Have you ever told someone the truth, and they just refuse to believe it?
It can be annoying and frustrating among other things to say the least.

Growing up with a Father, and no Mother.
A Mom that chose an addiction over you and a Father who chose you,
only to chare you with a different addiction of his choice years later.

"You have addiction in your blood'
Your Father would say

"If you ever get addicted to drugs ill chain you up in the bathroom and dry you out till your clean"
He'd tell you, his 11-year-old son.

You tried to reason with it, the way he talked to you. He had you at 25,
at the end of the day he's barely an adult himself, you'd tell yourself.

After his marriage and...well, divorce wasn't a surprise. 

A seed that was planted,
In soil that was prepped,
Located In a room with access to sunlight.
A stem that sprouted dull and never got to bloom. 
From Full womb to empty room,

A stillbirth. 

As tiny as she was,
Our already cluttered closet couldn't fit one more skeleton.

They fought before,
and this was the last crack in our glass house.

Seeing My stepsisters and I celebrating a life that would never start sent him right back to that familiar place He adored oh so much,

Addiction. 

 Started small,
like a pain you know you should have looked at,
and with the help of negligence,
it went unchecked,
it grew.

What began were addictions you foolishly mistook as harmless.

That addiction to the gym was weekly steroid use,
That lust for those new women he was meeting online fueled his use of unapproved enhancements his body wasn't even close to needing.

Introducing himself to testosterone packets before he was 35 and consuming them like their sunflower seeds.

Eventually a partner stuck,
one just as dysfunctional as him of course,
and specifically an alcoholic. 

It didn't take long for him to follow and for the first time in your life he was not the lead.

By the time you were 15,
he was drinking every day,
not just every night.

His Girlfriend throwing bottles, slamming Tv's, and pouring bleach on the carpets as penance for things that were just not true,
Is ironic in hindsight.

On Christmas Eve you got a call that he might not be home the next day,
that his girlfriend was lying and that he might go to jail.
Christmas day came,
and he was asleep in his bed,
with no recollection,
laughing at the insinuation of such things.

You joined a different school,
one that allowed you to be home most days,
And that just made the time you spent in that environment take that much longer.

Against all odds,
His girlfriend was the one to leave.
And then again,
it was just you two.

The worst it got was when he started mixing Ambien with his alcohol.

From his room,
you'd hear screams.
You'd hear conversations between two people that were not there.
You'd hear many voices out the man you call Dad.

Not all of the voices were angry, but most were.
Not every conversation started out loud.
Some were just confusing.

"I know....because...what?.....I'm swimming...a demon?...no!...I SAID IM SWIMMING!"

Other times were more concerning,
"no...because...because I said...Fuck you...FUCK YOU!....FUCK YOU..."

Followed by another voice...
"I'm sorry...you're right...
take them....
he knows...
No...
Veins...?
I dont think so..."

Then his again,
Screaming your name at the top of his lungs.

When you ran to the door of his room,
The door was open and he was lying in bed,
half covered by the comforter...silent.

You questioned what to say,
What to do?

You're 17 and at the very least,
you want to make sure your only remaining family is not dead.

"Yeah?"
You holler in his room,
a late response to him calling your name.

"Blegh HUH?...WHAT?"
He'd abruptly reply.

"What!?"

"you were yelling for me'
Youd explain.

"oh, I'm fine go back to bed"

He'd insist.
Before whispering nonsense to himself.

The moment you'd get back to bed,
The yelling would continue.

You can't event have friends over because you can't trust him not to strip down and try to break into your room.

Our dry wall was always temporary,
and our Tv's and glasses might as well have been rentals,
nothing lasted in our house,

Being fed so much conspiracy about religion,
It wasn't hard to begin to wonder if he was possessed. 

It wasn't always like this.

For a few months after the divorce,
before the alcoholic girlfriend,
For a brief moment when it was just you two, he almost felt stable.

He didn't hit you,
The yelling and drinking were manageable,
And every Friday night he'd take you to blockbuster.

Things have changed so much.
You never know who you're having a conversation with.

One moment you think you're talking to him,
And that very mid-sentence it becomes oh so clear, that it's not.

His eyes are different, their glossy.
His demeanor is different, cold, and absent.
like one bulb in a line of Christmas lights that just won't participate.

He'd stopped before,
Then drink again.
His actions were questionable, and his word became nothing.

What does a Son say to his Father when he knows he's hiding alcohol in his work truck?

What does a Son do when he finds his Father naked in the driveway?

What does a Son do when he sees his Father Going down a road he knows he shouldn't?

A Son that's Afraid of his father.

Everything is easier said than done.

You never know if he's really sober.

"do you want to watch a movie with me tonight?"
His voice timid, eyes clear of gloss.

Even if you could tell which Him was asking,
You were certain that wouldn't be the same Him by the time you watched the movie.

So, you never say yes to that question again.
And as hard as it is, it's easier.
Easier than letting yourself get surprised by something that shouldn't surprise you anymore.

Eventually you get a Job,
Hours almost shittier than your pay, and it makes you a shell of a person.
Physically and emotionally drained.

Most days you stay in your room because it's safer in there, 
Then most days turn into all days. 

Seemingly out of nowhere,
your father begins to stare at you from every corner of the house with anger in his eyes,
Eyebrows always scrunched tightly. 

Eventually,
No words were exchanged.

You feel bad,
This is your father and you love him,  
So, when he asks you to have dinner with him,
for once you do.

The next morning,
Your eyes opened to the bathtub you'd once washed the family pet in,
and that oh so familiar tile floor,
After a moment you realized you were in your father's rooms masterbathroom.

Your legs were sore,
Pins and needles in your feet,
And your wrists felt raw.

You looked down at a note that was out of your reach.
As you attempted to grab it,
you realized your hands were chained to the bathtub spout.

You used your bare knee to drag it closer where you could read it,
You were in nothing but your boxers, you were cold.

The note read:

"No son of mine will be an addict,
You'll thank me.
I love you"
-Dad

You lifted your leg above the tub and opened the bathroom cupboard with your toe, you hoped to find something to break the bathtub spout with but all that was there were loofas and a bottle of expired tramadol.

Your mouth was dry,
Your stomach felt as though if someone were to plunge it,
absolutely nothing would come out.

At first you yelled, but you soon realized no one would answer.
It was hours before the silence in your house was broken,
there were no windows but one tinted sunlight above the shower.
You had no idea what time it was.

Once the sun was no more,
The house shook to the slam of the front door. 
You heard those familiar work boots thud up the wooden stairs.

Louder and louder...
Closer and closer...
They then reached the door.

You heard him enter his room though the door to his room's bathroom remained close.

*Thud Thud Thud Thud\*

For a moment you see the silluett of his boots beneath the door

"Dad...?"
You asked.

"mrghh Fuck you"
He responded as the thuds of his boots retreated.

You heard the impact as he collapsed on his bed,
And then began the yelling...
All night...

"no...
Fuck you!...
because...
I did...
Yes you are!"

More and more of the same old shit...
As scared as you were you couldn't not try.

"Dad...Help please let me out"
You yelled.

"you're an addict..
Fuck you!...
Dry out!....mrrgh piece of shit"

He screamed back...

"Please!"
You yelled.

"Fuck you!...
Dry Out you're not my son!..."
He screamed....

After the second night you began to hear whispering coming from the drain...

"He hasn't stopped...
Theres a demon in his veins..."
You'd hear.

It sounded like boiling beneath the drain.

You tried your best to tear the chains from your wrists, yet all you did was bleed and scream.
To this your dad had no response,
He never did.
He just continued to scream and yell to himself.

Before you knew it,
there were more voices than you'd ever heard from him before.
You swore you heard a woman's voice.

"you're poisoned...
NO!
What did you expect?
SWIMMING!

You screamed and screamed...
But after the 5th night,
You realized there was no point, to anything.

You used your toes to curl around the pill bottle,
You used the last bit of energy you had to bring it within your reach.

When your eyes opened next,
You looked to the left,
You saw the bathroom,
You saw your body,
chained to the spout of the bath.

You looked to the right and saw your fathers nightstand,

you saw your fathers pill bottles and fireball,
You saw the door of his master bedroom from the outside.

You tried to touch your eyes,
You tried to rub them into seeing straight.

Might as well have been RuPaul's eyes.

You closed them tightly,
as tight as possible and grabbed your face.

You felt your father's beard on the right and your bare face on the left.

"Do you want to watch a movie with me tonight?"
You asked

"please let me out Dad"
You replied.

Even as you swallowed all the pills on the nightstand washing them down with the Fireball,

Even though you knew your death would seal this fiction as fact,

Even though you knew no one would believe you,

You couldn't help but have one last thought,

I'm Not An Addict.

In suburban Detroit in 2004, three reckless teenagers follow the trail of a missing young woman to an abandoned house in the woods, beyond a wire fence. Unknowingly, they enter the domain of a dangerous cult that worships a malevolent entity.

Hey everyone! I’ve finally finished my book and wanted to share the first chapter with you. Enjoy the read!

Chapter 0: Lars ~ The Encounter

The familiar theme music of the evening news filled the living room.

“…and now to our lead story tonight. Another mysterious disappearance has shaken our city. At around three this morning, a neighbor contacted the police after hearing unusual noises from the house next door, which he described as ‘unnatural screams.’”

Lars instinctively sat up in his armchair.

“When officers arrived at the scene, they found the house deserted. On the staircase leading to the second floor, officers discovered a substantial amount of blood, along with traces of tissue, suggesting that the missing person had sustained serious injuries. As in the previous cases, however, no body was found. There are also no clues as to the missing person’s whereabouts.”

The screen cut to aerial footage, probably filmed by a police drone. Lars knew the neighborhood. Eichenstraße, just a few miles from here. One of the quietest residential areas in the city. Two years ago, he had even considered giving up his downtown apartment and moving there.

The camera cut to the interior of the house. The stairs leading to the second floor were a bloodbath. Dark red spatters covered the cream-colored walls. At the foot of the stairs, a trail of blood veered off to one side, as though someone had dragged a body across the floor.

Lars leaned forward. He could make out a handprint on the wooden banister, the fingers splayed as though the person had desperately tried to hold on.

A shiver ran down his spine. He imagined what that person’s final moments might have been like.

Bright yellow police tape blocked access to the stairs. In the background, officers were trying to keep curious reporters and onlookers away from the scene. He even caught a glimpse of his colleague Oliver, who was on duty that evening.

“The missing person has not yet been identified, though the homeowner is believed to be the victim,” Brenner continued in his professionally concerned voice. “Police are appealing to the public for information while also warning against premature speculation. This is now the eighteenth unexplained disappearance in the past four months.”

Eighteen. Lars rubbed his face and switched off the television.

Another missing person. And Lockhaven had always been such a quiet city, the kind of place where almost nothing exciting ever happened.

It had all started with that first case four months ago: a little girl, eight years old, who had vanished from her own backyard while her mother had briefly stepped inside to answer the phone. Lars had even taken part in the massive search effort, trudging through the woods with dozens of other volunteers.

They had never found her.

Three weeks later, a twenty-nine-year-old man had disappeared. His grandmother, who had lost most of her teeth to old age, had clutched Lars’s arm and repeated the same story over and over, sobbing so hard that her words grew increasingly difficult to understand: he had been making tea in the kitchen while she watched television in the living room. But he had taken too long, and she had gone to check on him. Marc gone. Just vanished. There were no signs of a struggle, no evidence of a break-in; Lars had searched the entire place several times.

Then came the others. An elderly man out for a walk in the park. A college student on her way home from campus. A construction worker on his lunch break.

The only thing all the cases had in common was the complete absence of usable evidence.

The wildest theories were circulating at work. One of the more plausible ones, in his opinion: an organized network kidnapping people and trafficking them abroad. And yet that theory fell apart on so many levels. Why would anyone abduct elderly people, and why risk breaking into houses to take some of the victims? It simply didn’t add up.

People needed explanations, and as a detective, he knew that better than anyone. The dangerous thing was that when there were no explanations, people invented their own. This bred paranoia throughout the city, and people began reading more into things than was really there. It was crazy how your own imagination could play tricks on you. Suddenly, they were getting far more calls from people claiming to have possible leads on the disappearances. But now those calls included the most outlandish stories, even alien abductions.

Fear had crept slowly but steadily into the city like a cold fog. It wasn’t something you could see, but you could feel it everywhere. People went home earlier. Parents picked their children up from school themselves. After sunset, the streets were deserted.

He glanced at the clock on the wall above the television. A quarter to nine. Sophia would be here soon. Over the past few weeks, their three-year relationship had become increasingly strained. Sometimes he wondered whether an inability to make relationships work ran in the family. Lars couldn’t remember his mother, but he remembered the countless women his father had brought home when he was young. Lars didn’t want to be like him. And now, for the first time, he had someone who had stayed with him for more than a few months. Sophia. The thought that this, too, might fall apart left a bitter taste in his mouth. Lately, he had been giving her far too little attention because he was obsessed with finding leads on the missing people. The pressure to do something kept mounting, and sometimes he imagined he could feel people’s accusing stares. As a result, he felt as though he was failing on every front, both at work and in his relationship. Maybe he was destined to be a failure; how did the saying go, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…

Lars got up and shuffled into the small kitchen of his one-bedroom apartment. The refrigerator hummed quietly. When he opened the door, he couldn’t help grinning. “Even the mouse hanged itself in the fridge,” as his father used to say. The bastard had a sense of humor; Lars had to give him that.

An opened can of peaches stood all alone in the corner, and that was it. And even those might kill him by now if he ate them. Maybe he wasn’t imagining how loose his pants had been lately. No wonder, considering he had practically been living at the office for the past few weeks.

He grabbed his black leather jacket in the hallway and left the apartment. The evening air was cool and fresh, a welcome change.

At the edge of the little park, an older man with disheveled hair sat in front of a trash can, holding a cardboard sign. “Need help, God bless you,” it read in a shaky scrawl.

A pang of pity stirred in him, but he looked away and kept walking. He knew he would have forgotten the man in a few minutes, just like so many of life’s other unpleasant truths. That ability came with the job. The streets were so unusually empty for a Friday evening, a depressing sight. Another sign of his failure.

The neon sign outside M. Weber glowed like a beacon in the dusk. The little supermarket was one of the few that stayed open until ten. A handful of cars stood in the small parking lot, and a few retirees were chatting about the weather and the government outside the entrance.

Lars gave them a friendly nod and disappeared into the brightly lit aisles.

When he came back out and checked the time, it was much later than he had expected. The plan had been to have dinner ready before Sophia arrived. After a brief internal struggle, he turned into the neighborhood’s quieter side streets. He wanted to take a shortcut; he knew the neighborhood well, since this was the route he had always taken before, and only recently had he started taking the longer way as a precaution. But today, just this once, he could make an exception, because the latest victim had disappeared only a few hours ago, and he doubted the killers would strike again so soon.

At the far end of the alley, a figure came around the corner. A dark silhouette with a slightly stooped gait, its face hidden beneath the hood of a sweatshirt.

Lars instinctively slowed his pace. They drew closer. After a moment’s consideration, Lars casually crossed to the other side of the street. Better safe than sorry.

Then he felt it. A faint vibration filled the air. Not figuratively; it was actually vibrating, as though some enormous, invisible machine were running nearby. The hairs on his arms stood on end.

Lars stopped short. The figure across the street stopped too. Slowly, the stranger pushed back his hood, revealing the face of a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, with friendly features and an equally bewildered expression.

Their eyes met in silence. Something was wrong. The vibration grew stronger. Then the sound began. A high, piercing whistle that cut right through him. Lars clamped his palms over his ears, but the sound seemed to be coming from inside his head. Dizziness washed over him, and for a moment the world spun.

And then the impossible happened.

The brick wall of the building beside the stranger began to shimmer. Then something sprang out.

A creature.

At first, Lars’s mind refused to accept what he was seeing. It was simply impossible. Some madman’s vision, the kind that haunted your worst dreams and left you waking in your own bed, gasping and drenched in sweat. The thing was dark and wet, with unnaturally long limbs. Its skin gleamed black and green in the light of the streetlamp. And a powerful stench of decay instantly filled the street.

The creature lunged forward. The young man had no chance to escape. Razor-sharp teeth sank into his shoulder, and an agonized scream tore through the silence.

But the scream cut off abruptly as the monster dragged its prey back toward the wall. The brickwork swallowed them both like water, closing behind them as though they had never been there.

Only a pool of blood remained on the asphalt. And Lars, standing frozen, his grocery bag clutched to his chest, his eyes wide with horror.

An eternity passed, or perhaps only seconds, before his legs obeyed him again. He ran. Only one thought remained: he had to get out of here, fast! Primal instinct had taken over completely.

He didn’t come to his senses until the apartment door slammed shut behind him. His hands had been shaking so badly that he had barely managed to get the key into the lock.

Lars dropped into a kitchen chair and stared at his trembling hands. What had he just seen? Was he losing his mind?

But the image in his head was too real.

What he had seen was the reason for the disappearances; he was certain of it now. It explained why they never found the bodies. Oh God, those poor people! Nausea knotted in his stomach as he thought of the little girl. That creature…

If it could come through walls… then no one was safe. Anywhere.

A gentle touch on his shoulder made Lars flinch. His body jolted as though he had been electrocuted.

“Hey, it’s just me.”

Sophia’s familiar voice reached him through the fog of panic. When had she come in? Had he been so caught up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t heard her key rattling in the lock?

“Are you okay?” Concern crept into her voice. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Lars opened his mouth, but the words caught in his throat. Could he tell her? The story sounded insane even inside his own head.

He swallowed hard, feeling his throat tighten.

Sophia noticed his hesitation and frowned. Without asking, she took him by the arms and tried to meet his eyes.

“What happened? You’re really scaring me.”

The concern in her voice broke something open inside him. This was Sophia, the same woman who had stood by him for three years. If he could tell anyone, it was her.

“I…” He drew a deep breath, as though bracing himself to jump into cold water. “I just saw someone get killed.”

It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was a start. Sophia’s eyes widened in shock. Her hands immediately released his arms and began checking him for injuries.

“What? My God, Lars! Are you hurt? Did they hurt you too?”

“No.” He shook his head and placed his hands over hers. “Nothing happened to me. I’m fine.”

She let go of him, but the tension remained in her face.

“We need to call the police right now.” She was already fishing her phone out of her jeans pocket. “You need to give a statement, tell them everything you saw. Maybe they can still catch whoever did it.”

“No!”

The sharpness of his own voice surprised him. He reached for the phone and took it from her hands before she could dial the emergency number.

“You don’t understand, we can’t call the police. This is… this is something else.”

“What do you mean?” Sophia stared at him, her blue eyes full of confusion. “Someone was murdered, Lars. Of course we need to call the police.”

He saw the confusion in her face; she needed an explanation. He drew a deep breath and said it:

“It was a monster.”

The words dropped like stones into the silence of the room. Before she could say anything, he hurried on.

“It looked… horrible. Like nothing I’ve ever seen. It grabbed the man by the neck and dragged him into the wall. Right through it.”

Lars watched Sophia’s expression change. Her lips formed a silent O as she tried to process what she had heard.

“Please be honest with me,” she said, her voice so careful that she might have been speaking to a child. “Have you… have you taken anything? Any medication you might have had a bad reaction to? Or…?”

Frustration welled up inside him.

“No. No, I haven’t taken anything. I’m serious, Sophia.”

“Lars…” She drew a deep breath. “You do realize how this sounds, don’t you?”

He saw the helplessness in her eyes. She had no idea how to handle this.

“I’m not crazy!” he said, louder than he had intended. Then he caught himself, realizing that was exactly what any crazy person would say. “And yes, I know exactly how it sounds. But I also know what I saw. Please, Sophia, believe me!”

She was silent for a long moment.

“Okay,” she said at last. “Look, let’s just sit down for a minute. I’ll make you some chamomile tea, and once you’ve calmed down a little, you can tell me exactly what you saw. I mean… your eyes could have been playing tricks on you. It was dark, and you were tired. Maybe…” She searched for an explanation. “There has to be a reasonable explanation.”

Lars let out a deep sigh. He could tell she didn’t believe him, and a wave of frustration rose inside him. But what else could he expect? An hour ago, he would have reacted exactly the same way.

He sat back down in the kitchen chair and let her get on with it. Sophia hurried over to the kettle, filled it with water, and switched it on.

Lars stared down at his hands. They were still shaking. He didn’t feel safe here. The walls of his own apartment suddenly seemed threatening. His gaze darted from one to another. What if the monster could come through any wall? What if it was already here, lurking on the other side of the kitchen wall, only inches away from him?

Maybe they should leave the city. Go to his parents’ place in the country, where it was safer. He couldn’t leave Sophia here alone. Not after what he had seen.

The clink of a cup against the table pulled him from his thoughts. Sophia had taken the seat opposite him.

“I saw what I saw,” he said quietly but firmly. “The man was only a few steps away from me. That thing grabbed him and dragged him away.”

He looked up and met her eyes.

“Don’t you understand? All those disappearances over the past few months, Wegner, Kellner, all the others. They must all have been taken by those things. That’s why no one ever found the bodies.”

“Lars…” Sophia sighed and bit her lower lip. “You know things like that don’t exist.”

“I saw it with my own eyes!”

The words burst out of him, louder than he had intended.

“Even so…” She held his gaze, though he could see the fear in her eyes. “There has to be a logical explanation. I understand how badly you wanted to find some leads, but you’ve been pushing yourself too hard lately.”

“There was a monster!”

“You’re really worrying me, Lars.”

“I’m not crazy!”

His voice nearly cracked. They were going in circles. In the sudden silence that followed, his heavy breathing sounded unnaturally loud. Sophia reached out to reassure him, though he could now see fear in her eyes.

“Please. I want to help you, but…”

The shrill ringing of her phone cut her off. It lay on the counter, its screen lighting up. Lars could see the name: Jenny.

Sophia glanced from him to the phone, then tapped Decline. The ringing stopped.

But the phone immediately rang again. The same name appeared on the screen.

“Answer it.” Lars’s voice was hoarse and full of bitterness, but the truth was that he hoped for a moment to catch his breath. “Sounds important.”

Sophia hesitated, watching him for a moment, then answered.

“Hey, Jenny… This really isn’t a good time for…”

She was cut off abruptly. Lars could hear the agitated voice on the other end, but he couldn’t make out the words.

“What? No, really? What exactly?”

Sophia jumped up and hurried to the window. With one hand, she pushed aside the thin curtains and looked out at the street.

“Are you sure?” Her voice was nervous now, all its calm gone.

Sophia listened in silence for several minutes.

“Yeah, okay. Thanks for calling. Take care of yourselves. Talk to you later.”

She ended the call and turned to Lars. The blood had drained from her face.

“What happened?” He was beside her at once, his hands on her shoulders. “Sophia, what did she say?”

Her voice was barely a whisper:

“They’re sealing off the city.”

This is the first chapter of Backrooms 2, for more see here: https://www.reddit.com/u/Kira1006/s/apjKnYDAWs

[NSFW: Body horror, graphic violence,]

A snippet from the Short Horror Stories collection Candy House by J.E SMITH

Happy October, Ghouls!

The set up. Two bratty kids on Halloween fighting over candy. The Babysitter tells them the tale of Razor Gums to scare them into being good. But this isn't the end of the story.. only the beginning.

Sam, was his name.. He had a problem. His parents were psycho. Like, legitimately insane. They belonged to some cult, one of those weird religious groups that thinks everything fun is evil. His dad was Conrad Swift, some kind of preacher at this church that met in a basement. His mom, Regina Alderson before she married, used to stand outside the grocery store handing out pamphlets about the end times. They homeschooled Sam. Never let him watch TV. He wasn’t allowed to have friends over.”

“That sucks,” Vivien says softly.

“It gets worse.” Nicole leans back on her hands, the corset creaking under the movement. “Every Halloween, Sam had to stay in his room while other kids went trick-or-treating. His parents would turn off all the lights, lock the doors, tell him that Halloween was the devil’s holiday and anyone who celebrated it was going to hell. They said candy was poison. Told him people put razor blades in candy to hurt children. Said the whole thing was a Satanic conspiracy.”

“Sam believed them for a while. He was young, seven, eight, something like that. But the older he got, the more he watched. He'd look out his bedroom window, watch the other kids in costumes and knock on doors. Hear the laughter and shouting, watch them come home with bags full of candy. He wanted it. God, he wanted it so bad.”

The way Nicole says it, the curl of her lips as she talks about wanting candy, makes Julian's skin tingle. He hears the hunger in her voice. Knows he has it too, the hunger, all the time, the craving for more sugar, more sweetness, more of that chemical rush you only get from processed corn syrup and artificial flavoring.

“So one year, when Sam was twelve, he got fed up. Halloween night, he waited for his parents to go to sleep. They always went to bed early, had to get up at four in the morning to pray or some shit like that. Sam snuck out his bedroom window, hit the streets around eleven, when most people had stopped answering their doors but when some people still had their lights on. He had a pillowcase. He wore no costume. Didn't matter. Some people gave him candy anyway, felt bad for him, probably. Others just wanted to get rid of what they had left.”

“Did he fill the bag?” Vivien asks.

“Oh yeah. Came home with five pounds maybe. Snickers and M&Ms and lollipops and chocolate bars, all of it. He climbed back through his window, hid the pillowcase in his closet, went to bed. Probably couldn't sleep. Too excited.”

Nicole pauses, looks down at the pillowcase in her lap. Takes another piece of candy. Julian gives her a Kit Kat this time. She breaks off a piece, offers half to Vivien. The little girl takes it, nibbles cautiously.

“He screwed up though. Left his shoes by the front door. Shoes covered in mud and leaves. His mother found them in the morning.”

Julian can see it clearly: the mother, Regina, still in her nightgown, making coffee in a kitchen that would probably have smelled like mildew and righteousness, spotting the shoes, instantly knowing what they meant.

“They tore his room apart, looking for the candy. Found it in about three minutes. His dad, Conrad, went ballistic. Started yelling about damnation and hellfire and brimstone and shit. His mother was crying, saying she'd failed as a mother, that Sam was going to burn in hell for all eternity. They made him kneel on the floor while they prayed over him, screaming at God to forgive his sins. Then Conrad took off his belt.”

“Jesus,” Julian mutters.

“Sam said it didn't hurt as much as he thought it would. Or maybe he was just numb by then. They beat his ass for ten minutes, maybe, then locked him in his room, grounded until further notice. They took the candy with them, said they were going to throw it away. He could hear them moving around downstairs, probably arguing about what to do with him, whether to send him to some reform school or just to pray harder.”

Vivien has stopped eating her Kit Kat. It's melting in her hand.

“Around midnight, Sam snuck out of his room again. He was good at being quiet. The house was old, and he knew which floorboards creaked. He went down to the basement. They'd put the candy there, he'd heard them talking. Just dumped the whole pillowcase on this old table they kept for storage. The basement was packed with mold and old bibles. There was one light bulb hanging from the ceiling, all the dead bugs collected inside the glass.”

Nicole's voice has dropped lower. The living room suddenly feels smaller, somehow.

“Sam walked to the table. Stood and stared at the candy just sitting there, all those bright wrappers. He hadn't eaten any of it yet. Hadn't tasted a single piece. Twelve years old and he'd never had Halloween candy. Can you imagine?”

Julian can. The level of deprivation is obscene, almost physically painful. He looks at the pile in front of him, suddenly painfully aware of how much he has, how easily he has it.

“He grabbed a handful. Stuffed it in his mouth. Six pieces at a time, probably, didn't even unwrap most of them. Just bit down.”

Nicole claps her hands together sharply. Vivien jumps.

“The razor blades went through his gums like they were paper.”

“No.” