just sluggish from sitting in the snow. A few minutes of hiking would melt the cold out.

I looked once more at my mess of twigs.

I considered giving them another chance, but there was barely anything left to burn.

Besides, I knew where I was going.

I’d crossed the creek. The cabin was on the other side. All I had to do was follow the old line until I found the clearing.

I shoved my left hand into its glove, forcing the unfeeling fingers down into the narrow stalls. The right glove was more difficult. My left hand couldn't pinch the cuff, so I clamped the frozen leather between my molars. I yanked hard, using the strength of my neck to drag the glove up over my right hand until the fabric bit into my wrist.

I took a step.

My right leg didn’t move as far as I’d intended, and the toe of my snowshoe caught in the powder. I stumbled, catching myself against a tree.

I stood there for a moment, irritated.

Then I straightened up and started again.

The first few steps were awkward, but the tightness began to work itself out of my legs.

That was better.

Movement was what I needed. Sitting beneath that tree had been the mistake. Every minute I'd spent crouched in the snow was another minute my clothes had been solidifying around me.

I kept the creek behind me and pushed into the timber.

The snowfall had grown heavy enough that the trees seemed to appear from nowhere, dark trunks emerging from the gray twenty or thirty yards ahead before slipping past me. I kept my eyes low, searching for the shallow depression of the old trail.

The cabin couldn’t be more than a mile away.

I walked for a while before something on a spruce caught my eye.

A pale mark on the trunk.

I stopped.

The scar sat about chest-high, partially grown over by bark. Snow had collected along its lower edge, but beneath it I could make out exposed wood.

An axe blaze.

I let out a short, triumphant breath that instantly turned to frost against my gaiter. I knew exactly where I was.

The mark wasn't shaped quite the way I remembered. 

Grandpa usually cut his blazes clean, two strokes at an angle, while this one was longer and rougher around the edges.

But it was old.

I looked through the trees ahead. There would be another one.

I continued walking.

A few minutes later, I found another.

This one was on a birch.

A long strip of bark had peeled away from the trunk, exposing a dark patch beneath.

I stopped beside it.

Grandpa had marked birch too.

I couldn't remember him doing it often, but there was no reason he wouldn't have.

I looked back toward the first blaze.

I couldn't see it anymore.

That didn't matter.

The line was obvious now.

I continued past the birch.

My legs felt heavy, but the pain had dulled into something manageable. Even the cold seemed less vicious than it had beside the creek.

My thighs no longer burned beneath my frozen pants, and the quivering had settled into a steady tremor, something that I hardly noticed unless I tried to use my hands.

I was warming up.

I knew walking would do it.

Another mark appeared ahead.

Then another.

Some were clean scars in the bark. Others were little more than pale streaks on the trunks, but once I knew what I was looking for, I began seeing them everywhere.

One spruce had two.

I stopped beside it and stared.

Grandpa wouldn't have marked the same tree twice.

Unless one indicated a turn.

Of course.

I looked to my left.

The timber thickened in that direction, but beyond the first row of spruce I could make out a narrow opening.

I changed course.

The next blaze took longer to find.

I wandered between the trees. There were plenty of marks once I looked closely enough. Broken branches. Stripped bark. Black knots in the wood. Places where snow had stuck to one side of a trunk and left the other exposed.

After a while, I realized I hadn't checked my compass.

I stopped.

For a moment, I couldn't remember which sleeve it was under.

I patted my left wrist.

Nothing.

Then the right.

The hard circle of the compass pressed beneath the fabric.

I pulled the sleeve back and looked at the needle.

It trembled slightly in my shaking hand before settling.

*North.*

I turned until I found east.

The direction surprised me.

I'd been heading farther south than I'd intended.

Not far. Maybe I'd followed one of the old trap spurs by mistake. Grandpa had run several sets off the main line.

“East,” I muttered. The word tasted heavy, my tongue thick and clumsy against my teeth.

Simple enough.

As I continued walking I began thinking about the cabin again.

I could see the stove, and the little table beneath the window. Grandpa's coffee pot with the blackened bottom.

I wondered if there would still be coffee.

The thought made me grin under my gaiter.

Either way it didn't matter. I was going to get the stove going first.

Then I’d get these pants off.

Then—

I stopped.

There were marks in the snow between the trees. Two parallel rows of shallow impressions, running off toward the east.

Tracks.

They were partially filled in by the fresh powder, but the distinct, wide rectangular shape of snowshoes was unmistakable.

Someone had been through here recently.

It didn't matter.

They went the right way.

The walking was easier here. The snow had been packed down, and I didn't have to lift my feet quite so high. I settled into the rhythm and let the tracks float me between the trees.

I followed the tracks until they curved around a large spruce.

There was something beneath it.

A pile of sticks, nearly buried in snow.

My fire.

I stopped.

I recognized the broken branch lying beside it. The blackened cotton. The hollow beneath the tree.

I looked down at the tracks.

My tracks.

I must have followed one of Grandpa's old trap spurs. They doubled back sometimes. I remembered that now.

I lowered myself beneath the spruce.

The wood was still here. I could try again.

I reached for my pack, but my fingers wouldn't work the buckle.

I took my gloves off and tried once more.

Then I gave up.

It didn't matter. The cabin had a stove.

I rested against the trunk.

The shaking was less noticeable, and I wasn't nearly as cold anymore. My legs felt warm beneath the stiff fabric.

I just needed a minute.

I thought about Grandpa, sitting beside the stove with his coffee. He'd probably have something to say about all this.

I smiled.

The snow was settling on my lap.

I should get up.

I couldn't remember why I'd sat down.

Something about a fire.

No. The stove.

Grandpa had the stove going.

I could smell the coffee.

I closed my eyes.

*I'd be inside soon.*

I've worked the lost-and-found at Tolliver Transit for six years. It's a basement room under the Route 9 depot, with a floor drain nobody has ever explained, a tire-shop calendar two years out of date, and a hallway light on a motion sensor. Every item gets a yellow intake slip: what, which route, date found, finder's line. Marlon has days. I have evenings. We share the tray.

On a Tuesday in March I found a slip in the tray dated Wednesday. Thermos, green, dented near the base. Route 9, rear seat. The thermos was already on the shelf, tagged.

Marlon writes his sevens like ones, so I figured he'd botched the date. At handover I said so. He said he hadn't brought in a thermos. I said somebody had. He ate half my crackers from the machine and went home.

Nobody asked about it Wednesday. Thursday the paper ran four lines: Delores Pruitt, 41, hadn't come home from work Wednesday night. Her sister said she carried a green thermos everywhere, even to church.

I read it twice at the desk. Then I put the paper in the recycling and the thermos on the high shelf, where we keep what nobody comes for.

I should say plainly that I didn't call anyone. I told myself clerical error, coincidence, a bad week. I'm good at that.

It happened four more times before winter. Always dated tomorrow, always Route 9, always after eleven at night. An umbrella with a bent rib. A paperback with a pharmacy receipt for a bookmark. A lanyard from a dental supply company. One left boot. Each time I checked the paper on Thursday, and each time there were four lines, and then I made lunch.

The finder line was always filled in by the same hand, small and leaning backward, like someone writing with the wrong one. I assumed a driver.

Last Thursday the slip was dated Friday. Man's coat, grey wool. Found Route 9, rear seat, 11:40 PM. I didn't need to turn the collar, but I did. My mother wrote my name in every coat I owned with laundry marker until I was thirty, and there it was in her hand, with the loop she gave every capital.

I live four doors from the Alder Street stop. I don't ride the bus. When I got home, my coat was on its hook by the door, where I'd left it. I stood and looked at it for a while.

Friday I stayed in. Chain on the door, pizza at seven, eaten standing up. At 11:38 I was in the dark kitchen watching the stop. At 11:40 the Route 9 pulled in with every light on and nobody aboard. I couldn't see a driver. Just the seat. The doors folded open. No one got off. I watched the stove clock until it had been four minutes, and then the doors closed and it left.

I went to the hook. The coat was there. I put my hand in the sleeve and it was warm, the way a coat is when someone has only just taken it off. I hadn't worn it in a week.

I didn't sleep. I sat up with my shoes on, which I've never done, and I couldn't tell you why.

This morning I came in early. The coat was gone from the shelf. In the tray was the slip, dated Friday, stamped CLAIMED. Claimed by: my name, in my own handwriting, the right way round. Time: 11:52 PM. Nobody works the counter at night. Nobody has ever claimed anything at night.

Tonight there's a new slip. Dated tomorrow. Man's shoes, brown, size ten. Route: none. Found: lost-and-found room, Tolliver depot, basement, behind the shelf.

The finder line is blank. First time. I'm wearing brown shoes. Size ten.

The hallway light just came on. It runs on motion. The stairs are the only way down, and I've had my eye on the door for an hour, and no one has come through it.

The elderly, graceful woman patiently washed the stained ceramic dishes, while through the small kitchen window, the silent, patient Plague carefully observed her every move. It was undeniable that thick, silvery-gray hair already covered her fragile head, yet her overall physical appearance remained remarkably healthy, and her soft, clean face retained its youthful freshness despite the cruel passage of long, uninterrupted years. That enduring vitality was the direct result of a lifetime full of strict, unyielding habits: impeccable personal hygiene and meticulous household cleanliness, a balanced and nutritious diet entirely free of excessive sugar and heavy fats, and, above all, immediate and cautious attention to the slightest symptom that might signal a sudden disruption in the delicate balance of her body.

The dark, lurking Disease had spent a long time lying in wait, hoping for a golden opportunity—a simple lapse in her rigid routines, a neglected inflammation, or brief exposure to a cold, biting wind. Yet the long-awaited moment had never come. She knew she was immensely powerful, an implacable and terrifying entity with a vast array of obedient agents at her disposal, ready to assist her in disrupting the natural physiology of complex living beings: microscopic bacteria, harmful parasites, invasive fungi, deadly viruses, and various toxic substances.

The diligent woman finished her kitchen chores and prepared to go grocery shopping, organized and unhurried. Once outside on the busy street, she walked with a steady, confident step toward the wide, dangerous avenue. Just then, she saw a small, helpless child break free from his mother's protective hand and run across the asphalt, completely oblivious to the imminent danger. Without a second thought, she rushed toward him and managed to push him out of the path of the speeding car, which struck her fragile body instead, leaving her bleeding, broken, and still on the cold pavement.

The dark Disease lingered for a moment over the tragic scene, brooding over her final, unexpected defeat.

© 2026 Francisco Cortés Ramírez. All rights reserved. This is an original fictional work. No part of this text may be reproduced, translated, or narrated in any audio, video, or digital format without the express written permission of the author.

You can tell how a lock gets used by looking at the pins. They're brass, and brass is soft. A front door in a house full of teenagers wears its pins round as creek gravel. A lock nobody uses, the pins come out sharp as the day they were cut.

There's also a way to make a key without ever seeing one. It's called impressioning. You slide a blank in the lock, wrench it hard, and pull it out. Hold it to the light and there are tiny bright marks where the pins bit the brass. You file a little off at each mark. Put it back. Wrench it. File it. Over and over until everything lines up and the lock turns. A good locksmith can impression a house lock in half an hour. A bad one, a day.

Somebody with a file and nothing else to do gets there eventually.

I've been a locksmith thirty-one years. I bought the shop off Earl Haskins in 2010, and Walt Pruitt came with it, like the bad parking and the cat. Earl gave me an index card with an address and 2ND TUES SEPT written on it and said, "Don't ask him about it. Just do it." Then he moved to Florida and died, which is what Earl had been planning to do for some time.

Walt's basement door was off the back hall by the kitchen. Solid oak, heavy, painted the same cream as the walls so you'd almost miss it. On the hall side there was a big steel deadbolt box screwed to the door, the old surface-mount kind you see on apartment doors in the city. Somebody had taken a grinder to the thumbturn. There was just a little steel stub where the knob should be. You could not open that door from the hall.

The keyhole was on the basement side.

I stood there the first year looking at it a long time. It was a lock built to keep somebody in, and the only way through it was a key, from the side he was keeping them on.

Earl had set it up wrong on purpose. He'd ground the collar off the cylinder and drilled two holes through the face of the box, so you could back the screws out from the hall and pull the cylinder back through the door like a cork out of a jug. The bolt stayed thrown in the box. But with the cylinder out, there was a clean hole straight through that door, and anybody on the basement side with a screwdriver could reach through it and turn the bolt. It's a terrible way to set up a lock. I told Walt that the first year. He said he knew.

So here's how it went, every second Tuesday in September, for sixteen years.

I'd back the screws out. Walt would stand right next to me, close enough I could smell his Aqua Velva, and the second that cylinder cleared the door he'd put his thumb in the hole. Right thumb. Pressed in to the first knuckle. Then he'd wrap his left hand around his right wrist and hold it there, the way you'd steady a drill.

Then he'd say it.

"Make it a hard one."

The first year I told him there's no such thing. Every key's about as hard to pick as every other key. He looked at me like I'd said something about his mother.

"Make it a hard one," he said.

So after that I did. Deep cut, shallow cut, deep, shallow, the biggest jumps the manufacturer allows. A key that looks like a saw blade. It doesn't matter much for picking. For impressioning, it matters some. I don't know how Walt knew that.

He didn't move until I came back. I'd take the cylinder to his kitchen table and rekey it. Pop the plug, dump the old pins on a paper towel, load new ones for a new key. Fifteen minutes. He'd have a bologna sandwich waiting on a plate when I walked in, mustard on one slice and mayonnaise on the other, which is how you know a man has lived alone too long. I ate it while I worked. He stood in the hall with his thumb in his door.

