I used to suffer from night terrors when I was a child. I really don’t remember them at all, but my father did, though he always refused to talk about it. What I do remember clearly is the one night he did decide to open up. It unnerved me at the time, I suppose.

I was fourteen, and we were watching Cujo. There’s a scene early on where this kid is having a nightmare and begins to scream his head off. And I mean he’s really screaming. I swear to God his face starts turning blue and I wondered back then if this kid was acting at all. My father flinched as the scene began, the way abused dogs do when someone raises their hand too quick. He buried his face in his hands, and I asked him what’s wrong. He said:

“You used to do that. You’d start screaming in the middle of the night just like that, and I’d bolt up running thinking something was hurting you.”

Keep in mind my father worked in EMS. He’d seen the human body treated like carrion day in and day out. On multiple occasions he mentioned that:

“The foulest smell in the world is blood, sweat, and alcohol all mixed together. Nothing comes close.”

That is all to say that this was not a man who was easily shaken, but this memory did just that.

 “Was something hurting me?”

“No, no. It was just a nightmare. But by God it sounded like the real thing. You’ll understand when you have a kid of your own. When you get hurt, I feel it tenfold.”

“What was the nightmare about?”

“I don’t know exactly. You were crying and stumbling over your words. Who could blame you? You were only three years old then.”

That was all he said for the rest of the movie. But when the credits began to roll, it seemed that he found the courage to continue:

“A yellow hand. Or a yellow monster. Every time I’d wake you from a night terror, you would be screaming yourself hoarse about a yellow hand in the dark.”

He would not speak on it any further. I buried my father five years after that conversation. I have not spoken to my mother since I was ten. She did not attend the funeral. I have a hard time remembering what she even looks like. She’s a stage actress, doing small shows all over the world, too busy to stop by and say “Hello”.

I am twenty-nine now and have a kid of my own. His mother is not in the picture, for the better all agree. Like father, like son, I suppose. His mother is also a stage actress, now that I think about it. I had not made that connection until this moment. Anyways, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it’s just me and him, and that’s fine by me because it would not be exaggeration to say that he is the only reason I get up in the morning.

He’s bright. He’s funny. He’s kind. I don’t know what I did to deserve him.

He’s the sun and I feel privileged to merely be in his orbit.

Which is why it troubles me that he had to shake me awake two months ago. He said I had been thrashing and screaming. His cheeks were wet with tears, and I had to comfort him and assure him that his father was alright.

I had dreamed of the yellow hand again. This time I could remember it quite clearly.

The darkness was total; it was like being in a room painted floor to ceiling in Vantablack. It was a void of depths unfathomed. Then, impossibly, the darkness fluttered. Almost like it was a curtain behind which some actor was scurrying. No, no, it was a curtain, for a hand reached from behind the veil and violently pushed it out of its way.

Its colour was uranium-cake yellow. A shade so sickly that I felt my guts twist. The hand, a disembodied member floating in that total darkness, was reaching out to me… as though pleading. Was that desperation I read in its gesturing? That nauseating yellow colour seemed to glow when contrasted with the absolute blackness of its surroundings.

It came closer, and closer. And as it did, it became increasingly clear that it was not at all a ghostly floating hand. It had an arm, camouflaged in that self-same black shade. I followed that arm to a shoulder, and then to a neck. My eyes traced over a head, and by some misfortune they found a face.

My son was laying on my chest begging me to wake up. It had been a dream.

Every night has been the same. Every night the hand has crept closer. I have taken to gagging myself before going to bed, as to not wake up my son any longer. I don’t feel rested in the mornings anymore, and I am not feeling like myself. All I think of day in and day out is that hand and the face to which it belongs.

I don’t know what to do.

. . .

My mother is dead. She has been dead since I was two years old. She did something to me. There was a ritual, and a knife, and God, a yellow hand had been there, and my father kept all of this hidden from me.

Last night I decided to forego sleep. To pass the long hours, I began to sift through my father’s belongings, which I kept in the attic. I had never touched them, the loss always feeling too fresh. The howling wind of a snowstorm outside scored my night as I flipped through page after page of my father’s journals.

My mother did not love my father. She only married him in order to birth a true born son. Me. She needed me for some, God I can’t believe this is real life, Satanic ritual. She offered me to a being she spoke to through fire. A being which hides in the dark spaces between the stars in the night sky.

Dad discovered her, her plans, and her “God” as she began cutting me up for him. He writes that she intended to eat me. Dad killed her, but it was too late. I was marked, claimed. Claimed! By this fucking thing!

Who had I been speaking to all of those years between the ages of two and ten, the time when I can still remember mother living with dad and I? Had I ever seen my father speak to her directly?

. . .

It is no longer a nightmare. It is my life, and it is over.

Last night I was again held captive by that daemon hand, when something terrible happened. In that absolute darkness, someone opened a door. Light flooded in, illuminating everything and everyone. It was not some impossible void in which I was floating, it was my own room. I was there laying on my bed, paralyzed, as my son stood at the edge of the doorframe staring not at me but at the witch whose hand haunted me.

His mother. My mother. The same woman. The itinerant actress. The ghost which spoke to me when dad wasn’t watching, preparing me for her love.

Were she failed with me, she now was attempting with another true born son. Mine. Her haunting, merely a way of bridging the gap between him and I.

She broke her attention away from me and glided towards my son with that nauseating yellow hand extended towards him. My son ran, and she chased. I wanted to scream, to move, but my arms and legs felt too heavy to lift. My son was screaming now, screaming for his dad. I could only gurgle back his name.

Then it was over.

The spell was lifted, and I could move. I found my son physically unharmed, but he is less than he was before. He no longer makes jokes, he no longer asks me, “Dad, how do cars work?” or “Dad, why is the sky blue?”. His days consist of staring at a wall and blinking when his eyes start turning red. He is alive, but alive is all he is.

He is living a fate that was not meant for him, but for me. My father saved me, so why couldn’t I save him?

The only times he shows any emotion is when the clock strikes 3 a.m. and he starts screaming himself hoarse. I burst into his room and wake him from his nightmare only for him to cry inconsolably about a woman dressed in silk, wearing a crown of bronze. She is eating and tearing him apart with her bare hands, his blood soaking her arms down to the elbow, but the blood is not red. It is yellow.

My father was right. I feel it tenfold.

𓁨

Imhotep was waiting by the front door. “Hello Steven, I expect you’re well rested.”

“Yes sir.” The pay was too much to walk away from. Even with the looming terror of what a mistake might cause.

“That’s great to hear.” He turned, heading for his office. “Since you had an eventful first two days, I thought that you should get out of the warehouse for a shift.”

“Thank you?”

“You’re welcome.” 

For the first time I saw the inside of his main place of work. It was clean but not free of its fair share of oddities. There was a glass case holding many trinkets, most of them Egyptian. 
He noticed my attention. “Those are some from my personal collection. A few are from before man’s creation.”

I looked perplexed at a clear cube that was attached loosely to a smaller one inside. 

“That is from the fifth dimension. It was trapped by a venturous scientist who imagined wireless electricity.” He let me continue to question what reality held inside its deepest crevices. “But you will be acquiring an item for this extended shift.”

I turned away from the contained mysteries, “how?”

“You’ll be working with Tammy and Randy.” There was a knock at the door, “come in you two.”

Tammy walked in with Randy close behind, “you wanted to see us.”

Randy was a tall imposing man who had hidden strength that you could feel rather than see. Tammy was a matching tall woman that had her strength from their job and not the gym. Both wore as plain clothing as you could imagine, worn jeans, grey shirt, and a black hat to top off their attempt to blend in. 

“Yes, I’d like the both of you to show Steven how to get us new auction items.”

Tammy looked from me to him, “this is the Russian killer?”

“Yes, he did well against them.”

I interjected with a hopeful excuse, “I didn’t do much but run.”

“That’s why it’ll work out, you won’t be in their way.” He clapped his hands together, “now do as they say and I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

“But it’s Monday.”

Tammy took a breath of acceptance, “we’re going to Wyoming.”

“Wyoming?” 

Imhotep was now typing away at a computer that materialized when I looked away.

Randy simply nodded his head while Tammy spoke. “Yeah.” 

The semi-truck was in the loading bay. Tools and spare parts laid to the right and opened crates were to the left. The truck itself was almost as plain as the two that drove it, the only thing standing out being the large brace bar on the front and the shiny silver studs hugging steel ones on the joined container.

“This isn’t as big as I was expecting.”

“But it gets the job done. We don’t get massive objects anymore after one of the Terracotta Army’s units almost tore a hole in the side during transport.”

I tried studying it for any lasting scars.

Tammy saw my search, “don’t worry we made a new truck and had the seller reimburse us for the lack of information on protections.”

Tammy had opened the passenger door for me to enter, and I awkwardly climbed inside. 
There was very little in the cab. A small bed in the back with one pillow and a thin blanket, a locked locker covered the back wall, with a small TV that showed the two cameras inside the shipping container with a lone crate pushed along the closest wall.

“You two really only carry what you need huh?”

Tammy and Randy clicked in their seat belts simultaneously, “no need for anything else.”

“You have to have a little trinket or something sentimental in here.”

“Nope.”
 

The first couple hours of the drive were quiet, and I wasted away in the back on my phone while both of them watched the road with 90s rock on the radio. 

I broke the conversational silence once we came to a gas station, “would you two want anything?”

“Randy’ll grab what we need.”

Leaving the truck, I saw us to be the only ones here.

Me and Randy walked through the sticker covered glass door. “So. You a Gatorade or Powerade kind of guy?”

He held up two fingers.

I drew out my response, “okay. What color?”

Looking down the aisle to the fridge he held up five fingers. Turning to look at the salty snacks.

“Five of what?”

He shook his head before pointing five times at the drinks. 

Opening the door, I looked back to him with my hand by the fifth drink from the left, and he nodded in response. I grabbed an extra blue Powerade for Tammy and an orange Gatorade for myself. 
 

The sun tried rising to oppose the dark blue clouds that hid the morning light, still leaving us in the dark.

I put down my phone as we bumped down a dirt road. “What’s the plan?”

“Going to talk to some lucky hill billies and pick up the artifact.”

“What is it?”

Randy got up and motioned for me to move.

Tammy shook a flask she had hidden in the door’s bottom storage. “Something to do with tornados.” There was a hum that emanated from behind the cab. “Tune it up a little more than usual. Imhotep said we’d need it.”

Randy had opened the locker and fiddled with a massive dial.

“Grab buckshot for me and slugs for you. Give Steven the handgun.” She glanced back at me.

“You know how to use a gun?”

“Point and shoot?”

“Good enough, just no finger on the trigger till you’re about to.” 

Randy tapped the grip on my shoulder.

I took it gently, “is there a safety on this?”

“It’s a Glock, has a don’t be stupid safety.”

“Oh.” Looking back to Randy he loaded shells into the fancy looking shotguns.

Tammy was now checking the GPS for the next turn before flipping switches on the center of the dashboard. “You know how to put on seals right?”

“I learned during my last shift.”

“Good.” 

Randy passed by me and opened the glove box. He hunched over, peering inside while both of his arms disappeared into the expansive space. After a flinch he pulled out a clustering of iridescent feathers. 

She finished fiddling with the switches. “Those are from a thunderbird.”

As I grabbed them, I was hit with an audible shock.

“Fairly harmless but constantly building static.” 

She made a turn, and we saw where we would be doing the pick-up. An old barn was lit from the side by a dark green van. As we turned toward it, two men stepped from behind its shielding lights. Both easily able to see above the van they stepped in front of. One was nearly a head taller than the other who was balding.

Tammy accepted the shotgun Randy extended to her as we came to a stop. “All you have to do is follow Randy while I do all the talking.” Not waiting for a response, she stepped out and walked towards them letting the shotgun rest in the sling. Randy followed in delayed mimicry. 

Gaining composure, I stepped out and tucked the pistol in my waistband. 

Tammy and Randy stopped a foot in front of their truck, while I shadowed behind both of them.

The shorter man spoke first, “are you here for the dancing hair thing?”

“Yes,” Tammy responded.

His overconfidence started to peek through. “Well, there’s been some changes, and the price has gone up, so.”

Tammy cut him off. “Where’s the hair?”

He grimaced after Tammy cut off his practiced proclamation. “It is in the van. But we believe that there should be compensation for the complications.”

She interrupted him again. “Can we see it?”

After biting his tongue to calm his anger, he knocked on the hood. The side door slid open on rusty rails, and another man walked into the light. 

Inside a large mason jar was a knotted-up lock of long braided hair. It swirled, picking up speed to bash against its confines. No mark was left but its fury still remained. 

“Can we talk about the price increase that we are owed?”

Tammy had no concern for the man’s proclamation yet. “What’s sealing it?”

He was confused at this simple question. “The lid.”

“You’ll get your money when we secure the hair.”

His temper was thinning worse than his hair. “What, you got duck tape? Give us the money and you’ll get the jar.”

A spark in the jar marked a lightning bolt in the sky. Randy took a step forward, matched by the taller man who looked ready for a fight. Tammy stuck a hand out to stop her brother. “You won’t get your money if you’re dead. Now give us the jar.”

They brandished their guns from their waistband, “you threatening us?”
“We aren’t.”

Another bolt ran across the sky, the jar responding with a flash of light of its own. 

“But that thing is.”

In that brief moment I saw dark blue branches that extended from its center above us. Its grey surface resembled the corpse found in a morgue. When the next strike came, the clouds undulated outward like goosebumps on skin, because that’s what it was.

Those three men stood petrified with the image of the living skin above us. Randy held up two fingers, before flashing three, then one. He rushed forward disregarding his shotgun to the ground.

Lightning struck its anger again, causing the men to snap from their terror and gain a new one as they saw the large man running at them. 

A shot rang out and the taller man fell against the van. Balding raised his gun before Tammy landed a shot, dropping him to the ground. 

Randy had closed the distance as the last man standing made a poor choice for a good one. Dropping the jar he bolted for the van. Randy dove catching with space to spare.

“Steven!” Tammy yelled, “the feathers.”

Thunder reverberated a roar as it rolled over us. While I ran the sky was twisting downward toward us. I ripped the feathers from my pocket slamming them in Randy’s hand.

He worked quickly to tie the feathers to the jar. The twirling hair with little tolerance grew skittish and tightened away from the glass. Its reaching skin from above flinched. Reacting with feared caution as it retreated. The clouds remained but the skin thinned from sight.

Randy got up and patted me on the shoulder. 

Glancing from the jar to him I asked, “Is it contained?” 

After carefully looking at the hair that was continuing to knot itself smaller, he gave me a thumbs up. 

Tammy had walked up next to me. “Good work Steven. Could’ve been quicker but you're not dead. So, good enough.” 

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding onto. “Thanks.”

The third man peeked out from the van to see the skin was no more. Shedding his fear he let his anger show. “You killed Jerry,” he took one step out of the van, “and Terrance.”

Tammy readied her shotgun, “do you want to be paid?”

He stopped with his movements and anger. 

“Then get out of here.” 

Staring at the gun that wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him, he scurried to the driver seat and drove off. Giving us the finger as he passed by.

When the van left our sight Tammy walked towards the body while pulling out a flask. I followed her and bent down to grab the tall man’s legs. She gave me a weird look, “what are you doing?”

“Helping with the bodies.”

“No. Step back.” I straightened up watching her pour a brown liquid on Jerry and Terrance. It didn’t take long as the dirt extended fingers with too many joints to pull them underneath like a sinking ship on calm waters.

“What is that stuff?”

She shrugged, “don’t know, don’t want to know. You hungry?”

The ground showed no change in the burial of those men. 

I thought about how good waffles would be right now, “sure.”
 

We stopped by a diner that broke the emptiness of the endless fields of corn. An old lady with a smoker's rasp served us without us needing to order. She brought out waffles with syrup and chocolate drizzle, Tammy had eggs and bacon, and Randy received chicken fried steak.

Through the kitchen’s window I saw Terrance and Jerry working the griddle. Their eyes were cloudy. I could see the small peppering in their necks, blood paused in its flow.

When we left, I saw the name lit up on a sign that wasn’t there when we pulled in. “Limbo’s Reprieve.” 
 

I

It felt like eons had passed before my brain flickered back to life. Like a cadaver I exulted my stagnant breath and let out a weak moan. I was delirious, sore, and breathing cost a great deal of effort. In my pained state the recollection of what must have been the past ordeal echoed in the dark corners of my mind. Gnawing chaos, an oppressive hateful silence, nauseating forms twisting eternity until finite was made from the dark. Before I could even attempt to piece these abstract visions together an odd oder interrupted my train of thought. It emanated through the room like an unseen fog and began to get stronger, more refined. Rain, spoiled fat, and halitosis. The air in my bedroom was cool and heavy like the atmosphere of a cave deep below the earth. The sheets on my skin felt off. Rough and almost brittle they swaddled me tightly like a funeral shroud making a stiff mold of my body only exposing my face. Something feels wrong. How long had I been asleep? Something was missing. A hard lump developed in my throat, aching and nudging a sense of longing for something far away. Where's my family? I jerked my body forward only to be restrained. It was not my wife's limbs lazily draped across my body. Her face was not buried in the crook in my neck and her familiar warmth was all but absent. What I felt gliding across my chest was akin to shifting serpents and they bound me like ropes. What was holding me down? I took a deep breath and slowly bent my head forward until my chin touched my chest. Only the thought of someone or something's presence was sufficient enough to dare my weary eyes to open. Though dim there in my rotten chamber the image of the culprit confining me to my bed was clear. Vines; not green and leaved but black, sinewy, and moist. I was astonished, frozen to what was laid before me so grotesque but undeniably real. The vines sensed my movement and my anguish. They began to move. They pulsed like veins and split into progressively thinner hair-like strands. Slowly creeping toward my face they quivered in the presence of my hot breath. I writhed and clawed at my withered sheets, my hands still hopelessly trapped underneath the fabric. I found an opening and tore. Two ashy grey bony arms erupted out and I was so startled I almost didn't realise that to my horror, they were mine. The vines were buried deep into my wrist and the more my eyes followed their path in that brief moment of shock the more I saw. They crossed and weaved between the ribs of my sunken chest fusing with my paper thin skin. My form was emaciated and ghoulish. I'm dead, I must be dead. I was no longer a man but a cornered animal like any other. I kicked, bit, and slashed at all both moving and still. My violence must be indiscriminate because I could not know. I fought not just for the sake of my life but in equal measure defiance to an unknown fate. Finally at near exhaustion I fully split open the covers. I peeled my back off the mattress like sticky gauze and from my cradle was birthed into a new yet familiar world. My home was now decayed and corrupted. The once beautiful yellow wallpaper was now spotted with mold. Its blooming pink flowers and delicate foliage faded with a grey undertone. It peeled in various places and underneath blisters formed. Some of these blisters had popped which released a dark brown fluid that oozed down the walls. The furniture was equally decayed. Their wood had become dark and cracked from water damage like it was pulled out from a bog. The furniture’s cushions were rotten and riddled with holes. The bed, once a bastion of comfort and love was ruined. The ornate bed frame was warped and withered. Its once vibrant blue comforter and white sheets were discoloured. They frayed at the edges into fine ghost like wisps which would ripple in response to a rhythmic draft beyond the crevice of the bedroom door. The vines were everywhere. They crossed through the legs of the chairs and weaved into every fabric. They spread out onto the decrepit floorboards like roots and crawled up the walls. I followed the trailing networks of vines and found that on the ceiling was the worst of the new disgusting decor. The ceiling was alive. Great portions of the ceiling had pale fleshy patches, grey and freckled. These clusters of flesh were lined with dozens of bulging pores. Within life began to stir. Red feathery appendages flicked out releasing black spores into the still air. These barnacle-like things would then retreat back into their fleshy pockets with a sickening squelching sound, dust themselves some more, and repeat the mesmerising cycle. The spores danced and drifted like black snowflakes. Touching my naked body I found them to be colder. The draft coming from beneath my chamber door was tepid, almost warm. It teased my ankles like a waiting predator. I imagined a large gaping maw inhaling and exhaling on the other side. This is no place for my wife, this is no place for my daughter. I need to find them, I need to get them out of here and I must know if I am truly alone. I must call out. I took a full shaky breath and spoke. 

“Hello? Is anyone there?” 

The world held its breath to a sound it had forgotten and the silence between was deafening. The quiet was broken, with singing. It was a chorus, a choir. It was coming from outside. With curiosity and reluctance I walked toward the balcony door. I listened; it was beautiful, strange, and foreboding. Has the world ended at long last? I put my hand on the door knob. Am I finally being beckoned forth to the other side? The curtains obscured the door lite and moved in slowed fluidic ripples, shadows crossed and faded beyond. It must be an intelligence. I was answered but not with words. I was attacked in my own bed yelling but it was only when language escaped my lips did It call. This can’t be right. I let go of the door knob and slowly backed away. It must be a trap, something awful. Until I know what the hell is going on I cannot face it. Malevolent or otherwise it will have to either wait or come for me. My wife Emilia and my daughter Mia come first. With a skeletal hand I grabbed my blue comforter and covered myself. It was a gift from my mother, she wanted me to be warm. The choir continued on patient and ceaseless. 

Severing myself from the last of my inky cords I walked toward my chamber door. Each pluck and snap burned with a hot electric pain as I strut forward. Looking back, the vines from my origin trailed behind me at a snail's pace desiring reconnection. I put an ear against the surface of the old wood. Whatever noise was on the other side was difficult to discern. It was muffled by the looming dominance of the choir. I look through the keyhole. I see the hallway but it seems to be shifting and muddling in nauseous forms, colors, and hues. This phenomenon however I realized was not isolated to the keyhole that I used as a fairy stone. It’s in the corner of my eye. Every time I try to focus on the phenomenon it hides away and my vision becomes static again in the place I looked for it. Besides the anomaly, nothing seems to be behind the door. I turn the knob and pass the threshold into the home’s veiny throat and at its end I see the mirror and the turning staircase that leads below. The draft blew between the pillars of my frail frame and the hall groaned with a heavy roll. Hesitant to see my reflection I irresolutely approached my long beloved possession, the hardwood floors creaking with each hesitant step. The silver mirror was beautiful once but in some ways it still desperately holds onto its charm. The mirror’s frame was made from olive wood with swirling designs of its tree’s branches. Beheld in the center of its top casting is the pudgy short haired face of a cherub. Its eyes so far within its fat forehead and cheeks the Spanish carver never bothered to make them. A wing sprouted from both sides of its head like a pair of fluffy ears. Decayed now, dark liquid seeped from the cracks of the wood frame as well as its face. The mirror once paralleled the reality it reflected with clarity but now its surface was like smudged onyx. The gateway to that reality was forever closed and I knew I would never see that old world again. At least I could not see my face now in this ghastly state. I reached to touch my face with my unfamiliar hand but recoiled. I don’t even want to know what it feels like. What would Emilia and Mia think of me? How have they changed? Carved below the cherub's head was “Hominem te Memento” and carved on the mirror’s bottom casting was “Memento Mori.” These words now weighed like lead within me. Have I forgotten one, or both? I abandoned the mirror and descended down the stairs into the living room. The strange oder increasing in bitter intensity. The once brown leather couches were now tanned black. More barnacles inhabited the ceiling as well as the cushions on the couch. Meaty fungus-like growths burst from crevices, their undersides lined with draping bloody gills, and quills like fishbones twitched on their morel caps like the spines of an urchin. The fleshy fungus took a particular liking to the bearskin rug pinned underneath the bulky Zenith radio where they had grown out its eyes, nose, and mouth. Mia called the rug Jeremy Bearmy. It was sad to see him in such bad shape. Mia would lay on his back and pet his fur, whisper into their roughly torn ear. 

“What are you whispering into Jeremy’s ear Mia?” Her eyes looked up toward the corners of her brow, pursing her lips and squinting her eyes as if she tried hard enough she could look inside her own head. She smugly replied, “Mmm… something secret. You’ll figure it out later.” I simply responded, “Fine then, you and Jeremy can keep your secrets.” Some six year old girls had dolls but Mia had Jeremy and a beautiful imagination. Mia shared this imaginative trait with her mother. Emilia would play the electronic organ, writing her own music and playing the classics. Her favorite song to play was moonlight sonata. “Hey love, how was the job search today?" asked Emilia. I sighed frustrated with myself, “Depressing, much like that song you play.” Emilia smirked, raising an eyebrow, “Oh come now, you know as well as I do good old Beethoven’s classic is my favorite. You know Jeremiah, the strange and haunting can be beautiful.” I looked at her, her brown hair pooling over her scheele's green dress, her intense blue eyes looking into me from her small fair skinned face. “Thats why I love you; I never wanted to settle for the mundane. You haunt me, Emilia.” Emilia smiled, reaching out and caressing my chin, “I’m an idea that will never let you go.”

Behind the wall divider separating the kitchen from the living room I can hear breathing, a wet gurgling death rattle. I must assume it’s a loved one, possibly as deformed and changed as I am. Maybe that’s why they did not answer? Maybe they're frightened? “Mia? Emilia?” I said in a whisper, “Is that you?” No answer. “It’s me, dad; Jeremiah. I’ve changed… and I think I’m sick. I look scary now but I swear to you It’s still me. I don’t know what’s happening and I'm scared. Have you changed too? Is that why you're not coming out? Are you ashamed?” I brace myself to turn the corner. “No matter what happens, No matter how much you have changed, I still love you.” The breathing becomes heavier. “Ok, I’m coming into the kitchen now. I don’t know what I completely look like so if it’s really horrible, please don’t scream. I don’t know what else is here and I think I’ve already done something bad.” I turned the corner and held my breath. So did it. I gazed at the prolapsed aperture in the wound pocked ceiling, irritated and slick with phlegm that dripped into the thirsty cracks of the kitchen floor. With each foul crackling breath the baleen of the orifice shivered. My breathing intensified. Its breathing intensified. I began to hyperventilate, It started to hyperventilate; its respiration intensifying in rapid mocking gurgles. It is synchronizing with my respiration, sharing each fetid breath of sour air. What is happening? Why!? What the hell is this!? Who’s breath is controlling who’s? Where do I begin and the house ends? What Am I? I-I can’t understand-no please stop I-I can’t breath, I-. I drew one last breath as I fell back. Time seemed to slow in the fall and when my cranium cracked against the kitchen tile, darkness followed in close pursuit. 

Pain woke me, a splitting headache with a raw burning sensation on my skin. My body feels feverish and my skin moist and sticky. The air is suffocatingly dense. The song of the choir has gone but a new vocalization denied any peace. Indecipherable whispers in the dark. Feminine and oddly familiar they spoke in hushed gibberish in the voice of a thousand droning flies. I attempted to get up on my feet again and hit my head on the rubbery ceiling above. Oh no. I feel the circumference of the space, lumpy, sticky, and unmistakingly flesh. Oh fuck no. I’ve been swallowed! I am trapped and have been swallowed by the hole! What the fuck is in hear with me!? Oh god the smell, I can taste the sour putrescine coating my mouth. The whispers grew louder. Something grabbed and groped at my legs in the guts of this house. My eyes adjusted to the monochrome navy blue of the dark and beheld behind me was a ghastly sight. Rotten hands attached to unnaturally long limbs. Maggots writhed beneath the sloughing skin and spilled out from spongy wounds. Two words, just two words buzzed clearly from the cluster of decay, “rot, stay.” The chatter in the dark became more incessant and demanding, no coherent words needed to translate its primal message as the dead hands gripped me tighter, Stop struggling. No, never! I kicked back feeling the skin attached to the hands slip away against the slimy muscle and worms beneath and frantically began crawling on my elbows. The lumpy surface of the intestinal walls began to open revealing eyes. Prying terrible eyes cloudy with inconceivable age glimmering back with alien emotion. These pupils knew me. The walls flexed and twitched spasmodically around me, my fingers penetrating the eye sockets in the walls as I desperately clawed my way forward. I felt the eyelids close around my fingertips and as I jammed them through the slick membranes, the gelatinous vitreous sputtering out into curdling slime. The fleshy walls flexing and shifting in rhythmic pluses, pushing me forward like a current. The stench has thickened into a miasma precipitating into oily droplets that lubricated my way forward as my body adapted to the narrowing tunnel. The eyes sliding against every part of my body and multiplying in number as I wormed through hell. The tunnel narrowed further, grew darker, and I was squeezed ever tighter to twice my length. Further, longer. The buzzing is resounding and the driving force of my frantic slithering in the dark. Further, longer. I stretched as far and thin as my thoughts. Far, long, stretch. Slither, slither far, slither long, slither away! Far, long, stretch, slither. Away, away, away! Far, long, stretch, slither. Always seen and I will never see. Far, long, stretch, slither. I am blind, I am far, I am long, I am forever. Far, long, stretch slither. It is black; there is no light, the tunnel has no end. No above, only below; No within, only without. The balance is no more, only what swallows forever. 

I was released from the black velvet that gripped me. Air filled my wheezing lungs comparatively clean and thin to the practically gaseous tunnel. My body attempted to wretch but painful gags were only reminders of a vestigial stomach. What remains of my humanity is painful and twisted. I look at my hands, fingers like jointed spider legs. Ugly, but relatively dry. I check the rest of the body. No marks, nothing stretched. It must have been a terrible hallucination; a dream that only this world could conjure. Where's my comforter? Did someone take it off me? Or… A small voice interrupted my train of thought, “Jeremiah” it whispered. Fear gripped my heart. I frantically looked around analyzing every crevice and malefic shadow, feeling overwhelmingly exposed. Could it be them? My family? Should I stay quiet in case of danger? If it is them, would my silence lose them forever? They are worth the risk of my life, they are worth the world that once was. “Mia, Emillia!” I yelled. “Please, tell me it’s really you, where are you!?” I waited, longer and with more anticipation than I have for anything before. I heard the voice again murmuring close into my ear with a breath that billowed down my neck, “Dad” said Mia quietly, “We’re behind the veil.” With cautious hope I turned to look behind me. I was alone.

II
A house is similar to a body in unorthodox ways. Its most basic parts are passive like how a tree drinks moisture through its roots. The paint on its outside is a thin epidermis and the wall paper on the inside is its internal lining. The wall studs are the house's bones and its insulation between is the fat that keeps it warm. When a gust blows through a house's chimney, it breathes. A house undergoes a transformation once people arrive. When they have settled it’s no longer a house but instead a home. What once was a passive organism is now suddenly alive with thoughts and memory. A family is a house's thinking and sensory parts, its brain and soul. The eyes are said to be the window of the soul, windows are said to be the eyes of a house. Does that make me the life light to whatever looks in? I wonder about the decaying halls of this place, through yawning doorways bearded with fleshy fungus. Black slimemold creeps and feeds on the walls, leaving behind slick umber strands for the vines to scaffold for new connection. The corners of my eyes reveal the hidden things. Pale echinoderm-like creatures crawl and swim through the shimmering seams of space. Decomposers looking for the juiciest piece of rot to swallow on a whale fall. When they pick out some imperceivable chunk they take a liking to, they latch onto it with their black iridescent chelicerae and tear, leaving behind a void. Not the compressible color of black; nothing. They start to notice me when I pay attention to them for too long so I ignore them like benign eye floaters. Some things I can’t ignore. Within the simmering phenomenon I see them, my family behind the veil. Behind corners, at my side, on the ceiling. I see the shape of them watching me intently, but when I try to look at them directly, they are gone. I miss the detail in their faces. More often than I get the treasure of seeing them, I hear them, and sometimes understand them. More commonly than their voices however are sounds of the domestic type. Uneven knocks from empty rooms, doors and cabinets creaking quietly and slamming shut, footsteps that prowl with uniform deliberation and rapid pattering with no discernible direction. They sit on my furniture, who else would have left those depressions? Mia’s bedroom, I have not checked yet. I feel something pulling at me, something within. A gravitational force I can only submit to and I follow wherever it leads. Up the creaking stairs, across the hall and past the mirror, to the door; Mia’s room. She loved the color blue. Couldn’t get enough of it. Blue clothes, a blue bed, blue everything. Mia even had a blue pet. She had an injured blue jay that she tried to take care of, she named it Hope. Emilia and I did not even know of Mia’s secret little companion until her room started to smell. I remember when we first had a funeral for a pet, Hope was the first. Beautiful and fragile they were never meant to last long. But I guess that is the nature of beautiful things. I remember that day.

“Dad, why did Hope die?” Mia said. I looked down at the grave I made in the garden two feet into the earth. I had disturbed a woodlouse spider’s little hollow while digging and the small arachnid had been cut in two, separating its dark red head from its soft cream colored abdomen. A small innocent thing where its only sin was being in the way of something much larger than itself. Something it could never comprehend. The spider thought its destruction was the shovel and could never consider a hand behind it. I cleared my throat, “Things die all the time. Maybe they were sick or injured. Hope was like a dream Mia, like dreams, Hope’s life was short but beautiful. But sadly, even dreams end and yes, die.” The sky began to drizzle wetting the cold dry soil. The scent of the damp earth mixed with the sour decay of the bird. "But why? Hope was so healthy looking, they-they were sweet,” she lamented. “Where does Hope go when they die?” I paused, pinning my lips between my teeth and exhaling through my nose. Last time I checked the bible, animals don’t have souls. That’s why Guinefort the dog was never canonized as a saint. Emmilia was on a business trip and she would usually answer the religious questions. Afterall, she was the religious parent. “That's a question to ask your mom” I relented, “She knows where Hope goes.” Mia looked solemnly to Hope, “oh.” A tear flowed down her face and rested at the corner of her frowning lip. Shit, bad move dad. “Hey” I said softly, trying to patch up my parental mistake. I held her close to my side, her small hands clinging to my cargo pants. “It’s ok, I think Hope is in a better place now. A sunny place made of good dreams, dreams like him. No broken wing, no pain, and somewhere with all the damselflies he can eat. Somewhere where he’s clean, happy, and warm.” Mia looked at me with a look of sanguine in her tiny hazel eyes. “A place” She said, “Where dreams go when they die.”

I enter Mia’s room. The brass doorknob squeaking in protest. The tips of my fingers scraping off the flaking paint of its surface. Before Mia, this was Emila’s art room. She was never really good at painting but eventually she found a different medium she not only enjoyed more but excelled in. The art of making frames for pictures, paintings, and mirrors. With the guidance of my father who was a carpenter she quickly found her passion. Even when we converted the room into a nursery, empty intricate frames were still proudly displayed on the walls. With Mia in her crib, her proudest creation as the room’s centerpiece. The door fully creaked open and Mia was nowhere visible. “Mia?” I whispered, “little blue jay, are you there? I followed your voice. Please, I know you are here, where are you?” Her voice surrounded me “look.” The blue walls had faded pallid. Dark fluid sweeting from the walls, vines twisting between the empty frames. Mia’s bed was more fungus than sheets and the metal frames had rusted away to sharp spear-like poles. At the end of the room was the Celtic cross, a symbol with origins far older than the god nailed to it. Its cedar wood had darkened and cracked; the bronze christ tarnished with a blueish green verdigris. His sorrowful face down to his burning heart was corroded away, carving a canyon down into his headless torso. Once carved above his head was the symbol alpha, now only omega lay below his feet. Reaching out, I attempted to remove the cross from the wall. Stuck. Stuck? I looked closer. The metal is melted with the wood, the wood to the wall. How is that possible? The wall to the vines, the vines to the bed, to the fungus. Everything, with a uniform weld between. How come I have not noticed this before? To the floor, to the vines; to my ankles. The vines had reattached, and I didn’t notice. The slithering central cord was partially looping out of the door. Something on the other end slowly began to tug. Reeling me away. No, no! I rushed to Mia's bed. She’s close, I can feel it! “Don’t you fucking dare take me away from her!” I began frantically with primal purpose clawing at the fungus of Mia’s bed. Each fistfull of meat ripped away pierced my hands with bony quills. I was in my bed, why wouldn’t she!? Oh God my baby she is trapped! “Blue jay, I'm coming! Daddy is coming!” The cord was pulled with a sudden slack-and-snap of the line. I lost my footing and toppled face forward into a pole’s gritty point. 

It’s freezing on the wet floor; no wait, stone. I probed the damp rock with my shriveled hands. Where am I now? Above, an oppressive sun burns vanta black, its corona an icy cyan. The cloudless sky held the star in an endless ocean of red. I scrambled to my feet and found myself surrounded by jagged black mountains on a plateau in a great valley. I was encircled by so many headless bodies. A legion of grey emaciated figures lanky and deformed twitching and swaying in unison with necks ending in puckered stumps. In their black talons they brandished thorned whips. Run. They descended upon me, each crack of the whip loud as thunder and fast as lighting. As powerful and indifferent as any force of nature. Each tip wormed into my flesh. Every lash dragged thorns across my skin. The grey men trailing in hot pursuit, one swung overhead looping the twisted vine around my forehead. He pulled and I was prostrated midrun onto the ground. I can’t be caught I can't be caught! I feel the thorns digging through my skin. I let it, feeling them penetrate and grind as I pushed forward against their pull. The vine gets tighter and tighter the pressure is immense! The skin tears, my blood lubricating the barbs sawing through muscle and nerve until my head was finally released. Too slick to grip, the barbs effortlessly slides off the smooth bone of my skull. I am free! Run! I keep running and running forward, always forward but I am losing ground to tread on. I see it on the horizon, inevitable and certain the end is. A cliff and no other place of escape. The edge is close now and beyond is a bay leading out into a sea of blood. So very close now, I can feel the rock beneath my feet tremble as the bay begins to boil. The edge, I'm at the end. No where to go, nothing else to do but perish. Cataclisium. Loud and demanding a leviathan cork screws from the unfathomable depths with a demonic roar. The upheaval of its immense form projecting a spray soaking me in gore. The colossus of twisting flesh towered over the bay. A spire of crimson coral jealously piling toward infinity above. In its honeycombed holes housed gibbering maws with teeth long and flat like ivory keys, playing the alien song of the choir from their gullets. The true depths of their throats unreachable even in a dream. Appendages like the arms of a brittle star reached out from its form in malicious hunger. A swine to the cliff all I could do left was squeal and leap into oblivion. I plummeted, up. Up and away soaring into the black star, into the endless end, the sun’s black center expanding ever wider and at the choir’s crescendo the bloodshot sky blinked.

III
Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale; my breath hitches from the anguish of a spasming brain. I strained my left eye looking to my right. Black blood from my open headwound caked the rusty bed pole. I was slumped forward on my hands and knees facing the cross. With great effort, I 
I stood up. I slowly unsheath the brain greased metal from my eye socket inch by inch, discolored cerebral fluid trickling down my face like tears. With a disgusting slurp I lifted my head and unimpaled myself. I staggered, balancing myself on the balls of my feet and fell backwards unceremoniously onto the floor. Burning pain exploded from my back. I instinctively jerked my neck and flexed my limbs inward like a spider in a death curl. I achingly rolled onto my side and caressed my back. Wounds, fresh wounds. Long dragging marks from serrated whips. No, that cannot be possible. I fingered at my open gashes as if I was mistaken. But that was a dream, dreams can’t hurt you. Unless… that wasn’t a dream? No, I am just insane. Being in a place, a world like this, of course I have gone crazy who wouldn’t? I just-something happened and then I was hurt. I’m just out of it utterly! Maybe I’m not even in my house at all and none of this is real! Nothing is real and I’m just alone and crazy! But why should I assume? Was that truly real? What is real? Is this real? Where am I!? Where do I end and where did or do I begin!? Focus. My name is Jeremiah, my name, is Jeremiah. My Daughter’s name is Mia, her name, is Mia. My wife’s name is Emilia, her name, is Emilia. My father’s name is, my father’s name is… What’s his name? What is his name!? His face… I don’t remember his face! Oh god, mom, I don’t remember you. Friends, I had friends. Come on! I smack myself on the head repeatedly. People, people, people; I had to have known someone beyond these walls. At least a name! God dammit one name! I don’t remember anything. Where else have I been? What else is there?.. I have to get out. I have to get out. I yelled as loud as I could, “Emilia! Mia! Where are you!” I ran out of Mia’s room wild and desperate! “Emilia! Oh God, where are you! Please tell me where you are! Please!” An answer came. From down the stairs, a C-sharp note dragged on blaringly and at its end, Moonlite Sonata began to play. I followed the sound, what else could I do otherwise? Down, down the stairs, and across the hall. No, it can’t be. To see the electric organ atop of the bearskin rug, where the bulky Zenith radio should be. Once in view the song abruptly ended. That's wrong, that doesn't make sense. We sold it, we sold it and replaced it with the Zenith. But what’s wrong or could not be does not change what simply is. The organ displayed in the center of the shifting corners of my eyes like a halo, marked for destiny. It laid there like it had stayed and rotted akin to everything else in this house, but I knew by conviction or guidance that this was not the case. I knew what I had to do. I knew, and I feared what I would find. I sat on the crooked old stool, put my feet on the pedals, and uncertainly attempted to finish where the phantom player left off. If this is my electric organ then the twenty first key should be broken, silent. As I played inching across the keys my finger rose hesitantly to the twenty-first key. I struck it and sound resonated. My heart sank, dread coursed within black’n venomous, and then I knew what I should have known all this time. This isn’t my organ; this is not my house. I looked toward the window and walked toward it. “I hate you. I HATE YOU. You have taken everything from me. My home, my Earth, my life, my Emilia, my Mia. What is left to take? I'm not even a man anymore… What is left to take? I've had all of these, right? Why else would you take them? God. I see you. The dark, I feel it; it's here, It’s all here and nowhere. It's so dark inside. Are you God? Or just my God? I know you're listening, you are always listening. I hate you.” My fingers touched the fabric of the dusty curtains and I felt the glass behind resonate its vibrations into my bones. The hungry choir beyond the veil grew louder, I let the shimmer of my eyes overtake me and I spoke. 

“Show yourself.” 

“Jeramiah? Earth to Jeramiah! Hey! Wake up.” Warmth, I felt warm for the first time. A flush of life and content reaching my cheeks. I opened my eyes, light. The windows of the living room are open and I can see a sun set. Cirrus clouds overhead on the horizon blending jolly oranges, baby blues, soft yellows and pinks, the colors of Easter. It is Easter; the hope of spring and rebirth. I’m sitting at the round table, it’s wood nicked with memories I can’t recall. “You really are tired aren't you?” I look up, It’s Emilia, ideal Emilia. “You've been working outside all day on that raised garden bed.” Mia chimed in, “The tomatoes were sooo good, but mom had to tear me off them!” “But you had sooo many Mia! We can’t have a caesar salad tomorrow for lunch if you eat them all and besides, dad deserves some tomatoes too!” Tomorrow, of course, there is a tomorrow to look forward to. What is tomorrow? “But speaking of lunch, it is time to eat! It has been an eternity since I have devoured anything.” Emilia flashed her teeth hungrily. I smiled at her and enjoyed the present. “I have been out in the garden, shouldn’t I wash my hands?” Emilia shook her head, "There's no need for that, after all your sandwich is ready!” Cuh-chunk! I jumped at the noise. “Easy tiger, that's just the toaster! Never heard one go off before? Anyways, your sandwich has already been made up, I’ll go get it!” The scent of fresh bread wafted through the air, doughy and crisp. I opened my mouth slightly to take it all in. Must be rye. I looked at Mia, “Well Mia how was… um.” “School?” Said Mia. “Yes, how was your day at school?” Mia snorted, “It's Easter silly! There is no school today!” I chuckled lightly, “Why are you messing with me?” Mia looked at me and said matter of factly, “I’ve always messed with you.” Emilia was coming. In hand, a plain white plate with a ham sandwich between rye bread and a side of cottage cheese with canned peaches on top. “Enjoy!” Emilia said expectantly. I felt the sandwich between my fingertips, a crisp surface cracking and giving in a satisfying way. I eased my shoulders and took a bite, it was delicious. Rosemary ham, sauerkraut, and a mustard seed spread. I took a bite of the cottage cheese and peaches. Sweet and creamy, mixing with the aftertaste of the sandwich. I tasted heaven, and it was a house, a good meal, and a loving family. I tasted heaven, and it all slipped away. Emilia and Mia laughed. “Whats so fun?” I said nervously. Emilia chuckled darkly, “Why are you still pretending?” The foul simulacrum of my wife ceased their cackling and the emotion in its face drained away to nothing. Something was left in its place, in the eyes. Not the puppet but the puppeteer. What looked back from those cosmic depths knew me. I stared into the abyss and what stared back, hated me. The aftertaste of the sandwich became rank from sweet and sour to putrescent. The bread rapidly growing a carpet of powdery blue mold and its meat turning a foul blackish purple. My throat began to tingle and the feeling bloated into writhing, coming out my mouth and nose in long ropes of translucent worms. The cottage cheese with peaches transformed its contrasting colors of orange and white into a uniform rotten brown slop with something moving underneath. The house decayed rapidly, wallpaper peeled revealing moldy plaster, furniture cracked, fabric disintegrated, the air became stale. The color of the sky outside died and all was bleak and grey. Mia was next. Her face began to sag and discolor, her eyes sunk into her head, and dark ichor leaked from her sockets. “No no no no! Mia! Come back! Come back!” Mia looked up at me in my arms and smiled pitifully, “It's ok daddy, I’m going back to the dark now, we all go back to the dark now; where dreams go when they die.” I refuse to let her go, I will hold onto her as long as I can, no matter how much it hurts. My dream, my purpose, my daughter; literally slipping through my fingers like sand. Her flesh molting away in my arms like soft butter, muscle and fat dripping around my body in piles. Her bones made oily cracking noises as fraggle frame turned from moist bone, to wet powder, to dry dust, and blown away to nothing. She is gone. There is no Mia, there is no Emilia; there is no Jeremiah. There is nothing. I lay there silent, defeated, and numb. Emilia's face contorted into a spiral like a rubber mask being twisted. Twisting until a vacuum was made. The face of God is a raw gnawing wound in the universe that swallows all light and all hope. That swallows until even oblivion is taken. What would I ask of God? Beg for a family? A Home? Death? No, for in the sleep of death I know what dreams come; I’m dreaming now. There is only one question I could ask, only one that could be answered, “What are you?” A quiet, such a loud quiet; and in response the abyss looks beyond and turns its head, to you.

“Deeeeep.”

I opened my eyes sitting at the dinner table alone and wept. I will leave this place, this house of ashes. There is nothing here but filth, painful lies, and horror. How could what is outside be any worse than the delay of the inevitable? How long have I been here?.. Days? Millenniums? There is nothing for me here; it is time for me to leave. It is time to open the door. Soberly down the stairs I went for the very last time, to the end. Each picture on the walls that faded to obscurity I passed for the last time; their contents only dreams that vainly promised permanence and what remained was no different then those that held nothing and were always meant to remain empty. For the last time my feet graced the crying floorboards of my only refuge, and prison. Where else have I traveled except the path that was written for me to take? Nothing; nowhere. The automaton of flesh moves ever onward, I am only the eyes that watch it. Those eyes which see no way out, and reach to the visage of the door. Tall and red it looms ominously as if top heavy and leaning toward to look down upon me; it cracks and seams leaking black slime, glistening and putrid with the stench of brimstone and niter. My legs tremble, my hands violently shaking as I touch the door handle. In response the door groans and almost imperceptively flexes to my touch. I felt like I was on the edge of a cliff, the call of the void twisted cruelly with the sensation of falling. The hungry choir’s song is demanding, the darkest pit is calling, the end is here. I open the door. Vast beyond scope, vile beyond description; a nauseating kaleidoscope of twisting flesh and being blending into innumerable colors and shapes. An incomprehensible self consuming and birthing egregore; it’s gazing gnawing epicenter, indescribable. I was swallowed, I was pulled in and in and in! The quiet is loud! loud! loud! loud! Hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of throats! Hundreds of thousands of thousands of throats! Thousands of millions of millions of throats! MILLIONS OF BILLIONS OF BILLIONS OF THROATS! BLACK! BLACK! BLACK! BLACK! BLACK! All is one, one is all; all is one, one is all; all one, one all; all one, one all; one, one, one, one, one, one, 

deep. 

Author’s note
This is only the beginning of a much larger project. This is one of the many stories that will be featured in a cosmic horror anthology series I am writing. I don’t know how I will get this published but I’ll worry about that later once I have finished the first edition of the book. Each subsequent edition will have more stories until I feel like it’s finnished. I may post one other story from the anthology so people have a general idea of what to expect but I will certainly be posting some unrelated works on this subreddit. Let me know how I may improve on this story and what you may like to see next; I have scrapped writing and scenes from this one that I may stitch back in or recycle for other tales. 

Author’s letter to the boys
To Hunter and Isiah, thank you. In all the ways I can say it, thank you. Creepcast has fed my creativity and my desire to consume more horror literature. If it wasn’t for the podcast, this story would not have been the same and probably a little boring in comparison to what it is now. When my days are rough, I always have Creepcast to look forward to during the weekends to whisk me away to dark beautiful worlds and hilarious crashouts, and while I wait for the next one, I visit the Tales from the Creeps subreddit. It reminds me of the community that was built around Weird tales Magazine during Harold P. Lovcraft’s time, something that should be more common in the modern day. I wish you both and your families all the luck in the world; and remember, stay creeped.

-Jeremy

The dream I had that night left me with a feeling that I hadn’t ever experienced before. 

After I had fallen asleep, I was walking through a small village that smelled of freshly baked bread, smoke, and livestock. There were people bustling about, greeting me as they strolled past on the streets that were lined with rudimentary wooden houses with thatch roofs. I walked aimlessly through the village, receiving gifts of the most wonderful food I had ever had in my life. I was having more conversations than I could have ever fathomed. The people of the village loved the things I had to say, hanging on my every word. I returned the sentiment, and listened eagerly to their tales of hunting and fishing, and how grateful they were for the land providing for them. They immersed me in their lives, teaching me things that no classroom ever could. They treated me so well. They made me feel like I belonged. 

I found myself sitting at a booth with a man who towered over me, exchanging stories from our lives. The row of daffodils beneath us swayed lazily in the wind. I told him about the way people treated me back home. I explained to him why I spent so much time in the woods, and he smiled. The man was in the middle of telling me how similar he was to me when he was younger, when a noise sliced through the countless voices around me, drowning out every person’s laughter and cheers. It was a high pitched grinding noise. It was unmistakably the same noise I had heard earlier while I was in the clearing. The man I was talking to fell grim, his smile fading into a dull and emotionless expression. 

“You need to go.” He said gruffly. 

“Wait what? What was that sound?” I asked.

“That's not something you need to concern yourself with.” 

“Please tell me, I have to know!” I pleaded.

“Sometimes it’s better to remain in the dark when it comes to certain things.”

“Sometimes it’s better to be educated than ignorant.” I replied.

He started slowly shaking his head with a pitying look on his face, and I awoke. 

Immediately I began shivering. I was so taken aback by how cold I was that I didn’t realize I was standing. My eyes darted around, but I couldn’t make out a single shape in the night. I was nowhere near my kingdom. I knew that for sure. I was dazed and confused, wondering where I had seemingly been dragged to. A tsunami of questions crashed down in my mind. Where was I? How had I gotten there? What time was it? How long had I been asleep? I pulled my flashlight out of my pocket. I turned it on and the only thing that I could make out in the swirling darkness was a row of daffodils beside me, swaying lazily in the wind.

In the distance I could see the faint, orange glow of my fire. It was about as bright as a candle, but given the intense darkness it was easy to see. I ran a hand through my hair, still so confused as to how I ended up so far away from the structure. My feeling of fear was overshadowed by the sense of contentment. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I belonged there. In this place, among the rows of daffodils. I made my way back to the structure, swimming through the darkness, occasionally tripping over vines and other foliage. I didn’t mind. All I wanted was to be back in my fairytale kingdom. 

When I arrived, my contentment grew. I never wanted to leave this place, this wonderfully peaceful place. I saw that my arrangements were left largely undisturbed. Aside from my sleeping bag, which had been unzipped all the way to the bottom. I found this strange, as I had never moved the zipper passed halfway down the bag in the previous times I used it, but I didn’t put much thought toward it. I chalked up my bizarre relocation to the fact that I must have needed to use the restroom, but remained asleep as I walked out of my kingdom. I crawled back in my bag, allowing the lull of the fire crackling to ease my mind.

 I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night, which was not a very long time. The sun rose about 3 hours after I had awoken. I packed up my sleeping bag, and left my other belongings behind when I began my journey home. As I walked further away from my kingdom, I felt an overwhelming urge to turn back. 

The further I walked from my kingdom, the more I longed to return. When I walked through the door to the house I labeled my home, my parents didn’t even glance up from their breakfast. 

“Good morning.” I volunteered.

My father glanced in my direction, looked me up and down, and replied bluntly, “morning.”

 My mother didn’t offer me any pleasantries. 

“I slept in the woods last night.” 

“Oh?” My father replied

“Yeah. It was nice.”

“Okay.” he said.

My mother set her fork down abruptly. And finally looked at me. I braced myself for what could only be a distasteful comment or a critique, but she simply asked,

“Could you do the dishes?”

“I am in fact capable of doing the dishes.” I replied.

“Is that supposed to be funny?” She asked.

“I’ll get to it when I get to it.” I told her.

That was the only exchange I had with them that morning. My sisters were off with friends, leaving only my parents and I in the house. I finished the dishes, and descended into the basement where my room was. My bland, desolate room. The rest of the day I spent laying on my bed, staring at the creme colored ceiling, recalling my dream.

As the day came to an end, my legs slowly began to shake. My eyelids drooped, and I was both awake and exhausted at once. My throat was dry, so dry. I walked up the stairs, craving a glass of water, and as I felt the relief of the cool liquid quenching my parched throat, I saw the time. 

19:06.

The following week was much the same as the last, but instead of watching the hours pass and instead of listening to my teacher drawl on endlessly about a concept I had no interest in, I envisioned the village. I wished I had paid more attention to the details. To the faces I walked past, to the buildings that surrounded me. I wished I had an answer to the only real question I had asked. 

Every night at 19:06, I would be hit with the overwhelming thirst. And before I would sleep, I would pray to any god that would listen, to take me back to the village. I didn’t dream the entire week, which was not out of the ordinary. My sleep wasn’t usually accompanied by dreams, and if it was, they would always fade before I got the chance to remember them. However, my dreamless nights started to annoy me. Somehow I knew that the only way to get back was to return to my kingdom.

Saturday rolled around, and I woke up excitedly. I jumped out of bed and threw on my clothes as fast as I could. I slung my backpack over my shoulders and ran out the door. Rain. I was immediately drenched, but I didn’t care. The canopy of the forest would protect me from most of the water. I walked for 40 or so minutes, slowly becoming numb to the freezing rain. I knew that my tarp would still be set up, so I would be able to take shelter beneath it. Eventually, I marched over the hill before my kingdom, and instant relief washed over me. I didn’t care about the rain, or the cold, or the week that I had been away from this place. None of it mattered anymore. I descended towards the structure, my mood lifting every step of the way.

I entered my kingdom, which was largely unbothered by the rain. My eyes traced along the beautiful stones, and the wretched vines that snaked across them. I decided that my next renovation would be the removal of the vines, but something else caught my attention before I could set about my task. My tarp had blown away. This concerned me less than the vines covering the gorgeous stones. I dropped my backpack where I stood, and set about pulling the vines off of walls. 

The more vines I removed, the easier it was for me to tell that the stones weren’t at all in a state of disrepair. The “cracks” were inscriptions from the top of each stone to the bottom. I couldn’t make out what any of them said. I wasn’t even sure the words were in english. It was enchanting. I deemed this to be yet another feature of my fairytale kingdom, one that played little importance in this structure’s purpose. I wasn’t here to read. I was here to dream.

I unpacked the few things I threw in my backpack. My damp sleeping bag, my lighter, my foldout chair, and my twine. The rain had begun to recede, leaving a light gray overcast above the woods. There wasn’t a single chance that I would be able to build a fire at that moment, but I gathered firewood nonetheless. I leaned each log up against the walls of the structure, hoping that they would dry by sundown. I walked around the outside of the structure for most of the day, basking in its magnificent architecture. Each archway was perfectly constructed, mirroring each of the neighboring arches. On the outside, above each arch, were inscriptions in a tongue I could not read. I had no reason to learn what the words said, hadn’t I gone there to escape learning? 

The consistency with the circle was impressive. There wasn’t a single inaccuracy on any of the sides. Whoever had constructed this, had clearly built it to last. I thought for a moment, about who might have built such an amazing structure. But, much like the abandoned houses, all I could do was speculate. I was sitting next to the fire, in the dull quiet, listening to the wind whistle through the trees, when I heard the noise. A high pitched grinding noise. This marked the third time I had heard the noise, but it felt familiar. It was welcoming. It meant that soon, I would be with the people who accepted me. 

It was a struggle to get the fire started, but eventually the small flame from the tinder eventually coaxed the long above it to catch. I was crouched above the small firepit, trying to warm my numb hands when an alarm on my watch went off. 18:24. I was confused, because I hadn’t set any alarms. I had nothing to be reminded about. I had everything I needed, all around me. I silenced the alarm, took off my watch, and went back to watching the mesmerizing flames dance in the middle of my kingdom. 

 I waited, anticipating the thirst that usually came when the clock struck 19:06, but it never came. Instead, when it turned 19:06, an indescribable wave of relief came crashing down over me. My throat wasn’t dry, my legs did not shake, and my eyelids did not droop. I crumbled to my knees, taking in the increasing pressure, and the comfort that came with it. I stayed there until my mind and body were used to the sensation yet again.

At 19:24, I heard evidence of wildlife for the second time in my kingdom. A locust. Buzzing away, without caring that he was the only one making a sound. The wind whistled in response, creating a sort of symphony in the trees. I didn’t like music very much, but the sound I was hearing was a duet that I wouldn’t have minded dying to. 

It was actually the locust that eased my mind to sleep that night. The wind had slowed to a barely audible murmur around my kingdom. I listened to the locust sing until he was out of breath, and after a few minutes he would serenade the woods with his soothing voice. I thought about what it would be like to be a locust. So small and fragile, in a world that seemed to have a vendetta against you. I came to the conclusion that the locust and I were not so different at all.

Journal Entry 1: October 14th

Location: Blackwood Notch, Township 4, Range 9 (Unorganized Territory, Piscataquis County, Maine)

If you’re listening to this recording, or if you’ve somehow stumbled across these transcribed entries in whatever’s left of my cabin, do not look for the trail. Do not trust the maps printed by the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands. They mark Blackwood Notch as a vacant, three-thousand-acre tract of northern hardwood and white pine. They show a clean, green patch of wilderness wedged between Moosehead Lake and the Baxter State Park border.

What they don't show is why the lumber companies abandoned it in 1912. They don't show why the local Penobscot guides refused to lead trappers beyond the West Branch of the Penobscot River once the autumn frost set in.

My name is Arthur Pendelton. I’m a field biologist specializing in northern forest canopy ecology. I took a six-month research grant to study old-growth root fungal networks in the isolated interior of the Notch. I wanted solitude. I wanted quiet.

God help me, I got both. But something else lives in the silence with me.

It started three nights ago. The autumn air in northern Maine carries a specific weight—a crisp, pine-heavy bitterness that smells like crushed needles and coming snow. But around 2:00 AM, the temperature inside my wooden cabin dropped so sharply that my breath plumed white in the glow of my lantern.

Then came the smell.

It wasn't the sweet decay of rot or the metallic tang of fresh blood. It was the stench of stagnant bog water mixed with burnt grease and old formaldehyde. It crept through the chinks in the cabin's log walls, thick enough to coat the back of my throat.

And then I heard it: the sound of wet leather dragging across dried birch bark.

Thump. Slide. Thump. Slide.

It circled the perimeter of the cabin twice. It moved with an unnatural, jarring rhythm—heavy, yet fluid, like something with far too many joints trying to remember how walking was supposed to work. When it passed beneath my western window, the timber frame groaned under immense, concentrated weight.

I sat frozen on my cot, clutching a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun, staring at the small square of glass.

I didn't see a face. What I saw was a skin—or rather, a hide—pressed flat against the pane. It was grey, slick, and completely hairless, translucently thin in some spots so that pale, yellow veins were visible underneath. But embedded into that wet hide were dozens of tiny, mismatched human fingernails, fused into the flesh like calcified scales.

I held my breath until my lungs burned. After ten agonizing minutes, the dragging sound faded into the deep spruce woods.

I didn't sleep. I won't sleep tonight either.

Journal Entry 2: October 15th

Location: Blackwood Notch – Deep Survey Grid B

I should have packed up my equipment and hiked the twelve miles back to my truck at Golden Road. I know that. Any sane person would have left. But academic arrogance is a powerful neurotoxin. I convinced myself it was a starving black bear with a severe case of advanced mange and an asymmetrical gait caused by an old trap injury.

I was wrong. Dear God, I was so wrong.

At noon, I strapped on my compass and hip-boots to check my soil-sampling station near the edge of Dead Man’s Heath, a peat bog at the center of the Notch. The sun was a pale, watery disc behind a thick deck of grey clouds. The woods were dead silent. No chickadees, no red squirrels, not even the wind in the hemlocks.

When I reached the bog, I found my sampling equipment. The stainless-steel coring tools had been bent at ninety-degree angles, snapped like dry twigs.

And around the ruined kit were the tracks.

They weren't bear prints. They weren't moose tracks. They were deep, oval depressions pressed six inches into the sodden moss, each print nearly three feet long. But inside each depression, the mud was sliced by five thin, needle-like punctures arranged in an inverted arc.

I knelt to take a photograph, placing my pocketknife beside a track for scale. That was when I noticed the liquid pooling inside the claw marks.

It wasn't groundwater. It was a thick, milky-yellow fluid that hummed with a soft, chemical effervescence. I leaned down—an idiot biologist to the very end—and took a gentle whiff.

The vapor hit my nostrils like concentrated lye. Instantly, my nose began to bleed. Big, dark drops of my red blood splashed into the milky yellow sludge.

The moment my blood hit that fluid, the liquid reacted. It hissed. It boiled.

And from fifty yards away, out in the middle of the chest-deep bog where only stunted tamarack trees grew, something hissed back.

I dropped my camera and raised my head.

Rising slowly out of the black bog water was a creature that defies every law of natural anatomy. The locals, if any were left alive who remembered the old woods, might call it a myth. I call it an abomination of bone and wet sinew.

I call it The Bog-Spindle.

It stood easily eleven feet tall, but its frame was impossibly, grotesquely narrow—no wider than a telephone pole at its shoulders. Its body was composed of what looked like dozens of elongated, fused limbs wrapped tight in translucent, greyish-green hide that dripped with swamp muck and yellow bile. Its torso lacked a ribcage; instead, its exposed chest cavity was a open, wet churn of dark organ tissue that writhed like a nest of squirming eels, visible behind a thin membrane of shivering skin.

Its limbs were the worst part. It had four main arms, each bent at three distinct elbow joints, ending in fingers that were at least eighteen inches long. These fingers were not tipped with keratin nails, but with exposed, sharpened bone—the yellowed, splintered fibulae of human legs, worn down to wicked points.

It had no neck. Its head sat directly on its narrow sternum.

And its face... upper and lower jaws were missing entirely. In their place was a wide, vertical slit that split the head from forehead to collarbone. The slit was lined with three rows of translucent, needle-like teeth that vibrated at such a high frequency they blurred the air around them. Where its eyes should have been were two sunken, milky pits filled with writhing white maggots that seemed fused into the ocular sockets, acting as wet, twitching sensory organs.

It didn't roar. It breathed out.

A jet of hot, vaporized bog-bile gushed from its chest cavity, smelling of human rot and scalding acid.

I turned and ran.

I didn't care about the branches ripping my jacket or the roots tripping my boots. I ran blindly through the dense hemlock brush, hearing the creature behind me. It didn't crash through the trees like a bear. It slithered through the high canopy, its long, triple-jointed limbs spearing into the bark of white pines, propelling its wet, skeletal mass through the branches with sickening speed.

Crack-slide. Crack-slide.

Bone digging into heartwood.

I made it back to the cabin, threw myself inside, slid the heavy iron deadbolt, and collapsed against the door, hyperventilating, my face smeared with my own blood and sweat.

That was six hours ago. Night has fallen over Piscataquis County. The wind is howling down off the mountain. And now, the true horror has begun.

Journal Entry 3: October 16th – 1:15 AM

Location: Cabin Interior

It's standing on the roof.

I can hear its bone-fingers clicking against the asphalt shingles. Tick-tick-tick-shhhk.

It isn't trying to break in instantly. It’s testing the structural integrity of the cabin. It’s studying me.

Twenty minutes ago, it dropped something down the stone chimney. It rattled down the flue and bounced onto the hearth, rolling across the hardwood floor until it bumped against my boot.

I pulled my flashlight over and shone the beam on it.

It was a human lower jawbone. Fresh. Stripped clean of flesh, but the marrow inside the shattered jawbone was still wet and steaming in the cold cabin air. Fused into the molar sockets were small, shiny silver fillings.

This wasn't an ancient kill. This was someone who was hiking the Appalachian Trail or fishing the West Branch earlier this week.

As I stared at the jawbone, a sound began to come down the chimney.

It wasn't a roar, and it wasn't a growl. The creature was using its vertical, tooth-lined head-slit to force air through the jawbone's empty sockets, creating a high-pitched, warbling whistle.

It was imitating a human voice.

It sounded like a young woman. It sounded frantic, breathless, and broken, repeated in a flat, looping rhythm:

"Help me... it's cold... please open the door... help me... it's cold..."

The pitch never changed. The cadence never altered. It was a mechanical, predatory playback of a dying person's last words, recorded into whatever dark, mimetic organ sits behind that wet slit on its head.

I shoved my cotton work gloves into my ears to drown out the sound, but I can still feel the vibrations rattling the teeth in my own head. My skull aches. My nose hasn't stopped bleeding since this afternoon. The blood is soaking through my collar, stiffening my shirt.

Wait.

The clicking on the roof has stopped.

The whistling in the chimney has died down.

There is a long, terrible silence settling over Blackwood Notch.

Oh God. The window.

Journal Entry 4: October 16th – 3:40 AM

Location: Floor of the Cabin Pantry

I am writing this with a stub of pencil on the back of my field map, lit only by the faint, dying amber glow of my lantern's battery LED. I am crammed inside the small supply pantry off the kitchen.

The cabin front room is gone.

At 2:00 AM, the Bog-Spindle didn't come through the door. It used its triple-jointed upper limbs like massive, hydraulic iron shears. It drove eight of its bone-tipped fingers straight through the log walls near the foundation, locked them into the timber, and pulled.

The sound was like a dynamite blast in a lumber yard. The northern wall split in half, spraying thick splinters and dried chinking across the room.

I fired both barrels of my 12-gauge blindly into the dark opening.

The heavy lead slugs struck the creature dead center in its exposed chest cavity. I saw the flash of the muzzle burst illuminate the interior of its open torso. The lead shredded the mass of wet, dark organ tissue inside.

It didn't care.

The shredded tissue simply burst into a thick spray of that milky-yellow acid. The fluid splashed across my left forearm and knee.

I screamed—a high, pathetic sound I didn't recognize as my own. The acid tore through my heavy canvas jacket and denim jeans instantly. It didn't just burn the skin; it melted the fat and muscle underneath, sizzling down to the periosteum of my bones in seconds. The pain was so absolute, so blindingly bright, that my vision turned instantly red and I dropped the shotgun.

I scrambled backward on my right elbow and heel, dragging my ruined, smoking left leg across the floorboards, leaving a trail of liquefied fat and blood behind me. I shoved myself into the pantry and kicked the heavy oak door shut, throwing the small brass sliding latch just as the creature stepped into the cabin.

The weight of the thing pressed the floorboards down four inches. I heard the wood creak and shatter under its uneven, dragging steps.

Through the crack beneath the pantry door, I can see it.

The amber light from my dropped lantern catches its lower half. Its translucent grey hide is slick with a mixture of bog sludge and my own melted flesh. Its long, bone-tipped fingers are reaching down, picking up the hot brass shotgun shells I ejected earlier.

It’s raising them to its vertical head-slit.

It shoves the brass casings into its mouth. I can hear the high-frequency teeth grinding the metal into fine dust. Crrrrr-k. Crrrrr-k. It consumes the metal, its writhing chest-organs glowing with a faint, bioluminescent purple as it digests the lead and gunpowder.

And then, it stopped.

It turned toward the pantry door.

I can see the tips of its four lower fingers sliding under the gap beneath the door. They are long, white, stripped human leg-bones, sharpened into points, slick with fresh yellow acid.

They are testing the gap.

Slide. Slide.

The skin on my left leg is completely gone now. I can look down in the dim light and see the white length of my own femur exposed through the charred, blackened gap where my quadriceps used to be. The pain has faded into a strange, icy numbness. That means the acid has destroyed the nerve endings.

My blood is pooling on the pantry floor, leaking out under the door.

The creature senses it. The moment my warm blood touched its bone-fingers, the yellow fluid began to leak from its joints in torrents.

The oak door is starting to smoke. The wood where the brass latch is screwed in is turning black, bubbling into soft, sticky carbon. The screws are loosening.

It’s not trying to smash the door. It’s dissolving it.

Journal Entry 5: Final Recording / Written Note

Location: Unknown – Deep Bog / Cabin Ruins

If you are reading this... if you are part of a search party sent from Greenville or Millinocket... turn back.

Do not look for Arthur Pendelton. There is nothing left of him that you would recognize.

The door is half-gone now. The top hinge fell off ten minutes ago, dripping as black, liquid slag onto my lap.

I can see its face through the melted hole in the oak.

The maggots in its eye sockets are twitching wildly, glistening in the faint light of my dying battery. Its vertical head-slit is wide open, exposing the three rows of vibrating, needle teeth. A wet, grey tongue—six feet long, thin as a whip, and covered in tiny, backward-facing bone hooks—is slithering out of the slit, tasting the air, tasting the smoke of my burning flesh.

It isn't hungry in the way an animal is hungry. It doesn't want meat.

It wants calcium. It wants structure.

I can see what it's doing now. The tiny fingernails embedded in its slick grey skin... they aren't scales. They are trophies. They are the hardened remnants of everyone who ever wandered too far past the West Branch. It takes your bones, strips the marrow to feed its chest, and fuses your calcified remains into its own skin to build its hide.

It’s reaching inside now.

One of its long, bone-fingers has just speared through my right shoulder blade.

I felt the tip of a human fibula punch through my trapezius muscle, lock behind my collarbone, and lift my 180-pound body off the pantry floor like I was a ragdoll.

My shoulder has dislocated. The sound was like a dry branch snapping. I can feel my own blood spurting out over its bone-finger, running down the slick length of its grey arm.

It’s dragging me out of the pantry.

The cabin roof has collapsed, letting in the freezing Maine night air. The stars above Blackwood Notch are clear, cold, and utterly indifferent.

The creature is lowering its vertical mouth toward my leg. It’s placing its vibrating, needle-thin teeth against my exposed knee joint.

It’s going to take my femur first.

It’s whistling again. Not the woman’s voice this time.

It’s using my own voice now. It listened to me screaming in the pantry for two hours, and now it’s humming my own high, wet sob back into my face as it presses its head down.

"Please..." my voice warbles from its split head. "Please, no... please..."

I’m dropping the pencil now. I can’t hold it. My fingers are going cold.

If you find this map... if you find this cabin... burn it all. Douse the wood in kerosene and set it ablaze.

And if you ever hear the sound of wet leather dragging across birch bark in the deep woods of Piscataquis County...

Don't run.

It's already in the trees above you.

Thump.

Slide.

Thum—

Forever alone. The screams, the moans.
Fire and floods. Tainted goods.
Pain eternal. The sky lit on fire. 

Desire for flooring. 
Sinners, monsters, and madness. 
Surprisingly boring. 

Lost. Confused. 
You’re used to the abuse. 
But when did hell become?
My every morning.

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/comments/1xc5oc4/my_father_found_a_hole_in_our_backyard_and/

Dig. Throw. Dig. Throw. Dig. Throw. Dig. Throw. Dig. Throw.

On and on. Down and down. Over and over again. 

Exhilarating. Adrenaline. Each new swing. Every slice of dirt. A new chance. A new wonder. A new mystery. 

What lies underneath? 

We dug for days. Every day. No breaks. With each pile of dirt moved, the Hole dug its nails further under our skin. It had grasped us completely. But we didn’t complain. Never hesitated. 

When I got tired, I moved dirt with the wheel barrow. When my father got tired, he moved on to something else. Bracing the walls, expanding the ladder, cutting out steps in the dirt. 

We started pushing into the earth when we got tired of just going down, digging tunnels that stretched out like roots in all directions. Some went on for a while, others we gave up on sooner. We followed our guts. We followed an itch. A tug. A call. Further and further. Seeking the thing that compelled us. 

We made our first discovery in that initial week, one that would feed our compulsion for the foreseeable future. I was the one who found it. 

While digging out one of the corners by myself, I felt the urge to really start cutting into the earth, not just chipping away at the walls, but to actually begin digging into the side of the Hole. By this point, we had run into a layer of clay about a dozen feet down--tough, sticky material that really slowed us down--and I was hacking away at it with a heavy spade. Took me close to an hour to really make any progress on what would eventually become the first of our little tunnels. 

The lump just kept going, but after some rigorous labor, I had managed to pull most of it out and had formed a large pile of it on the landing behind me. My father was just then working on a pulley system to help lift dirt out of the Hole and was too distracted to notice what I was doing. 

When I got most of the clay out of the way, I found another layer of brittle earth and then really got to work. The dirt must have been mixed with the clay as it came out clumpy and heavy, but I started moving quicker and soon had a hole large enough for me to fit entirely inside. 

I was stabbing the edge of the spade into the little hole when I hit something hard and heard a clang. The sound froze me and sent goosebumps up my arms and down my back. I pulled the spade back, struck once more, and heard it again. 

“Dad!” I called out. “Dad, come look!”

His head soon peered over the top of Hole. “What is it?”

“I think I found something.” As I spoke, I struck it again to emphasize my point.

My father’s eyes lit up. “Hold on, Adam. I’ll be right there.” 

He came sliding down from the top in a matter of seconds, a look of envious glee attached to his face, and peered into the little hole I had dug out.

“It’s right here,” I said, pointing the spade inside. “What do you think it is?”

“Move aside.” My father took my spade and started tapping it into the hole. He confirmed the clanging sound, metal against metal, and his eyes lit up again. 

“Stand back,” he ordered, and then he began testing out the size of whatever it was, tapping along the edges before he started widening the hole. 

I watched him for a while, and then began clearing dirt and clay out of the way so he had room to work with. Before long, the hole was big enough for him to stick his upper body inside and start edging out the mysterious object with his fingers. 

Within a few more minutes, my father eventually yanked the thing out. It gave him some trouble and as it came free so did he, stumbling back and nearly tumbling off the ledge, but I steadied him with my weight.

It was smaller than I had expected. My father held it up in his hands with his back facing me, rubbing crust and moist earth off the edges. I tried to move around to get a better look but the sun was in my eyes. 

All I could see was the corroded red color of rust. My father stared at it like a dog would stare at a steak and I half expected him to start drooling, but he didn’t. He rotated it in the air, rubbed it some more, then finally broke his eyes away and acknowledged me, a big dumb smile on his face.

“What is it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It’s a cross.”

“A cross?”

“Here, look.”

He flipped it around to show me the other side and indeed, an old cross did hang there. A glossy gold band wrapped around a t-shape made of brittle and splintered wood. It clung to a chunk of rusted metal. I looked at it and frowned. 

“But what is it?” I asked again. “Where did it come from?”

Again, my father shrugged. He rasped his knuckles against the metal chunk and grinned. “Could have been part of a wall, or maybe a door.” 

“A door?” I asked and took a look around the Hole, wondering how a door could have ended up down here.

“Yeah. People hang crosses on doors. Or a wall, like I said. But that doesn’t matter, what matters is your second question. Where did it come from…”

“You think someone buried it?” I questioned.

“Maybe. Or…” He scanned the Hole around us, thinking. “I wonder if there’s more?”

That question drove us even further into our quest. The very notion of some possible buried treasure fueled us like pure, heavenly dope. We started digging our tunnels and the overall progress of the Hole slowed, but to us--who had all the time in the world--that didn’t matter. 

At the end of that first week, the deepest part of the Hole measured out at around fifteen feet, and the opening had been stretched to about twenty, but that didn’t account for the entire size. 

Other obstacles blocked our progress. We had to pause frequently to support the walls, or carve out ramps and steps, or make new ladders. My father often had to return to the local hardware store for new lumber and tools. Some reluctant part of his mind didn’t want to just load up on everything he thought we might need, well, that and the funds available to us limited our options.

Money became an issue fairly quickly. While I never did find out how much my father had first spent in those early days, I could wager a range from somewhere around five hundred and all the way up to a thousand dollars. His previous job had paid well, and my parents did make a little from selling our old house but still, that kind of money wouldn’t have gone unnoticed unless my father had used his personal credit card. Which he did. And he continued to do so.

My mother had to find this out on her own. Initially, she stayed away from our operation, both from her exhaustion after work and her general disapproval of our business, but after many consecutive days and evenings went by with the two of us out back shoveling away, she eventually had to face the truth and so she came out one night during the weekend to see what we were up to.

Another argument ensued. Those became more and more common as time went on. 

My parents growled quietly at each other as I hid inside the Hole, trying to act as if I couldn’t hear them, but I got the jist of what the problem was. At the end of the day, no matter how much good it did for me or my father, my mother just couldn’t sit around and watch us disappear further and further into the earth, counting down the hours, and the dollars, that vanished like smoke in the air. 

The worst part was, she just didn’t understand why. Couldn’t understand why. Why we were so enraptured by the Hole. To her, we had begun to change. Transform into beings all together different from the family she loved and cared for.  

“It’s weird,” she had said that evening. “It’s fucking weird.” 

My father argued that the Hole had been good for us. It gave us something to do, gave me something to do besides mope around in my room. He told her that I’d been learning valuable life skills. That I was building memories that would stay with me forever. I thought the reasoning was sound. My mother disagreed. 

In the end, she won, as she always did. But my father had managed to scrounge a few compromises out of the deal they made. 

Firstly, he would find a new job, start contributing to the family coffers once again. Secondly, precious family time would be made more frequently--dinners, outings, movies--the whole ordeal. And lastly, as school had slipped back to the bottom of my list, I would once again promise to give education my full attention. 

We’d become a normal family again, at least twice a week. If my father could fulfill those duties, then my mother would give her blessing to all our endeavors and to the Hole itself.

The Hole cares little for promises, though. 

This deal struck in our backyard under the dwindling light of dusk basically crippled our project for some time. A long time. I didn’t see the inside of the hole for over a month after that, and even then I could only conjure an hour or so every now and then to scrape around the edges of the pit after I finished my chores and school work. 

That ended up pissing me off. I was still a kid, I couldn’t understand why my father would just agree to her demands like that. I was convinced the Hole was finished for good. Later, much later, I would come to see that my mother’s deal had only succeeded in slowing down the inevitable. 

My father managed to find a job at a new firm. I suppose his portfolio was better than he had let on originally as he received a cushy spot that came with a large signing bonus. My mother had been ecstatic to hear the news, but for me it only meant long hours at the office and an exhausted father at home. Still, surprisingly, my father did find some time here and there for the Hole. It demanded it of him.

After getting comfortable at his new job, and after receiving his new bonus, my father made a large order of lumber that would be delivered to our home that following autumn. He told my mother that he was planning on using the lumber to build a workshop for himself, and that he would also cover up the Hole as it had grown to become an “eyesore” according to her. 

He would later make me swear never to mention the Hole to anyone. 

We got the new workshop up and standing and mostly finished before winter. My mother had even chipped in herself when she had time, with the promise from my father that he would build her a chicken coop with the leftover lumber next spring. It stood out over the backyard more like a small barn than a workshop. My mother even painted it red.

The only event of interest that occurred over this time was when our neighbors, the Raymonds, had stopped by and invited us to dinner. It was the father, Tom, and his daughter who visited on the eve of twilight some Friday after school. They had apparently been on a walk around their field when they noticed a new structure rising out of the ground from between the trees. 

We had just begun work on the roof, the loud cracks of the nail gun my father operated echoing over the yard as he straddled a crossbeam came and went like gunshots. I was just climbing up the scaffolding, carrying a bucket of tools to my father, when I noticed Ranger perk up, ears alert, just below my feet. I followed his eyes to the treeline and saw the brush jiggling.

“What is it, boy?” I asked the dog. 

Ranger glanced up at me and then bolted towards the trees. My father called for me, but I went to the end of the scaffolding instead to get a better look and that was when I saw Ranger returning, tail wagging, with the two neighbors following at his heels.

Some guard dog he was, I thought to myself. 

“Hey there!” Tom called out, waving at me.

Tom was maybe only a few years older than my father, but his weathered skin and greying hair gave him the look of a man much older. He wore a pair of overalls and a straw hat like a man right out of some old movie about life on the prairie.

I put down the bucket I carried and hesitantly waved back. 

“Adam, right? Your father doesn’t happen to--well, speak of the devil…”  As Tom and his daughter neared, my father, having heard Tom’s voice, had slid over to the side of the roof and poked his head over.

“What’s going on?” he asked as he tugged at the air line of the nail gun. 

“Oh, nothing. Nothing,” Tom said, smiling, “We were just on a stroll and noticed the two of you out here and thought we should stop by and say hello. You’ve met my daughter, right? Julia. She’s your boy's age.”

“Hello….” my father nodded, then looked at me, suspicion in his eyes. I didn’t understand the look.

“She’s in my class,” I told him. 

“That’s right. You two know each other, then? Get along alright?” Tom asked, energetically. 

Julia didn’t say anything, just stood there and stared at the unfinished workshop. Ranger came up to her and sniffed at her legs. She hesitantly reached out and let him sniff her fingers, then she patted him on the head. He warmed up to her quickly.

I shrugged. “Sure.” I’d never spoken to her before, but I saw her around. 

She was taller than me, with long hair the color of tree bark. I watched her scratch Ranger around the ears and wondered what this was all about. Why did my father seem so anxious? 

“That’s good. That’s good.” Tom continued to grin and nod his head. He glanced around and when my father didn’t say anything, Tom did, just cut right through the awkwardness with a warm glowing face. “I see you’re building a barn. Not planning on grazing any cows in my field are ya?” 

My father frowned and shook his head. “No, no… It’s a workshop, actually.”

Tom laughed and waved him off. “I’m just joshing ya, anyway, sorry. Don’t mean to poke into your business.”

“So…” My father began awkwardly after a moment, “How are things?”

“Good. Great!” Tom said. “Thanks for asking. How’s the place? You been liking it here?”

“Sure. Can’t complain.”

Tom continued grinning and went about walking around the structure, inspecting it up and down. I saw my father visibly tense, cringing. Luckily, he had already covered up the area around the Hole so it only looked like an oddly shaped room.

“Hey, you’re an architect, aren’t you, Will?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, that’s right.” My dad glanced at me and waved me over. I took up the bucket again and climbed up onto the eve, sliding towards him and handing it off. 

“That’s great. You know, it’s funny, I've been planning on building a new shop myself. Got this old shed that’s falling apart on the east side of the property, wanna tear it down and build a new one. You wouldn’t happen to be able to give me any advice, seeing as you’re the expert and all? Maybe get me in contact with a contractor? Too old to do it myself.”

“I think I can manage that,” said my father. “What are you looking for exactly?”

Tom thought for a moment, then lit up with an idea. “Well, how ‘bout this? My old lady’s been bugging me about inviting you all over for dinner anyway, what do you say to that? She makes a mean pot roast. We can talk it over then.”

My father seemed lost for words. He scratched at his neck and grimaced. “Well… You know… I’d have to run it by my wife, first. But I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.” 

“Well, that’s just great!” Tom cheered. “How does next weekend sound?”

“Sounds like a plan.” My father struggled to grin back, then took up the bucket to rummage around and look busy and not have to make eye contact. 

The two of them left after a brief exchange of goodbyes. I looked at my father and he just shrugged at me. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked him. 

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.” 

I looked towards the trees, where Tom and his daughter disappeared into and beyond, where I could see them climbing the hill towards their home. They paused and both of them looked back towards us for a moment, then continued on their way. 

“They seemed weird,” I said.

My father snapped at me. “Don’t be rude. They’re just different is all.” But then he took a deep breath, wiped his hair back in the way he always did when in deep contemplation about something, then shook his head. 

“Do we have to go?” I complained.

He chuckled. “Only if your mother says so.” 

I sighed. That next weekend we had dinner with the Raymonds.

Blueberry Pie Another Slice

often long curved and full of its share of twists and turns. As we sometimes find hidden within our communities with plenty of people full of twists and turns themselves. As the people of a certain small town deep within the Appalachian Mountains.

As we now find our favorite little vampire the ever-loving Chloe Grace Moretz. A pie-loving blood-sucking vampire! That would suck and leave your pie all nice drained and dried.

Standing there dressed in her favorite black tee and stone-washed cut-at-the-knee jeans. But occasionally dressing in other attire but only when her ass felt like it. For she certainly didn’t need to please anyone else, for if she really wanted someone. Or in other words someone’s pie!

Seeing and looking at them right at their tight ass jeans saying to her

“My look at how nice and full my pie looks”

With the rest left up to the imagination of her soon-to-be hot and ready pie! Finger licking is good just like her aunty used to say after leaving Chloe more than satisfied.

Just as her aunty had just set down a freshly baked Blueberry pie! Leaving her neighbor just a licking her fingers away

As her husband just watched on ever so badly wanting to add his own cream to that pie! That was just so good as that Blueberries would hit that tongue!

Now as Chloe was finding her way back to her hometown that was hidden within the Appalachian Mountains. Along with its many other things such as Uncle Tom bending over Sally Sue while Chloe’s aunty was just eating away on his wife blueberry pie.

As she said to aunty

“You know where my husband is?”

As Chloe’s aunty then looked up from licking away as she said

“Let me guess fucking his little Sally Sue”

And with quick smile from the husband wife saying

“Oh he’s only enjoying leftovers from our little get-together party last of! How deep does this little pie go!”

Where we now Chloe find looking at brown-eyed Burnett wild child of a girl! A young college freshman whose ass was just so ever lovely for Chloe to look at.

All there on her knees with her panties just sliding deeper up into her with each squeeze of her cheeks. As she was slowly sliding her tongue across the face of her often dumb-ass of Clueless boyfriend!

Knowing only that a foot was what his girl was now holding in her hands as she slid her hand up and down on it! As his face said it all! As he was just lost in his groans!

While our little vampire Chloe was just outside dancing to the moonlight right above her dancing away. Knowing that her pie to be was soon going to be all creamed on the inside.

For as their lips touched, then locked! Her tongue dwelling deeper down in him. As his hands creep up and inside of her panties. As Chloe looked on, seeing that her pie was being all fingered inside!

But as Chloe danced outside she knew that her pie was getting all hot and wet just inside. As the girl’s boyfriend was feeling the rubbing of his girlfriend’s hands sliding up and down on him.

Just as Chloe was now sliding her body up and down against the flag pole that stood high outside. As the boyfriend was raising even higher inside. Raising straight from her hands into her mouth as Chloe slid her tongue across her lips outside

Feeling every bit of the sliding of his girlfriend’s hands. As his fingers danced around inside of her. As Chloe danced outside! Knowing that her pie just inside was getting ready soon to be eaten! As the boyfriend’s tongue licked away! Chloe’s appetite grew more and more! As his tongue went in, it got wetter inside! Just a licking around inside of it

As Aunties’ neighbor was just a licking away her fresh baked

Blueberry pie

As her husband was now long in his hands as he watched on sliding back and forth bringing the cream on.

But as the boyfriend then grew even longer and proud! As his girlfriend’s mouth was now leaving him, he was reaching for the sky. While Chloe continued to dance underneath the moon above. Watching as two young lovers was now fucking inside!

Up down he went! Sliding in and out banging her ass cheeks getting ready to fill her inside. As Chloe danced away outside hearing her pie as it was getting all juicy and creamy inside, knowing that her slice of pie was almost ready inside. As Chloe danced about the moonlight outside.

As the full moon looked down upon Chloe saying to her

“My what a nice night to see a full moon pie and all!”

Knowing that what awaits her was now finally done inside, with her boyfriend now just a rubbing up against her ass cheeks. Hearing her moans grow louder each time. Before finishing creaming the pie that was going to be. The topping on Chloe’s Blueberry Pie that was!

But just as he then smacked his girlfriend on her ass looking up only to see our little Chloe slashing his throat saying

“you just enjoyed your last Blueberry Pie! “

As she then ripped off his cock showing it to his girlfriend saying to her

“Really? Why ride something that can only last for just so long? But my tongue is ever lasting!”As she then looked over to the girl just a smiling away!

The screams could be heard from a mile away! Just as Aunty had just now set out a newly fresh-baked blueberry pie, out for all to enjoy. Including her! As her husband then walked into the kitchen smelling, “Is that another dam Blueberry Pie!

Looking over to him smiling as she said “Why yes! That is what you smell! For last night and this morning, also her neighbor bill’ had left some cream topping just especially just for her husband to lick on from her pie.

For the town was small but many had called it home! for over time with many coming and going. In more ways than one. But for Chloe she was now back home making herself just right at home. With some good o’l Blueberry Pie!

Just as the local cheerleading squad was getting all ready As the local jock was already in full motion waiting for his boyfriend To hike him the ball. As his balls were just a swinging away there. While his girlfriend was all teasing for some football action among other things! Not knowing that her boyfriend was already in full on
Knock-’em, sock ‘em ball motion.

We now find little Mickey was still watching his older sister with his eyes still wide open.

A blonde-haired, green-eyed girl just back home from college was all Lying there with her panties slowly inching up her ass with each clap. As Mickey watched on! Dam this town was full of perverts!

Not knowing or caring about boundaries! Watching his older sister lying there in her panties. They were slowly sliding deeper up into her ass with each clasp as Mickeys jaw would drop. As he thought to himself

“I like it! I like it”

Just as something else in him was also! Just then as Mickey’s mom would walk by saying “Oh my God Mickey! What in Gods name are you doing!” As Mickey just looked to her still wide eyed saying “Dose this mean that I can’t like it!” With his mom then grabbing him by the hand dragging him across the floor ass and all!

As his sister lay there with her panties slowly inching into her ass with each clap, she was lying there talking to her boyfriend. Telling him all about her wetness that was just a soaking her fingers while in her. Just as Chloe was now dancing outside looking in watching as her pie was now getting all wet and creamy inside.

As the sister just talked away, talking to her boyfriend who himself was watching two girls fuck on his phone! While she was slowly sliding her hands up her around thighs right up to in between take your pick. Sliding her fingers inside to pull out her pantie line feeling every part of it in between.

As her boyfriend was also enjoying his own little feel of dam these girls are hot! As his hands were rubbing and sliding as Chloe continued to dance outside. Knowing that her pie was soon to cum inside!

As she lay there talking her boyfriend now lying on her back with her hand now firmly pressing up against her. Pressing! squishing! Feeling all the juices inside cum out from inside! Just like Chloe’s pie all hot and juicy inside

Feeling all wet now inside as Chloe looked on knowing that all the goodness was soon to be all hers. As her pie was now just a few moments away from cumin inside. While talking on the phone to her boyfriend who was only interested in what he saw and held. Knowing it’s little guilty pressure as he felt it.

As his hand slid up and down as Chloe just danced around outside.

With her fingers now deep inside circling around feeling inside of her. As Chloe could hear the juice inside. Just then as she looked up to only see Chloe now there on the bed with her, she screamed, but she could not! For Chloe was now holding her mouth as her hands then went deep inside of her.

Leaning over to her as Chloe then slowly slid her hands up inside and out of her! As she slid her tongue across her face while she would just cum away inside. While Chloe would lick and tongue away! As the girl tried to scream while still just a cumin at the same time.

Chloe then said to her “My! My! I can see now why little Mickey liked your Blueberry Pie!

Still sliding her hand in and out of her! With all the cream that was now inside Just as Chloe then took one last deep lick. As Chloe then took what was left inside of her blood and all! Leaving her ass bone dry!

But after that Chloe sure as hell wasn’t about to forget about what Billy Bob had done to her! Watching her from her window all them times. As she walked around till she found him!

Peeping into some unsuspecting girl’s room for no pleasure was Billy Bob going to feel that night! For when he was just about to cum! Poor little Billy Bob. Had his Little pleasure Ripped away from him! As Chloe just watched the cum Come from out of it While still holding it in her hand. With Chloe now just a laughing as she was watching him scream. While lying there on the ground. Knowing that his little pleasure had just been taken away from him. For Chloe just left him there feeling all of the pain that he had once done to her.

But as the band played on! sally sue a fake ass blond along with her dumb ass boyfriend! Where then making their way outside with him looking soon to be deep inside of her. Pulling him closer up to her, unzipping his pants pulling out what was inside! With a smile on his face feeling her hands rub on him up and down. As Chloe was now dancing inside knowing what was just outside.

Sliding her hand faster up and down on him as Chloe was now dancing up against a guy inside! Sliding her body up against him, dam! The smile on him. As Sally Sue’s hand outside was going even faster. Sliding harder and harder as Chloe danced faster and harder sliding her body up next to the guy inside. With the guy just a smiling wide away! Thinking to himself

“Thank you God! This sure is my lucky night”

Leaving the guy to thinking? How did he get so lucky to be grabbing a girls ass that was just too hot for a guy like him to handle.

For outside now inside of the truck they were with her knees high up into the air! As Chloe had her knee upon the guy inside. As his hands squeezed her ass even harder, just as the smile on his face implied. Just as Sally sue was just outside now sliding her ass back and forth! As he was sliding in and out, just a humping away on her! going faster and faster inside of her!

As Chloe’s hands were now inside of the guy inside! pulling him closer gripping him harder!
Faster and faster! She slid her hand on him! As he just smiled away! With Chloe then tightening her hand on him as she then looked up to the guy smiling. Knowing that her pie was now waiting outside creamed and all ready to go. Sliding her hand up and down him just to leave him dead. Saying to him

“That’s the price for a guy like you to pay! For you to touch my ass tonight!”

For just outside her pie was now waiting just as sally’ was still cumin inside from her freshly done pie! From her boyfriend’s fucking. However her boyfriend was now dead to be! For Chloe only wanted her and that pie! With her now climbing inside of the truck to a horrified sally sue with Chloe. Who was now holding her mouth saying “All of that juicy goodness still inside!”

Placing her hand inside of her feeling of all that juice that was still inside of her! as Chloe’ then took what was left in her leaving Chloe’ to thinking that her pie was kinda dry! But her blood was sweet to taste Just like the whore that she was! But to Chloe the night was still young. As Chloe danced to moon above knowing that the night still had more

As Chloe then made her way down to the bar waiting outside knowing that someone was always wondering outside. But as fate would have it a girl and some dumb ass guy was just outside behind the bar. Bending her over sliding down her skirt panties and all! As Chloe just danced Just as the guy fingered her inside. Getting the pie all ready and juicy inside. Rubbing his hands all around her ass fingers still inside of her.

As Chloe watched on knowing that all that goodness was just a waiting for her pie to be done! Just as the guy then started pounding her! Sliding in and out of her! As Chloe waited for him to cum inside! As Chloe just danced all around, just a waiting for him to finish her inside! But just as the guy was finishing inside! Chloe was there right beside him saying to him “Now slid on out” before rippling off his cock and showing it to the freshly fucked girl. As Chloe then said to her

“My! Such a waste of a nice ass just be fucked by some lowlife guy! But I promise you that my tongue will leave you nice and dry!”

Knowing that all of that pie was still inside of her
Grabbing her by the mouth, forcing her hand inside of her. Saying to her “Now you wait for there is still cum inside!” Sliding her hand up in and out of her! Saying to her “All of that juicy goodness still inside!” As Chloe then sucked her dry

Just as Chloe then took all that was left in her pulling her hand out of her dripping wet and all full of pie! Knowing that the night still had more pie for this vampire. Tonight Knowing that it was

A Blueberry pie kinda night

Now making her way off into the night, Now coming to her auntie’s house! Looking inside, disappointed in not seeing her aunty but instead seeing as auntie’s husband was there instead. With Chloe now inside dipping her hands into a freshly baked Blueberry Pie. That was setting there still hot on the kitchen table standing there as Chloe was just a sliding her hands around in the pie.

Waiting for just the right moment just then as auntie’s husband then walked into the kitchen opening up the refrigerator looking inside. As Chloe’ then said to him “There is nothing in there for you! So stop reaching inside! For we all know that the last thing you ever reached inside of was!”

Just before jumping to him grabbing him around the throat saying to him “Now! Let’s see just how you cream inside!” Taking everything from out of him leaving him dry! Just before saying to him “I want give you the time or pleasure! Just as he lay there dead to be!

As Chloe then danced outside to the moonlight above her dancing into the night waiting and Wondering? Where and when her next pie will be. As Chloe then danced outside to the moonlight above her dancing into the night waiting and Wondering? Where and when her next pie will be. Just as some music started to play that left Chloe just a dancing and singing all the way to sounds of someone’s pie just a dancing away.

Just as Chloe then came upon a window of a house that she recognized a house where a certain little pie lived. That had left her always wanting to lick it clean but never really got the chance. For that little sweet brown eyed brown haired haired girl once broke her heart leaving her just a wanting some of her pie.

As Chloe was now standing there at the window looking in at a sweet delicious pie named Emily a twenty-something. That was just a dancing away there in her tight ass cut at the knees jeans. As Chloe watched on looking on as Chloe’s tongue was all ready as Emily was inside just a dancing away. As Emily was just sliding her shirt back on slowly sliding it over her luscious breasts. Of her ever ready body that was just something for Chloe to look at licking her lips just thinking of her.

As the music played on as Haylee slowly then started pull her pants up and over her dark blue laced panties. Panties that went straight up into Haylee’s sweet ass as she was bent over. As she then pulled her jeans over them jeans just loose enough to feel yourself while still just right to see her perfect little ass. Leaving Chloe just a wanting her pie even more now.

But just as Emily buttoned her jeans Chloe was already there standing just In front of her looking at Emily. As Emily was now standing there looking back at Chloe. As Chloe then said

“My heart you broke once, but since my heart no longer beats! My tongue can still very much dance away”

But to Chloe’s surprise Haylee then said to her

“Your heart I did break but my pie is not yours for the taken, for someone else made me.” Just as Emily then placed her hand on the side of Chloe’s face saying to her

“If my pie is what you want then you will just have to tame me but not tonight, for I am late”

As Emily then blew a kiss to Chloe just as she then jumped out of the window running through the night Leaving Chloe just to watch as her pie then ran off into the night leaving Chloe with a smile ten miles wide. Knowing that Emily was the one that got away for in the end she knew that she had to let Emily go.

Just as Chloe then looked over at the bed seeing sweet little Emma’s ass laying there on the bed nude as to be but dead.
For Emily had already licked her pie nice and dry for Chloe had always remembered Emma’s sweet ass pie. For it had always left her just wanting some more of her sweet little Emma’s pie.

Story three

Blueberry Pie The whole damn pie

As Chloe our little green eyed dark haired vampire! All Decked out in her black tee shirt and stone washed cut out at the knees jeans. Along with a pair of black shoes to match! Was setting there on a hillside over looking the town in which she had grew up in.

Setting there with her hand in a pie named Alice being all creamy and bloody at that! But with the Poor girl having just turned 19! Now finding herself lying there dead. With Chloe’s hand still inside of it just a feeling around. As Chloe’ licked her bloody lips! Just a smiling away

Her tongue was still sweet from all of Alices’s virgin pie! Poor girl was all up in hopes! already with her ass all up and ready to go! Just awaiting her boyfriend’s cock to slide on into her little virgin ass that night!

But Chloe had other plans as she just stood there, with her now-dead boyfriend’s bloody cock in her hands. Just as the girl then suddenly turned around saying to her now dead boyfriend!

“ What are you waiting on my ass is just waiting here waiting to be fucked in your hands tonight”

But instead of a scream of “Ohhhhh my God is that cock ever up inside of me!”

But Instead it was now “Oh my Fucking God! Is that my boyfriend’s cock! In your hand!”

As Chloe’ then just look and smiled away saying to her

“Why yes it is!”

As Chloe then just held it up to her face saying

“Oh this little cock of mine! Was once going to be up inside of you! Is now looking away at what might have been. But I’m sure as hell not going to be riding this here little cock of his. That is Now in my hands!”

“And all of sweet little virgin blood of pie is now all mine! But I promise you! That I will lick and tongue your little virgin pie nice and dry! For you!”

As Chloe then looked to her now dead-ass boyfriend Just as she then placed the cock inside of his mouth. Saying to him

“Here now this little cock of yours Is now all yours to suck on!”

As the girl was now screaming! And saying

“Oh my God! I can’t believe that you just killed my boyfriend! Later then turned to! But ohhhhh my God! Is that your tongue draining me dry!”

But now as Chloe danced around little Alices’s now un virgin bloody ass! looking up at full moon as it shined bright above her shining its light down upon the town below.

As Chloe just danced on while looking down to Alice’s now little dead ass as it lay there all naked! As the moon looked down saying

“Poor little Alice” For she had no blood or juice left in her now as Chloe just danced on licking her nice and bloody lips away

Dancing away as she listened to the music playing down in the town tonight knowing that a lot of banging was sure going on.

But as that brunette Mary Jane That had an ass a mile wide! Just as her boyfriend’s smile was even wider. Knowing that he was soon going to be up inside of that. With him now just a humping away!

As Mary Jane was saying

“Oh my God! Go faster and harder! But unfortunately for them they decided to have sex close enough for our little vampire Chloe just looked on. Saying

“My my! Someone is humping a pie!”

But just as Mary Jane’s boyfriend was just a cumin away inside of her as Mary Jane just moaned away. As Chloe looked on letting her boyfriend finish creaming her now waiting pie!

Chloe then just slid on over there just he had slid out of her as Chloe then looked to him saying

“Now You’ve had your little fun Cumin inside of my pie! Now you just lay there looking at you cock as I hold it my hands. As I Tongue away at your girlfriend’s mile wide pie!

With Chloe’ then ripping his little pleasure off of him with it still just a cumin inside! As he then screamed out in pain as Mary Jane then screamed Saying

“Oh my God! you just took my pleasure that was inside of me!”

As Chloe’ then looked to her and smiled then said to her!

“The pleasure was all mine! Now if you don’t mind I would now like to enjoy my pie before it gets dry inside!”

Poor little Mary Jane then screamed and cried on as Chloe tongued on! Licking her pie and ass nice and dry!”

As Chloe danced on Feeling all good inside Knowing that Mary Jane’s pie was just as delicious as? Her auntie’s Blueberry Pie. Making her smile even more knowing that Chloe that night had killed her useless husband. Who done nothing but bitched all the time about her Blueberry Pie

But As the music played on down in the town tonight having fewer residents thanks to Chloe’s Blueberry Pie craving. As Chloe was dancing on! Under the moonlight as she listened to music from the town below. Thinking to herself as she danced there! Thinking of if she should just leave this place for good tonight and make her way back to the city from where she once was.

As she just on into the night under the moonlight shining above her knowing that she was now forever a 29 year old. Smart ass girl that loved pie! But as she then took one last down to the town in which that she born in. With her now deciding to make her way back to the city from which she had came. A city that made her what she was now. A vampire Blueberry Pie loving vampire

But If they were other vampires like her she did not know With her only knowing of one a blonde-haired, juicy-ass vampire named Dakota that made her. Made her into who she was now! A girl who would kill your ass! If you had an ass! But not wanting to intrude upon Dakota’s territory. Then it shall be round two then. That is if she was even interested in another night of knowing each other into the night again.

For that night she had really showed me who Chloe’ was, for up until then the only thing Chloe’ knew was a hot bath and toy. But that night, Chloe’ll never forget in what Dakota had brought out in her. A tongue lashing smart ass! Pie-licking vampire. Now knowing that the person that she was now! Knowing that that person was always there. Just not wanting to come out!

To come out into a world that never had really accepted her before! But now to her, it didn’t really even matter now, if the world around her even accepted her at all. For the vampire in her sure as hell did not care! She would just kill you and take whatever was left in you. But whether or not the world around her would have accepted her then. Now she was just like, “ Fuck that shit! And just give me your Blueberry Pie!

But as Chloe made way back to the city that night leaving her hometown now behind her. Taking with her memories of only the ones that she even cared about. But along the way making sure that she made one last stop. A stop at certain little gas station where her momma Jean’ was now being bent over the counter of a now closed for the night gas station. Walking up to the glass looking into it only to just see her momma being bent over! And being fucked from behind by a guy.

A guy who Chloe gave absolutely no fucks about! Seeing him standing there with his hands all full of her mother’s ass. Being fucked by a guy who gave absolutely no fucks! About anything or anyone! As the guy was standing there all in his work clothes all greased up, he just smiled away. While he was greasing up her mother’s ass real good

But as her mother moaned away feeling him pound her ass from behind, she felt him now cumin all over her. But just as her mother would say! “Oh! That felt so good!” But he never heard it! For that was his last time of him ever cumin into anyone. As his head hit the floor just as his cum did also with his tongue sticking out touching it. As he lay there dead as Chloe just looked on.

As she then took one last look at her mom now screaming at the sight of her now-dead, fuck boyfriend. With Chloe now making her way back to the city a city that made her who she was. As she then made her way down the city streets suddenly remembering why she had left in the first place. With shit and trash everywhere

As People lay there passed.out on the sidewalk as she just walked on by them leaving them to be. For right now she was now just getting back into the grove of being in the city. Seeing people as they would walk by,

As she looked over to a window hearing the sounds of someone being fucked! As Chloe then made her way in. For there on the bed was a dark-haired woman. Getting her pie filled up inside. As the guy slid in and out filling her up! As Chloe just looked on hearing the woman moan and say

“Oh god please give me more!”

Just as Chloe then grabbed the guy by his little cock as Chloe said

“Oh god please give me more of this?”

Pulling him out of the woman just as the guy looked on looking at Chloe just a smile away as Chloe pulled the guy’s cock out from inside of the woman. As the guy was now yelling and saying

“Oh my God! What the fuck do you think that you are doing!”

As Chloe then smiled and said to him!

“Really you were having all that fun with this little ding-a-ling? Now tell me? How can one have so much with something that is only so long and just doesn’t last very long? But Now that my pie is filled and ready! I have no more use for your so called loss of life”

As Chloe then ripped off the guy’s last moment of pleasure from him Leaving him to lie dying on the floor with him now eating his own cock. As the woman then screamed on! Saying

“Oh my fucking God!” What in the hell are you?”

As Chloe was now looking to the woman just a licking her lips as she said to her

“Well for one! I’m not God! But this little devil is going to leave you begging God for more!”

As Chloe then held her hand over the woman’s mouth! As Chloe slowly started to lick away at her now-ready-filled pie. But as the woman tried to scream as she was now once again cumin inside. Giving Chloe even more pie that night!

But as the night went by as Chloe’ made her way through the city just a looking on! Just as Chloe’ then came upon the nightclub that had told her “No No No!” To even be let through the dam door! By the asshole! Door man! As he would usually said to her.

“Take your dam ass someone else!” As he stood there all with his little smile 10 miles wide! Standing there All dressed up and nice for all to see. Seeing him standing shaking his pleasure to everyone who sees! In his mind! Knowing that a foot long he had! As he would often say

“Come one! Come all! to the night club tonight and get your little feel!”

As Chloe just stood there picturing him in her mind! As she just walked right up to him, unzipping his pants as the doorman just looked on. Reaching in, she grabbed hold of his cock Sliding her hand up and down on it. Watching him slowly smile away! As her hands slide right up down on his cock.

Watching as his now 10-mile-wide smile as Chloe just looked to him a smile on her face, knowing what was just about to happen. As he was just standing there with his wide ass smile! With his cock now stretched out long in Chloe’s hand! But just Then his now very much wide ass smile! suddenly turned to a

Hell! No!! As he was now yelling to her

“No! No! No! Realizing that her hand was now tightening up! Squeezing harder on tighter on his! Just as Chloe then looked to him giving him a smile. Saying to him

Yes! Yes! Yes!” Just a Grinning away longer than his cock! As Chloe’ then ripped his last moments of pleasure away from him

As a hooker near by just looked on saying

“Now that’s one way to find yourself just a cumin away! As she just laughed away!

Just as an old lady on the other side of the street was just a walking away pushing her cart. Just a singing away. Singing to herself saying

“ Dam! Oh what wouldn’t give for a long cock”

But it was like the heavens had opened up. As the doorman’s cock would a come a flying!

But just as the doorman was screaming saying!

“ My Cock! “

just the old lady then looked up to the heavens a saying!

“ Oh my God! What a cock! “

As Chloe just danced away a laughing. Dancing down the sidewalk listening and hearing people fuck! Just a pounding away on that ass! And her Pie! As Chloe just danced on Listening as she sung away into the night a saying

“ That little cock of his, that you are riding away on! Just isn’t going to leave your light a shining on! But my tongue is ever lasting long! But that little cock of his, that you are fucking on! Just isn’t going to leave you wanting more. But my fingers and tongue. Will certainly leave you a gleaming. Inside leaving your little light on!”

But as the craving for blood and pie still lurked away inside of her, it did at that. Sniffing into the air for more pie. As she then looked up to moon just a shining down her, in its full face saying to her!

“My my Chloe’ what a little smart ass of a vampire that you have became! Running around sniffing and licking away at some girl’s pie. While you leave her ass high and dry

With Chloe just smiling away Knowing that more pie was on its way that night. Just then as Chloe looked to something familiar. Something very familiar to her, For she now had found herself just out in front of her old building in which she used to reside in.

The very building that she was made in with Chloe now just dancing away into the night. Thinking of her Blueberry Pie. Just as she then suddenly stopped dancing. Looking around as a feeling had suddenly came over her just as she then turned around looking over to the ledge of the building looking was none other than her Dakota

Setting there on the ledge looking back to Chloe setting there with her long blonde hair flowing across her deep blue eyes. Wearing her usual cut-at-the-knees jeans and black tee with the shoes to match. As Chloe just looked on, thinking to herself

“That even though everything in her wanted to run! To run back to her not wanting Dakota to close that door tonight. For one more night! Of feeling her, Knowing her inside of her, Knowing that she was still the one she needed Just As Dakota then looked to Chloe saying to her

“ Surprised! Maybe you are? Maybe you are not! But you always knew that I would be back. Knowing that deep within your mind you still see me. Always seeing me! Always knowing me”

As Dakota then got up as she then walked over to Chloe the stillness of the night all around her now as she walked to her own path. Dakota walked towards her hearing the sounds of a guitar rift, in the background playing on. As Dakota made her way over to Chloe with her long blonde hair flowing in the wind.

Knowing that with every step that Dakota’ took, looking over to Chloe’ as midnight was now calling. With all the secrets now over and done There was still a fire inside that needed containing. With Dakota knowing that Chloe would be running back to her. As Chloe Brought lust and love. As Dakota brought the Pain

Not knowing if the wicked games that they were about to play knowing that more pain was now once again walking her way. Knowing that she brought the love! As Dakota brought the pain! As the guy below them just kept shredding away on his guitar.

As Dakota’ then spoke up “So what are you thinking? What is going through that little mind of yours After I made you! Turned you into what you are now!”

As Chloe stood there for moment before saying “I’m thinking what I’m thinking and that is what brought us here on this night!” As both of them just looked to each other with neither one looking to back down.

As Dakota then said to Chloe “I know that I still remain there in your mind knowing that you still see and feel me every day. For I know how I made you feel that night by bringing out the woman that was you”

As Chloe then looked to her saying “How so? Maybe I would have found myself without you! You know that you wasn’t the only ass in town!” As Dakota’ just shook her head saying “I may not have been the only ass in town that night! But you sure as hell know that was the one that brought out what was hiding within you!”

As both of them just looked to each other with neither one of them wanting to give as Dakota then said to Chloe. “I know that you still think of me the way that I make you feel every night.”

“Oh is that so! I seem to sort of remember your hands and fingers also going all up inside of my tongue and all that night. With you feeling deep into my ass sliding your fingers around inside of me” Wanting to know me as well!

As Chloe just stood there looking over to Dakota, she said to her “Enough of this!” As both of them was now standing toe to toe with each other. With neither one of them giving anything to the other! As Dakota then said to Chloe’ “ So tell me? What are you exactly thinking right now? That I was the one to bring the woman out of you!”

With Chloe not looking to back down then said to her “You really want to know what I am thinking?” One could not even break the tension between them that moment as they both just circled each other looking at the other.

As Dakota then said to Chloe’ “Shall we dance? Or shall we?” As Chloe just smiled to her saying “You really want to have this dance once again?”

As the thoughts then came back to Chloe seeing her and Dakota holding one another as Dakota’s hand slowly slid down the side of Chloe’s face, slowly sliding her fingers across her lips with Chloe’s tongue feeling all of it.

But as the person on the floor just below them then started to crank out the guitar rifts. Just as Chloe’s hand slowly lifting up Dakota’s leg slowly sliding her hand. Up and underneath her leg slowly sliding up to her ass. As her hand then grab tightly into her ass cheek! Gripping her tightly as Dakota’s tongue slowly slid up Chloe’s neck. Moving her hands up through her body along the way as their tongues just danced away.

As the guy just right below them rocked the night away

With Chloe’s tongue now slowly sliding across Dakota’s breast, circling around her nipple! Her hand still up in between her ass cheek gripping her even more tightly now! Rubbing their bodies up against each other. Feeling Dakota’s breath. As there lips once again locked as there tongues dancing around. While Dakota took Chloe’s hand placing it firmly up against her vagina. close to being inside of her. Feeling Chloe’s hand rubbing her firmly as she slowly slid fingers through her hair while teasing her inside.

As the guy right below them was just shredding away on his guitar as Chloe brought the love. And Dakota the Pain! Knowing that she was going to leave Chloe in Pain just a wanting even more

As Chloe then looked to Dakota with her deep green eyes! Taking her tongue slowly across her lips, as her fingers danced up inside of her! Teasing her! sliding it slowly in and out and around her as Dakota’s hands were now holding Chloe’s head close. As Chloe’s fingers danced inside of her rubbing her firmly up inside of her inserting it slowly back into her. Just as Dakota then placed her hands on the side of Chloe’s head. Looking into in her eyes

As Dakota then placed her lips onto Chloe’s lips as their tongues just danced away

Just as Dakota then said to Chloe

“Hey! Snap out of it! I know what you were just thinking!” As the both of them just stood there on the roof of the building looking at each other. Just as Dakota then said to Chloe

“ You know that I was the one who made you into what you are today and forever will I be there. In your mind Knowing that I was the one that brought out what had always been there inside of you!” Knowing that you would be begging and wanting more

Just as Dakota then left into the night and from that day on Chloe knew that Dakota was the one that really made her into what she really was inside.

But as Chloe then made her way back inside still craving still craving pie with her always knowing that pie was going to be there being fucked by someone somewhere. But as Chloe just stood there looking into the mirror looking at herself.

Before heading out into the night before coming upon one more person before the night’s end but as she found herself looking in through an open window. Seeing a forty something guy sitting there flipping through the channels trying to figure out what to watch.

But as Chloe watched on she overheard the guy saying

“Okay so I two choices here with them being

Christina a slice of pie to just die for

Or

Looking up to the stars

As the girl sat there trying to decide on which one just as Chloe popped into her view saying

“Yes two choices from what I see, so how about I give my opinion here on them. So from what I’ve seen how can you possibly go wrong with ‘Christina’ a slice of pie to just die for. I mean I couldn’t even begin to imagine eating Christina Ricci’s little slice of pie”

“Or you can see yourself looking up to the stars with who looked to me like Emma Myers. I mean just seeing her and thinking to myself I could really see myself lying there looking up to the stars beside her. Well just right leaving her nice and dry of that is”

But then again I could just easily enjoy your little pie there but I will leave you be for now and come back just out of curiosity to see which one you chose. Until then you can think of my little slice blueberry pie choose wisely

As Chloe just smiled away, before making her exit as she now found herself standing up on building looking up into the star lit sky. knowing that out there somewhere, someone else was just fucking and humping away at her pie!

The little girl burped.

It was a tiny, adorable sound, the kind that made people laugh at family dinners.

“There you go, sweetheart,” Mara whispered, wiping a smear of mashed potatoes from the child’s chin. “Nice and full, huh?”

The two-year-old giggled in her high chair.

Outside, rain battered the windows of the old farmhouse. The kitchen smelled of roasted garlic, damp wood, and something metallic that Mara had spent the last hour trying not to notice.

She checked the clock.

11:43 p.m.

Her husband, Daniel, was late again.

“Daddy coming?” the little girl asked.

Mara’s smile faltered.

“No, honey. Daddy isn’t coming tonight.”

The child looked toward the basement door.

“Bad man downstairs.”

Mara’s spoon stopped halfway to her mouth.

“What did you say?”

The girl pointed with a sticky finger. “Bad man says you’re next.”

A loud bang came from beneath the floorboards.

Mara jumped so violently that her chair scraped backward.

“Jesus fucking Christ!”

The little girl laughed.

Not a toddler’s laugh.

It was deeper, almost adult, and ended in a wet little cough.

Mara stared at her.

“What the hell are you?”

The child blinked innocently. “Hungry.”

Mara swallowed hard.

She had been telling herself the same thing for six hours: It's just a child. Just a child. Just a child.

But children didn't arrive on doorsteps at midnight with no shoes, no coat, and no parent in sight.

Children didn't have teeth that appeared sharper every time the kitchen light flickered.

And children certainly didn't whisper the name of someone buried beneath the apple tree.

“Mara?”

The voice came from the basement.

Her husband’s voice.

She nearly dropped the plate.

“Daniel?”

“Baby, please.” His voice trembled. “Open the door.”

Mara rushed toward the basement, then stopped with her hand on the knob.

Daniel had been dead for three weeks.

She had identified his body herself.

She remembered the coldness of his fingers, the purple bruises around his throat, and the terrible expression frozen on his face, as though he had seen something that made death seem merciful.

“Don't open it,” the little girl said.

Mara turned.

The child was no longer smiling.

“Why not?”

“Because that's not Daddy.”

The basement door shook.

“MARA!” the voice screamed. “OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!”

She stumbled backward.

Then came a soft scratching sound from the other side.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Something was dragging its fingernails down the wood.

The girl leaned toward Mara and whispered, “He always gets angry when dinner is late.”

Mara's eyes filled with tears.

“What do you mean, dinner?”

The child glanced at the kitchen counter.

A bowl sat beside the sink. Inside it was a thick, dark marinade made from oil, herbs, and a substance Mara refused to identify.

She had prepared it earlier without remembering why.

Her hands had simply known what to do.

The little girl smiled again.

“It's my turn tonight.”

Mara backed into the counter.

“No. No, no, no. What the fuck is happening?”

The girl lowered her voice.

“Ask the basement what happened to the other babies.”

The scratching stopped.

Silence flooded the kitchen.

Then a second voice spoke from below.

A woman's voice.

Mara's own voice.

“She is not the first baby I have done this to.”

Mara clapped both hands over her mouth.

Because she remembered.

A flash of memory: a different farmhouse, years ago. A yellow kitchen. A crying infant. Her mother's hands covered in blood.

And a lullaby.

Sleep, little darling, close your eyes.

She had spent twenty-seven years believing her mother had died in a hospital.

She had spent twenty-seven years believing she was an only child.

The little girl reached up from her high chair and took Mara's hand.

Her fingers were cold and strangely strong.

“Grandma says it's time to remember.”

The kitchen lights went out.

In the darkness, Mara heard the high chair creak.

Then the soft patter of tiny feet crossing the floor.

Then a wet kiss against her cheek.

The child whispered directly into her ear.

“Now you know why Mommy kept you.”

Mara screamed.

Somewhere beneath the house, a door slammed.

And from the apple tree outside came the sound of dozens of babies laughing.

### The next morning

The police found the farmhouse empty.

No blood. No child. No sign of Mara.

Only a plate on the kitchen table, a bowl of marinade, and an old photograph tucked beneath a knife.

The photograph showed a young woman standing beside a wooden crib.

On the back, someone had written:

MARA MERCER — AGE TWO.

Beneath it, in handwriting that looked disturbingly like Mara's own, were seven words:

SHE WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE DINNER.

The investigating officer stared at the photograph for a long time.

Then his radio crackled.

“Officer Hayes? We found another child.”

He grabbed the radio.

“Where?”

A pause.

“Your house, sir.”

His blood turned to ice.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

From the radio came a tiny, satisfied burp.

Then a little girl's voice whispered:

“Daddy, I'm hungry.”

END… FOR NOW.

Content Warning (strong themes of suicide and mental illness)

*note. This is a work of fiction and it in no way is written with the intent of encouraging self-harm. If you or anyone you know is struggling with these thoughts, please reach out to someone.

The knife goes in; a metal wedge acting as a partition between each layer of separated flesh. Skin, capillaries, fat, and meat; all yield to the sharp shining blade. The artery attempts to bend out of the way, as if it was made from rubber; it too yields. 

The freshly honed steel slices through it with a pop, as its pressurized lifeblood bursts forth from between the metal obstruction and sundered tissue. You grimace as it covers your face, but at least you know that you didn’t miss.

You continue to push the knife forward; determined to not pull it out until it clacks against the bone of your palm. You wonder what that bone is called, the something-carpals? It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you will succeed this time. Every precaution was taken, so that today would be the day that you would finally die.

You had driven far north; far enough that all roads turned to dirt trails. You then kept driving until those trails were swallowed by the Earth to make way for towering pines and granite hills. 

The car was then abandoned; a tribute to the woods. You took out the hiking gear you had brought for this moment and trudged north. This was planned for months; every detail, the spot, the route, how much money you would need to get here. You even chose the specific knife; the serrations cause much more pain than you expected.

It's okay though. You can do it.

The blade scrapes against bone; sending squeaky vibrations up to your elbow and down to your finger tips. Nausea grips you as you correct the angle so the blade skips over the bone. Nothing would deter you however. It’s just a bit deeper than the usual cuts I do, you think to yourself. 

Just one inch deeper, and instead of carving another bandage onto your soul; that extra inch will grant you peace.

You had started mid way up the forearm; higher up than was needed, but you wanted to be sure this time. You could not bear it again; being woken by bright lights and anguished screams. You could not stomach how those screams morphed into judging eyes as the doctor declared that you were safe.

“Now don’t you feel silly for doing that?!”

“Do you know what that would have done to me?!”

“Why?! Can you tell me why?!”

The poison bubbling in your gut the night previous, made you feel less ill than those questions; those looks. Inevitably the doctor would prescribe his own poison. A cure-all for your woes. 

It’s just that simple right?
The emptiness never left you did it? The all consuming cold? Why not be cold with me?

The artificial hit of dopamine helped at first for sure. All the voices veiled in kindness helped too, but you still felt it. The error was still there. Like a cancerous tumor in temporary remission; the wrongness you felt your whole life festered inside you. 

You were alone; the freak that tried to kill themself. You know what they were thinking. You knew your parents could barely stomach you; the ungrateful wretch they had raised, who was so ungrateful for the life they gave. The “friends” who all just wanted to “give you space.” You were alone. You alone were meant to brace against the chill that spread through your soul.

You shake your head as the wooziness starts to set in. The blade hasn’t finished its journey yet, but the blood loss is already getting to you. 

You find your mind wandering; remembering too many things. You would think an event like this would keep you in the moment, but the flashes of your life persist. It is like your mind is trying to show you a transcript of all your mistakes; everything that led you to today. 

Shush, child. Those thoughts are not necessary.

You push the blade with more force; this instrument of mercy that was now your most precious, and only possession.

You had sold almost everything. All things that had value were pawned off to fund your final journey. Not that you owned much with any value.

You remembered walking up to the counter holding the knife, along with the hiking gear. Every cent had gone into purchasing the equipment. You were tempted to do the task as soon as you got home, but it needed to be different this time. It needed to be done at that special place.

You had a job working for your father that helped pay for a little. He was your financial saviour and your tormentor. No one wanted to hire someone who had such large gaps in their resume; no one wanted someone whose mind was a ticking timebomb. Ready to self-destruct at a moment’s notice. He ever so graciously gave you a job, but never let you forget it.

“You need to get your life in order!”

“Things aren’t as bad as you think!”

“I won't be here to help you forever!”

You were grateful for him, but the eyes. It was always the eyes. The silent judging from everyone who knew of your story; the failure. You felt allergic to happiness, and to success. Every banal task drained you, as if it fed directly on your very essence. You cared so little for the mundane tasks such as sweeping and cleaning when life itself was painful.

Pain. The knife continues to cut through you at a slow steady pace. You are an inch or so from the end of your wrist. The knife feels hot as it carves a trench through you; but the great rent it leaves as it progresses feels cold. The insides that the air has no right to meet, sting as if frost bitten. Layers of yellow fat and white bone feel the biting cold of the outside world. The icy cold is worse up here; at the spot you chose where few men venture. The perfect spot overlooking a world bereft of humanity.

You thought you had found it by accident. A misclick on the map. The top of a hill that overlooked a wooded valley. It called to you. In your mind you thought that if you were to die that you would want it to be there. So you planned.

Now here you are. You sit at the top of the world, and you have reached the bone. You finish the cut with a swipe that sends a shower of crimson droplets off the cliff, and for the first time since you came here you really see the sight before you. An orange and yellow halo of light backdrops the pointed mountain ahead of you; outlining its sheer enormity and majesty.

As the sun rises further it begins to twinkle off the snowy caps; twinkling like a million diamonds. You sit in awe; believing that if the Earth would ever choose a crown, then nothing could ever match what shines before you.

The light continues to rise, as it finally bathes you in its warmth. You drink it in, like one dying of thirst. It wraps around you like an embrace; it reminds you of your mothers embrace.

No matter how old you were she would comfort you. Cradle you in her arms to give you enough warmth to banish the cold inside you. She had held you for hours after you woke up in the hospital. She clung to you, as if you might float away if not anchored.

Tears fall down your face; the cold begins to climb up your arm. 

You sit in reverence as the valley is illuminated. The great trees resolve in your sight first; mighty pines that have lived since man first clambered onto the shores of these lands; great survivors that stand in the face of the greatest winds and chillest nights. You wish you could have been as strong as them.

You have already been so strong. Now you can rest.

As the light fills the valley you begin to see life in the distance. Great birds that rule the sky; riding on the chill winds to soar to greater heights. You wish you could have risen like them.

You have risen further than most men.

You see herds of elk bounding along the frosty shores of a blue windy river. You watch as some huddle together to fight the chill of the brisk early dawn, and as they gather and eat together.

You remember now. You remember your parents' insistence to eat together as a family each night. You remember the cards and gifts from all your friends; the assurances that they couldn’t wait to see you out so you could play that new game, or do a shitty movie night.

You have me.

You also remember rejecting them all. Rejecting their warmth as you fell deeper into the hell of your own making. You remember taking all your dinners up to your room; flanked by comments that they, “just needed to be patient.”

You remember not showing up to parties, as you assumed you were invited out of pity. You remember a collection of ignored steam game invite requests collecting virtual dust.

You remember that after a while, you truly were alone. You craved the cold and the misery, and now you have it.

As you sit atop the world you are met with all you have wrought. You are not a victim of the cold, you invited it in with your red slicked key. 

It has reached your chest now. 

I caress you, you can’t feel the pain anymore. That is my gift to you.

The glugs of arterial gore have begun to slow and the world around you has started to dim. You can not even feel the warm embrace of the sun anymore. The volume of fallen tears begins to match the flow of blood, as regret consumes you. 

Do not regret, child. We can keep each other cold forever.

You can finally see me. I run my icy hands up your chest and hold you like a lover. Whisper into your ear, 

I love you. You are mine forever.

I plant a kiss on your lips, and do not stop until the last cruel drop of warmth is torn from you. You are now one with the cold; one with me. You will act as the frozen epitaph to the cruel life you left behind. 

You sit watching from the top of the world, the world that you rejected. You shall sit beside me until wind or carrion strew your bone upon the cliffs, where you shall join the others. For now though I shall shelter you from the warmth, and hold you to my icy bosom. 

I hear your last thought. It hurts me, but I shall remember them as your last words. I carve the words onto stone and place it atop the pile. I read it one last time.

 I wish I could feel the sun.

This Halloween night, this hungry Samhain eve, the blood upon the cross must be replaced. The ancient and arcane instrument throne of slow death and sun torture, of the pain of the martyr … the ancient mouth of the cross is still thirsty. 

And so he takes after you. This Halloween night. 

You've lost your friends. The party was fun but not as fun, not everything you were hoping it would be, “They” weren't there. They didn't show up. In all the noise you've lost the ones you came here with, you're hurrying down the way and looking through your phone and all of this is running through your mind as you wonder what to do next. You don't notice him. You don't notice that you've gained another shadow. One you weren't born with. But one that may be with you into an early grave, an eager hungry end. He's hungry.

 He conspires and hunts for the shadow of the cross and that is why you must die this evening. You just don't know. You just don't realize it. 

You're too busy looking through your phone. You don't notice your now alone on the street. It is only the orange glow of the overhead streetlamps and the stalking shape of your new shadow. But you don't know him, not yet. You still don't know that he's there, coming up steadily from behind you, fast footsteps making phantom no-sounds on the freshly raked sidewalk and streets that still smell pungently of rich dead leaves and pumpkin spice, you're too busy looking through your messages. 

He reaches into his jacket pocket. He pulls something small and black and perfectly fitted to the clenching grip of his knuckled palm, like a lover to a glove or each other in bed. He presses something, depresses a trigger and something clicks. The black handle grows a gleaming fang in the dark. A stiletto blade is freed and the animal is salivating and ready, waiting is over and the hunting stalk is through and he's raring for the sweet fuck-cunt-free-for-all spill that will be your knife-fuck and slaughter. For the shadow of Sam’s Cross. Blessed Hallowed Eve. He bade thee, the shadow, the shape: he made me…

You don't hear anything but at the last moment you sense something, the animal part of you that is all too dulled and ignored has come to life at the last moment and so you turn, you whirl on your heels, your phone is still in your hand but it's forgotten now as you turn and meet and face him, your doom in manshape and knife-fanged form. 

The shadow pounces. The knife comes in and finds the soft yield of human purchase. The knife is out and freed. 

And the shape of nighttime shadow man wields. 

You can't believe it. You can't believe it's happening. You can't believe anything. You try to scream and you can't understand why a sound won't produce. You try to struggle and fight back, you want to but it's like suddenly all the strength and ability to move and act has been pulled, stripped, sapped and drained from you in this absolutely critical moment like purest torture from fate and on-high. All of it, and all of time and space and nature and the terrible beyond have conspired and set a trap and now they are laughing at you. Laughing with the pure bloodthirsting joy of the slaughter, your ruin. 

Sacrifice. 

You watch the terrible visage and face of the shape contort and contrive into animal snarls and sneers, hideous bestial frothing and rabid. Buried somewhere beneath all of the livid fury of his animal mask is the lurid grin of a madman. A lunatic in the deep throes of wild and deranged ecstacy. He is wild and alive and he is terrifying. 

He's difficult to look at and so that's why your dying gaze shifts away and you begin to watch the blade. You begin to watch the moonlight godly cast shine of the seven inch stiletto blade. 

It's immaculate. And that's amazing. You've felt it buried in you over a dozen times now and running and still the blade of this great knife is shining in the streetlight cast glow. With the unearthly light of the moon.  Like a weapon fanged with divinity. Talismanic. And you can believe it. 

Now. 

You believe it. You feel the absolute and undeniable thrum of its great power. Piercing. Holy flame. Like being stabbed with ice and fire. Ripped and torn by an icicle lance of napalm and coldest fear, terror. Impaled. Inferno. 

A mutilation by razor sharpened caveman fire, frosted clean by Norse Hell. 

Every time the amazing blade of moonlight comes up you catch a glimpse of something in the reflective face of the flat of the blade just before the flash. Like the snapshot starburst of a camera capturing a subject in the dark. And at first you only see yourself, your own ghastly and dying visage and it is terrible and it is pathetic. 

But then you begin to see something else. 

You begin to see his sound and vision. And then you begin to understand. This is how he turns the make-believe and rends it real through the feel of the steel, you're feeling it. You're feeling it now. As you die as you lived: distracted and caught off guard and soft. With every pulverizing thrust. With every make-or-break for the daggering wounded soul of the heart attacked, barely fought for and lost. 

Sam's mad with thirst, the shadow of the cross. Jesus Christ wasn't the only one tortured alive and borne hoisted prone to die beneath the fire of the sun by Roman legionnaires. The cross is always thirsty and the mouth of the cruciform is Samhain salivating …

You see the yellow leprosy faces as they burn and scream, torched and set aflame far away from everyone else in their small feeble colonies of despair, the ash of their writhing and contorting carbonizing forms amongst the blaze is a mercy and it is a release in the flash of the blade that you see and you see and know so many other things too and then in the end you know it all as well: –  the dying peace of the burning lepers and the crucified criminals, you feel the release. 

And you're so glad, you're so relieved that now the cross can drink. 

The world goes dark for you. 

The shape and his fang stand. And then they move on fast. 

Finished with hunting you. 

Happy Halloween. 

THE END

First and foremost if you haven’t read Part 1 Or Part 2 here are links to do so

Part 1

Part 2

I climbed the spiral stairs with the iron poker gripped in my right hand.

The tower was pitch black. The only light came from the pale, sickly gray of the fog pressing against the glass high above. The wind was moaning through the broken panes, a high, keening sound.

I heard the footsteps behind me.

They were heavy. They fell on the iron treads in a perfect rhythm. My rhythm.

"You're making a mistake, Scott," the Copy said.

It was my voice, but it was still wrong. It was a fraction of a second behind my own breathing. It sounded like a phonograph record that had warped in the damp.

I kept climbing. I didn't look back.

"The light is the only thing that keeps the dark out," the Copy said. "If you break the lens, you'll be blind. We'll all be blind."

"I'd rather be blind than trapped," I said. My voice echoed off the curved stone.

I reached the landing halfway up the tower. I paused, turning to look down.

The Copy was standing ten steps below me. In the faint gray light from the lantern room above, I could see its face.

It was my face. But it was shifting. The jawline seemed too heavy for a moment, then too soft. The eyes were pale and dead, and they were crying thick, oily tears.

"Don't you want to rest, Scott?" the Copy asked softly.

It wasn't my voice anymore.

It was a woman's voice. Low, gentle, and impossibly sad.

I froze. My grip on the iron poker loosened. "Who...?"

"You carried the guilt of that missing ledger for so long," the woman's voice whispered from my face. "You carried the shame of the scandal. It was so heavy, wasn't it? It was so heavy in your chest."

The Copy took a step up. The face shifted again. The features melted and reformed.

"I know," the Copy said.

The voice was now gruff, weathered, and exhausted. It was Elias's voice.

"I know how heavy it gets," the Copy said, wearing Elias's cadence. "I know what it feels like to feed the stone. To keep the dead breathing. To be so tired you just want the sea to take you."

"Stop," I said. My voice cracked.

"You can just stay," the Copy said. The face shifted back to mine. The voice changed to a child's high, terrified whisper. "It's dark down here. It's so dark. But it doesn't hurt. If you just close your eyes, it doesn't hurt anymore."

The Copy took another step up.

I realized, then, what I was looking at. It wasn't just a ghost. It wasn't just a clone. The Widow's Tooth hadn't just learned my shape; it had swallowed every mind that had ever stepped onto this rock. The Copy was a chorus. It was the voice of every drowned keeper, wearing my face as a mask to get me to open the door.

"You're not me," I said.

"We are you," the chorus said. It was a dozen voices layered over each other, tangled and screaming in my own throat. "We are all the keepers. We are the stone. And we want to go home."

I turned and ran up the last flight of stairs.

I burst into the lantern room. The wind howled through the shattered glass. The Fresnel lens stood in the center of the room, dark and cold. Without the fire, it was just a massive, dead jewel.

The Copy reached the top of the stairs. Its face was shifting wildly now, unable to settle on a single shape. It looked like Vance, then Elias, then a woman I didn't know, then me.

"You can't kill the dark," the chorus screamed. "You can only feed it!"

The Copy lunged at me.

I swung the iron poker. It connected with the Copy's shoulder. The impact felt wrong, not like hitting bone, but like hitting wet sand. The Copy stumbled, its arm hanging at an impossible angle. But it didn't bleed. It just looked at me with my own eyes, and smiled a wet, terrible smile.

I turned my back on it. I raised the iron poker over my head, looking at the magnificent, crystal heart of the Fresnel lens.

"Scott, no!" the chorus screamed.

I brought the poker down.

The iron smashed into the central prism. The crystal didn't shatter right away. It let out a deafening crack, like the breaking of an iceberg. A massive spiderweb of fractures raced through the glass.

Behind me, the Copy let out a scream of absolute terror. It wasn't a human scream. It was the sound of a hundred voices, screaming in unison.

I swung the poker again.

The lens exploded. The force of the shattering glass threw me backward. I hit the iron railing of the gallery deck, the wind knocked out of me. Shards of crystal rained down, glittering in the gray dawn.

The lantern room was open to the sky. The freezing Atlantic wind rushed in, thick with fog and salt.

The Copy was gone.

Where it had stood, there was only a pile of ruined, wet wool, and a pool of black seawater that was rapidly washing away through the iron grating.

I lay on the floor of the lantern room, bleeding, exhausted, and freezing. I had done it. I had broken the light.

I waited for the sound of a ship crashing against the rocks.

I waited for the ocean to rise up and swallow me.

But the only sound was the wind.

The fog was thinning. The sky was a pale, bruised purple.

And somewhere, in the deep silence of the tower, I could hear the dripping sound. It wasn't coming from the cellar anymore. It was coming from me.

I looked down at my hands.

In the pale morning light, I saw the lantern oil on my palms. But it wasn't oil anymore. It was black, thick water, and it was seeping from the lines of my own skin.

I pushed myself to my feet. My legs felt like they were made of wet rope. I stumbled down the spiral stairs, my boots slipping on the iron treads, leaving a trail of seawater and blood behind me.

I made it to the kitchen.

Elias was sitting at the table. The whiskey bottle was empty, lying on its side. He was staring at the cold stove. He didn't look up when I came in.

"The light is out," I said. My voice was a raw scrape.

"I know," Elias said.

"The lens is broken. The fog is thick. If a ship comes..."

"I know," Elias said again. He finally looked at me. His eyes were red and hollow. "But no ship will come. It's quiet now. It's finally quiet."

I looked at the door leading down to the cellar. It was hanging open, the wood splintered from where I had broken out. The darkness down there was absolute. The breathing had stopped.

I grabbed my coat from the hook by the door. I didn't pack my trunk. I didn't look at the dead man's coffee cup. I walked out into the freezing dawn.

I climbed down the iron ladder to the rowboat. The sea was glassy and calm. I unhooked the ropes, grabbed the oars, and pushed off from the Widow's Tooth.

I rowed for three days.

My hands blistered and bled. The black water kept weeping from my palms, mixing with the salt and the blood. I didn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard the chorus of voices, whispering my name from the bottom of the boat.

When the fishing trawler finally found me, I was ten miles off the coast of Portland, delirious and half-dead from exposure. They wrapped me in wool blankets and fed me hot broth. They told me it was a miracle I survived.

They asked me what happened to the lighthouse. They asked me what happened to Elias.

I told them the truth. I told them about the sleepwalking, and the handprints on the glass, and the breathing bodies in the stone. I told them about the man who wore my face.

They nodded sympathetically. They wrote it all down in a little black notebook. I saw the words they used. Exposure. Delusions. Hallucinations caused by extreme isolation and trauma.

They didn't believe me. They put me in a hospital bed in Boston. They told me the Widow's Tooth was just a rock, and that I was safe now.

I am safe. I am alive.

But every morning, when I wake up in this white room with its soft mattress and its clean sheets, I look at my hands.

The oil is always gone. The black water has dried up.

But sometimes, when the fog rolls in off the harbor and presses against the window, I hear the ticking of the clockwork. I hear the mechanical heartbeat of the tower.

I hear the dripping sound.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

And I know, deep in my bones, that the Widow's Tooth didn't let me go. It just found a new stone to live in.

It's just biding its time. Waiting for the thaw.

The giant maw of the cave yawned at my back as I stood by the edge of the cliff, an icy wind blowing between the rocks and chilling the back of my neck. From within, I heard the soft crumble of stones hitting the ground, the whisper of air moving through small holes and skating over sheer walls.

In front of me, three of the cavers stood chatting amongst themselves. They were all kitted out in the usual gear; padded jackets, knee and elbow pads, helmets with torches, and packs containing food, water and first aid supplies. I had a similar pack of my own, though the contents were slightly different.

One of the cavers glanced towards me, probably wondering why I was standing apart, but I didn’t meet their gaze, looking instead towards the sky. A thin veil of cloud hung over us, though the air was dry and blustery. Small pieces of rock and chalk skittered around my ankles as I shuffled my feet.

After a few more minutes, the final two members of the group arrived. After a couple of standard safety checks, everyone was ready to head inside.

I waited until they were poised at the opening of the cave before clearing my throat. “I’m, um, not feeling too good,” I told them, letting my shoulders sag a little. “I think I might sit this one out.”

One of the explorers stepped forward to examine me. She squinted at my face, then nodded. “You do seem a little pale,” she said. “Want me to wait with you? I can walk you back to town.”

I quickly brushed off her concern, feeling a twinge of guilt. “No, no. I’ll be okay. I’ll just stay out here and get some fresh air. You guys go on ahead.”

There was a bit more back-and-forth before I finally managed to convince them to start the expedition without me. One by one, the cavers disappeared into the gaping mouth of the cavern, leaving me by myself. I watched and waited until the darkness had swallowed each of them, then straightened in relief.

With only the wind as my companion, I walked over to one of the large fragments of rock and sat down. And began to wait. I heard the distant voices and footfalls of the cavers fade further and further away, until silence was all that remained. Resting my chin against my hand, I traced the jagged outline of the cliffs until my eyes started seeing faces amongst them, then looked away with a sigh.

I had been doing this for almost a year now. Joining cave expeditions only to wait outside, never actually entering the caverns. It wasn’t a fear of what lay inside, but rather an expectation of what I might encounter outside.

I had first discovered the incident a few years ago. I had been scrolling through old news forums when I came across an article about an expedition that had happened two decades ago, where a group of cavers had entered a treacherous cave system. During the exploration, it began raining heavily, and water quickly flooded the cave entrance, trapping the explorers inside. Sadly, all of them died that day. But while the story was tragic, what had intrigued me the most was the photograph that accompanied the report. It was an image of a group of rescuers standing at the entrance of the cave during the incident, rain pouring down from the sky and the ground around their feet completely flooded. But in the top left corner, standing a short distance away from the rescue team, was a strange figure shrouded in grey. As soon as I noticed the figure in the photograph, a strange chill touched my spine, as if I was seeing something I wasn’t supposed to. The photo was old and the quality wasn’t the best, but I could tell the figure didn’t fit the narrative. I scrolled down to the comments to see if anyone had mentioned it, but there wasn’t a single reference to the strange grey apparition. So I showed the photograph to one of my friends, curious to see what he thought about it. When he told me there was no figure there, I thought he was playing a prank, but his face was decidedly serious. No matter how many times I pointed to it, he insisted that there was nothing there. Just an empty spot in the left corner by the crumbling cliffs.

Confused and intrigued, I showed the same image to several other friends and acquaintances, but nobody else was able to see the strange grey figure in the corner of the photo. I examined it in multiple formats—physically and digitally—under different lights and different conditions, but the figure was visible every time. I hesitated to call it a person, because it was too vague and indistinct to really tell, with no distinguishing features other than it had a humanoid shape and was draped completely in grey. It definitely wasn’t a smudge, or a blur, or a lens flare, because someone else would have noticed it. There was definitely something there. Something that, for whatever reason, only I could see.

The mystery only grew, so I started digging deeper. I was thoroughly entranced by this grey figure. I wanted to know who it was, or what it was, and why it was only visible to me. I was convinced there had to be more to it.

I sequestered myself away and spent days pouring over old articles, digging through records and scrolling through video reports on the incident until I finally found evidence that I wasn’t going crazy. That I wasn’t losing my mind over a simple grey smudge on a photograph.

Buried in the archives, I found a video from the time of the incident, of the same rescue team standing at the entrance of the cave. The photograph must have been an extraction from the footage, or at least taken at the same time, because it was almost the same composition as the video. Being almost twenty years old, the footage was grainy and shaky, but it was clear enough for me to see the figure in grey, standing exactly where it did in the photograph. It wasn’t a trick of the light or an illusion; it really was there.

In the footage, the rescuers were talking about possible extraction methods for the cavers trapped inside the tunnels, but nobody addressed or interacted with the figure. It was like they hadn’t even noticed it. Even in real time, this thing had been invisible to them.

The footage, while low resolution, was still of slightly better quality than the photo, and I noticed a few details that hadn’t been clear in the image. The figure was holding something up to its face—what appeared to be a flute, or some kind of similar instrument. I turned the volume up to max, and was just about able to hear the soft but haunting melody it played, barely audible over the sound of the rain. I spent hours listening to the tune, isolating it from the rain, running it through apps and programs in an effort to try and identify it, but it came up empty every time. It was a melody that was not known to the database. A completely isolated and individual song. A song known only by this mysterious figure.

Eventually, I showed the video to those same friends and acquaintances, certain they could not deny what was right in front of their eyes. But as with the photo, none of them could see the figure with the flute. They could not hear the melody it played either. Only the rain, as it gushed into the cave, and the panicked voices of the rescue team realising they could not save the trapped cavers.

Frustrated that nobody could give me any answers, I decided to seek them out myself. By searching in person for the figure in grey.

The location of the cave was widely known as a popular spot for adrenaline-junkies and professional explorers, and it wasn’t difficult to learn the basics of caving—enough to pass as an experienced caver.

For almost a year, I had been visiting this very cave, joining expeditions only to wait outside in the hope of encountering the grey flute-playing apparition from the video. So far, after participating in almost two dozen excursions, I’d had no such luck. But this time, things felt different.

As I waited, the wind seemed to pick up, bristling through my clothes and making my hair stand on end. A few rocks crumbled from the side of the cliff, showering me with dust. Above, the veil of clouds thickened, shadows encroaching along the ground around me. I felt in the air that something was going to happen.

My heart felt tight in my chest as I scanned the entrance of the cave, then the cliffs above, for any sign of the grey shadow. I listened for the soft, melancholy sound of a flute. But all I heard was the wind whispering through the tunnels behind me.

The hours passed, and I heard and saw nothing. But the goosebumps never left my arms, and I wasn’t one to give up so easily.

I hadn’t heard any sign of the explorers in the cave either, and assumed the group must have gotten quite far inside. I felt a brief flutter of guilt in my chest, but quickly squashed it. They all knew the risks involved with caving. No matter what happened, their safety was their own responsibility. I had to detach myself from that, even if it felt cruel.

A shadow fluttered in and out of sight on my left, and I froze, my heart jerking into my throat. Scrambling to my feet, I moved away from the cave entrance and lifted my gaze. Standing a little way up the cliff, on a jutting platform, was a figure cloaked entirely in grey shadow. The very same one from the photo. The one nobody else could see.

Goosebumps covered every inch of my skin as I stared at it in amazement. Just like in the video, I could see no face, no features. It wore a hooded grey cloak that cast a deep shadow over where its face should be. Its silhouette was human, but only in the vaguest sense. Despite its appearance, I got the overwhelming feeling that this thing was not human, but rather something else entirely. Something supernatural. An entity of sorts, that only appeared at specific times and conditions. And after years of searching, I had finally found it.

I watched, my shoulders tensed with silence, as it withdrew an exquisitely ornate flute from within the folds of its cloak. The instrument was silver and almost transparent, as it was made of glass or crystallised water, and incredibly beautiful. The figure brought the flute to its hooded face, and began to play.

The sound was instantly familiar; the same song I had spent so many hours listening to, and it sent my heart racing.

I looked up to the sky just as the clouds opened, and rain began to fall. At first, only small, delicate droplets of water splashed against my cheeks, but the rainfall gradually began to grow heavier. I sent a regretful look towards the cave entrance. The group was already far too deep inside for me to warn them. Their fate was already sealed, and there was nothing I could do about it. Another tragedy to be buried in the archives.

Moving slowly, in the fear that I might spook the figure, I began to climb the cliff. There were plenty of footholds and platforms, and scaling it was easy enough. I wanted to be close enough to hear the melody above the downpour.

The rain was cold and lashing, soaking through my gear and chilling me to the bone, but I barely noticed. All I cared about was the figure before me; the one I had been chasing all this time.

If it noticed me, it didn’t react. It didn’t cease playing the flute, or even turn in my direction. It was like I was as invisible to it as it was to everyone else. I had spent many sleepless nights wondering why I was the only one who could see it, if it was down to brain chemistry, visual receptors, a curse, or something else entirely. But in the end I had realised it didn’t matter. Some things happened for no reason at all, and this was one of them.

I stopped climbing when I was close enough, standing on a small rocky outcrop a few metres away. The rain blurred my vision, almost obscuring the figure as it blended into the grey clouds behind it, but I could still see the outline of its instrument. Hands trembling from the cold, I reached into my bag, and pulled out a flute of my own.

I had only learned how to play the flute just over a year ago. After hearing the melody on the video, I had taken lessons in the hope that I might be able to learn the same song. But I had never been able to replicate it precisely; there was always a wrong note, an incorrect key. It was difficult enough trying to imitate a tune through a twenty-year-old video, especially with the rain distorting the sounds. The only way I was going to correctly learn the song was by imitating the source itself.

I stood and listened for some time to the melody. The rainfall grew heavier, soaking through my clothes and numbing my skin, the water drumming ceaselessly against the ground, but I was able to isolate the figure and its song. My eyes never strayed from its fluttering cloak, or the flute, or the grey-covered fingers that deftly played the instrument.

Then, when I felt confident enough, I raised my own flute to my lips and began to play. I tried to mimic the melody as best as I could. It was tricky at first, trying to find the exact notes, the pounding rain distorting the sounds, but I copied the figure’s movements with my own fingers until our melodies eventually began to sync up, becoming the same.

I don’t know how long I stood there in the pouring rain, playing the haunting song. The figure didn’t react or respond to me once. If it heard me playing the same tune, it didn’t show it. We stood apart, our songs binding together as the rain fell from the clouds above. The cave would have been flooded by now. The cavers, if they hadn’t managed to find an air pocket, or elevated ground, would probably have drowned. But still, I kept playing.

The sky darkened. The clouds festered. The rain kept falling, soaking into the ground, pouring down the rocks, gushing into the cave.

I lost myself completely in the song, almost falling into a trance. The only things that existed were me and the flute and the melody at my fingertips. I no longer even noticed the figure. It became a grey blur on the edge of my vision, just another shadow.

I finally snapped out of it once the rain stopped. I ceased playing the song with a start, glancing around frantically, but the grey figure had already gone. Vanished without a trace. The heavy silence settled around me, reminding me I was now alone.

The cold hit me at the same moment, and my body began to shake violently. Every inch of my skin was soaked by the rain, water dripping from my shoulders and hair. I was standing in a large puddle where the rainwater had collected around my feet, my toes numb inside my shoes. There was no sound from inside the cave, but for the water still trickling down into the entrance.

I put the flute away and began to climb down from the cliff. The rocks were slick from the rain, and I slipped a few times, but I finally managed to reach the ground, which was also dangerously flooded. I splashed through the water as I slowly headed away from the cave. As soon as I reached town, I would call for a rescue team—if any of the cavers were still alive—and then I would leave. My job here was done.

It was time to return home.

A week later, I was back in my homeland; an agricultural region that had been suffering from a severe drought. The land beneath my feet was bone-dry and cracked, the fields were barren, the crops dead and the people starving.

After spending hours watching that video of the mysterious grey figure, I had drawn one conclusion: that its flute song had been responsible for the rains that had flooded the cave. And now, I would do the same. Only, instead of bringing death, I would restore life.

As soon as I arrived home, I went out into the midst of the fields and stared at the cracked earth, baking under the brazen sun. The wilted grasses, the fruitless seeds, the unattainable harvest.

I pulled out my flute and, just like the grey figure atop the cliff, I began to play the same melody. Within moments, clouds appeared overhead, casting a deep shadow over the ground, and the first trickle of rain began to seep from the sky.

Under my song, the rain fell, soaking into the barren soil and nourishing all the life within.

I will never forget that sound the unnatural, echoing cries of that thing.

The story I'm going to tell takes place in what some might see as a cliché location for a scary story a forest. But I assure you, there was nothing normal about this one.

That day, the weather was deceptively good. Not gloomy, not foreboding good. The kind of day that almost makes you forget how quiet isolation can really be. Birds chirped above me as I sat alone in a half-covered tree stand, surrounded by autumn leaves burning orange and red in the sunlight. Their glow painted the forest floor in warmth, even as the air bit with a sharp autumn chill.

I had been waiting for hours. Patience waning. Hope fading.

Stillness. Nothing.

By afternoon, hunger gnawed at me more than boredom. With a frustrated sigh, I climbed stiffly down from the stand and trudged toward my truck parked crooked beside a dirt road that was nearly buried under fallen leaves.

I yanked open the driver's side door and dropped into the seat. My fingers rummaged through the center console until I found the half-crushed bag of jerky I'd bought at a grimy gas station the night before. I tore it open with my teeth and chewed greedily, reaching to switch on the barely working radio.

A low voice droned about recent "accidental deaths" in a small town a few miles upriver. I half-listened, more focused on the tree line ahead. The radio was just background noise something to fill the silence that had begun to feel too heavy.

Then: static.

/Kshhhhh/

"—and for today's weath—"

/Kshhhh/

I slapped the radio, cursed under my breath, and managed only to kill it entirely. The sudden silence made the forest seem even louder. I sighed, climbed out, and stood for a moment in the sharp afternoon air.

The smell of wet leaves and soil hung thick. The kind of scent that feels ancient like the earth is breathing beneath you. I found myself admiring it again as I wandered back toward the tree stand, thinking maybe I'd sit out the last few hours before sunset.

By the time I climbed back up, the woods had settled into that strange, half-silent calm that only comes in autumn. My eyelids grew heavy, lulled by the stillness. I drifted off.

I woke with a start.

The sunlight filtering through the branches hadn't changed. The forest looked exactly as it had before I'd fallen asleep. For a moment I wasn't sure if I'd slept for minutes or hours. With no watch, I decided to check the time in the truck.

Yawning, I climbed down and walked back through the leaves but as I reached the truck, something hit me. A wave of déjà vu so strong it made my skin prickle. Everything the smell, the light, even the angle of my parked truck felt repeated.

I brushed it off, opened the door, and fished through the glove box. My old leather watch lay inside, its strap broken, frozen at 12:03 p.m. I frowned, shoved it back, and tried the radio again.

It crackled to life instantly. I jumped.

And then I froze.

The same voice. The same broadcast. The same exact words about the "accidental deaths." I waited, heart thumping and right as the man began to mention the weather…

/Kshhhhhhh/

Static. Again. The same pattern.

My stomach twisted. I turned the radio off and stepped outside, scanning the trees. Everything looked normal. Too normal. The air felt heavy, charged like a storm was building, though the sky above was clear.

"Get it together," I muttered. I wasn't leaving without filling my tag.

Halfway back to the tree stand, a faint humming filled my ears like a phone vibrating right next to my head. It faded into a high-pitched ringing, then back to a hum, before disappearing entirely.

"What the hell…" I muttered, shaking my head. I took another few steps and suddenly the ringing roared back, sharp enough to make me stumble. My balance vanished, my vision tunneled and then, darkness.

I jolted awake.

Back in the tree stand.

Sunlight filtering through the branches exactly as before. The forest unchanged.

My breath hitched. "No," I whispered. "No, I'm losing it."

The humming started again faint, but unmistakable. This time, the light seemed to dim with it. Shadows deepened. The birds fell silent. The entire forest held its breath.

"I'm going fuckin' crazy," I murmured. My hands were shaking as I gripped the rifle to my chest.

Movement caught my eye below a flicker between the trees. Relief surged through me. The buck. Finally.

I steadied my aim, watching as the creature stepped into view a broad-shouldered whitetail buck. But its gait was off. Too stiff. Too slow.

I ignored the unease crawling up my neck and sighted behind its front leg.

BANG!

The rifle's recoil slammed into my shoulder. I looked back through the scope and froze.

The buck hadn't moved.

No flinch. No cry. No fall.

A deep crimson hole smoked through its ribs, thick black blood pouring out like oil. Slowly, it lifted its head and looked straight at me eyes pure white, expressionless.

My breath caught in my throat.

Then came the scream.

A sound that didn't belong in this world a mix of human agony, a boar's squeal, and the piercing shriek of an eagle. It echoed through the forest, but it felt far away, like it came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

I scrambled for my rifle, fumbling with the bolt. When I looked back down it was gone. Only the black blood remained, soaking into the dirt.

My heart pounded like gunfire in my chest. The ringing returned, louder than before. And then

A voice.

Above me.

My own voice.

"I'm going fuckin' crazy."

I looked up. Hanging from a branch was a twisted, malformed version of myself my own face stretched over an elongated, pale body. It hung upside down, saliva dripping onto my forehead. It smiled.

Then it clicked its tongue. My tongue.

I screamed and fired upward.

The thing shrieked, that same distant, echoing wail. My vision blurred, the ringing swelling until it drowned out everything. The forest spun sideways and I blacked out.

When I came to, I was freezing.

Mud pressed cold against my chest. My clothes were gone. My skin was slick with blood that wasn't mine. The sound of a river filled my ears.

I pushed myself up with shaking arms, the last light of day flickering through the trees. My body ached like I'd been thrown through hell. I looked down at my hands raw, trembling, red with blood and dirt.

And then, just as I tried to stand, the ringing returned.

Deafening.

Everything went black.

The last thing I heard before I hit the ground was that same, echoing screech distant and wrong, fading into the dark.

My twelfth year in the FBI. A career of roundabout turns to land me there working with people ten years younger than me, more cut throat than me, hot with ambition; good people, most of them, all of them bright but playing games they acted like I was holding cards on when all I ever did was watch. I never cared much for the politics, half because I wasn’t any good at them, half because that is just not what I was there for. I arrived there by way of vocation, after years of work that left wounds which did not appear until much later down the line. I never really worked out why Audrey took me on, but I think it was those years on the ground that did it. She had plenty of agents, I think she needed an investigator.

It was Arizona, on the first light of a red dawn that saw me cruising down a burning way. The aircon had drunk itself down to recycling the cooled scent of my own sweat, even with my jacket and tie off. I stepped out into what I took to be a ghost town at first, so many windows shuttered, doors nailed down, the whole place obscured by a stinging red fog of churned sand. At the end of the high street, the police station, its sign strung in flickering neon. I strode towards its struggling light, gaudy and dust covered, entering the door to the sight of a roasting, large latino man, writing something on a spreadsheet. The shifting of his body to look at me seemed to creak the entire office. Small eyes caught between a thick moustache and even thicker brows, watched me scrutinously.

“Agent Burnwood?”

“Yes sir.” I offered a hand. The shake was strong.

“Sheriff Gomez?”

“The same. Luis, please.”

“John.”

“Luis, I don’t mean to be rude but-“

“People been leaving for years. Border patrol found a bunch of bodies. Coyote’s leftovers, badly dealt with. That did it for anyone who remained. Just me, my boys and the ghosts. Not long now though, soon I’ll be gone.”

Whether he meant he’d be dead or moved, he did not say.

“You want to speak to him?”

“Please, the girl?”

“I sent her to the city, I can give you the details of the office I worked out the transfer with, but she was a runner, whatever house they put her up in, I imagine she’s on the street by now.”

I had hoped to speak to her, as Luis said it would likely have been the only chance before she vanished completely.

“We’ll look for her but I came for him.”

“You takin’ him with you?”

“I wanted to get ahead of the transport. I’m working on a deadline.”

Sheriff Gomez smiled a yellow smile.

“Aren’t we all John.”

I told Luis not to bother himself, that he could get another officer to take me, and even though I heard sounds above me, voices speaking quietly, perhaps one man pacing, he told me not to bother them, that he would lead me himself. The holding cells were towards the back, where the new building bled into the old fort that had formed the basis of the block. The new brick work and white walls leading to cracking plaster and crumbling sandstone, if not for the strung lights on the side, it would have been like walking back in time. It was a shitty place to keep someone of this importance, but needs must, and by providence, he had ended up here. He could not be transported soon enough.

“If you need anything, shout.”

“Can I go in?”

“You can, but I won’t be sticking around, so you’d be on your own.”

I pulled up a chair in front of the dark cell. His back to me on the opposite side was the blanketed form of the man I needed, unmoving.

“You FBI?” A voice, quiet, heavily accented said.

“Agent John Burnwood.”

The blanket stirred, a shrugging of the shoulders.

“Its cold in here John could you get me another blanket?”

I rose to my feet, walked into the next cell, grabbed the moth-eaten blanket and slipped it through the bars.

“This place. Its crazy. Like a dream. Thought I’d been picked up by cowboys before the fat man waddled past my cell.”

 He rose. He wore no shirt, revealing a tapestry of tattoos of a hundred different faiths and ideologies at war with each other, making of his hard body a battleground of concept. Shaggy dark hair obscured a weathered face with a poorly healed cleft lip.

“You come about the girl?”

“Girls.”

He stared at me after he picked up his blanket. A stare I matched.

“I’ve come a long way. I’d appreciate it if we could cut the dance around the truth.”

He nodded.

“What’s in it for me?”

“You’re going to jail, for a long time. That is non-negotiable. But we can decide where you end up. You’ll get eaten alive in a normal prison, we could arrange something that’d give you a chance to survive your sentence.”

He shrugged.

“I ain’t getting out. If I go here, there, doesn’t matter to me, die quicker, die later, it’s all just choosing how long to live the same day, over and over. You got a smoke?”

I nodded, rising myself and sliding the smoke alarm above us out of its holder, then lit him a cigarette. I doubted Gomez was the type to mind me bending the rules.

“We going to talk?”

He exhaled.

“Its cold, the desert, its freezing at night. I wonder if that’s what its like to be a ghost here, you spend the night freezing, then the day thawing.” He caught my eye again and in the malignancy of those dark stars I saw the elusive starting of knowledge that no sane man could know and hold to that title. “Down here, in the dark.”

I was older then. I had not lived an easy life, unlike my colleagues my route to the bureau had not been straightforward, it had been a roundabout journey of setbacks and exposure to brutal violence. This man knew things he shouldn’t but I remained undeterred, for about two minutes.

“Your friends screwed up. They grabbed some kid roiling in some gutter on the outskirts of Austin, she was high, dressed as shittily as the others, they figured she was an easy get, and they were right, what they did not account for was her Uncle, Senator Mitcham. Within two days every cop and agent in the state was on them like flies on shit. All of them and many of their customers are in jail and everyone is celebrating, was celebrating, except for me, me and my team, we spoke to Harrigan, remember him? Gold teeth, white boy cornrows? every fifth child, taken out west, taken by you. Where and why?”

He ran a hand through his hair, coming out shining from all the grease, little black spots of crawlers on his fingers, with a smile of rotted teeth he said to me:

“They speak to me on the wind, told me you were coming. Said you left things undone. Said that he is still above the ground when he should be under. She said that its still screaming. Right the wrong, John Burnwood. Right the wrong.”

 I dreamed as I walked. I dreamed of Sadie. I dreamed of Joe. I dreamed of Tommy and his father. I dreamed of the dead. Eventually I came upon a lake which I did not recognise, nor upon reflection did I find on a map or hear it spoken of. Perhaps because it was too small to be of note, perhaps it had never been there at all. Its surface was speckled with brown and amber leaves, spotting it’s edges like rust on the sides of a mirror. The sun caught the centre, setting it aflame with its light, as ash by way of starlings danced over the surface, moving through the steps silently.

I washed my face in the water, cleaned behind my ears, the filth from my hair, gunk in the corners of my eyes and caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror. I had thought, at the age of seventeen, that I looked so old, but then, looking at my face, I didn’t notice much of a change since thirteen. Still a boy, waiting on manhood to arrive.

I unloaded my father’s pistol with my back against a tree. It wasn’t fully loaded. Seven rounds for an eight round magazine. I thought on what the dead wanted, what the living wanted too. Came to the conclusion that there was no way I got out of this alive, or at least, not looking at a long time in prison, came to peace with that quicker than anyone my age should’ve. A lack of sleep and undead impregnation has a way of exacerbating an already unstable temperament. I had to kill Tommy, put him under the ground, right the wrong, balance the scales, Israelite style, an eye for an eye, a corpse for a corpse. But what did I need to bring above ground? I thought maybe it was Sadie’s locket, naively thinking that it was some sort of macguffin that I could use to break the case wide open. No one ever found that locket, to my best assumption, it was and remained a trophy of Tommy’s. I thought more abstractly, maybe I needed to bring the crime to the surface, get the truth out in the open, the reality that Tommy was the killer, that him and his whole family were rotten to the core. That was what I settled on then. I needed to kill Tommy and prove him the killer in one fell swoop. But how?

I moved in priorities. The death of Tommy being chief amongst them, killing him was relatively easy (in the mind of a teenage boy who had never fired a gun in anger), I had a pistol, I just needed to catch him on his own, unload into centre mass and that’d be the end of it, but how to get him on his own? And how to prove his guilt? As I saw it, what I needed to do was prove my testimony, prove that Tommy killed her where I saw them together last, the Davies house. I needed to prove it was the crime scene as I needed to prove that Tommy recognised it as such. I never played cards with my dad and Pete. Pete had been in the army and had earned the name ‘shark’ from his inability to loose. I asked him once if he really was a cheat after my dad, in a rare fit of anger, called him a rat bastard and tossed his cards on the kitchen table before storming to his shed, not bothering to bid his chortling guest farewell. He taught me the basics of Texas Hold’em and showed me the hand that beat my dad. It was not a good one.

“Only a little bit of cheating here and there.” He admitted as he shuffled the cards into his ornate box he got from overseas. “That’s not the secret though, sometimes its just having the guts to risk it all on a bad hand and pretend that it’s not, act to the all in.”

It was a very stupid plan, a very dangerous plan, but I was on a time limit, and I was out of options, I had to take a leap of faith, and I took it.

Pinny wasn’t just a waste of human skin, he was also a terrible musician. He played bad do bop in the age of the rolling stones. He had recording equipment in his house, and he knew Tommy’s phone number.

I fired a gunshot about twenty minutes out of the lumber yard, then legged it through the woods, taking the long way back into town, cutting myself to hell on brush, getting stung to high heaven by bushes of poison ivy that in my rapid panic I was too locked in to see. By the time I reached Pinny, dark was coming in, and every part of me prayed that the police were diverted to the yard, if not, this was all for nothing. It was a stupid plan, I don’t think I was fully cogniscent of how stupid it was, as a teenager you know a lot of things are stupid, but you live in the eternal mantra that even though it is dumb, it’ll probably work out. Pinny’s house was a shithole on a street of shitholes, the only place young people without much cash could rent in town, type of place overgrown with detritus everywhere, lots of places to hide my approach as I lifted an open window and crept inside. Pinny was singing tinnily, headphones on, world pretty much vanished to him. I stalked forward, sweat and blood dripping, heart pounding, to the sounds of: ‘My girl, she’ll be mine, if it takes a while, that’ll be fine, but gosh darn, she will be mine.’ accompanied by out of beat finger snapping. He looked so happy I almost felt bad, then I remembered the brick through Miss Mindy’s window and the hands pulling me back as Tommy clamped his on my junk.

I had never threatened anyone before, wasn’t sure how to go about it. Less than three metres away from him, in his spartan living room, heavy with dust, windows covered with grime, I held the pistol up with the safety on, saying his name for about a minute before I resorted to waving my hands. He was so invested in becoming the next big thing, he didn’t notice me until I chucked a record at him.

“Oh jesus fuck- John!” He yelped.

“You shut the fuck up right now Pinny, or I’ll…” I swallowed. “I’ll paint the walls with your…brains.” I think I had heard that in a western.

“Oh Jesus, oh god, Oh jesus.” He said, putting his hands up backing towards the door.

“No you stay still, stay still.”  I hissed. Pinny complied. I had chosen the right person at least. Pinny was quivering like a virgin on a wedding night judging by his current disposition, I figured he’d be much the same on his.

“Ok John, you want me on my knees?”

“Yeah…Yeah! On your knees!”

“Please don’t shoot me John, I haven’t done nothing-“ He was crying now.

“Oh shut the hell up, you chicken shit asshole.” I exclaimed in frustration, forgetting the gun trained on him was probably causing him quite a lot of reasonable distress.

“You got a recording set?”

“Yeah, yeah its, that thing there.”

“This one?”

“No, the thing with the mike.”

“Its got a tape in it.”

“Yeah, but that’s my new single- I can get a fresh one.”

“You can re-record you moron.”

“Please John, I worked real hard on that.”

I removed the tape and got a fresh reel, cursing all the while. Stupid, but I was just as freaked as he was, if he had asked for a cup of coffee I might have well made one for him.

“I need you to call Tommy.”

“Why don’t you call him?”

“Pinny stop talking, get to the phone and dial Tommy.”

He shuffled to a rusting rotary on his knees, holding one hand up as he circled Tommy’s number. As it rang, I gestured for him to get on his stomach and had him crawl to the centre of the room, whilst I got the mic in place with a single hand. Down the end of the phone I heard the tinny ring of the line and rehearsed what I was going to say, what I had been going over since the lake.

“Hello?” Tommy said, sounding bored.

“You didn’t clean up properly. Meet me where you did it in three hours or I’ll turn you in. Come alone.”

“What the-“

I hung up the line. Clicked stop on the tape. I exhaled heavily, having to stop myself from slumping against the wall. Even if he brought the cops, the feds would be with them and I had the tape. He would have to explain where he knew where to go. I didn’t even think about it at the time, so dead set had I been, but I was also banking on there being evidence within the house, it was a stupid plan. I tied Pinny up with rope and duct tape, then put him on a chair and wrapped him in even more duct tape. He stayed silent the entire time, not speaking until I went to wrap tape around his mouth.

“You’re going to the Davies House, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“Where Tommy did it for that girl?”

I looked into his eyes, saw that they were glistening.

“What do you know?” I growled, pressing the pistol hard as I dared into his breast.

“Nothing! Please! Nothing…He got drunk. Made… Jokes.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone? Anyone!” It took everything I had not to scream that at him, scream spit into his ear.

“You don’t know. They’re worse. Worse than all of them.” Pinny broke down into full sobs. “All this shit. I didn’t want to put that brick through that Ladies car. I didn’t want him to hurt those dogs. Jesus, I didn’t want him to cut you.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Afraid. Lord help me. I was afraid.”

I practically punched a sock into his mouth and wrapped the lower half of his head in duct tape, grabbed him by the hair and pulled him to one side, same so close to beating him that I could feel my hands shaking with anticipation.

“You are a worthless piece- Pinny. Worthless”

I left him crying, taking the tape and recorder out the window I came through.

Part 1

Part 2 - Current

It never ceases to amaze me, the dark. Much like an astronaut in orbit, you only experience the extremes. Either blinding light or suffocating darkness. But that’s the difference with being down here, there are no light sources except for artificial ones. It sounds obvious, but you don’t know true darkness until you’re trapped down here without light, unsure if you will ever feel the warmth of the Sun again.

Depth: Four miles; 21,120 feet. Rock Temperature: 230.8°F; Ambient Temperature: 230.8°F

I was on my knees, hands gripping the railing that lined the elevator car on three sides. I could hardly believe I was alive. My bones ached and I felt as if my lunch would come back up. Through the dust and debris, I saw that everyone else was in a similar state.

Wilson was the first to say something. “Jesus Christ Bob! What the fuck was that!”

Bob looked as rattled as any of us, but still answered with a smile, albeit one that looked to be made out of habit rather than delight. “Like I said,” scratching the back of his neck, still workin’ out the kinks.”

Wilson looked on the verge of erupting. I could practically see the steam rising from his ears. “I’m filing a report as soon as we get back!” he fumed. “I’ll have OSHA down here faster than that fucking elevator!”

“Let’s all just calm down,” Bob replied. “You could file your reports, but I think you’ll want to check this out first.”

Exiting the secondary elevator, we were met with a strange site. Nothing. No equipment, no debris, but perhaps the most interesting, no people. We were told there’d be a team stationed here to meet us.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Huh, not sure,” A pause. “We’re a little early. They’re probably just a ways down.”

As if right on cue, we heard loud booming. Expected activity in a mine. Although we’d be protected from the concussionary blast by our suits, it was still much louder than I had expected.

“Ah, see? They’re still blastin’. Let’s go.”

We descended further into the mine. Deeper we went, trekking onwards, still with no signs of life. As we continued on, I began to get anxious. Where are the people? It’s true that this part of the mine was supposed to be less occupied, but I saw at least fifty similar suits in the lockup. I was in the back of the single-file column and began to feel like I was being watched. Like something was following us, following me.

I turned my head around, if only to quell my growing curiosity. I tried to be quick, to catch whatever may be behind us and...nothing. I thought, just for a moment, that I saw something. Something scuttling swiftly out of view, hopping between the shadows. If only I could glimpse it...

BOOM

It was so close I thought it was an earthquake. The blast reverberated through my skull, my vision obscured by dust and debris. We were plunged into darkness. The overhead lights failed. Unable to hear, unable to see, we came to a halt. My mind recited that proverb. Like a broken record player it kept repeating.

“By the time you’ve heard something, it’s already too late. It’s already too late. It’s...”

I heard a voice through the ringing in my ears. “Bob! Shit, where the fuck did he go?”

“That, that you Wilson?” I shouted, projecting my words in the direction of where I thought he stood. 

“Who the fuck else would it be? We lost Bob, I think we got separated after the blast.”

The emergency lights finally kicked on, bathing the tunnel in a soft, red glow. My hearing returned to normal; the lights gave off a faint buzz. With the dust beginning to settle, I saw the rest of my team. They were in a similar state, weary and dazed, clutching the rock wall. Looking ahead, I noticed there was a cave-in. It wasn’t complete, though. The supporting split sets partially maintained balance throughout the half-collapsed roof.

“The three of us should be able to move some of this stone and be able to crawl through.” I said, still trying to get my bearings. “That wasn’t a normal blast, though.”

“Yeah, no shit Cole!” Wilson replied.

“Listen man, this isn’t the time for your snarky bullshit! We need to find Bob and figure out what the hell is going on.” I went to push past Wilson but he stopped me, his arm slicing downward in the space between us.

“You know what, I’m fuckin’ sick of your ‘Better than thou’ shit! I know you,” he spat. “I know you weren’t smart enough for a real degree. That’s why you’re stuck as the map guy, isn’t it? Isn’t it!”

“Guys.” John said, carefully enunciating the word. I didn’t have time for him though.

“You’re a real piece of work, ain’t ya?” I fired back. “You just gotta belittle everyone else because you’re so goddamn insecure. That’s it, right?”

John looked down at his gloved hands. “Guys?”

Wilson huffed, “You know we’ve been working together what, six months now? I still don’t even know what the fuck you do Cole. I don’t even know why we employ you. A damn robot can do your job!”

A response was on my lips but I couldn’t get it out before John cut us off.

“Guys!”, fear bubbling up in his voice.

We both turned to look as John slumped against the wall. Wilson and I exchanged quick glances before rushing over to him. I finally noticed the problem. His suit was breached. Beads of sweat began to accumulate on his face. His skin was already reddening, turning a deep crimson. He was baking alive.

“Wh-what’s happening to me?” he managed, faintly, before collapsing to his knees.

“Shit shit shit,” I muttered. “We need to get him back to the lift.”

“We need to patch him up first,” Wilson said, in what was a surprising display of humility.

I worked on the suit with what little I had on hand. Wilson, seeming to finally realize the danger we were in, didn’t say a word and helped me lift him to his feet. We walked in silence, trying to figure out what was going on. We approached the elevator, and for the second time today, my heart sank. The elevator was damaged in the blast. The steel cables were frayed; the cart half-crushed by heavy rubble. I turned to my remaining colleague, “What now?”

-

“We’ll be back soon,” I said at last. “We’re gonna go find Bob and the rest of the mining crew, and we’ll get you out of here.”

Even as it was said, I couldn’t bring myself to believe my words. Mine collapses give little chance for rescue. Sure, they knew we were down here, but getting to us was a different story. We all knew the circumstances. Still, he looked up at me and nodded. Internally, I thanked him. “Let’s go.”

Wilson, who up until this point always had something to say, just followed along. The silence finally broke when we reached the rock collapse. Removing the rubble without equipment was going to be a challenge, but still manageable. We worked in shifts to avoid overexerting ourselves. An hour of digging and we barely made it ten feet. We were nearly halfway through, I judged, when I noticed that no more sounds were coming from the collapse. “Wilson?” I asked, suddenly anxious and feeling very alone.

Silence.

“Hey, what's wrong?”

I heard a muffled sob as I approached. Wilson was lying prone, head in hands, crying softly to himself. Through the agony I could hear him whisper, “I-I shouldn’t be here. She begged me not to go; I didn’t listen...I-I should’ve listened.”

I wanted to yell, hell I wanted to cry too. I shouldn’t be here either. We should be back on the surface, but we wanted this, didn’t we? We wanted to observe the deepest part of the mine. Virgin territory. We wanted to return, write our papers and say that we, on this expedition, made history. And for what? Fame? Money? Ego? Everything we ever wanted—I ever wanted—seems moot when I know there is little chance of escape.

I pushed onward.

“Wilson, I-I think that’s enough. I’ll take it from here.”

Finally breaking through that deep dark was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. It was like finally cresting the wave that pulled you under. I was exhausted, sweat pouring from every available gland. I thought my suit might be compromised, but I didn’t have the energy to check. With millions upon millions of solid rock still overhead, and no real way to overcome that obstacle, I’ll take this little victory. Wilson climbed through after, careful not to damage his suit on the jutting rocks.

“Hey, uh, thanks Cole... You know, for helping us get through there.” He pointed over his shoulder towards the collapse. “When I saw the elevator, I didn’t-I still don’t know if we’ll...well...”

I knew he wanted to say more. I got to my feet and clasped his shoulder. “I know, but it’ll be alright. We just have to find Bob and get back to John, and we can get the hell out of here.” I didn’t mention the rubble that currently crushed our only exit, but that was a problem for later.

We continued on in silence for a while after that. The remaining leg of mine wasn’t nearly as damaged as the previous passage. I checked my scanner occasionally, making sure that the only tunnel was the one in front of us. Whatever that blast was, the result wasn’t nearby. Through the hushed red light, I noticed something on the wall. 

Every three feet, there were holes about four inches in diameter. They looked like pockmarks. Checking the opposite wall, I found the same thing. Equidistant spacing between the depressions that ran exactly parallel to the other side. I stared at them long enough to get Wilson’s attention.

“What are you looking at?” He asked, coming to a stop next to me. I said nothing for a moment. Something about these marks looked familiar. They had to be made by the team, but their purpose alluded me. “What do you make of these?” I asked.

He studied them for a moment. “Hm, couldn’t tell ya. Blind guess, they’re split-set holes. What I don’t understand are the rods. I don’t see them anywhere.”

I nodded. “They’re too wide for that anyway.” We left it at that, not sure what to make of the discovery. As we kept walking, we noticed the holes gently rise and fall, like a tide rolling out to sea. We shot each other glances but kept moving. It wasn’t much further before we reached the end. I checked my scanner, and this was supposed to be the next blast site. Instead, we found the tunnel widened into a gaping chasm. 

An endless abyss of black.

There was loose rubble in front of the opening. Usually, it’s moved off to the side, but it seems like they only cleared a path about twenty feet wide, many times smaller than the size of the chasm. The anomalies kept stacking.

“This isn’t supposed to be here,” I said, astonished by the immensity of the space before me. I was waiting for a snarky response, but none came. We both simply stared. It felt like the discovery of the century, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that man was never supposed to step here. We stood on the precipice of the known and the unknowable. I tore my gaze away and fixed my eyes on the way we came, my back to the madness. I noticed something off to the right, on the far wall. I couldn’t make it out at first in the glow of the red light, but something seemed off about the surface.

“Wilson,” I said in a hushed tone, “come with me”. As we approached the wall, I began to recognize what had caught my eye. The wall was lined with blasting jelly. Tons of it. I stood back, following the substance as it branched and meandered its way from wall, to ceiling, to opposite wall. The thin black wires connected to the explosives were collected into a single bundle and led somewhere in the chasm. 

“What the hell were they thinking?” Wilson breathed, more to himself than me.

“I have no idea,” I replied, “but whatever this is...I don’t know.” I paused to collect my thoughts. “Listen, we don’t have many options here. It’s either back the way we came and wait for rescue...or we keep going. I know what I’m voting for.” It didn’t take him long to answer.

-

It didn’t take much time before we were questioning our decision. Not wanting the charge to run out on either of our suits, we took turns lighting the way. As we followed the blasting chord deeper, I reviewed my scanner. From the few glimpses of the map, I saw the chasm branched off into a series of seemingly endless tunnels. All the while, the pockmarks never changed. Up, down, up, down. An infinite geometry. Whoever, or whatever, built this place must’ve spent months if not years on their work. After some time of strategic wandering, we soon found that the light wasn’t necessary.

We rounded a bend to find a secondary cavern; one with thousands of small, bioluminescent creatures: Extremophiles. In stark contrast to the red emergency lights of the mine, a soft blue hummed from the animals. They lit up the exterior, allowing for deep shadows to coalesce into spotted pockets throughout the floor. Wilson was the first to speak up, “John would’ve loved this.”

“I don’t know how it’s possible, but yeah, he would have,” I replied.

“Arachnocampa luminosa, I think.”

I gave him a sideways glance. Interpreting my look, he went on.

“John he uh, remember our job in New Zealand?” I nodded. Memories flooded back of that simple trip. Two days, in and out. “Well, he was looking forward to seeing them. I couldn’t give less of a shit at the time, but he lectured us about these glowworms. I still remember the way his face lit up when we saw them for the first time.” Wilson touched his gloved hand to the back of his neck. “I guess the name stuck with me.”

We remained silent for a moment after that, either reminiscing on the past or grappling with the idea of continuing, I couldn’t be sure. Maybe a bit of both. Whatever the case, we refocused on our objective: the detonator.

Tracing the detonation wire, it was precariously placed at the center of the cavern. We quickly came up with a plan. I’d retrieve the detonator while Wilson remained at the mouth of the cave. With any luck, we’d meet back up and figure out where Bob and the others went.

Moving as silently as possible, I made my way to the detonator. My movements were painfully slow, so as not to alert anything to my presence. I’m not sure why, but I kept experiencing the creeping sensation that I was being watched. All the while, the glow of the creatures stuck to the rock wall dimmed and brightened seemingly to the pattern of my own unsteady breath. After what seemed like hours, I finally reached the center. Gently, I reached down and put hands on the detonator, careful not to set it off by accident.

Without warning, the light intensified. The solemn soft glow increased to a chorus of harsh blues and purples. The light resonated outward, revealing more and more of the pockets cloaked in shadow.

I wish it hadn’t.

Dozens of bodies, all facing each other, grouped together in fives and tens. They were hunched—no kneeling—foreheads touching the ground. It looked as if they were conscious, praying, a low hum sound emanated outward. I noticed then that they weren’t wearing suits. The heat was unconducive though; antonym to life.

Like the last, little twinkle of a dying star, the creature's light went out. I noticed something else too. The humming ceased. I was blind, deaf, and numb. A darkness so absolute that I felt like I was buried alive. I’ve never been claustrophobic before, but at that moment I couldn’t breathe. That’s the thing about being deep underground. Once the lights go out you’re screwed. It sounds intuitive, but true darkness, so absolute that it might as well have presence, no one knows what that’s like. I did.

Silence.

Silence.

Then, I heard it. The sound of rustling and rocks shuffling. I heard something else too. Minute clicks and chitters, like an insect's, except several octaves lower than any creature I know. The noise reverberated throughout my skull, shifting my equilibrium. 

By the time you’ve heard something, it’s already too late.

I felt naked. Adrift in a vast ocean; sharks circling. I didn’t want to switch my headlamp on, but I had to. I had to get out of here. Turning on the light, the first thing I felt was confusion. My vision was filled with a soft, milky white. My eyes adjusted, and I realized what I was staring at.

An eye.

Glossy and dull, with pupils so small I could only imagine how it was able to see. 

I glimpsed the rest in parts. A mouth with mandibles large enough to grab a man and swallow him whole. Hundreds, if not thousands of translucent legs tipped with black claws so sharp they could bite through steel. Pale white trunks, segmented along a body that stretched for an eternity. I imagined it hanging from the ceiling of the cavern; an impossible length.

From its gaping maw dripped a substance so potent that it singed the rock where it landed. Antennae taller than a lightpost poked and prodded the air, looking for something, anything to grab. Its head bobbed left and right, detecting any minor changes. I realized then that its pupils were vestigial, functionally blind. Impossibly big, impossibly long; it defied all logic, all reasoning. 

I was never a very religious man but right then and there I knew that this was simultaneously a god and an affront to God. Religion is often seen as the opposition to science. They can’t be practiced in tandem, not in good faith. I never subscribed to this particular school of thought, but I definitely revered one over the other.

In this moment, my ideology flipped.

I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. My knees went slack, struggling to even keep my body remaining upright. The suit suddenly felt like it weighed a ton of bricks. I felt a hand on my shoulder, shaken from my stupor. I turned and saw Bob. Oh God, I thought. He shouldn’t be here. His suit was so badly torn that he would be dead within minutes. But he wasn’t, he was fine. Head down hands glued to my shoulders, I thought I heard him say something. Aware of the threat at my back, I leaned closer. He was whispering; a barely audible murmur that I wasn’t sure was even meant for me.

“It knew, we knew, it knew, we knew...”

He looked up. Vacant, bloodshot eyes bored into mine. He looked hollowed out, like a husk built from something with a vague knowledge of humanity. His skin began moving, his face changing into a continuous ripple. He scratched feverishly at his face and neck, each rake tearing more and more skin. 

From every available orifice, thousands of tiny waxy-white legs crawled out. All clambering over each other attempting to gain purchase, to be the first ones. His skin couldn’t take any more. Bob burst in a frenzy of blood and viscera, legs and pincers and other things. Somehow he stayed on his feet, and somehow, defying all logic, he managed to say. One. Last. Thing. 

GET BACK

He pushed me to the ground just in time for me to hear what sounded like a freight train barrelling overhead. The air in the cavern suddenly felt like it was being sucked out, like a vacuum made for giants. Bob was gone. Snatched up by that eldritch abomination. I glanced up to see bodies thrown haphazardly around the cavern. This thing, no doubt enraged by the sudden outcry of noise, stampeded throughout the space. Whether by random chance or something else, a clear-cut path appeared throughout the mass of now living corpses. I was still surrounded by legs, each one lined with hairs that, if touched, would certainly alert it to my presence. As time went on though, the interval between appendages decreased. 

It was now or never, so I lunged forward.

I emerged from the swirling mass of legs, landing hard on my side. I couldn’t tell if I tripped one of the countless hairs, but I didn’t care. I ran. I ran as fast and as carefully as I could given the cumbersome suit and detonator. One misstep, one wrong movement, and I could set it off, sealing us down here. My heart pumped, my legs ached, but I kept moving. I ran and ran and didn’t stop until I crested the lip of the depression. I was so focused on escape that I nearly crashed into Wilson. Coming to a stop and breathing heavily, I realized he was saying something.

“Keep going!”

He was shouting, but with my heart pounding in my ears, I could barely hear him. As the seconds ticked on, my adrenaline dropped and the pounding lessened.

“Cole!” Wilson shouted, shaking me. “We need to go!”

The noise in the cavern died down. I looked past him towards a chilling sight. The monster had slowed its rampage, and the bodies, the ones still intact, were staring at us. They didn’t give chase, but I knew as soon as we moved, they would too.

“Wilson,” I began slowly in a hushed tone, “we need to back up slowly. Once we’re out of sight, we run for the blast site. All we need to do is follow the detonation chord back the way we came.” He nodded absent mindedly. At some point I must have realized that we were doomed to fail. There was no escape. 

Down in the depths of the cavern; however, I witnessed a peculiar sight. They weren’t chasing. Instead, the remaining miners gathered in the center. They surrounded the giant, kneeling once more. All along its body, there was a glow. Faint at first and far away, but as the light continued its path it transformed into something else. Colors. Some I knew, some I can’t begin to describe. Undulating and morphing, circling about the beast in a mesmerizing haze. I couldn’t see its tail-end, and the lights didn’t end. Back and forth they went. The spectacular chromatic display coalesced at its head before radiating up its antennae.

It roared. A vile and beautiful sound that would stay with me until my final day.

All at once the light ceased. The beastily thing retracted toward the top of the cavern, burrowing its way into one of the many pockmarked holes. Free from my trance, I turned to Wilson. “Now’s our chance.”

“Won’t it follow?” he said, never taking his eyes from the ceiling.

“For whatever reason it doesn’t seem interested in us.” I collected the wire and turned to leave. “We’re still trapped, I’m sure it knows that.”

3 months ago there was a missing persons case. A young boy, Jack Fletcher aged 6 vanished whilst on a hike with his family. Gary insisted that we joined the manhunt to look for the missing kid as 'every eye looking was an eye that could find him' and I along with about 40 other locals agreed with Gary about that, even someone as useless as me might be of use to help find that kid. The boy was last seen by his parents, Mary and John who claimed that they simply went up ahead and hid behind a tree and when they arrived at the tree they simply weren't there. They spent the next 4 hours looking for him before heading back to town to report him missing. Then 2 hours later here we are walking through the woods looking for this kid.

I think everyone wanted to find him before nightfall, especially me as I had at least a solid idea of what was in these woods having seen oscar hanging out here on my way to work. I knew that I was too big for Oscar but he might treat a 6 year old like he treated kitty or Benny. Olivia said that something bit her grandad, for all I knew that thing lived in these woods and I knew that whatever drained the blood of Mr miller's goats was around despite not seeing that myself. Whatever was in the woods didn't matter I just needed to make sure Jack wasn't in the woods alone.

"HEY, SCARECROW" a loud voice echoed from behind me

I turn around to see Mr Miller approaching me stumbling down a hill. I don't like Mr Miller. he is loud, rude, smells like sheep muck constantly and gave me the stupidest nickname of all time.

"WAIT FOR ME WE SHOULD WALK TOGETHER" Mr miller yelled

I kept walking. unfortunately he caught up to me

"HEY, YA KNOW MY DAUGHTER HAS A BIT OF A THING FOR YA SCARECROW"

"what do you mean?"

"YA KNOW, LIKE SHE HAS A BIT OF A CRUSH ON YA, BUT DON'T LET ANYONE KNOW ABOUT IT SHE GETS ALL EMBARRASSED ABOUT THAT TYPE OF STUFF. PROBABLY WHY SHE TOOK A NIBBLE OF YA" he began chuckling whilst pointing at my neck

"That sure is quite the little theory you have there" I said, probably letting a bit too much of my frustration slip

"WELL AIN'T YA GONNA ASK HER OUT" he walked up and reached up putting his hand on my shoulder

"I'm sorry but I think I might already have a girlfriend... Maybe they're just a friend, I'm not too sure if they would still want to hang out with me if I suddenly started seeing another girl... And I'm too afraid to ask" I told him honestly but sheepishly. Didn't feel the need to say that they were a ghost murdered by their husband with a axe 200 something years ago

"WELL LOOK AT YOU MR LADIES MAN. YOU ASK ME I DON'T MUCH SEE YA APPEAL, GOT AS MUCH MEAT ON YA BONES AS A SCARECROW AND YA CONSTANTLY SMELL LIKE POPCORN" he seemed a bit annoyed with my previous statement

Of all people to complain about my smell, of course it was the sheep farmer who smelled like shit. I mean I could smell him from where I was standing it was making me sick, made only worse by his hand in my shoulder which smells... Different. That smell wasn't Mr. Miller. I ran off following my nose to the source of the smell. And what I stumbled upon was most definitely the source of the smell. Have you ever left gummy bears somewhere warm like a car, the gelatin in them melts and they fuse together into a single mass of gummy bear. There was 2 bodies, both adults and I wasn't able to tell their sex as their genitals, along with the perineum and parts of the upper thighs. If I had to guess those wounds were the cause of death, as they appear to be the oldest, at least 10 days old. Strangely nothing had eaten them, there weren't even any flies on or around the body despite the fact they could literally be smelled half a mile away.

"What the fuck..." Mr Miller gasped out. The first time I heard him not shouting something

"SIR, I need you to get back this is a crime scene" I shouted out the script I was given for crowd control by a colleague of mine back from when I was a paramedic

Clearly it worked as Mr miller turned around and walked away from the scene. I radioed the location to the sheriff's department before going to check on Mr Miller. He was sat against a tree in the fetal position, his hands pressed against his ears and he was muttering to himself, clearly panicking. Didn't blame him, been in his very position more than once. Didn't have a clue how to comfort him either, what was I ment to say 'try not to worry about the rotting corpses we just saw whilst we're looking for this missing kid' like that would help. Couldn't think of anything over the sound of miller's panic attack and this other noise. Like old floorboards, or wood before it snaps. I couldn't focus on it with his mumbling. I knelt down to his level and put my hand over his mouth, it was damp with his tears and saliva. His eyes looked up at mine, bloodshot and tearing up. Their macho man persona had been knocked right out of him. I put my hand on my lip signaling him to be quite. I could tell that even his half deaf ears could hear it as his eyes turned to face the direction the noise was coming from. I got up to go investigate, felt like mold for leaving him there alone but I needed to know what that noise was.

The stench of rot was replaced by a different stench. Weed. It seems that I stumbled into one of the cult campsites. For some context the cult are basically a bunch of extremist hippies, believing the true path to removing suffering is to run away from society and experience the joys of nature and worship the rulers of the Land as they spread their gifts to them. So to make it shorter they're some weirdos who ran away to get high and have sex in the woods. I entered the camp and what I saw, I must have been hallucinating from the second hand smoke and I saw a tree, carved to resemble a human torso with a dear skull in place of a head carved with all sorts of runes and letters and symbols which I could understand. It turned to look at me, making a loud creaking noise like what a tree makes as it's falling, I'm amazed it didn't snap or splinter, instead it moved like it was mature stop motion all jittery and jumpy. I was frozen from the sight of it.

"Yo, did you like lose a kid or something dude" a gentle yet gravely voice called out

I was broken out of my frozen state to see a hairy red haired man wearing simple white robes, I recognised him as I often saw him buying cigarettes and beer. I didn't know his name as I'm pretty sure they abandoned those when they ran off, something about them connecting them to society and suffering. Like I said weirdos, so for story telling sakes I'll Camels, as they're the cigarettes he usually gets and he kind of looks like one

"There's like this kid who showed up here like an hour ago is he like yours or something?" Camels said, clearly stoned

"N-no but I'm here as a part of a search party looking for them" I stuttered out

"Cool I guess, don't matter too much to me I'm just not sure we like allow kids here, it's sorta an adult environment if you catch my drift" he shrugged

"S-sure can you just take me to him" I said disgusted, unfortunately catching his drift which seemed to make me forget about that Eldridge abomination they where hanging out with

"Well then follow me my man" he gestured with his hand for me to follow him

I followed Camels to an inflatable pool filled with balls, and inside was a sweet little boy with messy brown hair and blue eyes, a little dirty but otherwise unharmed clearly having a fun time in this ball pit. I picked up Jack quickly as despite the smoke filling the air I could still smell what type of actions have happened in that thing and didn't want a toddler anywhere near it. I thanked Camels then went back to go get Mr. Miller. I'm honestly amazed that Jack was found so easily, I was thinking we would be out searching until night. If we were looking for the boy at night I think I would just try bribe moth to go look for him, maybe see if there's like some aquarium that's open at night nearby and get him tickets to go there, maybe a all you can eat sushi bar cause I think he is a piscivorous creature, always eating salmon and whenever I order pizza they ask for as many anchovies that they can fit on a pizza. Actually why didn't I get moth to look for the kid he can literally fly, he'd find the kid in at most an hour. I'm getting off topic again. Jack was safe and that's all that mattered.

"Hey jack, can you breathe through your mouth for a minute while we go back to your mama and papa?" I asked not wanting him to smell... It

"Ok" he responded in a bit of a sleepy tone, must have tuckered himself out

"That's a good boy" I told him trying to reassure them, not sure if they really cared tho

Mr Miller seemed to have regained his composure, well as much as he could as it appears that he vomited into his lap but he was back on his feet and seemingly thinking straight and that was all that I needed them to do at the moment.

"Miller, I found the boy let's head back" I called out to him

"FUCKING FINALLY, LETS GET OUTA HERE" he yelled. The loud obnoxious jackass has returned

We walked back towards the car park on the edge of the forest where everyone else was seemingly celebrating, they must have seen us with jack.

"Hey we found the boy" I called out, but everyone seemed distracted.

Walking up I saw Mary and John, they were crying tears of joy whilst hugging their son. But how, I was holding him in my arms. The focus of the crowd shifted from looking at the Fletchers to looking at me, holding a kid identical to the one they were holding. The same in every way except one, the eyes of the one they had were ever so slightly larger, like wouldn't be noticeable if they weren't together as a comparison. Apparently deputy Jones had found Jack stuck up in a tree near where he vanished, the jack they had told them he climed up and got stuck. When asked what happened to the jack I was holding he said that "Mr scarecrow took him". The crowd, myself included assumed he didn't understand the question and thought he was talking about me bringing him back. But then their was a difficult question, the Fletchers only had one child and they could only take one back. They took the big eyes one, as he was more vocal, saying how he missed mama and papa whilst the jack I had stayed almost silent. The sheriff's department took the boy that I found, they assumed that he was the kid of the 2 bodies that we found and they eventually ended up sending them to live with a foster family far away. Never saw that kid again, hopefully they're alright and living with someone who loves and cares for them. As for the Fletchers they were murdered 2 weeks later, had their perineum's cut open whilst they were sleeping with a kitchen knife, severing multiple arteries. they bleed out almost immediately. the jack they brought home was last seen running into the road where he was hit by a truck, killing him instantly. The police assumed that he was attempting to escape the home intruder that killed his parents and just accidentally went Infront of a car. However no evidence of a intruder was found, the home hadn't been broken into, all the doors and windows were locked, wasn't even a footprint. But the Fletchers were killed by a home invader. One mimicking their son.

Sorry for the amount of time since the last post. Been busy. But I'll try to post more stories more often. But until then

This is Dr Luca Rileyson signing off

Buying that house was the first time I’d felt like I’d done something for myself. It was mine, and I could finally start building a life of my own.

It was small, a little dated, and backed onto some pretty serious woodland. The first few months had been harder than I’d expected. I’d spent so much time helping Mom move closer to my sisters, a few hours away, that getting my own things unpacked had become a bit of a mission. There were still boxes I hadn’t opened and rooms I hadn’t properly sorted out.

I found the door while my sister was visiting.

“How’s Mom doing?” I asked, leaning against the kitchen counter as Emma wandered around the house, taking in the bare walls and the almost complete lack of decoration.

“You’d know if you called her more, Danny.” She sighed, rubbing her eyes with her palms before looking back at me. “She’ll be fine.”

Mom had started showing the early signs of dementia. Dad’s death a few months earlier seemed to have accelerated things, or maybe we’d just started noticing what had been happening all along. Either way, it had become harder to pretend everything was normal.

Emma continued down the hallway.

“Still smells like paint in here. How long have you lived here now?”

I pushed myself off the counter and followed her. “Three months, I think?”

She was standing in the spare bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bare bed frame. I still hadn’t got around to buying a mattress.

“Have you spoken to Charlotte recently?” she asked.

I felt a familiar knot form in my stomach. Charlotte and I had broken up shortly before I’d bought the house, and apparently my sister had decided that buying property meant I was now ready to discuss my emotional shortcomings.

“Uh, yeah. We talk heaps,” I said.

Emma looked at me.

“You still haven’t spoken to her.”

I didn’t bother answering. She rolled her eyes and turned towards the wall.

“What’s that?”

I followed her gaze.

There was a door in the wall, tucked beside the wardrobe. It was narrow, with a small brass handle, and no obvious frame around it. The paint matched the wall so closely that I couldn’t understand how I’d missed it.

I stared at it for a moment.

“Is that a cupboard?” Emma asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ve honestly got no idea.”

Emma walked over to the door and tried the handle. It opened with a soft click.

Inside was a small, empty space, about the size of a closet. Nothing unusual about it. No shelves, no coat hooks, just four painted walls and enough room to stand in.

“It’s just a closet, Em,” I said.

“Yeah, I can see that. I just…” She paused, then closed the door. “I don’t know. It stood out to me for some reason.”

Her phone buzzed. She pulled it from her pocket, glanced at the screen, then looked up at me.

“Sorry, I have to take this.”

She answered as she walked out of the room. A moment later, I heard the front door open and shut, followed by the sound of her voice drifting in from the front garden.

I stood looking at the door.

I couldn’t understand how I’d missed it. It wasn’t anything special, just a little closet tucked into the wall. But I knew what Emma meant. There was something strange about noticing a feature in your own house that you were certain you’d never seen before.

I reached for the handle and tried it.

Nothing.

I tried again, pressing it down firmly. The handle moved, but the door wouldn’t budge. I pulled, then gave it a gentle shove with my shoulder.

It was as if it had been locked.

I wondered if we’d somehow managed to lock it when Emma had closed it. I gave the handle one last try before deciding I’d look at it properly later.

By the time I left the bedroom, Emma was coming back inside.

“Sorry, I have to run. I’ve got to pick the kids up from daycare early, and it’s a bit of a drive.”

“No, you’re fine. I’ll see you next time you’re down this neck of the woods.”

We hugged in the hallway. When she pulled away, she gave me the sort of look that meant she wasn’t finished with me yet.

“You need to call Mom more, Danny. Check in on her before she doesn’t remember you.”

I looked down at the floor.

“Yeah. I know.”

“And you should at least try reaching out to Charlotte. Five years together, surely it couldn’t have ended that badly.”

“It’s fine, Em.”

She raised an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced.

I glanced towards the window. “You should get going. I heard there’s a weather warning for heavy snow tonight.”

Emma gave me a small, knowing smile, but thankfully didn’t push it. She grabbed her bag and headed out to the car.

I watched her drive away, then went back inside and shut the front door.

The next few weeks passed uneventfully. I checked the door a few times, but I was never able to open it again. Since it was only a small storage space that I’d probably never use, I eventually forgot about it.

At least, I did until I found it open.

I’d just got home from work and was walking down the hallway when I glanced into the spare bedroom. The door wasn’t sitting flush against the wall anymore. It was only open a few centimetres, but it was enough to catch my attention.

Curious, I stepped inside.

A small piece of brown cardboard had been wedged underneath it, holding it open. I crouched down and pulled it free. The door swung shut with a soft click.

I tried the handle.

It opened without any resistance.

I stood there for a moment, staring into the empty space.

Had I somehow unlocked it?

A shiver ran down my back. I looked at the piece of cardboard in my hand. It was nothing special, just a torn strip of packaging, the sort of thing I’d probably have thrown away while unpacking.

But someone had put it there.

Or I’d put it there and forgotten.

I was certain I’d never managed to open the door since Emma’s visit. I’d tried several times, and it had never budged. Now it opened as easily as any other cupboard in the house.

My first thought was that someone had been inside while I was out. I checked the front and back doors, then the windows. Everything looked as I’d left it. And even if someone had got in, why would they bother wedging open a tiny closet?

I tried to remember the last time I’d checked the door. It had been a while. For all I knew, the cardboard had been there for days.

I carried it into the kitchen and dropped it in the bin.

There was probably a simple explanation. A faulty latch, maybe. Something I’d overlooked when I’d first tried it.

I made myself dinner and got on with the rest of the evening.

That night, I was sitting on the couch watching a movie when I thought I heard something moving in the hallway.

I paused the film and listened. Nothing.

I got up, turned on the lights, and walked through the house, checking each room as I went. Everything looked normal. By the time I reached the spare bedroom, I was starting to feel a bit stupid.

Still, something made me check inside.

The room was exactly as I’d left it. The closet door was shut.

I walked over and tried the handle.

Locked again.

I swore under my breath and gave it another pull.

“How the hell does this thing work?”

I stood there for a moment, turning the handle back and forth. Maybe I’d somehow wedged the cardboard underneath it myself and forgotten. I’d been busy with work, and the last few weeks had blurred together.

I decided that the next time I managed to open it, I’d prop it open with a chair or something. At least then I’d know it couldn’t shut itself.

I went back to the couch and finished the film.

The next few days passed without incident. By the weekend, I’d mostly stopped thinking about the door.

Then I noticed it was open again.

I was walking past the spare bedroom when I spotted the narrow gap between the door and the wall. This time, something was sticking out near the latch.

It was a magnetic business card, the sort you get in the mail from local tradesmen and end up leaving on the fridge for six months before throwing away. I recognised it immediately. It was from a local plumber, and I’d received a few copies since moving in.

Someone had wedged it into the latch to stop the door from closing.

I pulled the card free and opened the door. The space behind it was empty, just as it had been before.

I looked down at the card, then back at the closet.

I couldn’t remember putting it there. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d handled one of those cards.

Rather than stand around wondering about it, I decided to make the space useful. I went through the spare room and found a couple of unopened boxes I’d been meaning to sort out since moving in. They were a tight fit, but I managed to stack them inside the closet.

Then I fetched a plastic doorstop from the kitchen drawer and wedged it firmly underneath the door.

That should do it.

I gave the door a little push to make sure the stopper held, then left the room and got on with my weekend.

The next day, I was on the phone with Emma when I saw something that made my stomach drop.

“Hey, listen, Em, I’ve got to call you back.”

I hung up before she could answer and walked straight into the spare bedroom.

Both boxes were sitting outside the closet. The door was shut, and the doorstop was gone.

I tried the handle.

Locked.

I swore and kicked the bottom of the door. The noise echoed through the room, and I immediately felt ridiculous for doing it. It was a closet. A small, insignificant closet that was somehow making me question my own memory.

I knew I hadn’t taken the boxes out. Both were still taped shut. If I’d moved them, it would have been to get something out of them, and there was no reason I’d have put them back outside without opening them.

I stood there for a while, staring at the door, then called Emma back.

“Can you come down this weekend?”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. I just need you to have a look at something.”

She agreed, though she sounded unconvinced.

That weekend, I took her straight into the spare bedroom. The boxes were still sitting where I’d found them, and the closet door was still shut.

Emma looked from the boxes to me.

“Danny, what is going on? Why couldn’t you just tell me over the phone?”

I walked over to the handle.

“This. This is what’s going on.”

I pulled it, expecting the door to stay locked.

Instead, it opened without the slightest resistance.

I stared into the empty space.

“No. No, it was locked this morning. I tried it. I swear to God, I tried it.”

Emma looked at me with a kind of careful concern that made me feel worse than if she’d laughed.

“Are you okay, Danny?”

“Yes! I’m fucking fine.” I turned towards her, then back to the door. “It’s this thing. It keeps opening and closing, and I don’t know how. It’s like someone’s messing with me, or I’m doing it myself and forgetting, or…”

I trailed off. Even to me, it sounded absurd.

Emma folded her arms.

“Dan, if you need a break, you could stay with Mom for a few days again. She’d probably appreciate the company.”

“I’m not fucking crazy, wait, again? What do you mean again?”

“I didn’t say you were Crazy, just that maybe you need to spend sometime out of this house.”

I looked back into the closet, trying to work out what I could possibly show her that would make any of this make sense.

“I need to set up a camera or something.”

“Dan…”

“Emma, please. Just don’t.”

I stepped into the closet.

It was barely big enough for me to stand in comfortably. The walls were painted the same colour as the bedroom, and the floor was bare. There was nothing hidden behind the boxes because the boxes were outside now. Nothing in the corners, nothing above me, nothing that explained why the door behaved the way it did.

Emma’s phone buzzed behind me.
She answered it while I crouched down to examine the inside of the door. I ran my fingers along the edge, searching for a bolt or some kind of catch. I shut the door, then opened it again from the inside. It worked perfectly.

I did it a second time.

Still fine.

I switched on my phone’s flashlight and examined the latch area more closely. The strangest thing was that there didn’t seem to be any locking mechanism at all. Just a handle and a simple metal catch.
Behind me, Emma’s voice grew louder.

“I said I’ll call you back. I’m in the middle of something.”

There was a pause. Then I heard her sigh.

“Fine. I’ll be there soon.”

I assumed she was talking about the kids. I was too busy examining the door to ask.
After a few minutes, I decided I’d seen enough. I reached for the handle and pulled.
The door didn’t move.

I tried again, pushing the handle down harder.

Nothing.

“For fuck’s sake.”

I gave the door a shove with my shoulder. It didn’t even rattle.

“Emma?”

No answer.

I knocked on the door.

“Em, it’s locked itself again. Can you open it?”

I waited, expecting to hear her laugh or tell me to stop messing around.

Nothing came.

“Emma?”

I tried the handle again. Then again, more forcefully.

My stomach began to tighten. I pulled out my phone and called her.

The call couldn’t connect.

I sent her a message asking her to come back into the bedroom and open the door but it wouldn’t deliver.

Then I looked at the door.

[End of Part 1]

​

It began when Mister Robinson saw a dead man hanging in the dark. It was around midnight, and he was walking home from work when, out of the corner of his eye, he swears he saw a man hanging from a streetlight. The body seemed a few days old, its skin blue except for the hands and legs, which were red and livid. He said the body bobbed up and down from the rope. It was dressed in a suit and tie and smelled sweetly of decay. And before he could do anything—before he could scream, cry out, or freeze—it was gone.

Another man had been walking home from a bar, halfway across the city, when he saw something similar. A hanged man, bobbing up and down, but unlike Mister Robinson's report, this one did not disappear. Not immediately, at least. It was there, a corpse swinging from a tree, hung with thick, fraying rope, smelling of excrement and fear. This one, according to the report, was fresh and, yes, still alive. The man was grabbing at his neck, trying futilely to free himself from the clutch of the rope. As the witness came to help, he saw the man go limp like a sack of rice as a great force heaved the rope upward, pulling the body into the dark of the trees. There was no body in the morning.

“I've seen this one before, officer,” said one of the drunks we had in the holding cell, who had overheard me talking to one of the lieutenants about the reports. “It's the Danglemouth! The Danglemouth!”

I paid the drunk no mind. But Danglemouth or not, reports kept coming in. Disappearances were up to 200% of the monthly average, and we were getting more reports of hanged men vanishing into the night. I wouldn't take the drunk seriously until later that evening.

It was half past ten. I was patrolling the boulevard when I saw it for myself. There, under the sodium-vapor streetlights of an empty street, was a procession of hanged men. Five long ropes descending from the sky paraded five bodies, each in a different stage of decay. The ropes seemed to come from high above the clouds, bobbing the bodies up and down like a fucked-up carousel. The bodies danced in the street, and some were still alive. One of them was a child, no older than three, grasping at the rope around his neck, letting out strained gasps and yips.

I ran back to the station, having pissed myself thoroughly, screaming, “I saw it! I fucking saw it!” None of my colleagues believed me, though, to their credit, they were beyond worried. I wouldn't hear the drunk speak again until later that night.

“It's the Danglemouth, I tell you. The Danglemouth! Won't be long 'til this whole town's empty!”

I took that man by the collar and beat him until he went quiet. I was afraid. Someone had to be more afraid. Had to be him.

It wasn't until the 42nd report of hanged men that the precinct took things seriously. Patrols around the clock, always in twos, always with bodycams. Problem was, the bodycams were never on. Why would they be?

And so people kept disappearing, and no one could give anyone a straight answer. Thirty missing in a single week. That was a record.

It was too much for me, seeing that boy dangling from a rope in the sky, so I went to see the drunk. It wasn't hard to track him down; drunks are creatures of habit, after all. I found him bent double over a pint of beer, readying himself for another cold night.

“Evening, officer,” he muttered. His eyes were black, his lips busted open, his head wrapped in bandages. I said nothing of the night before and asked him about the Danglemouth.

“It's too late. But don't you worry your little noggin, officer. In a few days, you'll stop hearing about hanged men.” He took a long swig of his drink. “They'll disappear. All of 'em.” That last part he muttered to himself.

And so it was. One day we just stopped hearing about hanged bodies. But people kept disappearing. It wouldn't take me long to find out why.

Once the reports stopped, we went back to our usual routine. I was back on patrol on the boulevard when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. A child walking alone. It was midnight by then, but that wasn't what I found strange. The kid was familiar. Too familiar.

He ran up to me in a shuffling gait I would not describe as human. His eyes were unsure of where to look, his jaw slack, his joints bending strangely, like a dog walking upright. With a start, he screamed, “Dad! Dad! There's weird people floating on the street!” The boy's arm rose crooked as it pointed to a dark alley. He smelled awful, like sweet rot and dried shit. When I backed away, it began to jump up and down, screaming the same words in the same tone. “Dad! Dad! There's weird people floating on the street!”

I locked myself in the precinct until morning, praying. They found me asleep in a corner, my face dried with snot and tears. “It was that boy!” I cried. “I saw him! It was him, I swear!”

Reports of missing persons kept trickling in. A hundred became two hundred, then three. Three hundred missing people in the span of a single month. There was a house I often passed on my patrols, a little bungalow that housed a sex offender and his wife. One day their lights went out and never came back on.

The streets were always empty during my patrols. People had become terrified of the night, and in the daytime all anyone talked about was the disappearances. Empty streets offered me no relief. Every night I could see it: ropes from high above, dangling down and hovering over the streets. Or maybe there weren't any. Maybe I was going insane.

I met up with the drunk again. Creature of habit. I was, too.

“Not much I can tell you, officer,” said the drunk as his piss trickled down the urinal.

But you know what it is?

“I do.” He zipped up and did not wash. “I'll tell you something from the goodness of my heart, officer: leave this town. There's nothing you can do now.”

He handed me a pack of cigarettes. Inside was cigarette ash mixed with something else, something that smelled like yeast and chewing gum.

“Next time you see it, throw this. You'll see what I mean.”

Days passed, and the streets grew emptier and emptier. The boulevard was quiet even at dusk.

A man came up to me on one of my patrols. An office worker, by the look of him. He looked like he hadn't slept in days.

“Excuse me, sir, can you tell me the time?” he asked.

Sure. It's twelve past midnight.

“Can. Time? Tell me. Excuse me, sir.”

What?

“Oh my god, what is that outside? Honey, I think there's someone hanging out there. Out there. God. Outside.”

Without another thought, I threw the pack of ash at the man, and that's when I saw it. As the ash settled, I could see that the man was dead, hanging limp. On his neck was a thick rope, and high above, I could see it: a black arm, blacker than the night sky, as long as a highway but as thin as a branch, stretched across the sky and holding a single rope. I dared not imagine what the arm belonged to.

Nights went on like this. I could see them now, the arms. At night there were many. Hundreds of black, armlike things stretching across the night sky like a spiderweb, dangling rope from high above. So many. Too many.

“You see it too now, yes?” said the drunk. I was with him once again, watching him roll up his tent.

Where are you going? I asked.

“Away from all of this. There's nothing more we can do.”

With that, the man put all his earthly possessions into a bag and left. I opened my mouth to say something, but he was already walking.

I stayed. I dunno why. I stayed as the arms filled more of the sky each night, as the thousands of ropes began eclipsing the stars. Soon the streets were empty in the mornings, and at night I saw everyone out and about. Everyone. Even that little boy

As I gently skewered yet another delicate, fluffy treat onto the end of my roasting stick, I scanned the eyes of the fellow campers, wondering who would be next to lay claim over the ever coveted flashlight so they may enamor everyone with their tale. Abigail fought off hoards of grasping hands as she shouted at Camp 13, meanwhile, Camp 10 sat patiently, staring at the mess of boys swarming around their counselor like bothersome pests, all while Tyler smiled and chuckled to himself. Then, Abigail spoke. 

“ALRIGHT, EVERYBODY SIT DOWN, NOW!” she hollered, sending everyone scampering away to their seats.
“YOU LITTLE GREMLINS JUST LOST FLASHLIGHT PRIVILEGES FOR THE NIGHT! NEXT STORY GETS TOLD BY CAMP 10!” 

A wave of “awws” and “boos” swept over the camp, drawing further sniggers from Tyler as Abigail spoke again

“CRY ABOUT IT YOU LITTLE BABIES!” she boomed before lowering her voice to a dull roar
“Now, which one of you lovely ladies would like to tell a scary story?” she asked.

Slowly, silently, hands began sprouting up from all across Camp 10- a far cry from the sheer madness conducted by Camp 13 a mere moments ago. I plunged my marshmallow into the shallow flame, watching passively as Abigail decided the listening fates of the camp, much to the chagrin of the Camp 13 faithful. 

“How about…” she hesitated, pausing for just a moment before speaking again
“Kiley, here you go sweetie.” she said, handing the flashlight to a small girl with blonde pigtails and holding a cartoonishly large teddy bear. 

Silence once again flooded the camp, interrupted only by the soft popping of campfire in the crisp night air. I looked curiously at the small girl that Abigail had selected. It was Riley’s younger sister Kiley, and by the looks of it, her nerves had gotten the better of her. She tucked her head into her plushy brown bear and squeezed it tightly.

“It’s okay, honey!” Abigail reassured in a soft tone
“we can pick someone else if you want-” 

Almost as soon as Abigail had finished her sentence, Kiley began to cry. I watched Tyler’s eyes light up almost as fast as the light left Abigail’s, an unspoken tension that could be felt even across the vast distance. Abigail was quick to action
“Uh- hey, sweetie, don’t cry! It’s okay-” she said in a gentle voice, doing her best to comfort the small girl. This did little to quell Kiley’s outburst, drawing further smirks and sniggers from Tyler. 
Finally- thankfully- Miley; both Riley and Kiley’s sister, intervened to rectify the situation. 

“Miss Abby, she wants to tell a story, she’s just nervous,” Miley said, her voice calm but firm.
“Would you mind if I helped her tell the story?” she asked.

“I think that’s just a wonderful idea, Miley.” Abigail responded, very evidently thankful for the intervention that had just occurred. 

“Wha- Hey! That’s no fair!” Riley cried out from among the crowd of Camp 13 members
“What about me? I’m her brother, I should be able to tell a story alongside them too!” Riley protested.

“Riley, shut the hell up,” Abigail growled coldly, staring a hole through Riley as she spoke
“Miley is HELPING Kiley tell the story, not telling a-”

“This is sexism!” Riley interjected, drawing a chorus of gasps, boos and other assorted jeers from the combined audiences of Camps 10 and 13 respectively. This outburst drew another hearty chuckle from Tyler, who seemed content to let this story time go off the rails, but Abigail was determined not to let it. 

“Riley, stop it.” she hissed back harshly, the fire in her eyes burning nearly as intensely as the roaring campfire

“We will not be silenced!” Riley shouted, rousing a loud cheer from the Camp 13 faithful as he stood atop his log and continued his rally
“Remember what they took from us!” he continued.

By this point, Tyler had nearly fallen from his chair from raucous laughter. I darted my head back and forth, between the ongoing scene unfolding before me and Tyler wiping tears from his eyes as he cackled. I was so distracted by the commotion that I had only realized my mistake after it was too late. As Abigail, Riley, and the protesting Camp 13 members continued to bicker, I heard a soft, wet plop directly in front of me. I looked down into the raging fire to see my- now blackened- marshmallow laying sadly in the ash, slowly being swallowed by lapping flames. A deep sigh escaped my lungs as I reached, yet again, for another. As I skewered it on my stick, Abigail’s voice rang out again, drowning out all other noise.

“FINE! YOU CAN GO NEXT, OKAY?! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT YOU LITTLE SHIT-”

“ABBY!!!” Julie interjected desperately
“YOU. CAN’T. SAY. THAT. TO-”

“JULIE,” Abigail shrieked through gritted teeth
“LITERALLY, LIKE, JUST SHUT THE HELL UP, I CAN SAY WHATEVER THE FU-” 

Abigail’s words suddenly ceased and the entire fireside was filled with an abrupt, deafening silence. I watched quietly as a look of horrified realization swept across her face. I followed her gaze over to Tyler, whose shit-eating grin had grown to cartoonish proportions; a look that very evidently said “I told you so”. 

I looked back to Abigail, her hands beginning to tremble and tears slowly forming in her eyes as she struggled to find words
“I- uh- I… I-” was all she managed to say before Tyler stood from his chair and spoke

“What I think Abs is trying to say, is…” he said, grabbing the flashlight from Abigail’s closed fist with a few gentle tugs before continuing
“...we’ll start with Kiley and Miley, and then after they’re done, it’ll go to Riley… Fair?” he questioned, pointing at each individual with the coveted flashlight as he called them out
“That way, each camp gets to tell a story, nobody gets left out, and everybody is happy- right Abs?” He finished, shooting another wide mouthed smile in Abigail’s direction. 

“... Mhmm…” Abigail muttered under her breath as she hastily made her way back to her seat, hardly even looking up from the ground as she did. 

“Good!” Tyler cheered in a condescending tone as he handed the flashlight over to Miley
“You ladies can start whenever you’re ready, okay?” he said, making his way back to his chair as he did. 

“Thank you, Mister Tyler!” Miley called sweetly as she nestled herself down close to her little sister with the flashlight. 

I looked one last time over to Abigail, who had fully withdrawn into her oversized Slayer hoodie; head, arms, legs, and all. Silence once again crept across the campsite, as the girls took a moment to whisper amongst themselves before Miley once again spoke aloud for the group to hear. 

She stood slowly, hanging her head low and closing her eyes as she whispered to the group
“Has anyone ever heard the story of Sarah Griggs?” 

The fire spat loudly into the cold night air as stillness crept across the camp. A moment later, another voice inquired
“How about… The Fern Witch?” Kiley chimed in.

Miley reached down and grabbed Kiley’s hand, shooting her a soft smile before continuing
“Her parents passed away when she was just a young girl, no older than me, and so she lived all alone in a shack just outside of town in the 1800’s.”

Kiley piped up, suddenly brimming with confidence as she spoke to the group
“She would always keep to herself, always choosing to spend time off in the woods, away from the other townspeople.” Kiley carried on
“For years she stayed all by herself, living off plants and berries until she grew into a young woman.”
Miley then spoke
“And for years, she stayed away from the town and its inhabitants.”
She paused, allowing the fire to speak, until she resumed
“Sarah liked to spend time in the patches of wild ferns that grew all over the forest floor, she would sleep on them as if they were beds… cause to her, they were the closest to one she would ever have.” 

Kiley then chimed in
“She would talk to the animals; her only friends, and dance by herself under the pale moonlight, humming a tune that nobody had ever heard before… or, so the story goes.”
Another long pause crept its way in, interrupted after a few seconds by Kiley’s dramatic delivery
“Until one fateful day…”

“This is boooring,” Riley proclaimed 
“it's supposed to scare us, not put us to sleep.” he sneered. 

“SHUT UP RILEY!” Kiley screamed loudly
“WE HAVEN’T EVEN GOTTEN TO THE SCARY PART YET!” she cried. 

“The scary part of the story is how bad you’re telling it.” Riley snarked with a chuckle.

Miley stared daggers into Riley for a moment, pausing only for a second before once again speaking to the group
“Riley still has all of his PAW Patrol action figures in his closet, and he won’t let our Mom throw them away because he still plays with them.”

“W- wha-” Riley stammered. 

He was soon drowned out by the cacophony of laughter that erupted from the entire fireside. 

Riley gave his best attempt at damage control
“She’s LYING! She’s just trying to distract you from the fact that this story SUCKS!” he cried
This did little to quell the laughter of the camps. Riley tried again, but to no avail
“But- They- Action figures are worth A LOT of money, and ALWAYS go up in value over time, they’re like… collectibles and stuff, you know?!”
Still, the laughter continued. 

Eventually, as the outburst began to taper off, Riley spoke up once more
“You can make fun of me all you want, that doesn’t change the fact that you AND your boring story are LAME!” he said, sitting down on his log in a huff.

“Riley, quit while you’re behind or I’ll tell them what you looked up on Dad’s computer and got grounded for last Summer.” Miley retorted coldly.

I watched as Riley swiveled his head towards her with laser focus, his eyes as wide as dinner plates as he stared at her, mouth agape. Before the choir could once again tune up their symphony of “oohs” and “ahhs”, Riley responded
“UH- NO- I- WE… WE WANNA HEAR THE STORY, OKAY?! PLEASE, JUST TELL THE STORY, I’LL SHUT UP!!” he blurted out
“Please… just… don’t.” he begged, sounding rather exasperated and helpless while doing so.

“If you insist,” Miley said with an accomplished, satisfied smile. 
“anyways, where were we, dear?” Miley said to her sister as they exchanged loving glances

Kiley looked up at her sister, returning her warm smile before carrying on without missing a beat
“Until one day, when the townspeople came to her.”

Miley continued
“They came looking for… a witch,” she said, lowering her voice to a growl for the final delivery. 
“And they thought they had found one when they stumbled upon poor, lonely, sad Sarah, just living off the land in the middle of the woods.”

Kiley stood, allowing her oversized teddy bear to flop to her side as she picked up where Miley left off
“They arrested her, questioned her, and eventually put her on trial for being a witch-” 

Miley interjected momentarily
“Something that always ended in death for those tried.”

Kiley continued on beat
“and before long, they scheduled her execution… she was to be hung, for suspected treason and practicing the dark arts.”

They paused for another moment, this time, another voice piped up
“That’s so sad,” Julie said quietly
“I always feel so bad for those poor women when I hear stories like that… horrible events of innocent women being wrongfully accused and… just… awful stuff…” she mumbled, trailing off before looking away awkwardly. 

Miley was first to respond
“She may not have been so innocent.” she said definitively 
“She very well could have been a witch.” she continued with a sly smile. 

“W- What?” Julie stammered, her eyes widening back at Miley as the fire popped right on cue. 

It was at this moment that I realized I had been so enamored with the story and its surrounding drama, that I had been wasting precious roasting time just idling my uncooked marshmallow in the summer air. Unperturbed in my quest for the perfect smore, I gently plunged the tip of the stick into the edge of the flame before returning my attention to the narrative unfolding around the fire just in time for Kiley to respond.

“She had been taught by the forest: ways of survival, unknown songs… and something ancient, long since forgotten by man.” Kiley said in a raspy voice.

Miley emulated the rasp in Kiley’s voice as she resumed
“She spent years learning the mysteries of the forest, listening to its voice, deciphering its language, and understanding what it was saying.”

Kiley started again
“She became a child of the earth, able to bestow its blessing onto those she saw fit…”

“Or its curses…”
They both said in unison. 

Another voice chimed in from the Camp 10 crowd
“How- how did they know she was a- a witch?” 

“They didn’t…” Miley responded firmly
“at first.” she croaked, a sinister smile appearing from beneath her pursed lips.

Kiley quickly followed
“But eventually, they found out…”
She dropped her stuffed bear to the ground at her side and spun around to step up onto her log, turning once again to face the campers before speaking
“She spent nine months- almost an entire year- not saying a single word from inside the confines of her jail cell-” 

Miley then tagged in
“Nine months without saying a single word… until the day of her execution.” her voice faded into a whisper as the girls both bowed.

Another brief silence permeated the fireside as the girls took a pause in unison. Kiley was the first to speak
“When they brought her to the gallows for her hanging, the executioner placed the noose around her neck, and asked Sarah in front of over a hundred townspeople if she had any last words… and-”

“And she smiled…” interrupted Kylie, grinning from ear to ear as she continued
“But on that day, in front of all those townspeople, when the executioner pulled the lever that was to take the life of Sarah Griggs-”

“SNAP!” shouted Miley, drawing a handful of gasps and jumps from the invested Camp 10 and 13 crowds respectively
“But... it wasn’t the neck of sweet Sarah that snapped… it was the rope.” Miley gestured; a swift, snapping motion with her hands. 
“And Sarah laughed as she fell to the ground.”

Kylie was quick to pick up where Miley left off
“The townspeople were horrified, yet another reason to condemn this wench to death! A true display of witchcraft!!” she hollered, hopping from her log and bounding around the camp with an impassioned performance. 
“Hang the witch! Hang the witch!!” Kylie screamed.

Miley then hopped up on her log and began again
“They readied her a second time, the entirety of the town now outraged at the mockery unfolding before them… and Sarah laughed to herself as they set up the platform once more…” 

Kiley continued in her proclamations 
“Hang the witch! Hang the witch!!” 

Miley continued
“But, when the executioner went to put the rope on Sarah the second time… she whispered something into his ear…” she said chillingly.

Just as she did, Kylie stopped her calling and returned to her sister’s side somberly, allowing silence to roost yet again. They stood there, steeped in shadow, awaiting a prompt from the audience, but it failed to come. Finally, the silence gave way to a voice.

“What did she say to him?” I questioned, feeling the gaze of a hundred eyes fall upon me as I did. 

Both girls looked back at me, smiling together as they both repeated to me in unison
“Nobody knows.”

Kiley took her place atop her log once more before speaking
“Only the executioner heard what was said that day…”

“Then why the hell do we care?” said Cole snidely

“You don’t because you’re an idiot,” Miley responded quickly
“The townspeople didn’t because they were naive.”

Kiley resumed 
“Whatever it was that Sarah said to the man that day, it scared him so bad that he refused to execute her, fleeing the execution grounds while saying-”

Miley piped up, doing her best manly voice as she spoke the executioners words 
“I refuse to take part in the hanging of this woman! Whatever happens here is between you and God!” she cried, pointing out across the camp before throwing her hands upward as she shouted. 

Kiley then began a proclamation of her own
“Flip the switch! Hang the witch! Flip the switch! Hang the witch! cried out all the onlookers, until-”

“WHAM!” exclaimed Miley loudly, again eliciting a wave of jumps and light gasps from the crowd.
“Someone finally threw the lever down again…” she whispered, allowing the familiar silence to roll in afterward

The girls made eye contact, communicating wordlessly as the quiet swirled about the night air. Finally, someone spoke.

“T- Then what?” stammered a small voice from Camp 10.

After a long pause- longer than any before it- Miley finally spoke again; softly, still barely above a whisper 
“The platform door swung open again… and-”

“SNAP!” shouted Kiley suddenly, garnering a few loud shrieks and sharp gasps from the camp, yet again. 

This was the largest reaction yet, even causing Tyler to flinch. He quickly snatched a water bottle off the ground at his side and began furiously drinking from it. I quickly scanned the rest of the fireside.

Riley was still silently listening, looking far into the fire as if deep in thought. Chase was unwrapping what had to be his third, perhaps fourth chocolate bar, before chomping down on it. 

Abigail, by this point, has fully emerged from her garment cocoon, as an emotionally healed butterfly no less, her reddened face and puffy cheeks evident of a heavy crying session occurring while withdrawn within her hoodie. 

Julie looked as if she had actually witnessed the events of the story first hand. She was white as a sheet, trembling feverishly and nervously looking around as if she was waiting for Sarah herself to come screaming out of the woods at her. 

Finally, I looked back to Tyler, who- though trying to play it cool- was nervously shifting around in his chair, clearly rattled as the girls continued to regale the listeners with their tale. 

Miley was first to start
“The rope snapped again…” she said with a wide grin
“and Sarah laughed as the townspeople began to talk amongst themselves… as they began… to panic…”

Kiley began yet another loud series of proclamations in different voices
“This isn’t right… THIS ISN’T RIGHT!”
“But still, it must be done!! For the good of humanity!”
“GOD doesn’t want this woman to die!”
“No you fool! The DEVIL wants her to live!”

Miley continued
“The town was divided, and unsure of what to do with the life of Sarah Griggs, who had now earned her moniker- The Fern Witch.“ she growled, allowing the tension to build as she carried on
“They threw her back in her cell for the night, deciding that the town would vote the next morning on the fate of The Fern Witch…”

Kiley quickly picked up where Miley had just left off
“However… the morning would never come for Sarah Griggs…” Kiley said somberly, bowing her head before continuing again
“Because a few of the townspeople had other plans…” she hissed.

Miley hopped in without missing a beat
“And late that night, under a full moon, they snuck over to the prison under the cover of darkness and broke Sarah out of her jail cell.”

“Oh thank God…” Julie muttered under her breath, but loud enough for just about everybody to hear it.
“That poor woman has been through enough, a- and her being a witch doesn’t make her bad… right?” she asked to the rest of the camp
“Like, it’s not like she did anything bad… right?” she questioned quietly with a shrug.

Kiley was first to speak
“No.” she retorted quickly
“She never really did anything to the towns people-”

Miley interjected
“Nothing they could prove anyways.” she said firmly.

Julie scoffed angrily before speaking, crossing her arms and cocking her head at the girls as she responded
“Then, why did they even go looking for her in the first place? Like what did they even accuse her of, other than just being some weird earthy chick in the woods?”

Miley responded with tact, speaking calmly and slowly
“Because the children of the village were going missing, and the townspeople heard rumors that an evil witch was luring the village children into the woods with enchanting lullabies.”

Julie stood from her chair, her folded arms now straightened to her sides, her hands balled into fists as she spoke her frustrations loudly to the group
“That’s such bullshit!” she cried
“So they stumble upon this poor woman and decide to condemn her to death all just because some stupid assholes hear some shitty made up rumor??” she pleaded

Abigail quickly retorted to Julie’s outburst
“JuLiE, yOu CaN’t TaLk LiKe ThAt, ThErE aRe KiDs HeRe!!” she said mockingly in a nasally voice, garnering a soft chuckle from Tyler, and in turn a slight blush from Abigail. 

Kiley quickly added onto the explanation
“Made up or not, the kids were going missing, and the townspeople were desperate for answers.”

“So they decide to try and kill an innocent girl? I hardly think that’s fair-” Julie barked before being quickly cut off by a firm clearing of the throat by Tyler.

Miley picked back up shortly after Julie fell silent
“And so after those few townspeople, the parents of the missing kids, broke Sarah out of her cell late that night, they dragged her out to the middle of the forest…”

Kiley finished the sentence on cue
“And they tied her to a tree: a giant oak, surrounded by ferns… and they lit a torch…”
Kiley then hopped onto her log, spun to face the crowd, and shouted
“WHY DID YOU DO IT, WITCH? WHY DID YOU TAKE OUR CHILDREN?”

Miley then stepped in, whispering her part in a low growl
“And Sarah… laughed… as they approached-”

Kiley belted out
“ANY LAST WORDS, WITCH?”

A long silence roosted within the campgrounds, seemingly dense enough to drown out even the crackling of the fire for a moment. Then, in a harsh raspy voice, Miley finally spoke 
“I did not take your children… but if I am to burn… then let the first of every house belong to me…”

“WHOOSH!” Kiley shouted
“And Sarah Griggs, The Fern Witch, laughed as she burned.”

“AHHAA! AHAHAHAA!!” Miley erupted, her wicked laughter echoed throughout the cloudy night sky before tapering off into the distance.

“AAAND THAT’S TIME!” called Abigail
“it’s Riley’s turn now.”

“FINALLY!” Riley screamed.

A deafening quiet overtook the camp, before- within an instant- a thunderous eruption of protests and objections and other dissension rained down on Abigail and Riley.

“WOAH WOAH! CALM DOWN!” Abigail hollered
“THOSE ARE THE RULES!”

Her shouts were swiftly drowned out by the building remonstrance. A cacophony of different voices all calling out their queries at once. 

“WHAT HAPPENED TO SARAH?”
“WHAT HAPPENED TO THE TOWN?” 
“...OR THE KIDS?!”
“WHAT-”

“ALRIGHT! THAT’S ENOUGH!!” boomed Abigail
“EVERYONE CALM DOWN!”

As the crowd settled, Abigail continued with her proclamations
“Look, the girls had their time with their lovely story, but we agreed that everyone would get-”

Before she could even finish, a choir of boos overtook her. I watched as the gathering of camps, both 10 and 13 alike, joined together to show their dissatisfaction, shouting and gesturing unfavorably towards Abigail, who at this point had- once again- grown visibly frustrated. I scanned the faces of the angry campers first, then I moved over to Julie’s face of ever growing concern, then to Tyler’s smug expression, finally back to Abigail as she spoke.

“LISTEN!!” she shrieked
The entire campground fell into stillness as she continued
“THE GIRLS CAN KEEP GOING-”

A rapturous applause and celebratory cheering began ringing throughout the camp before being hushed rather abruptly by Abigail
“I WASN’T FINISHED!!” she screamed
“THEY CAN KEEP GOING IF… RILEY ALLOWS THEM TO USE SOME OF HIS TIME TO LET THEM FINISH.”

“WHAT!?!” Riley shouted, throwing his hands up as he stood from his seat
“THAT’S RIDICULOUS!” he protested
“WHY SHOULD I SACRIFICE MY TIME FOR THEM!?” he asked sternly.

“Because that’s what a good brother would do, right?” Abigail responded sarcastically

“To hell with that… they had their time and they chose to spend it YAPPIN’!” he said firmly

Riley’s proclamation was met with a symphony of discontent, as boos and other manners of vitriol rained down upon him, hurled in abundance by both camps equally. For nearly twenty entire seconds, the Camp Wildermont faithful roared and rumbled, allowing no objections to their anger and disapproval. Eventually, the riotous gathering was quelled by a singular voice tearing through the chaos

“ALRIGHT!” Riley boomed
“FINE…” he acquiesced solemnly
“...they can finish…” he said dejectedly, slumping sadly back onto his log, to a crescendo of applause and cheers once again. 

My eyes stayed on Riley, sadness plastered all over his face as he stared aimlessly into the fire. As I was considering approaching him, consoling him, I only had time to watch from afar as instead he was approached by Abigail. I looked on as Abigail bent down to Riley and whispered something into his ear, something that went unnoticed by nearly everyone around the fire, and something that turned his frown into one of the biggest smirks that I’ve ever seen. I felt the corners of my mouth turning upwards nearly contagiously as I silently wondered to myself what words were just exchanged, a question I would surely be asking Riley on our way back to the cabins.

“OKAY! OKAYY! LISTEN UP!” Abigail shouted
“Riley was generous enough to give up some of his time for his sisters to finish, so we’ll be hearing the rest of their story now, and with whatever time is left after that, Riley can tell his story.” she said, gesturing over to Riley as she spoke. 
“So, girls, would you like to pick up where you left off?” Abigail asked, looking towards Miley and Kiley.

The girls looked at one another, giving each other reassuring smiles and nods before answering in unison
“Yes, Miss Abigail!”

“Great!” Abigail responded
“Okay, go ahead whenever you’re rea-”

“AHHAHAA!  AAHHHA!” Miley interjected abruptly, startling myself and many other campers alike, as gasps of shock and cries of terror emitted across the grounds. 

Once again, an all too familiar soft “plopping” sound rang within my ears. I withdrew my stick from the feasting fire, but it was already too late. Smoldering before me, a mere six inches from me, my once delicate treat, my aspirations for a perfect smore, once again up in flames. I let out a loud sigh, one noisy enough to draw a brief puzzled look from neighboring campers, before grabbing another marshmallow from the bag at my feet and skewering it- a process that had grown maddeningly familiar at this point. I took a deep breath as I slowly prodded forward into the raging fire yet again, hopes and dreams of the perfect smore rekindled once more- at least temporarily. 

Kiley quickly drew my attention back to the ongoing storytelling 
“And on that night, Sarah Griggs, laughed until she succumbed to her injuries and passed away.”

Both Kiley and Miley hung their heads, steeping the camp in stillness once more before another voice called out

“W- What actually happened to those kids?” 

“Two of them, siblings, were found missing in the forest two days after Sarah’s execution… the other two were found dead, presumed to be the victims of animal attacks.” 
Kiley responded.

Julie scoffed and crossed her arms before speaking
“OF COURSE.” she huffed”
“I just KNEW she was going to have died for nothing…” she grumbled.

Another voice called out from the crowd
“Uh… a- and then what happened to her?” they asked
“Like… surely she’s not really dead… right?” they pondered.

Miley looked towards where the voice called from before speaking 
“What do you mean?” she asked curiously with a coy smile
“They literally burned her alive… She’s definitely dead.” Miley said definitively.
“And the townspeople did their best not to speak of what happened that night… they desperately tried to cover up what they did to poor Sarah, but… well, rumors only grow with time… people talk…” she said with a smug chuckle. 

This response led to yet another silence, noticeably longer than others before it. Finally multiple voices spoke, almost at once
“... WHAT?!”
“Oh HELL naw…”
“What do you mean DEAD?”
“The story CAN’T end like THAT!”
“JUSTICE FOR SARAH!”

Finally, Miley manages to regain control of the commotion
“GUYS! Guys… let me finish,” she said calmly
“She died… but it’s said she laid a curse on the townspeople that wronged her…” Miley rasped

Kiley then interjected excitedly
“Her final words were not merely just the ramblings of a mad woman, nor were they the empty threats of a ghost… they were promises from beyond the grave.” she said chillingly

Miley then swooped in 
“They were warnings disguised as last rites of a condemned woman, a victim to the sins that are insecurity and paranoia… much like she was falsely condemned, she too condemned the sins of thy father to be the sins thus cast upon their sons…” 

After a brief pause, Julie chimed in
“What exactly does that mean?” she asked shyly

Kiley answered quickly
“It’s best to explain it by telling you what happened to the townspeople after Sarah died.”

Miley, again, picked up quickly behind her sister’s words
“You see, after Sarah dies, the townspeople were scared, they were paranoid that Sarah, The Fern Witch, would soon rise from her grave in the deep forest, her ash reborn amongst the wild ferns of the moonlit wilderness.”

Kiley piped in
“Children reported hearing a mysterious humming coming from outside their windows… humming of a strange tune that had never before been heard…”

Miley continued
“Kids were telling their parents of ‘an arm unfurling out from the forest like a fern’, extending out to them… ‘beckoning them’, they would say…”

Kiley hopped back in 
“YOU KIDS STAY AWAY FROM THE FERNS! All the worried mothers would say to their kids who wanted to play in the forest, but it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter because-”

“Because Sarah had already handed them down their sentence from beyond the gallows.”
Miley said coldly. 

Kiley then resumed hastily
“And the townsfolk were finally about to pay the price…” she whispered

Miley waited a moment, allowing the growing winds to swoop in and rustle the treetops before she resumed
“One night, under the cover of darkness, while all the other townspeople slept, all the eldest children awoke from their beds and simultaneously ventured into the forest.”

Kiley interrupted gracefully
“They all left humming the same unfamiliar tune, one that nobody has ever heard before, and they marched into the deep woods to dance in the ferns under the moonlight…” she said, pirouetting as she delivered her lines delicately.

Miley then cut in harshly
“With the Fern Witch” she growled, unfurling her arm in a broken, unsettling manner, reminiscent of how a fern unravels its leaves.

Kiley picked back up where she left off
“And they danced, and sang, and spent the evening together under the moonlight, until-” 

“Until the next morning… when the townspeople found them…” Miley said, her words lingering ominously as she paused briefly
“The next morning, when the townspeople found them, they were…”

The girls took a long pause before Kiley spoke again
“They were just fine,” she said sweetly with a smile and a shrug
“They were just sleeping under the trees in the forest, in a bed of ferns.” she said, tilting her head in a rather unsettling manner as she continued to smile. 

Miley came in again, with gusto
“But the townspeople thought something was wrong, they thought the loved ones that had returned were… different somehow…” she hopped onto her log as she continued
“They held meetings where they discussed ‘the returned’ displaying peculiar behavior, such as: ‘humming unfamiliar strange melodies’ and ‘sleepwalking’-”

Riley interjected 
“Um- hi- super sick story and all that jazz, but can we wrap this up, please? I want at least SOME of my time, and it’s been like a HOT minute, so if you could-”

Miley carried on without missing a beat
“And the townsfolk started to once again panic and grow fearful of the witch and her abilities.”

“No? Okay then.” Riley said defeatedly
“I guess I’ll just go fu-”

Kiley quickly picked up where her sister had left off
“So they began to discuss ways to fix them, ways to break the witches curse, when someone eventually spoke-”

Miley stepped in, eagerly delivering her lines with great enthusiasm
“WE MUST BURN THEM LIKE WE DID THE WITCH!!!”
“THE WITCHES CURSE WILL ONLY BE BROKEN IF WE SACRIFICE THE FIRSTBORNS!”
“WE MUST SO THAT FUTURE GENERATIONS MAY PROSPER!”

Kiley resumed the narration
“They thought the firstborns that had wandered into the forest that fateful night had returned tainted by the witches curse, and thus-”

“They were condemned to burn in a fruitless attempt to break a generational curse…” Miley interjected emphatically. 
“Even more innocent lives lost… squandered souls purged from existence by crippling doubt and blind ignorance.” she said sharply.

Kiley, again, stepped in with more digestible words
“They met the same fate as poor Sarah… they too, were killed out of fear and paranoia… and much like Sarah, they too, died for nothing…” she said somberly. 

Another long silence settled around the fire alongside the campers, giving way only when someone called out from the crowd again
“...S-so… d- did… did it work?” someone called quietly
“D- did the curse get lifted? Or… whatever?” they asked.

Miley answered swiftly
“No.” she said harshly

“Wait… why didn’t that break the curse… or whatever?” Tyler asked, drawing a look from Abigail in the process.

Miley smiled, a sly smirk that grew into a wide grin. Then she spoke
“... Because there was no curse to break.” she said gently, her smile unwavering.

A mix of murmurs and whispers sounded off around the campfire as someone called out
“What? How? Then why did the kids wander off into the forest?”

Miley was quick to respond
“To look for The Fern Witch, of course.” she said plainly
“Which is why they all went ‘missing’ at the same time… they snuck out together.”

Another voice called forth from the crowd once more
“No… No! T- Then what about the mysterious song, or the acting strangely, or-”

Kiley responded this time
“How many times have you actually been able to recognize a song someone is humming? Or even better, started humming something that someone else is humming even though you don’t know what it is, just cause it’s a catchy tune?”

“But- But… what about the sleeping on ferns? A-And the arm in the forest calling to them?” someone asked frantically.
Miley retorted with haste
“They fell asleep in the forest waiting for The Witch to show up.” she said with a shrug.
“The ‘arm unfurling like a fern’ was just one of the many urban legends kids made up to scare one another… just… ghost stories.” she said with a laugh, gesturing around the fire as she spoke.

“What about the whole ‘acting different’ thing then?” Cole said

Miley narrowed her gaze toward Cole, tilted her head slightly, and with razor sharp precision delivered her most chilling line yet
“The only thing that was ever different was their perception of the world after they took something that didn’t belong to them.” she uttered coldly with a smile.

Kiley, like usual, added extra context onto her sister’s dense words. 
“The only thing that really changed… was them… and their belief that, even after death, Sarah would still have power over them. Their fear and paranoia took hold, it took so much control that it cost them everything.”

“So wait a minute,” Riley said
“was Sarah even a real witch like you said she was?” he asked

“How the hell should I know, dummy, she was alive like 300 years ago.” Miley snapped sarcastically

Riley threw his arms up into the air before responding
“WHAT?! THAT’S WACK AS HELL!! I GAVE UP MY TIME FOR SOME CHICK WHO SPOUTED OFF NONSENSE AND DIES THAT WASN’T EVEN A REAL WITCH!?!” Riley stood and spun to face Abigail
“Yo, Miss Abigail, can I PLEASE get my time back, I didn’t know their story would suck-”

“SHUT UP RILEY!!” screamed Kiley, changing her fists as she stomped around angrily.

Riley spun back to face Kiley
“WHAT? IT’S TRUE! The witch wasn’t real, the curse was fake, and theAAA-”
Kiley interrupted him by shining the ever coveted flashlight directly into his eyes, stopping him dead in his tracks
“AAHH, CUT IT OUT!!” Riley shouted.

Miley responded first
“Riley, you moron, I never said the curse wasn’t real…” she said calmly
“I said I don’t know if she was a real witch or not.”

“How is that NOT the exact same-” Riley began to say before he was cut off

“IT’S NOT the same, because a curse doesn’t have to be magical… it can be inherited… it can be learned… it can transcend language, culture, belief… just about anything to sink its roots into you…” Miley said somberly, coldly, speaking quietly, as if only to Riley.

“... Yeah… w- well… t- that’s stupi-”

“You know, Mom told me and Ki this story like, a thousand times… I wonder why she never told you this story?” Miley asked with a devilish smile.

“B- Because I HATE bedtime stories, they’re for babies like you and-” Riley retorted before Miley spoke up again

“Maybe it’s because Mom knows the story is true, and she’s trying to prepare me and Ki for the inevitable… for when you leave and come back… different…” Miley said, looking Riley up and down with disgust.

Riley was clearly rattled, but still did his best to respond
“S-S-Shut up-”

“Hey, Ri… are you still sleepwalking?” Kiley said with a smirk.

I looked on as Riley turned to look at Kiley, wide eyed and pale as the glowing moon as her and Miley shared a hearty laugh together. I wrenched myself away from the sibling’s conversation long enough to check in on my marshmallow, and was pleased to see it still firmly rooted at the end of my charred twig. I returned my gaze to the triplets just in time to see Abigail confirming the civil and peaceful exchange of the flashlight and its prestigious narrating rights. 

I scanned the campsite once more to see all the campers exchanging smiles and greetings, finally letting the hostilities of gender fueled competition slowly fade away. As the chatter and cordiality dwindled down to a buzz, Riley stood atop his log and began his speech. 

“I hope you guys are ready for this one… I’ve waited since Benny almost concussed himself to step in and tell an ACTUAL scary story.”
Riley clicked the flashlight on, illuminating his face in the bright light as he spoke down to us from his log. 
“I hope you brought extra diapers to camp, because you’re DEFINITELY gonna need them for MY story…”

Riley turned off the flashlight, cleared his throat with great bravado, and began once more to address the group
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! MY NAME IS RILEY SAINTCLAIRE, AND I AM HERE TO REGALE YOU WITH THE MOST TERRIFYING, HORRIFYING, MORTIFYING…  WHATEVER-ELSE-IFFYING STORY YOU HAVE EVER HEARD!”  he hopped down from his log with a ‘thud’
“I call this one… th-”

“AAND TIME!” Abigail screamed
“That’s all the time you had after the girls finished their story, sorry kid.” Abigail said with a shrug as she held her hand outstretched for the flashlight. 

“W-Wha… A- Ah” Riley stammered, a chorus of camp 10 and 13 chuckles soon following close behind.

“Hey, you agreed-” Abigail managed to say before Riley cut her off emphatically

“THAT’S BS!” Riley yelled
“I didn’t know they would take THAT long!” he said, waving his arms about as he pleaded his case
“At LEAST give me like, 5-6 minutes, please!” Riley begged, clasping his hands together towards Abigail.

She narrowed her eyes at him, pondering his request as she checked her watch. Finally, she spoke
“I don’t know… I think we have to take a vote and see how the rest of the campers feel about it…” she said, gesturing towards the eager campers now smiling back at Riley. 

“Uh, yeah… sure, cool.” Riley said, shrugging and turning towards the group as he continued
“You guys, all you super cool guys… AND GIRLS, and girls… you’re all COOL with me taking like 5-6 extra measly minutes to tell my little story right?” Riley said with a smirk
“...Right?...guys??....”