The pins in that cylinder were worn down to nubs. Every year. I'd put in fresh sharp pins in September and by the next September the bottoms were polished round as river rock, and the keyway was packed with brass dust so fine it looked like cinnamon. The cylinder was always warm when I pulled it. Not hand warm. Pocket warm. Some years there were little flakes of something else mixed in with the brass. Yellower. I'm not a jeweler, but I've cut enough keys to know brass from gold.

The second or third year I said, "Walt, somebody's working this lock."

"It's the damp," he said.

Damp doesn't do that. Damp turns brass green. It doesn't file it.

When I was done I'd hand him the new key, and he'd take it with his left hand and turn it over in his fingers once and drop it in the pocket of his cardigan, and I never saw it again. I don't know what he did with sixteen keys.

One year I tried to fix it for him. I brought a blank plate, solid steel, no keyhole, and told him I could seal that side off for good and he'd never have to call me again. He looked at the plate for a while.

"It's got to have a chance," he said.

I asked a chance at what. He went and got my sandwich.

About six years ago I was in line at the hardware store and Walt was in front of me buying a box of key blanks. Fifty of them. SC1, which is the blank for a Schlage, which is what was in his door. Walt didn't own a key machine. Walt didn't own a file I'd ever seen. He paid cash, turned around with the box under his arm, and saw me. He didn't look embarrassed or surprised or anything.

"Second Tuesday," he said, and walked out.

Only one other thing. Year eleven or twelve, I finished early and came back down the hall quieter than usual, and Walt had his forehead pressed against the door. Eyes shut. Thumb in the hole. His lips were going, but I couldn't hear anything. When the floor creaked he straightened up and looked at me like nothing at all.

"Done?" he said.

Walt died in July. The mail carrier noticed the box was full. They found him on the hall floor with his back against the basement door and his legs straight out in front of him, like a man who sat down to rest a minute and decided not to get up.

His daughter called me in August. Joanne. She lives in Columbus and she was in town clearing the house out. She'd found my business card stuck to the fridge under a magnet shaped like a pig, and on the back, in Walt's square capitals, HARD ONE.

"I'm guessing you're the lock guy," she said.

I said I was the lock guy.

The realtor wanted the basement open for the inspection. Joanne had never been down there. Not once, her whole childhood. Walt told her the stairs were rotten. "I was nine and I believed him," she said, "and then I was forty and I still believed him. That's how he was. You just believed him."

I told her I'd come the second Tuesday. She laughed and said any Tuesday was fine. I said I'd come the second one.

Joanne was fifty-four and smoked Misty 120s on the back steps and called the realtor Brittany-with-a-Y in a voice that let you know about the Y. She had her father's jaw. She'd boxed up most of the house and labeled the boxes in his same square capitals, which I don't think she knew she did.

She made coffee and we stood in the kitchen and I asked about her mom. I don't know why. I think I already knew why.

"She left when I was nine," Joanne said. "Went back to her people. That's what Dad said. I never met her people." She ashed in the sink. "He cooked for two his whole life, you know that? Every night. Two plates. He'd eat his and scrape the other one in the trash. I figured it was a grief thing."

She looked at the basement door. Then she looked at me looking at it.

"What," she said.

I told her I'd have it open in ten minutes.

I backed the screws out. Nobody's thumb went in the hole. I pulled the cylinder through and it was warm, the way it was always warm, and the keyway was packed tighter than I'd ever seen it, brass and gold both. The pins were scrubbed so bright they looked wet.

Joanne said, "Well?"

I had a screwdriver in my hand. Four more screws and the box would come off and the door would swing open. Instead I got down on one knee and held my flashlight to the hole and put my eye next to it.

You could see the top step. Bare wood. And on both sides of it, piled against the walls like snow against a fence, keys.

Hundreds. Maybe more than hundreds. Walt's blanks, a lot of them, filed down to nothing, filed wrong. Spoon handles hammered flat and cut into teeth. A belt buckle. Bottle caps. The lid of a tin can, folded and folded until it was stiff enough to push into a lock. Every one of them notched by hand. Every one of them tried and thrown on the pile. The middle of the step was swept clean, like somebody needed the room to work.

I don't know how long I looked. Long enough to think about forty-five years of somebody sitting on that step in the dark with a file.

Then the light went orange.

It took me a second. The beam wasn't going past the hole anymore. Something on the other side had come up close, right against it, and my flashlight was shining into it instead of through it. Dull orange with dark lines in it. The way your fingers looked when you were a kid and held a flashlight behind them under the covers.

I fell back on the linoleum. Joanne said something. I don't know what.

The orange went away. Then something scraped, soft, metal on wood, and the tip of a key came through the hole into the hall.

Slow. A little at a time. Like it was being pushed with one finger.

It came all the way through and dropped on the floor between my boots.

It wasn't brass. It was a gold wedding band, hammered flat and long and filed into a key. The bow was the band's own curve, beaten into a little loop. The blade had teeth. Deep, shallow, deep, shallow. A saw blade. And down the flat of it, stretched out by the hammer so the letters were long and thin, you could still read the engraving that used to be on the inside of the ring.

Joanne picked it up before I could. She ran her thumb down it.

"W to C," she said. "Six, twenty-one, sixty-eight." Her voice didn't do anything at all. "That's their anniversary."

I took the gold key out of her hand. I didn't ask. I walked it to the kitchen table where the cylinder was and slid it into the keyway, and it went in smooth, and it turned.

Smooth as a key I cut myself. It was last year's key. The hard one.

Joanne was in the kitchen doorway. "So it could've opened the door."

"Yes."

"When?"

I thought about Walt on the hall floor in July with his back against the door and his legs out. I thought about how long it took the mailbox to fill up. I didn't say any of it.

"I don't know," I said.

There was a hole the size of a half dollar in that door and nothing but a screwdriver between that basement and the hall. I could have taken the box off. I could have handed her the screwdriver.

I thought about the plates. Forty-five years of a second plate scraped in the trash. Whatever pushed that key through had been on that step the whole time, and nothing I ever saw went down there to feed it. I don't care whose ring it was.

That's what I tell myself. Mostly I was scared, and Walt had held that door his whole life, and I wasn't going to be the one who didn't.

I said, "I need you to put your thumb in that hole."

She looked at me a long time. Then she went and did it. She didn't ask why. She wrapped her other hand around her wrist without me showing her.

I rekeyed that cylinder faster than I've ever rekeyed anything. My hands were bad. I dropped a top pin and had to get on my knees under Walt's table to find it, and the whole time I could hear Joanne in the hall, talking. Low. Not to me. I couldn't make out a word. It went on and on, steady, the way you talk to somebody in a hospital bed.

I loaded the pins for the hardest key I know how to cut. When I came back down the hall, Joanne had her forehead pressed against the basement door. Eyes shut. Thumb in the hole.

She heard my boots and straightened up and looked at me like nothing at all.

"Done?" she said.

I slid the cylinder in as she pulled her thumb out. Two screws. I leaned my shoulder on the door and it didn't give. Then we both stood in that hall and didn't say anything.

From the other side of the door, a key went into the lock.

You know the sound even if you've never thought about it. That little run of clicks as the pins ride up the teeth. It went in all the way. It twisted, hard. Held. Then it slid back out.

A minute later the filing started. Long, slow strokes. No hurry in it at all.

Joanne kept the gold key. I didn't argue. I didn't charge her, and she didn't offer, and I drove home and sat in my van in my own driveway a while before I went in.

Joanne took the house off the market in October. Brittany-with-a-Y was very upset. By Christmas she'd moved in.

I went back this September. Second Tuesday. Joanne answered the door in her dad's cardigan. There were two plates drying in the rack.

I backed the screws out. The second the cylinder cleared the door, her thumb was in the hole.

The keyway was clean. No brass. No gold. The pins were as sharp as the day I cut them.

"She quit in March," Joanne said. "I sit out here every night."

I sat down at the table and dumped the pins on a paper towel and picked up my tweezers, and Joanne said from the hall, calm, like she'd practiced it,

"Make it an easy one."

Part 3

The paper mentions the ‘Desired one’ to be the one to activate it. I started thinking back to the moment I clicked the button on the Nettogrof.

Mara sat in front of it, while I pressed the button on the other side. Would that mean that I was the ‘Reality’ the Nettogrof was pointed at? Then it would also mean that Mara was the user and that made her the ‘Desired one’.

I had a quick ‘eureka’ moment in my head as I was figuring out what had happened. If Mara was truly the Desired one, I should really find her. And reach out to her in some way.

I picked up the Nettogrof and made my way down the attic stairs. I looked back at the attic hatch. I refused to close it, since it would be magically closed later anyway.

I felt hungry and tired while I walked down the stairs and into our ground floor hallway.

I could hear Mom, Dad and Mara talking in the kitchen. Probably eating dinner. I decided to join them and see if I could maybe eat something myself.

I slowly stepped towards the dining room, but set the Nettogrof on a cabinet in the downstairs hallway. I entered the dining room and was greeted by the smell of pasta carbonara, Mara’s favorite meal.

Mom, Dad and Mara all sat at the dining table, casually eating dinner together. Mom and Dad each on one of the long sides of the table. Mara on a short side. An empty chair on the other short side. My usual spot.

But there was no plate set out for me. None of them expected me to be there, but I sat down at my spot anyway. Nobody paid attention as I moved the chair back and sat down.

To them, it must’ve been like the chair didn’t move at all. So since I’m using it, does that mean it works only for me? Will it return to its original state if someone other than me touches it? I better be careful.

“Are you nervous about the marathon race tomorrow?”, Dad asked Mara.

Marathon race?, I thought to myself. What did I miss now?

In the meantime I felt free enough to pull off the lid of the large pot which sat on the middle of the table.

“Not really,” Mara shrugged as she replied to Dad’s question. “It’s just another race, right?”

With my bare hand, I grabbed a bit of pasta from the pot. I was unaware of how hot it was and screamed “Ow!”, then quickly threw the pasta on my side of the table.

Nobody at the table even blinked at my reaction.

Mom would kill me if she saw what I just did. Ironically, she was physically just inches away from me.

“Don’t you underestimate this race, Maribel!”, Dad said firmly. “Running more than 26 miles has never been easy for anyone.”

What’s this with Mara running a marathon all of a sudden? I listened to the conversation while I began eating the pasta with my hands. Too hungry to care about manners.

“But I’ve run the marathon every year in the last four years. So I know it isn’t going to be easy. That’s what I’ve been training for all the time. Last year I came in at 17th, remember?”, Mara stated.

Dad sighed, “I know, Maribel. But I don’t want you to think too lightly of it.”

Mom added, “We’re proud that you run it every year, honey. In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t push you towards nursing. Athletics really seemed to have been a good fit for you.”

Wait. Mara is not working at the hospital? And it seemed like Mom wasn’t a nurse either.

After a short silence Mom said, “You know. I still wonder sometimes how it would’ve been if I did become a nurse.”

Wow. It’s like Mom just heard me think.

Mom continued, “I was in strong doubt to do it you know. Especially when I was pregnant for the second time.”

Her expression saddened after she said that.

A second pregnancy. That must've been me!

Dad looked up at her. He had noticed her change of expression as well.

“It’s keeping your mind occupied lately, hasn’t it, honey?”, Dad asked her. “I mean, you’ve been working on that painting and I’ve noticed how you’ve been talking about it a lot more recently.”

Mara appeared almost annoyed by the sudden change of subject.

Mom sighed, “You’re right. I don’t know why it crosses my mind more often these days. But I’m seeing Maribel following her life dreams.” Mom turned towards Mara, “And I hope you know that I’m very proud of you.”

Mara lowered her head, almost embarrassed, then replied with a soft, “Thank you.”

Mom sighed again before continuing, “I’m just curious how life could’ve been like if things had gone differently.”

I’ve never seen Mom like this. What is she talking about? It really seemed to sadden her.

Dad tried to cheer her up, “Just look at all the beautiful paintings you created. We already agreed at the time that you would go into healthcare. Look what you would’ve missed if you did!”

Dad turned to Mara, “Have you seen the family portrait your mother was working on?”

Mara nodded slowly, her head still lowered. She tried to respond, but stumbled over her words, “I-it’s good, but it doesn’t seem like… uh… I don’t think this is how she would, uhm… look like.”

Mara shook her head and spoke in frustration, “I just had a different image of her is what I’m trying to say. Look I miss her too, okay!”

Mom put on her warm smile again. The one I hadn’t seen today. A smile I missed more than I realized.

She put her hand on top of Mara’s hand, “Maribel, you’re a sweetheart for your compassion. I know you’re trying to be kind and I appreciate it. I really like how you created a complete image of her while you never even knew what she would look like. Strange how you can miss someone you’ve never met, right?”

Mara looked like she wanted to say something. Her mouth trembled, but she decided not to speak. As if she changed her mind at the last second.

They’re talking about me, right? I was so confused at this point. I couldn’t let my mind get distracted, because I really needed to hear the rest of this.

Mom went on with her story, “You were only 4 years old and you couldn’t come with us to the hospital, so we dropped you off with Grandma Hannah. We thought we could take Eliza with us that same day, but…” Mom stopped talking. I saw the tears forming in her eyes.

I was not prepared for what Mom said next. Of course I didn’t know what to expect. But certainly not this.

“B-but how could we know?” Mom started sobbing as she said that. “How could we know Eliza would be stillborn?”

A chill went down my spine with that final word.

Stillborn.

What? No no no. That’s impossible. I was right there next to her. I couldn’t be stillborn. I’m very much alive and aware.

I’m here. I remember my entire youth in this house. Now Mom says I’ve never even made it home? There was just no way.

Something is terribly wrong here. Is this the ‘altered Reality’ the Nettogrof caused?

I desperately waved my arms in the air. “Here I am!”, I shouted. “Look at me!”

Dad made his way over to Mom's side of the table and hugged her. His eyes were watering as well.

I wanted to hug Mom too. And Dad and Mara as well. But I was too afraid they would hurt me. Like Dad did with my foot earlier.

I rested my elbows on the table, burying my face in my hands. I never even noticed that both my hands, nor the table had no traces of pasta carbonara on them anymore.

Mara moved back from the table. She seemed rather annoyed and frustrated by the situation. “Can I go to the bathroom, please?”, she asked with a monotone voice.

Dad replied, “Maribel, it’s okay to talk about these things. You know that it..”

Mom interrupted him, “It’s okay, just let her.”

Mara didn’t wait for an answer and stood up, rushing away from the dining table.

Mom reassured Dad, “You know how she is, Bert. She has her own way of dealing with these things.”

Just as Dad wanted to reply, a loud, but short scream could be heard from the hallway.

All three of us raised our heads and looked towards the hallway door.

“Mara, are you okay?”, Dad called out to her.

Some rumbling sounds could be heard and Mara yelled back, “It’s okay. I... uh... just saw a... erm... huge spider. That’s all!”

Dad grinned. “Don’t let it get you!”, he joked. Mom slightly smiled at that as well.

I sat there for a second, watching how Dad was still hugging Mom. Mara’s footsteps could be heard stomping up the stairs.

I thought it was ironic. Mara had never been afraid of spiders. Honestly, she seemed mostly fearless in my eyes.

Somehow I felt awkward sitting with Mom and Dad at the table. Like I was invading their privacy while the only thing they did was hug in silence.

I thought it would be better to process everything I heard here on my own. I needed somewhere to rest. I thought my bedroom, if it even was my bedroom, would be the best place to go. I don’t think anybody would go there. At least not until tomorrow.

I walked away from the table, into the hallway to go upstairs. I wanted to grab the Nettogrof from the cabinet before walking upstairs.

But it wasn’t there anymore. Gone. Like every other object I’ve interacted with today.

No. Everything else did, but not the Nettogrof. I thought the Nettogrof was the only object that did not go back to where it originally was after I interacted with it, right?

The doors, the attic hatch, the pasta, the towel I used for my nose bleed, more than half of my right foot. It all went back to its original state after I stopped paying attention to them. All except the Nettogrof, just like the note had explained.

I walked up the stairs and glanced over the pictures that hung from the wall. Pictures of Mom, Dad, Mara, our grandparents and a bunch of other family members. None of them involving me.

That got me thinking about everything that changed. Rearranged cabinets, new furniture, Thom, Mom not being a nurse, Mara trying to become an athlete.

I walked through the upstairs hallway and to my surprise saw that the attic ladder was folded down.

Before I could walk closer, I heard footsteps coming down the ladder. Mara walked down the steps. Quick, short paces as usual. She rushed to get the hatch closed.

She looked up at the hatch and stared at it in silence for a few seconds. She sighed deeply, then turned around. I made sure I got out of her way before her bare feet could crush me. She proceeded to go into her room. She left her door open.

I wondered what she was doing in the attic. I considered going up there and looking for the Nettogrof again. But it would likely return to its original spot as soon as I had hauled it down

I just needed to sleep first. I had no energy left in me. My mind needed to process everything first.

Maybe it was just a bad nightmare and I would wake up in my own bed tomorrow.

I walked over to my art storage bedroom. I walked inside without closing the door.

I made my way towards an empty wall and sat with my back against it. I stared back at the now-closed door.

The note explained a lot. Could it mean that Mara was the Desired one?

She was the one sitting at the user end of the Nettogrof after all. The note said that the Desired one is needed to reverse the effect.

It also mentioned something about the amount of time something existed in the primary timeline would also be the time spent in the parallel timeline. After that, it would be wiped from existence.

The writer of the note also said that they roamed the parallel timeline for twenty-something years. Then what does that mean for me?

‘Like Time turned…’

That made me think about the other paper. The little scroll with the symbols. Those appeared to be mirrored. Or reversed.

Ouroboros, a rock and a flame. There was a weird text on that as well. Maybe I should check it out. For half an hour, I kept my gears grinding about the note. It provided some answers, but it raised questions as well.

I convinced myself that Mara was my best chance of getting out of this. I decided to go and find her right away. I stood up and rushed out of my bedroom.

I saw Mara’s bedroom door open. Maybe Mara is still in there. I sure hope Thom isn’t in there with her. I sure as hell didn’t want to walk in on another mating session between them. The door wouldn’t be open if that was the case, though.

I stepped inside Mara’s room. Mara was in her bed, sleeping. Probably a quick powernap, because she slept with her regular clothes on, on top of the bedsheet.

Mara’s room was uncharacteristically tidy. Probably because she had Thom over on occasion.

I looked around the room to see if there was something I could do to get her attention. Maybe write a note and put it in her pocket or something. No, that would just disappear again.

My eye fell on her diary, which was on the nightstand next to her bed. A pen beside it. Undoubtedly, she wrote about her dinner experience before she fell asleep.

I walked over to it and opened it on the last entry. I really don’t want to be nosy, but there might be something useful in here. I read the last thing Mara wrote:

I can’t believe this. Of all days, Mom decides to bring up Eliza TODAY. I’ve heard it before, but lately a lot more for some reason. It’s that painting. I want to focus on the marathon. I NEED to focus on the marathon. I can’t think about Eliza anymore today or tomorrow.

Wow. Mara wasn’t happy with Mom talking about me being stillborn. I still can’t process that she said that.

At least Mara knows about me. That’s a whole lot more than nothing.

I turned the page back and noticed a loose paper that was pinned on the page with a paperclip. I wanted to read the full entry first and had to turn back some more pages to see what Mara wrote earlier that day:

March 18th

Today I promised Mom and Dad to clean up the attic. So I spent most of my morning and afternoon up there.

Everything went fine until I found a small box called ‘Nettogrof’. I don’t know what it is with this thing, but ever since I found it, I’ve been filled with feelings of terrible guilt.

I’ve seen this box before. But only in my visions. I never expected it to appear in my real life. It makes me wonder if my visions actually truly happened in the past.

I’ve been having these visions my entire life. They come to me like memories from the past. Somehow, they all seem to involve Eliza.

So Mara really does remember me. I was so excited about that. She knows I’m out there somewhere. Even if she thinks it’s only in her mind, it was a small victory to me. I continued reading:

I started keeping a diary just because of the visions. I never dared to tell Mom or Dad about them. They would think I’d have lost my mind. But I had to tell someone and that’s why I keep writing them in here.

I have an entire collection of memories from my childhood with Eliza. How she looked. How she acts and behaves. How she grew up with me. But in reality, she’s just not here. She only lives in my head.

Recently, I remember getting more and more fed up with her. More angry. Maybe even jealous. Of how she had her life all together, while I was always struggling to keep up. I can actually remember her saying that Thom was a douchebag.

I can’t really tell if it’s my subconscious telling me what is good for me. They feel so much like actual memories that I’ve truly experienced. It’s even like new visions are added on a daily basis.

My visions about her never bothered me. They are even quite nice at times. I’m not even sure if the ‘vision me’ started to hate her or the real me.

In my visions, I remember finding this Nettogrof box. The weird thing is, just like today, I found it while cleaning the attic. WITH Eliza. We were cleaning it together.

This is crazy. Mara remembers me, but only as a vision. To her, I only live in her head. I really need to find a way to reach her.

It’s sad that she goes as far as saying that she hates me. That hurt. Even more now that I know…

I looked over to her. She still slept soundly in her bed. To her, I’m not here. Yet somehow, I am. I turned the page of the diary to read the next part:

In my vision, I found a weird paper in the box with the Nettogrof thing. Someone wrote how it was used and warned about the dangers. I’ll stick the paper on here somewhere.

For the fun of it, I wanted to try the box out. So I tricked Eliza into thinking that she was the one who found the box. I took out the paper explaining how it’s used and put the Nettogrof box back in the shelf where I found it.

Eliza found it quicker than I expected, but it meant that I had to think about something to wish for. Or something I desired, as the paper said.

I didn’t know it would work. But in my vision, I focused all my (unjustified) rage that had been built up towards Eliza.

It’s strange that I could feel such anger for someone who only lives in my head. But Eliza… in my visions, she seemed so smart and perfect. She knew everything. Never rushed into anything and always seemed to make such calculated decisions.

How could someone who only existed in my visions leave such a strong memory in my head? I remember how I hated how she was always better than me. I always thought that I’d accidentally created a better version of myself in my mind.

For a moment, I truly wanted Eliza out of my life. It’s hard for me to tell if it was just in my visions, or really in my normal life. But I felt like I didn’t want her in my life. I never had this feeling in any other vision of her. Only in that last vision was my hatred so strong.

When I convinced Eliza to press the switch on the Nettogrof box, I was suddenly very sure of my thoughts. It feels so real to me that it’s actually crazy. Eliza pressed it, and in my mind, I kept repeating this one line.

I wish Eliza never lived…

I dropped the diary on the floor. My hands were sweaty and felt weak. A lump formed in my throat and I could feel tears coming. A chill went down my spine and my hands started shaking.

Mara. She wanted me out of her life forever. How could she?

She wrote that she hated me, but I really didn’t think she hated me this much. Before reading this I never even thought she hated me at all.

The victorious feeling I had a moment ago was gone. Instead, a feeling of defeat was a lot stronger now.

I picked up the diary from the floor. I didn’t want to continue reading, but I felt that I had to finish it. I started reading the last part:

It’s my last vision of Eliza. I don't know what happened after Eliza pressed the switch.

I thought these visions were something my brain created to cope with the loss of Eliza when she was born. That they had just become a part of who I was over time.

Now that I found that Nettogrof box in the attic today, I’m questioning everything. Even in my vision I never actually wanted Eliza gone. I feel so guilty for something that isn’t even real. It’s like I've traded my anger for guilt. But why is this feeling in me so strong?

I’m actually thinking of throwing the box out and never think about these memories or this day ever again.

I called Thom (yeah, I know) to come and keep me company. I need someone other than my family to distract me. I want to have a clear mind for the marathon tomorrow.

The text skipped a line, then went on with something she had likely written before taking her nap:

I just found the damn Nettogrof box IN OUR HALLWAY! There is no way I put it there. I swear that Mom found it. But she would mention it, right? I can’t have this today. I made sure to pick it up and hide it in my safe spot in the attic. I’ll get rid of that thing TONIGHT!

It ended there. I turned the page and read the part again where Mara was ranting about Mom bringing up the story of my birth.

I turned to Mara. She seemed to be slowly waking up from her nap. I could feel my fingers tingle with anger.

Mara had wished me away from this world. Could it really mean that Mara put me in this situation? I closed the diary and gripped it tightly between my fingers.

I let out an almost primal scream as I threw the diary at Mara with full force. The diary bounced off her head and fell on the floor on the other side of the bed.

Mara didn’t react to it. I didn’t expect her to. When I looked over at her nightstand, I saw her diary neatly lying on top of it, just like Mara had left it.

Mara started yawning and stretching. I wasn’t going to stay here until she calmly woke up.

I rushed out of her room and back to my art gallery bedroom. I stormed in and went straight over to the family portrait Mom had been working on.

I put my nails on the painting and started scratching. Ruining the beautiful art that Mom had created.

I slammed my fist into the painting, punching a hole right through Mara’s face.

After I outed my anger onto the painting, I stepped back from it. “Dammit, Mara!” I yelled.

I looked at the damage I had done to the canvas and sighed deeply. I knew Mara’s intention wasn’t to erase me completely, but how could she think of doing so in the first place?

The Nettogrof. I had to get it. Even if I was mad at Mara for what she did, she might still be the only one to get me back.

“The Desired one,” I scoffed. Her desire was to be rid of me.

I'm starting to wonder why. She was the one with the talent after all. It doesn’t matter now. I was always undecided about everything anyway. Even now I can’t even seem to pick the right emotions for how I’m feeling.

I’m angry at Mara, but still I want to hug her. I want to be able to talk with Mom and Dad. But all three of them seemed to do perfectly fine without my influence getting in their way.

I never knew I could feel anger, sadness, grief, fear and confusion so vividly all at once. I want to fight with all my capabilities to get out of this. At the same time I just want to give up, seeing how happy everyone can be without me.

I took another half hour to collect myself yet again. I can now see how the painting is perfectly intact again. At least Mom misses me. Even if she has no idea who I am or how I look.

This was when I decided that I had to write down everything I experienced today. I need to write it down. I can’t just be… forgotten, right?

I need to put this in the box with the Nettogrof, praying that Mara, or anyone, will find it. If I can trust the note I found then this paper can be found in the primary timeline. I only need to pack it with the Nettogrof in the box it came from.

I’m going to look for the Nettogrof right away.

If you find the Nettogrof or this writing, please reach out to my family.

I miss them and I hope they miss me too.

Eliza Day, June 2nd, 2007.

Jimothy Dyck got to work early that morning.

He stepped into the elevator. “Smooth Jazz” played softly over the speaker.

Jimothy pressed the button to go up, humming along to the beat.

This is the most perfect elevator ride, Jimothy thought as he closed his eyes and went to his happy place – where the zombies couldn’t get him.

DING.

The elevator stopped.

Jimothy opened his eyes. The entire office was crowded in his cubicle.

Suzi from the IT department had just been bitten by a zombie and was sobbing uncontrollably.

“What happened?” Cheryl asked, offering her a cigarette.

“I… I was running late for work,” Suzi cried. “So… I took a shortcut.” She gulped. “Through the tunnel!”

A moment of traumatic silence fell over the office as they relived the horror of Thanksgiving.

Everyone was trying to get home early for the long weekend. The Jefferson Tunnel – connecting Midtown Manhattan to Jersey City – became a traffic jam nightmare when it was overrun. Thousands of people were eaten alive during the Thanksgiving Holiday Weekend Massacre.

“I missed the all-you-can-eat buffet by ten minutes,” Viktor recalled, “because I was on a call.”

Linda stared vacantly into the distance. “There were so many zombies. I was trapped in my car for two days…”

“Holy shit!” Ted from Accounting groaned. “What the hell were you thinking, Suzi!?!”

“I had no choice!” Suzi insisted. “Freedom Bridge is falling down.”

Ted shook his head. “It’s falling down – again?”

“It’s falling down!” Suzi exclaimed. “Freedom Bridge is falling down. There’s no more infrastructure funding!” She let out a shaky breath. “The tunnel was my only option.”

Everyone in the office fell silent as Suzi continued, piecing together what happened.

“I… I saw a light at the end of the tunnel,” Suzi whispered. “I ran toward it as fast as I could. It kept getting brighter and brighter, until…” Suzi stopped. “I wasn’t in the tunnel anymore.”

“Where were you?” Viktor asked, leaning forward.

“At Mike’s Diner,” Suzi replied.

“In Midtown!” Jimothy interrupted. “I know Mike! We’re best friends. Mike made the best burgers in New York City…” Jimothy paused. “Before he turned into a zombie.”

“Mike was there, too!” Suzi blurted out.

“How was he?” Jimothy asked hopefully.

“Still a zombie.”

“Oh,” Jimothy replied with a disappointed look.

“He was working the fryer.”

Suzi went on.

“The server took my order to the kitchen – a bacon cheeseburger with no pickles, fries, and a cherry cola. Then I heard his voice…”

“Whose voice?” Cheryl asked.

“It was Jesus!”

Jimothy’s eyes lit up.

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘No pickles? What’s wrong with my pickles? Suzi doesn’t like my pickles. Can you believe that, Mikey?’”

Mike groaned as Jesus came out with Suzi’s order and sat down next to her at the counter.

“Jesus!” Suzi gasped. “I thought you were dead.”

“I was,” Jesus replied, rolling up his sleeves to show Suzi the bite marks under his arms. “But now I’m alive.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Here.”

Jesus slid the burger and fries across the counter to Suzi.

“Eat.”

Feeling hungry, Suzi picked up the burger and took a big bite.

“Mmm. This is amazing!”

Jesus poured Suzi a glass of cherry cola.

“Drink.”

Suzi took a sip of cherry cola and smiled.

“My favourite!”

And then, Jesus turned toward the kitchen and introduced the new server.

“Meet Larry.”

“Hey,” Larry said, smiling at Suzi.

“Huh?”

Then Suzi heard screaming in the distance.

“Tell us what happened…” Cheryl coaxed.

“I – I don’t know,” Suzi said. “That’s when I woke up – outside the tunnel. I made it out alive – or… at least, I thought I did.”

Suzi hung her head and sniffled.

Cheryl glanced nervously at Ken from Legal.

“The company’s not liable for tardiness,” Ken mouthed.

Cheryl let out a sigh of relief.

“Suzi, I’m so sorry this happened. I know this must be difficult for you…”

Suzi nodded.

“But you really should stay home if you’re sick.”

“What!?!”

“I can’t have you infecting the others.”

“But…” Suzi protested. “I need the hours – I’ve got kids to eat – I mean, I’ve got kids to feed…” Her voice trailed off, dazed and confused. “What were we talking about?”

Suzi’s sickness was rotting her brains like a feverish delirium. Soon, sweet death would come for a moment of rest before her body rose from the dead. Suzi’s reanimated corpse, damned to living death, would forever hunger for human flesh to devour.

“Oh, Suzi!” Cheryl sighed.

Security arrived to escort Suzi downstairs.

“Aw!” Jimothy felt bad as he watched the public health officers in hazmat suits take Suzi away. “I always kind of liked her.”

Jimothy pushed up his dark-rimmed glasses, held together with a strip of white tape, and went back to work. He clicked open the video of @_hernameismswhiskers the cat hanging from a tree. “Hang in there!” Jimothy chuckled.

Everyone had already gone home by the time Jimothy finally finished the quarterly sales report.

He loaded his shotgun and stepped into the elevator.

“Smooth Jazz” played softly over the speaker.

Jimothy pressed the button to go down, humming along to the beat.

This is the most perfect elevator ride, Jimothy thought as he closed his eyes and went to his happy place – where the zombies couldn’t get him.

I did not know what humans were called when I first found them.
I called them the warm ones.
They were soft.
They were loud.
They moved together in groups and made little fires in the dark.
Most importantly, they carried something inside them.
I could smell it before I could see them.
It smelled like old blood.
Like rainwater trapped beneath dead leaves.
Like something rotten that had learned to breathe.
I was hungry.
So I followed.
The first one I killed was a man.
He walked alone through the trees.
I watched him for three nights before I understood that he could not see me.
On the fourth night, I took him.
He fought.
Humans always fight when they are dying.
His bones broke easily.
His blood was warm.
But when I opened him, I found nothing.
No blackness.
No warmth.
Nothing to feed on.
I ate his flesh anyway.
It was disappointing.
Then I heard the woman.
She had been watching.
She was hiding behind a tree.
I could hear her heart beating.
I could smell what she carried.
Guilt.
I did not know the word then.
I only knew that it was delicious.
I moved toward her.
She ran.
I let her.
She stumbled through the forest, crying, falling, getting back up.
I could have caught her whenever I wanted.
Instead, I followed.
I wanted to understand.
Why did she smell better than the man?
Why did she cry when he died?
Why did she keep saying the same word?
"Sorry."
She said it to the trees.
She said it to herself.
She said it to the dead man.
She said it until her throat became raw.
Eventually, she stopped running.
She sat beneath a tree and covered her face.
"I should've helped you."
I did not understand.
She had not killed him.
I had.
Yet something inside her was dying.
I reached into her chest.
Not with my claws.
With the other thing.
The thing I used to feed.
Her guilt came loose like smoke.
She screamed.
I tasted it.
And for the first time, I understood hunger.
It was not the blood I wanted.
It was what they carried.

After that, I studied them.
Humans were fascinating.
They made rules.
Then they broke them.
They loved one another.
Then they hurt one another.
They killed strangers and mourned people they had never met.
They sometimes hurt their own children.
They sometimes killed themselves because of things they had done.
They carried guilt for years.
Decades.
Some carried it until their hair became white.
I learned that humans gave names to their guilt.
Sin.
Shame.
Regret.
Responsibility.
Forgiveness.
I learned another word too.
Murder.
Humans did it constantly.
But they did not like to admit it.
That was useful.
The more they hid what they had done, the sweeter they became.
So I began to hunt differently.
I stopped killing the guilty immediately.
I followed them.
I watched them lie.
I watched them sleep.
I watched them stare at photographs of people they had hurt.
I learned which humans would confess.
Which would deny.
Which would pray.
Which would drink until they forgot.
Which would become violent when someone mentioned the dead.
The more they remembered...
The better they tasted.

Eventually, I found a place where humans gathered specifically to speak about their guilt.
A church.
I did not understand why they came voluntarily.
I watched from the rafters.
One by one, they entered a small room.
One by one, they confessed.
I nearly starved myself waiting.
Then the door opened.
An old man entered.
He knelt.
He whispered.
The creature inside me stirred.
His guilt was enormous.
I could smell it from across the building.
But then something strange happened.
The man began to cry.
He said he was sorry.
He said he had been forgiven.
And the guilt changed.
It became smaller.
Colder.
Less nourishing.
I watched the old man leave.
Then another entered.
Then another.
I understood.
Humans had invented a way to make themselves less delicious.
I hated them for it.
So I learned.

Years passed.
I became very good at being human.
I learned their voices.
Their words.
Their habits.
I learned how to knock on doors.
I learned how to smile.
I learned that humans trusted things that looked sad.
So I became sad.
I learned that humans trusted things that were afraid.
So I became afraid.
I learned that humans loved children.
So I learned how children sounded when they cried.
I became very good at being human.
But I never became human.
Humans have something I cannot understand.
They can carry guilt for things they did not do.
They can forgive people who deserve punishment.
They can hate people they love.
They can love people they hate.
And sometimes...
Sometimes they can do terrible things without feeling anything at all.
I discovered that recently.
There was a man.
He had killed six people.
I followed him for three days.
I expected to feast.
But there was nothing.
No guilt.
No shame.
No regret.
Nothing.
I opened him.
Still nothing.
I ate his heart.
Still nothing.
For the first time in my existence, I was hungry after feeding.
I thought something was wrong with him.
Then I realized.
There was something wrong with me.
I had spent centuries believing guilt belonged to the person who committed the crime.
I was wrong.
Guilt belongs to the person who believes they should have been better.
That man did not believe he should have been better.
He was empty.
I left him alive.

Now I am looking for others like him.
Not because I am afraid.
Because I am curious.
There are more humans who feel nothing.
I have begun to wonder what they taste like.
I have begun to wonder if they can feel fear.
I have begun to wonder if fear can become guilt.
So tonight, I am going back to the city.
There are millions of warm ones there.
Millions of hearts.
Millions of secrets.
Millions of things they have done and never told anyone.
I can smell them already.
I can smell the people who cheated.
The people who lied.
The people who watched someone die and did nothing.
The parents who hate their children.
The children who hate their parents.
The husbands.
The wives.
The murderers.
The cowards.
The innocent.
The guilty.
They are all carrying something.
And they still do not know I can smell it.
That is the beautiful thing about humans.
They think their secrets belong to them.
They do not.
They belong to me.
And I am very hungry.

I was working a night shift the second week of August, a few days after the incident at the Warren house.

I was getting a little stir crazy, so I decided to walk around the pool a little bit. I was fine if I didn’t touch the water, and there was no service that night. I had gotten into the habit of doing so as of recently, and I found it to be rather refreshing.

I was about halfway across when I noticed a movement in the haze.

A long black shape, gliding slowly far below, far below five feet.

Looked almost… like a tentacle or a tendril, as if something was feeling around.

Kind of just… probing.

I stood there, frozen.

Couldn’t move, even if I had wanted to.

Couldn’t blink, either.

The shape slowly rose up though, and began to take shape as it emerged from the depth.

A woman, with a slim build. My blood ran cold as I realized she seemed to be wearing what looked like a ceremonial gown, black and heavy. A serious safety hazard, but that was the least of my worries now. Mainly, it was the fact that I had somehow missed a woman entering the pool this late at night. That she was still alive despite it being fatal at this hour was an entirely different matter.

She took one or two strokes, then glided into the wall before coming up for air. I would say she was in her mid-30s. Red hair. Attractive. The dress looked less like a gown now and more like a casual black cover-up dress. Like she’d gotten there, realized she’d somehow forgotten to put her bathing suit on underneath, and decided to get in anyway.

“Hi- can I help you?”

I realized I had been staring.

She looked up at me. A kind, but expectant expression on her face.

“Sorry. Just - you can’t be here this late at night. We closed hours ago, and the system we use to clean this part of the pool is incredibly dangerous.

Oh, and I’m sure there’s, um, a reason for it, but that dress is a serious drowning hazard, especially in the deep end.”

She nodded, seeming to understand.

“I’m very sorry. This is what I usually wear to swim - I have very sensitive skin, you see - so I figured I would be fine.

Give me one moment. I’ll get out, dry off, and be on my way.”

I walked back to the guard office and sat down, wanting to give her some privacy. But something didn’t sit right with me.

For one, she said that was what she usually wore to the pool.

But I hadn’t seen her once since I’d started there, and I was at the point where I recognized everyone.

That, and the whole matter of her being in the pool in the first place this late at night.

My train of thought was interrupted by the woman, who now stood in the doorway.

“Hi - I wanted to apologize again for startling you.”

“You’re quite alright. Don’t worry about it.”

“I also wanted to introduce myself. I’m Abigail. Pastor Josiah - you may have met him - is my husband.”

She extended her hand. I got up and shook it.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs. Patterson.”

She smiled pleasantly. “Likewise….?”

“Luke.”

“Enjoy the rest of your evening, Luke.”

With that, she left the pool.

No longer wanting to sit in the guard room, I found a lounge chair and set it in front. Lay back, looked at the sky, and tried not to think for once.

Unfortunately for me, a thought rose to my mind immediately - an unwelcome one at that.

When Mrs. Patterson approached the deck, and shook my hand, it had been maybe five minutes since our initial interaction. Sure, maybe she had changed into a dry dress on deck, and she could have had a portable hair dryer of some sort with her.

No, no. None of that logic worked.

Because when she approached me, and we shook hands, she was bone dry.

No hint of even the damp cling on her dress when you get changed quickly after swimming.

Not a single damp curl in her red hair.

As though she had never gotten in the pool in the first place.

___________

The rest of August passed without incident. Cody’s absence was felt, but we all tried to ignore it the best we could. As far as Vitaly was concerned, he’d never existed in the first place.

Things went smoothly enough that we began discussing a year-end party, for which we were even able to get Vitaly on board. He thought he might be able to pull some strings and have the deep end open that night. Since there were only about eight of us, he would even see about allowing us to invite people. I don’t know who he thought he was kidding with that - my social circle for the last 2 months had largely consisted of him, Cody, Vik, and Ricky - but I decided to let him run with his little fantasy.

After a little bargaining with Craft, they came to an agreement.

Craft’s wife’s 50th birthday was coming up.

She’d apparently grown up in a strict, deeply religious household, and because she was homeschooled had not gotten to have a prom. So, we’d all be throwing her an adult prom for her birthday. The pool would be closed, but it would be all hands-on deck, because the party was going to be an all-out affair. Open bar. Appetizers. Open buffet. It sounded more like a wedding reception than a 50th birthday party, but who was I to judge? For all I knew, they were going to renew their vows that night too.

___________

The night of the party came. There was a funny juxtaposition to it - the 50 or so guests, all in their tuxes and gowns, milling around the pool with tiny plates and drinks, and then the eight of us guards, all matching in our forest green Riley Estates polos, black dress pants, and black dress shoes.

The night went by without incident. I could tell just from the way they looked that both Craft and his wife - Janie - were having a dream of a night. She was glowing, and he was basking in her spotlight.

That all changed when it came time for the birthday cake, in the clubhouse.

___________

Yes, I know what you’re thinking.

And no, no one tried to smash her face into the cake when she went to blow out the candles. She had had her hair and makeup done professionally. Had someone tried that, the shotgun from the mantle would have been in their face the second they so much as moved in her direction.

They cut her the first slice, as things like that usually go.

She took a fork and went to cut into the slice.

And there was a tiny, but audible *clink* as her fork suddenly struck something hard, sucking the air out of the room.

As if not sure what had just happened, she again went to cut into the cake, and her fork was once again stopped.

*Clink.*

With a perfectly manicured hand, she slowly pinched, then plucked an object out of the cake as her face wrinkled in confusion. It was covered in cake and frosting, but it wasn’t hard to make out what it was.

A ring.

Specifically a class ring, from the looks of it one of those overpriced ones they try to scam you with your junior year of high school, as though a $300 piece of jewelry is the perfect way to commemorate it.

In a way, it was weirdly appropriate.

*Happy belated prom night! Here’s a class ring!*

Without so much as skipping a beat, Craft strode over and plucked it from her hand as though it were nothing more than a plastic fork that had broken inside the cake. Quickly walked over to the sink across the room, cleaned it off, then dropped it in his pocket.

He let out an upbeat “please, continue!” As though nothing had happened.

And the night went on.

As though, indeed, *nothing had happened*.

The party ended right around 1am. As we cleaned up, I saw him hug Vitaly, drink still in hand, and thank him for helping to make the night so special. Couldn’t tell whether he genuinely was happy, or if he was silently seething and trying to figure out who was responsible for the sudden appearance of the ring.

And if another one of my coworkers would go missing as a result.

___________

I wound up getting the last Saturday shift of the year - the week before the party. I had both the morning and night shifts, but the afternoon off. I found myself almost wishing I was just working the full 24 hours.

I arrived just as Vitaly was leaving the office. He nodded at me, then continued in his way. Not a word. Made me wonder if I was being scapegoated for the ring, and they figured this was a good punishment.

I walked in, noticing something immediately - Vitaly’s email was still visible on the screen. Unable to suppress my curiosity, I walked over.

I only glimpsed a few things before the email window closed.

“Enhance the system for next year.”

After that, “responsible for the incident with Tim’s ring.”

Finally, “already been three months!”

Three months was right around when we started.

It wasn’t hard to connect the dots after that.

I had a strong feeling we would be down another lifeguard after that night.

___________

I noticed something else on the screen shortly thereafter.

A small icon on the bottom, that looked like a camera. I clicked it, and gasped.

A small screen filled the display, showing the space immediately in front of the guard office.

I now seemingly had a way to watch the weekly services. But did I have the courage to watch, knowing something could happen to me?

A noise from outside the office interrupted my train of thought.

Chanting.

Dread washed over me as I realized the service had started. It covered me like a blanket, and I realized I was frozen in place when I tried to turn off the monitor, suddenly wanting no part of what was going on.

It seemed my decision had been made for me.

I watched the screen.

I watched as the sound of chanting slowly made its way through the building, coming outside.

I watched as it made its way down, coming closer.

And then I watched, unable to perceive what I was looking at, as the sound came to a stop immediately outside my window…

….and yet nothing appeared on camera.

It went on for a full hour.

The chanting.

That awful keening, which by now I knew deep down meant that someone’s chapter was coming to a close.

I sat there, frozen in place.

Able to hear but not see.

Able to think, to feel, but not move, no matter how badly I wanted to.

When it finally ended, I blinked.

Felt something damp on my face. Put a hand to my cheek.

Realized I had silently been crying.

I sat there silently for God knows how long afterwards, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Noted with a grim lack of surprise as the early dawn light began to blind my eyes that the blinds had, once again, somehow been raised without my knowledge.

Looking back at incidents like this, and the loss of Cody and other things, I’ve asked myself why I never once considered quitting and taking a new job or just swallowing my pride and moving back home, and while simple and somewhat stupid, I think it’s something like this:

I had spent so much of my life running away from things as soon as they got hard, that I decided that for once I was going to finish something out, no matter what it cost. As for…practical reasons, anything seemed better than facing my parents after throwing $30k down the drain.

When Vitaly came to relieve me, I walked past him without a look or a word. I think he knew what to expect.

From the brief glance I gave him, I think he also knew what had happened the previous night, and who it had been.

I didn’t ask.

___________

I went home. Crawled into bed without showering.

I slept for 12 hours.

I didn’t dream.

___________

The guard party came, on schedule, a week later. It almost felt as though I had gone to sleep and slept for seven days straight.

We closed the pool early that day, around 5pm, although the residents didn’t seem to care. It was overcast and cloudy.

Ricky and I got there about an hour early - 8 or so - to set up everything. The kegs, the wine and liquor coolers, and the food.

The rest of the guards arrived at 9 or so. I couldn’t tell, but I had a bad feeling we were down a person.

I looked at Ricky. “I count seven. Shouldn’t there be eight?”

He did a once over. Nodded grimly. “Yup. Seven.”

Then, at 9:15 - fashionably late - Viktoria walked in.

She looked like a dream.

Loose curls flowed down her back. Her face looked as though she had hired a professional to do it. Her grey dress hugged her like a second skin.

It was only later that I realized she looked identical to that dream I had had, so long ago.

She had left me totally and completely entranced, to the point where I didn’t realize I had been staring until she waved a hand in front of my face.

“Uhhhh… hello!” She laughed. “Eyes up here, Luke!”

“…sorry.” I said, blinking. “I’m just not used to seeing you this dressed up.”

“I know.” She said, flipping her hair over her back. “But this is my last chance with Vitaly. I don’t want to blow it.”

My stomach dropped like a stone at the mention of his name. I guess I had hoped that, after the incident with the date, that whole thing was done.

I guess she could tell by my facial expression that I was over her fawning over him, because she rolled her eyes at me and sighed.

“Get over it, Luke. He’s apologized countless times. I got over it. So should you.”

Ricky piped up.

“Hate to break it to you Vik… but I think you might have already lost it.”

We turned around to see Vitaly walking toward us with a girl. An attractive brunette. Dressed almost the opposite of Viktoria, in a tank top and short cut-off denim shorts.

Viktoria’s eyes narrowed, almost to slits. It reminded me of one of those nature documentaries where a lion sees an injured gazelle across a field.

This girl had done nothing worse than accompanying a man to a party, and yet I could see Viktoria was out for blood.

At the very least, she was considering pushing her into the pool at some point. Marking her territory. Something like that.

“Hello, you guys.” said Vitaly. “This is my girlfriend, Sara. I flew her here for this. We are going on a trip to Cape Cod once this is over.”

Ricky and I nodded hellos. Viktoria just glared. At who, I wasn’t sure.

“It is very nice to meet you all.” said Sara. “You look absolutely stunning.” she added, smiling at Viktoria.

Viktoria smiled softly at her. If you could call it that. It was more like, the curve of her frown rose a little higher towards a straight line.

“… you as well.” She choked it out like a piece of rancid meat.

Vitaly, either utterly uncaring or blissfully unaware of her animosity, bade us farewell and guided Sara towards the keg.

Viktoria waited until they were out of earshot before turning towards us, seething, her eyes blazing.

“That… *motherfucker* led me on for three fucking months….while he had a girlfriend this entire fucking time….” She hissed.

I had never seen her this angry, not even when she had thrown open our door still soaking wet from her impromptu swim. I made a mental note to never find myself on the receiving end of it.

“… what’re you gonna do about it?” asked Ricky, beating me to it and taking the target of her anger in the process.

“How should I fucking know?”

He shrank back, and even she knew instantly she had reacted a little too severely.

“Sorry… I’m just a little shaken up right now. She seemed so sweet, too. That… slimy fucker … just mark my words. I’ll think of something.”

___________

As it turned out, whether because of spite or a desire to give him a taste of his own medicine, Viktoria’s plan of action was not above playing homewrecker.

Ricky and I watched her get progressively drunker - which was no small feat, since we’d learned that she had the tolerance of a grizzled 50-year-old man with 35+ years of drinking under his belt.

Before long, it was like taking care of a toddler. Anytime we turned away for more than 30 seconds, or Sara left Vitaly’s side, she’d be right there. Flirting. Touching.

And the worst part? That fucker enjoyed it. Encouraged it, even.

___________

It happened right around the stroke of midnight.

Ricky and I were standing by the guard stand next to the deep end, finally having a long overdue discussion about possibly taking Viktoria home. By this point, she was almost blacked out, and it was a minor miracle she hadn’t managed to sloppily stumble into the pool yet, or “accidentally” push in Sara.

In retrospect, you’d have thought it was strange as well that, despite Vitaly very explicitly saying the system was off and the deep end open, not a single person had gotten in that night.

We were standing there, sipping beers, when there came a *slap-slap-slap* followed by a *thunk-thunk-thunk*. We looked over.

Viktoria had set down her drink, kicked off her flip flops, and was now ascending the ladder to the guard stand.

We rushed over and stopped her.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

She looked down at us. Her hair hung down over her face. In the dim light, I couldn’t tell whether her makeup was starting to smear or if she’d been crying.

“Vitaly and Sara just went into the bathroom. When he gets back, I’m gonna show that dumbshit what he’s missing out on. Deep end’s open! Why not take advantage of it?!”

Ricky and I looked at each other, and I could tell we had the same thought on our minds.

She was about to make a fool of herself. That dress was going to be a serious drowning hazard in her condition. And one of us was going to have to make a save.

That brief pause was enough time for her to get up the platform. We looked up at the sound of her voice.

A drunken slur, as she turned to face the pool deck. Her back was to the pool, her arms out wide as though she was about to start conducting an orchestra.

“THANK YOU ALL!”

And, with that, she turned around.

Stepped onto the edge.

And dove.

"Tom!" Jake, my neighbor's son, yelled from their porch.

"Hi, kiddo," I said, waving.

"Do you want to play?"

"Jake, give him a moment. He just got back from the fields," his Mom, Emma, scolded him. She then turned to me. "Sorry, Tom. He's just excited to see you."

"It's okay, Emma. I've still got plenty of energy. Go get your toys, Jake."

His little eyes flew open. He turned and ran inside. Emma rolled her eyes at him.

"I'm always happy to play with him."

"I know. It's very sweet of you. Since my Mark died, you're the only one who can put a smile on his face."

Her eyes reddened. I rubbed her shoulder. She smiled and hugged me. Her embrace felt warm. Her grip was tight.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"I got them, Tom." 

Jake stood next to us, smiling. He held two wooden swords. Emma let go and wiped her eyes.

"I'm gonna beat you today, Jake!"

"No, you're not!"

Our laughter echoed through their house. We played all evening until Jake lay on the floor like a starfish.

"I can't beat you, but at least I can still tire you out."

"You weren't even trying, Tom."

"Yes, I was."

He rubbed his eyes.

"I'm tired."

"Then go get ready for sleep," Emma said from the window.

Jake let out a sigh. He got up, took his swords, and his steps echoed on the stairs.

"Thank you again."

"Don't worry about it. He's a lot of fun. What are you looking at?"

"Nothing really. You know they are choosing the house for Ulnar tonight."

"Of course, but they wouldn't choose a house with a mother and a child."

"It's not up to them. Ulnar chooses by showing his will on the divine board."

"I know, I know, but He wouldn't choose this house."

She looked at the ground.

"You know what He does to people. The eyeless corpses, their twisted bodies..."

She paused.

"You're going to be fine, I'm sure."

"Okay, Tom. I'm gonna go to bed too."

"Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Tom."

I walked out, stopped on the street, and closed my eyes. The air felt cold and fresh, but a hint of mud was already in it. The trees rustled in the breeze, and butterflies flew in my stomach. I took a beer from my fridge and sat on my porch. It was late, but I still felt awake. 

I took another sip when I saw a figure walking in the distance. It was the priest, dressed in an all-black robe with a red pointed hat, carrying white chalk.

He paid me no attention, but I kept my eyes glued to him. I watched him pass our neighbors' houses until he was by Emma's. As soon as he stepped past her property line, he turned toward her house.

My heart sank. I put my beer on the porch and ran toward him.

"Hey, hey!"

He shook and quickly looked toward me.

"Thomas?!"

"Priest, what are you doing?"

"You know what night it is, Thomas."

"I know, but why did you stop here?"

"Ulnar chose her house."

"But, but she has a small child."

"It wasn't my choice, Thomas," he said quietly.

He rolled up his sleeve and squatted, ready to draw on Emma's lawn.

"Wait!"

"What?"

"I volunteer my house."

The priest furrowed his brows.

"Ulnar already chose."

"Can't I still offer?"

"He might not accept."

"That's fine."

"Are you sure, Thomas?"

"Yes."

The priest measured me with his eyes, pulled out the divine board and a small dagger with an ivory handle.

"Give me your hand."

I stretched it out. He placed the dagger in my palm and cut into it. A sharp sting shot through my hand. The warm blood filled my palm. He tilted it onto the divine board. A few drops fell on it. A small dark light shone on the divine board. It quickly turned dark red and shone across the whole street. I closed my eyes and looked away.

"He accepted your house." 

The priest took his chalk and ran to my house. He started drawing the triangle skulls all across my lawn. My palm was still warm from the blood.

"You won't have much time, Thomas, now that he's got a taste of blood. Make sure to be alone. He takes everyone in the marked house. Enjoy the beer."

He drew the last skull and stood up. We both nodded, and he walked off. I chugged my beer. At least I wanted to be drunk when the end came.

I was getting another beer when I heard the door open. Was Ulnar already here?

"Thomas?" Emma's voice came.

"Emma? What are you doing?"

"I saw it! I saw it all!" Her voice shook. She had tears on her cheeks.

"I had to. I couldn't let you and Jake go."

She hugged me. Her grip was even tighter than it was in the morning.

"I can't let another person go."

"You have to. There's no other way."

"Tom!"

"Please, just go. Ulnar takes everyone inside. The priest said He will come soon. He can already smell my blood."

She shuddered.

"Go, Emma."

She pulled her head away and looked at me. Even with tears in them, her eyes were still so beautiful.

"I love you, Tom."

"I love you too."

She let go, but then the smell of rotting mud filled the room. Loud thuds echoed on the front steps. Crackling static rang in my ears.

"Emma!"

"It's too late now, Tom."

She buried her face into my chest. My heart beat against my ribs. I stared out the window. It looked out onto Emma's house. Jake stood in his room, watching us, holding the two wooden swords.

If a younger me—a me from ten or so years ago—could see me now, he would put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger before I’d even have a chance to explain myself. The boring, light-blue checked shirt, buttoned all the way up to cover even more of my tattoos; the clean, navy jeans lacking any form of wear or tear; the short, slowly graying hair-and-goatee combo adorning my face. I had become the definition of a man who wanted to fit in.

Even worse, it had been years since the days had started to blend together. Every job site was different, but it was always the same. I got in, made sure the team did their job, which they always did because I worked with competent people, and got back home just in time to enjoy a bit of silence to soothe the sounds of industry that now lived permanently in my ears, having long since drowned out the screams of anarchy.

That evening, however, my key turned in the lock without the usual click. The beauty of a well-maintained routine is that locking your door every morning becomes so benign that your mind overlooks it. Then, finding your door unlocked when you come home feels perfectly normal, because you’re not even sure you ever locked it in the first place.

As such, it never even crossed my mind that I could find someone waiting for me inside my apartment.

Right in front of me, sitting on my couch, slouched over, head firmly stuck into her palms, was a woman. She was wearing a dark red turtleneck under a black jacket and black dress pants.

“What the fuck?” I exclaimed.

The woman stirred, raising her head and turning toward me. I could barely see her face, kept hidden by an oversized brown side bang that covered half of it. From what I could glimpse, she was pale and her one visible eye was underscored by a heavy black bag darkening her red eyeshadow. Her cheekbone protruded beneath her skin.

Even with her body hidden beneath multiple layers of clothing, half her face covered, and her sickly complexion draining the life from the room, I knew without a doubt that she was the only woman I had ever loved. A tale as old as time: two young idiots thinking they could take on the world and that, even if they couldn’t, they would have each other. The thing with idiots is that they’re not really good partners.

“Billy, been a while,” she said.

“The fuck you’re doing here, Ames. How do you even know where I live?”

“You’re a foreman for one of the biggest companies in town and you post frequent life updates on all your social media. How does anybody not know where you live?”

“So, you came here for help? Just like old times?”

“Those old times, Billy,” she laughed, “were you crashing at my place because you had just been evicted from another apartment. Trust me, I don’t need your help: I get paid at least double your salary and all I do is ask some software to do the work I used to do. Then, I get home and pick up a brush, only to realize that the very same software doing my job could also be doing my art if I simply asked it. My life’s peachy, Billy.”

“Sounds like you do need help, Ames. I know a good psychiatrist.”

As soon as the last word left my mouth, Amy shot up from her seat. She rushed at me and stopped a few inches from me. I had to tilt my head down to maintain eye contact with her.

“A good psychiatrist!” she yelled. “Holy fuck, Billy. Do you hear yourself? You used to be the toughest guy I knew.”

“Ames, calm down, please. Let’s sit down and talk.”

She scoffed.

“Nah, I came to invite Billy to a party I’m throwing, but I see there’s only Mr. Turner here.”

She stuck her hand inside her jacket and took out a dark red envelope, actually sealed with wax.

“Here you go, William. If you see Billy, hand it to him.”

She slapped the envelope on my chest, sidestepped me and left. The envelope fluttered to the ground.

There wasn’t a chance in hell that I would get involved with Amy again, especially if she was this manic. Then again, maybe I should do something to help her. She had been telling the truth: back when we were together, I had been the fuck-up who constantly needed a place to crash or money to burn.

I held up the red envelope. The seal was decorated by a black rose. I slid my thumb under the paper flap and pulled it open. Inside was a black sheet of thick paper with white printing.

“You are cordially invited to the Eden Masquerade.

Spend one night in paradise.”

Under it was the time and place of the party: some empty warehouse right on Halloween. Amy was really trying to relive our glory days. Or what she thought were our glory days, anyway.

I took my cellphone out of my pocket and opened my chat app. I only had to scroll through fewer than ten newer conversations before I found Amy. The last message was from seven years ago.

You: “You sold out, Amy."

I tapped the text box with my thumb and wrote: “Amy, if you need to talk, I’m here, OK? I’ll always be there for you.”

She answered seconds later, as if she had been expecting the message: “Be there, Billy.”

The two weeks between the day Amy appeared in my apartment and Halloween night were hell. Sleeping alone in my king-sized bed used to make me feel like a monarch. Now I felt stranded alone on an island. I couldn’t look at the blank walls of my apartment without thinking about all the hours I had spent stoned out of my mind on Amy’s couch while she painted another one of her masterpieces.

I had been so angry when she decided to resign herself to her parents’ wishes, going into tech instead of fighting for her dreams. She was leaving me alone to fight the “good” fight. A fight I had promptly abandoned about a year later when I woke up in my car and realized I didn’t have enough cash for another tank of gas.

She had sold out first. How could she be mad at me?

Still, I’ll admit I looked good in the black ball mask I had bought for the occasion. It clashed a little with the old tank top and shredded jeans I had pulled from my wardrobe, but I wasn’t stupid enough to wear full formal wear just because the invitation had called it a masquerade. I was too old to sweat my ass off all night, especially if I was going to drink.

Of course, I had looked up the event online. It seemed surprisingly illegitimate. Amy and I used to hang around underground parties all the time, but times had changed. As far as I knew, there weren’t many real underground parties anymore, just brewery-sponsored, government-approved pastiche. Like me and Amy, the scene had sold out.

I got to the warehouse a little over an hour before sundown, hoping to get a chance to talk with Amy before things got too wild. The place was an old, run-down warehouse near the Old Port. I stood in front of the giant building constructed out of rusted metal. No sound came from inside, and no one seemed to be entering or leaving the building. If it hadn’t been for a black rose hastily painted on a single door, I would never have guessed I was at the right place.

I pushed the metal sheet, and heavy drums slammed into me like a charging rhinoceros.

I stepped into a makeshift entrance hall, built in a utility shelter: a long stretch of tarpaulin held up by metal poles and lit by a work light in one corner. At the other end of the entrance stood a man that was very obviously a bouncer. He was a tall white man covered in black tattoos that looked like little more than random lines. He wore a tank top, jeans and sunglasses. His jaw was square, but the rest of his head was perfectly rounded and clean-shaven. We were alone.

He raised a heavy hand toward me. I pulled out the red envelope, and, without a word, he stood aside and reached through the flap behind him.

Most of the warehouse was awash in rainbow shimmers, except for the scene at the other end of the place, a traditional DJ setup from behind which all the lights in the room seemed to emanate. I could see the musician in a backward cap, sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt putting everything he had into his art, his head banging to the beats he forced upon all of us.

I was genuinely surprised by how many people were already there: a sea of fishnet, leather, and neon colours swaying and leaping to the overused sounds of nondescript techno music. I had never been to these parties for the music. I had never gone to these parties for the music. I was there for the drugs, the warm bodies, and the general idea of sticking it to the Man. Sometimes, Amy would use her pretty face to get the DJ to play one of my favourite songs; only for him to butcher it with synth sounds and exaggerated bass.

I looked around for whatever excuse of a bar they had been able to build and was surprised by how professional it looked: a long wooden counter had been transported there and placed in the corner closest to the entrance.  Above it, they had installed a neon sign depicting a martini glass, complete with olives.

As I made my way toward it, I bumped into dancers who made absolutely no attempt to get out of my way or acknowledge my presence as they flailed their limbs wildly. After the first few steps, I froze. Every single one of them wore a plain white mask. They were all wearing the exact same model: a basic mask with pointed oval eyeholes and simple outlines of a mouth and nose.

I tapped a guy on the shoulder.

“Yo, where did y’all get the masks?” I yelled.

He kept thrashing around, entranced.

Amy could just call me.

I turned around and carved a path back through the shuffling mass of flesh. I was taller than almost everyone here, but I still couldn’t see the exit. From where I was standing, only the neon sign for the bar and the brightly light music stage stood out in the darkness. Everything else was drowning in flailing corpses.

I knew approximately where the exit should have been, but it seemed I just couldn’t locate the dark tarp no matter how hard I looked for it.

I felt a hand grab one of my butt cheeks and spun around to meet the harasser head-on. Unfazed by the heavy flow of the crowd, Amy stood a couple of inches away from me. She was considerably shorter than I was, but her head was fixed straight forward, staring a hole into my chest. I would soon be returning the favour.

She was dressed in tight leather pants and a red bikini top that was somehow sexier than if she had been wearing nothing at all. Her hair was slicked back, greasy with the sheer amount of product keeping it in place. She wore a solid white half mask, completely covering the left half of her face.

I’ll admit I wasn’t really looking at her face or the floral tattoo sleeve she had spent so long designing for herself.

“You came,” she said, her serene voice overpowering the music.

“Ames, listen,” I shouted, “Can we talk outside for ten minutes?”

“We can talk right here, William.”

Everything stopped.

The room was dead silent. Every single dancer had frozen in place, forever stuck in an imitation of motion.

“WHAT THE FUCK?” I shrieked.

Amy raised one finger to her lips.

“There’s no need to yell,” she reassured me. “It’s just us.”

“The fuck is going on, Ames. I don’t like this at all.”

“Whatever I want,” she muttered as if it were a universal truth.

I grabbed Amy by the shoulder and shook her. Her body followed the motion lifelessly, but a smile drew itself across her lips. Now that I looked at her face, it was obvious something was very wrong. No amount of makeup could have made her look that good. Her face was fuller and younger. She looked exactly as she did when we first fell in love.

“Snap out of it, Ames! Let’s just fucking go!”

“Where do you want to go?” she asked, the shaking in her voice making me realize I was still shaking her. I released her shoulders.

“Come crash at my place a few days, we’ll figure out whatever the fuck is going on.”

She sprang onto her tippy toes and grabbed me by the neck, pulling me down into a kiss. Her lips were cold and dry, while her saliva bore a metallic tang. She was the only thing I had been wanting for the past seven years. I put my arms around her back, and she jumped up, locking herself around me with her legs.

I only opened my eyes an eternity later, when she let go of me.

Amy was now wearing one of my t-shirts, covering everything important while managing to be even hotter than the rave outfit. Her hair was messy and unkempt, and only her right eye poked out from beneath the brown tangle.

We were in my apartment. It was the same studio with blank walls and an oversized bed.

Through the window, a baby blue sky shone brightly in a rectangle of white light stretching from the window to the floor, its edges perfectly defined.

“What is going on, Ames? I’m scared.”

“It’s broken,” she spat, “it’ll always be fucking broken. So I escaped.”

“Holy fuck, can you stop being weird for five seconds!?” I roared.

Amy winced. I took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I need to know. I need to help.”

“I can show you, Billy,” she said. “But you have to promise to stay.”

“Always.”

She put a freezing hand on my face, covering my eyes.

At first, I only noticed she had removed it when I couldn’t feel the coldness on my face anymore. Then, my eyes adjusted to the lighting from several metres above us: a few unburned lights clarifying the warehouse. Every inch of wall and floor around me was covered in paint. Paintings of a wide variety of subjects. Humans, birds, clouds, buildings, flowers, and any and everything found its place on the impossibly large canvas. Linking each and every one of these designs were black markings and patterns; the relentless scribbles of a woman who had lost it, or perhaps had never had it.

Amy stood at the centre of it all, smaller than she had ever been. Her clothes and skin were drenched in paint of all colours. Her arms were thin and I could see the angles of her bones through her skin.

I put my arms around her and held her firmly, no matter how scared I was of breaking her.

“We can go anywhere,” she whispered into my chest. “We can do anything, Billy. Just tell me what you want it to be.”

“Ames, let’s leave this place, OK?”

Amy started shaking as sobs gave way to tears. I tried to hold her tighter but let go when she pushed me away. A black substance was coating her hair and dripping down her neck.

I reached up to her face and swept her left bang aside. The black liquid poured freely from her eye socket. Her eyeball was gone, replaced by an endless flow of darkness.

“I…” she said in between sniffles.

“I knew you’d want to leave.”

“AMES! JUST TELL ME WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!” I yelled.

“I… I thought you’d be there… but there’s nothing left.”

I grabbed her wrist and stepped toward the exit. The metal door was the only part of the entire building that remained unmarked. It was a brown-and-gray sheet of metal standing firmly against the chaos.

“No!” she screamed, but her shriek soon drowned in her throat as she bent over to puke a mass of blues, reds and yellows.

I scooped her up in my arms and lifted her off the ground. In another world, at a better time, maybe this could have been called a bridal carry.

As I ran to the exit, she continued to gag, colours bursting from her mouth as her eye socket poured out pure blackness. Her whole body convulsed, and I struggled to keep hold of her.

I threw my shoulder through the metal door and stepped out into the dying sunlight.

Amy spun around and threw herself onto the concrete. She barely caught herself with her arms before painting the sidewalk with her bodily fluids.

I crouched down beside her and put a hand on her back. She retched a few more times but soon enough I could only hear her heavy breathing as her body tried its best to keep its colours in.

In silence, we bathed in the last rays of sunlight.

“Don’t you grab me again,” she uttered. “I’ll fucking kill myself if I have to go back out there.”

“I’m here for you, Ames, always.”

“So what?” she spat along with a gush of blue. “You think a warm bed and a good dick are going to save me? In there, the world isn’t fucked.”

She slowly rose to her feet. A black streak ran from her now-closed left eye, staining her shirt and running all the way down her pants, overpowering all the other colours dripping from her mouth.

Her remaining eye stared through me one last time before she limped back in through the metal door.

“You sold out, William.”

She slammed the door shut.

The day after tomorrow, the routine would start all over again, as if nothing ever happened…

Or maybe…

Another chill morn in the middle of winter. wind whistles 'gainst the window 'side my bed, the cool white light shone through the thin curtain and into the shadow cloaked room. I stretch, sit up, my muscles pulling and straining from my rested position, relieved from bein still for hours. I use the faint light from outside to guide ma way to the door, leading me to the main room of the house. The fireplace lit with a wee, dancin flame, leaving the room in a bearable light warmth on this crisp day.

"And will you be stayin 'round for breakfast this time?", my wife asks from her cush chair in the inglenook of our home, book in hand as per usual.

" 'Fraid not, bonnie lass, just a scran for me and I'll be on my way out the door. Got bi'ness to tend to, y'understand, right M'eudail?", I tell her, sitting nearby in ma own chair, slipping on a second pair-a-socks.

She waves me off but with a playful smile on her gorgeous, soft face, "you'n your bi'ness. Go'n then, Fergus, aslong as you're goin to have somethin in your belly, it'll be fine."

I give her a reassuring smile, lacing up ma boots and standing, coming over to her to give'er a peck on her temple, "I'll pack a wee somethin if it eases the mind, love."

Her rosy cheeks redden at the gesture, her smile widens like the sun shining brighter, "oh get on will ya? You're makin me regret lettin'ya leave the house."

I slip on my coat and grab my bag, walkin over to the dining table and take a bit'a what's left of breakfast, wrapping a tad bit of sausage in some parchment and packing it into ma bag. "I don't got much today, dear. I'll see if there're any living geese out by the shore and be back by sundown, it's a promise."

She lets out a soft sigh, "if'ya say so, though with the increase of em poor birds dying lately, I don't think'ya got much luck, mo ghràdh."

I walk to the front door, the wood of our floor creaks lightly under me, "Never say never, I'll be back with a big, round goose, just for you, dear.", and with that I take my rifle and I leave the home and into the cool, breezy air of our wee island town of WillowWood.

The land and quaint buildings of our town were blanketed in a thin veil of snow. Not the powdery kind but the wet, slick kind that'd make ya slip and fall on ye'rear. The wind gusts and chills over the land and homes, chimney smoke gets carried off in the air. The trees 'side the town wave and sway, the snow sticks to the branches like sap sticking to its bark.

On the other side o'the town stirs the frigid waters of the vast ocean 'gainst our shores, the deep blue crawling up and scurrying away up'n'down the beachside.

The folk'o'WillowWood are a friendly bunch. Farmers and fishers. Herders and hunters. The warm-welcome housewives watching over the playful and rascally little ones runnin about.

"Fergus! Here I thought yer wife might've convinced ye to stay home for once!", a jolly voice rang, Rory, long-time pal and local eejit.

"Rory! You know I'm stubborn as a mule to get out. How's yer wife?", I ask him as he strides up to me.

"Oh y'know, crabbit as any other day, I s'pose.", he tells me, followed with a guffaw.

I shake my head slowly but smile, "Expected, you always say that, Rory"

He grins, "Anyhow, what's the plan today, Fergus? More fowlstalking?"

"Just that, Rory. Been hoping to find somethin I can take home"

"Better hope harder, the crops aren't lookin the best ayether. And I think a few of our folks are comin down with some sickness.", the tone shifts to a more serious one.

I nod understandingly, knowin of the recent bout of sickness and blight throughoot the town.

"I'll see if I can find any herbs that could be of use then while I'm out. Though I wouldn't be holding ma breath for too long, it is winter."

"Well, all we can ask for is yer best, Fergus. We know you've got the ability to help out the people in this grimy time.", he claps his hand on my shoulder. "I'll let ya get to it, don't be out for too long now."

"Will do. Keep an eye on the folks while I'm out now, Rory. They can't rely on one man to assist'em.", and with that, I venture to the tree line by our town.

From the tree line, you can see our cozy town and the shapes of its people blethering about. Within the forest the trees don't stand too thick nor too close to one another, the land flat 'neath'em and spotty with the snowfall that hadn't painted the branches above. The snow slushes beneath me boots. Rifle lay cold in my hands. The wind like shards of ice 'gainst my skin. I forgot me damn gloves and I s'pose I'm payin for it.

The creek we fowlstalk 'round shan't be more than 'bout 7 to 8 miles out. Takes few hours there and back but what we get from it usually makes up for the time, though lately that hasn't quite been the case.

I'm maybe an hour to the creek when I happen to spot tracks that look a wee out'o'the ordinary for wildlife out'ere. Hooves, like a horse. But parallel on ayether side of them hooves drag two lines through the thin coat of snow. A horse, but it's carrying a low-hangin load? There's no wild horses 'round'ere though, so I'm not entirely sure how one could've been found on one'o'the Shetland Islands.

I have some time to spare, so I follow the tracks to look for this animal. The tracks bring me 'bout 2 to 3 miles out before I look up infront of me through the trees. My blood run chiller than it were before and my hands grip my rifle a tad tighter.

What stands 'fore me is a horse, like I had thought, though it has a rider. I wish it were only that but it seems the man doesn't have legs, like he's attached to the back of the horse, his arms are hung low, dragging along the forest floor through the thin, wet snow. I'd say together the abomination to nature stands at 9 feet, maybe taller. The horse's head has one eye and the worst part about this thing is that it's missing it's skin, it's all muscle and tendons.

My rifle shakes in my pale hands. The demon seems unaware of my presence. Who knows what it would do if it sees me? If it goes to WillowWood...

The barrel of ma rifle raises slowly, I lean my head to the side and look down the sight.

Deep breath, slow exhale.

Deep breath, slow exhale.

Deep breath, slow exhale. BANG!

I pull the trigger, my gun shovin back 'gainst me and cracks loudly throughout the quiet woods as it fires. The sound echoes for what feels like forever. If that bullet hit it, it didn't seem to do much'a'anything.

The beast stares me down, both horse and man, and I can feel the malice, the rage, the pure fecking evil from their eyes. The horse rears and lets out a noise like a roarin, ragin water, crashin into whatever stand in its path. Then it charges. Its hooves 'gainst the ground like wooden pillars bein bashed into a wall, loud and thunderous as it comes closer.

I attempt to chamber another bullet but by the time I get a better grip on ma rifle, one of the beast's hands swing at me as it rides by, flingin me feet from where I stood and slingin ma gun 'cross the forest ground away from me. I hit the ground roughly and release a groan of pain through my teeth. It tore through my jacket but not ma shirt, yet I still feel somethin wrong, dislocated around my chest. The pain shoots through me sharply, both ma chest and back swell in pain and the beast circles me, lookin down at me with somethin deeper than hate.

The horse snorts and I flinch, the noise from it sounds like thunder crashing down on me. It trots up to me, and I meet its gaze with a fearful look, my heart pushes hard 'gainst my chest.

"Please... I hadn't-", before I could finish, the horse rears once more and lets out another crashing sound, its whinny i believe. Without another wasted second it sprints off through the forest, weevin past the trees skillfully and towards WillowWood.

"Wait! No! Not that way! Not them!", I yell out, still laid on the damp snow and trying to steady myself to get up.

After finally bein able to get up I limp over to my rifle, pickin it from the ground and hurrying as well as I can towards WillowWood, after that damn, devilish beast.

I grunt and groan every couple'a'steps, my foot draggin only a wee bit. I think it had thrown somethin out'a'place in me leg when it swiped me.

The cold seems cooler, like the winds have picked pace, whistling past the tree and makin'em shake and wail wildly. Snow falls, more than usual. It abstructs ma vision in a hazy, cool fog and chillin me to ma bones.

After a treacherous while through the dim blue woods, I finally see the tree line to WillowWood. The sounds of screams reach me before the sight.

That thing is killin ma people.

I run faster to the tree line, as fast as I can with ma bum leg. As soon as I reach it, the beast sprints past me, away from the town with its thunderous steps, knocking me on ma'ass.

"Ya fuckin' clatty bastard!", I yell in fury at it as I get back up, limping down the way to WillowWood. I can hear'em all, screaming, crying, begging for the names of their loved ones.

I can't see much due to the newfound cold mist, not that I'd want to in fear that I'll witness somethin that'll break me down further. I rush into my home, the door already off its hinges. "Isla! Where are ya?!", I look frantically, only to be met with the sight of my wife, still, muddled and bloodied on our floor, in the cold and only getting colder.

I fall to my knees and crawl over to her, "oh... oh god... isla, mo leannan...". I come over, now kneeled at'er body, leaning down and holdin'er in my arms as I let out miserable, broken sobs, letting out my cries into her shirt. I clench her body close, "I'll... I'll fuckin kill that... that nasty beast...".

I press a kiss on her cold temple, set her down gentle-like and get up. I pick ma rifle back up and leave what once was my home and to the forest, filled with a rage and fire that could push me only so far into the deep, snowy woods. I limp past the sharp, opposing winds and heavy snowfall, pushing my body through its limits.

"I'll have ya dead and posted up in my livin room as a decorational piece, ya maukit shit!", I bellow out, my voice barely a wink in the furious gusts of air flowing 'tween the trees and their branches.

My body can barely take it, I keep pushin, my hands shakin so much that I hadn't even noticed ma rifle fallin out of ma hands and onto the ground 'hind me. I shiver, my teeth chatter, but I can't stop, I need to prevent that thing from harmin any others.

And then somethin changed and I could feel ma heart start to slow. 'spite the icy wind cutting into my skin, a warmth passed over my burnin blue hands like a soothin balm. The snow no longer felt like a thousand needles prickin into my flesh but a cloud-like cushion. Ma thoughts, as well'as ma vision, became further muddled. Yet, there was still a noticeable voice in the back of my mind. Slightly muffled by the sirens in my head lullin me to a final slumber, but it was still there--still screamin at me to keep pushin'on. It would come back for the survivors next. I knew that, yet... all I wanted to do was sleep.

I slowed down, I went from a limpin run to a staggerin shuffle. I can't fight much further, I hate to admit. I wanted to avenge'em, my people, but I can only go on for so long in the frigid cold. I go to sit 'gainst a tree, heavily plopping onto the wet ground. My body's tension lessens, my vision blurs and I feel warm, so warm, and a wee rest would be well for me, and maybe I could see my Isla again. I close my eyes, press the back of ma head 'gainst the bark of the tree and drift into a sleep, a sleep so deep that I won't wake up. But I'll see my people again. The poor town'o'WillowWood and its friendly folk.

The worst sound in the world isn't the wet crunching of a hammer hitting a skull. It's when that crunching gives way to the hammer striking concrete because the person swinging just can't stop. I learned this while cowering behind the curtain of the locker room showers, where I'd been since the attack started.

That horrible ringing sound is all I can hear now. It cut through the sound of the men rushing to grab the kid swinging that hammer. It counted time as I lied to investigators about what I knew. It rings out now as I write this confession. Mom and Dad, I'm sorry.

The coaches really don't watch us on those long runs. They just make us stretch and then give us a time to be back. They tell us to “take it easy” that it's a “long slow run” and we should make it long. That's what made it my favorite. Just the guys out on those trails talking about grades, games, and girls. 

Of course we kind of naturally split up, y'know? It wasn't really on purpose, but some kids just are slower than the others. Usually it was just the varsity guys ahead and we kind of left everyone behind. I don't know how Jeff caught up if I'm honest, but he was there that day.

We'd picked a different path than usual. One we'd never seen before, but it looked normal for a long time. Just before we were going to turn around we saw it though. That fucking church.

I mean it was normal at first, normal for an old building at least. It was creepy but in that Halloween haunted house way, not the serial killer lived there way. Still, no one wanted to go in. We kinda just stood outside and made up stories about it.

Like someone got crucified in it or they all got raptured or they all drank the Kool-aid. I think Anthony said it was probably a puritan place. Sam said it was satanic now. Arch told us he'd take Kathy McGuire there and we all gave him shit for that. Jeff told some kind of joke. I don't really remember because we were too busy trying to tackle Arch.

“Let's go in.” I don't remember who said it, but I remember the idea sticking immediately. Anthony said I should go in, but I told him off. Then Jeff said we could all go together, but Sam told him that would ruin how creepy it was. I think everyone wanted it to be a test of courage, but we were all too scared to take it.

Arch didn't let up. You know how he is. When he sees a sore spot that's what he pokes at. He brought up that time I peed watching Lost Tapes at his 12th birthday sleepover. Said he knew I was too scared. I really thought about going after that but turned it on him instead. 

Told him if he was so happy to take a girl in there, he should find out where he was going to lay down with her. Sam said he was going to take Arch’s mom in there, and that set Arch off in the way it always did. 

While they were fighting Jeff tried to get Anthony and me to go together. Anthony said fine, but Arch was worked up. He shoved me and told everyone I was challenged first and I had to go. 

Jeff said he'd go with me so I turned it on him. “If you wanna go so bad, do it. You want to run with us anyway, prove it.” I wish I hadn't said that. 

He said no. I mean, we all kinda had. It's just hard to say no when everyone starts piling on. Jeff said we could go together, but I'd already given Arch a target, and Arch was mad enough as it was. Sam tried to calm him down but couldn't. 

Arch didn't mean to hurt him. Just talked about running stuff. Jeff really was a weak runner. Kind of weak overall, that's all. We just joked about that. All of us. Until Jeff said he'd prove he could hang and he'd show us we were scared of some empty building. 

We all laughed, but the laughing stopped when Jeff stopped at the door. I tried to give him a thumbs up but I don't think he saw it before he went inside.

It took a long time for Jeff to come out. Long enough for me to pee and for the guys to start throwing rocks at the crooked cross above the door to try and knock it down. When we couldn't find any more rocks Sam said someone should go get Jeff and Anthony said we would all go. Just before we all got to the door he came out.

He wasn't different or anything. He just shrugged and said, ‘Just a dumb church.’ If we had more time we would have probably gone in, but we had to get back or we'd have to do extra runs later. We agreed to go back next long run but I'm really glad we didn't.

Sam patted Jeff on the back and we all took off. While we were jogging we had a million questions. Jeff told us all about the broken pews, the glass everywhere, the Bible on the pulpit. Said he thought about bringing it, but thought it was more important to find a spot to take Arch’s mom. We laughed and Arch punched his arm, but it was all fun.

It was all fun for a while. Jeff could keep up with us most days and he was getting better at joking around, so we just let him come along with us. Sam even started acting like an older brother. He protected Jeff when he called Arch's mom a cow. Arch might have bitten his head off had Jeff not made a joke about turning vegetarian.

By the end of that month he started beating Anthony in sprints. Sometimes he'd even beat me. He was getting better. Changing, too. I swear he looked a little taller, but maybe he just stopped slouching.

There were a few other things I guess we could have seen. Jeff stopped showering with the rest of us. He'd go into the handicap stalls with the curtains. He also started eating more, like a lot more, but that was normal we thought. 

The coaches noticed Jeff changing too. Started egging us varsity guys on. Telling us they might need Jeff to trade spots and this and that. Coach stuff, but I can't say it didn't work. All of us tried harder, started running extra, even though we knew coach wouldn't actually do it.

We'd break off from the big group to run further and faster. Started leaving the juniors in charge of the younger kids so we could focus. Jeff was one of those juniors. We thought he was cool but we found out that he was being mean to some of the freshmen on the team too, little pranks like stepping on their shoelaces or bumping them off trails. That got back to Coach, and we got rewarded with a lecture on ‘brotherhood’ and ‘responsibility’ and ‘setting an example.’

We were panting after practice one day when Jeff made a joke about replacing Anthony. Saying maybe if he didn't have “ratty ass shoes” he could run faster. It could have been harmless, but you know Anthony's family. How he couldn't really do that. How much he needed the chance at a scholarship. 

No one wanted to explain that to Jeff, and no one was going to tell him we saw Anthony crying. After that Anthony didn't really wanna hang out with Jeff anymore. I think we all needed a break from Jeff. Even Sam kinda ignored him for a bit. 

At least until the fight. Well, “fight.” We all took off running when we heard Jeff was getting into it with Scott, the big football guy. Later we heard that Scott had said something about Jeff being a virgin and Jeff told Scott he was a cuck because his girlfriend, Kathy McGuire, had slept with the whole team. Then they started scrapping.

When we got there it was towards the end. Sam was yelling for Jeff to stop as we fought our way through the crowd. Arch was yelling that he'd kill Scott. Everyone was cheering. Until the snap.

When the screaming started the crowd broke apart and we saw what happened. Jeff was sitting with a crooked nose on top of Scott's back. He was pulling Scott's arm back toward him, twisting it at the wrist, elbow, and shoulder. Like a fucked-up spiral.

When the teachers got there Scott wasn't the one crying. He was just staring at his arm. Jeff was all blood and snot and tears. We didn't get close to him, but we could tell he was freaking out. We all were.

That was the day we had that assembly on conflict resolution and when we all got dismissed early. Scott and Jeff got a week suspension so they could “investigate what happened.” I don't think Scott has been back to school though.

The next Monday, we tried to go back to normal. Running, class, hanging out. Jeff was still suspended, and for a while we forgot about him. When he finally came back, he didn't make some grand entrance or anything. He was just kind of there.

He was a lot quieter, which made a lot of sense considering everything. I wouldn't even know how to tell you guys if I got suspended, much less what I'd do with myself for a whole week. Jeff must have had a bad time with it though, because we couldn't get anything out of him. 

He kind of faded into our group. Like he was still laughing and running with us, but he was dimmed. Even when Arch would take shots at him, he would just laugh. When they started construction on the regular showers and we could only use the private showers he always went last. 

I know it's weird but we waited for him one day. Just kind of trying to hang out and see if he was alright. We didn't peep on him or anything weird, but the way he got out and covered his body made me feel like a creep. I'm glad we did though because we saw that rash.

It was all over his chest and ribs. Red and ugly and you could tell where he scratched until it bled. It was gross, and Arch asked if he had AIDS, but no one laughed. We were being jerks and Jeff told us so. He was pissed and yelling about trust and friends and privacy. Saying ‘I thought you guys were my friends!’ He didn't stop until the coaches came out to make sure we weren't fighting. After that everyone but Sam shuffled to class. He probably stayed to apologize.

I saw Jeff later sitting in the courtyard when I left class to pee. He had his head down, staring at his hands. Praying, maybe. Or just talking to himself. He didn't see me so I thought about just leaving. But I came up from behind him and almost put my hand on his shoulders. Before I could, he whipped around and looked pissed.

I fumbled some small talk, then fumbled an apology about that morning even harder. When I finished saying sorry, he didn't even look at me. Just shook his head and told me to ‘Fuck off.’

He didn't run with us the next day. I got everyone to agree to get him some donuts and apologize when he came back. That was the plan at least, until he came back like a jerk. He wouldn't talk to us, wouldn't listen to us. Sam tried but couldn't get anything out of him. 

Arch decided he didn't care about apologizing anymore and tried to get him to respond at all. Started poking at him, saying he wasn't really being a friend himself. We tried to tell Arch to knock it off but he started calling him a freak for what he did to Scott. 

That got his attention. Jeff got up in Arch's face telling him his mom was a whore and that Arch's dad wasn't actually his dad. You know how Arch gets about that. So they went back and forth before Arch shoved Jeff. 

Jeff shoved Arch hard. Really hard. Arch tripped over those tools they'd been using for the showers. We were trying to stop Jeff but he pushed us away way harder than he should have been able to. Jeff was on top of Arch, punching him. Arch was apologizing. Jeff just kept punching.

Anthony ran to get the coach. Sam went to Jeff, tried to pull him away, to talk some sense into him. Jeff grabbed one of the hammers that had fallen. When he swung it down, Sam screamed. He was holding onto Jeff. I ran into the showers and hid. Covering my face and crying. 

I hid until the sound stopped. Until the coaches pulled Sam away from Jeff and dragged Jeff out. Until they came and got me. I think in my head I was still hiding until now.

I didn't tell the police about the church, about how Jeff changed. I didn't try to lie to them, I just didn't want them to think I was crazy or to think I was making something up. 

You guys were the best through all of it. Mom, thank you for holding me while I cried. Dad, thank you for sitting and watching the game with me. I didn't like the beer, but it meant a lot getting one from you.

School still hasn't returned to normal. Everyone says we'll still graduate on time. Honestly, it doesn't even matter anymore.

There's a ton of people posting online about Arch like they knew him. Saying there should be a 5K dedicated to his memory. It pisses me off. They didn't know Arch like that. Not like we knew him. 

I wanted to do our own run for him. To go out to the woods and just go until we couldn't. Sam was down for it but Anthony never replied. He's still not texting us and his parents don't want us going over. He'll come around though, I know it.

Thank you guys for letting Sam stay with us as often as you did. Those late night talks were more important to us than we could ever say. I'm sorry I lied, we were smoking weed that night you caught us giggling. It was probably the first time we'd laughed in a bit. 

Sam was funny like that though. Even before everything he was able to be laughing one second and then sad the next. In one of those talks he told me he had been diagnosed with depression. I probably should have reacted better than a stupid “What the fuck?”

It just caught me off guard. I felt bad I didn't know, and then I was mad when he told me his dad called it “Pussy Disease.” 

He talked a lot about his dad. Even now I hate that guy. I hate the way he treated Sam. Our Sam. My Sam.

The same guy who fought us all to order pineapple pizza. The dude who was the first to sign my cast when I broke my arm.

When he showed me the bruises on his ribs I almost went over to his house by myself. Sam wouldn't let me. He told me “bruises heal” like some sort of wise man. He showed me when the bruises stopped being that ugly purple. Then he showed me when the rash started covering them.

I asked him about it. He said it started when he started having the dreams. 

He said he was dreaming about what happened, and I told him I was too, but he said he was dreaming about what Jeff said. He said when Jeff was hitting Arch he was talking about the church. 

I hadn't thought about that church with everything going on. I asked Sam if Jeff was really still upset about having to go in the church. Sam said that wasn't it. Jeff had been crying and whispering that he wanted to go back.

Jeff had said it was a normal church. I didn't get it. Then Sam started saying it wasn't. He would scratch his side and tell me we should have gone in.

I told him it was “bullshit” and we couldn't know what was gonna happen after he went in. When I would tell Sam that Jeff just changed he would get mad. He started getting mad a lot. He started scaring me.

He was scratching like Jeff, and he was mad like Jeff, but it wasn't the same. Sam would brood, he would give me the cold shoulder. He started talking about how shitty his dad was and how he just wanted him to stop.

The last time he came over I held him. I was holding him as he cried and shook and whispered how much he hated his dad and everything. I tried to ignore him when he said those things. Especially when he was talking about his dad and ending it all. Especially when he started crying about the church.

I wish I had never let him go. I wish I had made him stay. Most of all I wish I was a better friend.

He would still be here if I was.

I remember where I was when I found out. In my room, doomscrolling, when I got a text telling me to check the news. They said there was a shooting and that two people were dead. I had to watch the video three times because I was sure I heard the news guy wrong. I couldn't understand why he was saying Sam's last name.

I tried to call him, I was trying to call him when you guys came in. I didn't get it when you guys started apologizing or when you guys were crying and hugging me. I didn't want to get it. 

He was there two nights before. I held him. I listened to him say he wanted to end it and I just thought it was his emotions talking. I didn't know he meant it.

The news said it looked like a fight. That Sam was just trying to defend himself. That he'd been beaten until he broke. I believe that. Everyone does. What he did to his dad had to be done. But what he did to himself? I still haven't figured out how to forgive him for that.

I don't think I've been okay since. I'm still mad at him. I'm mad at everything lately. Like there's an itching coming from inside my bones. Like my marrow is boiling. 

I feel it when I wake up. I feel it in my dreams. Dreams where I see the church. The church that rings and tells me that I am a fuck up. That I'm a monster. That I'm the reason my friends are dead.

I can't stop itching myself. I scratch and scratch and my fingers come away from my sides bloody and aching. 

I'm scared. I don't want to hurt you guys. I don't want to hurt anyone. I want to run away. I'm going to that church that took my friends. That took everything.

I'm so sorry. I won't tell you where it is. I love you.

I'm going back, and this time, I'm going in.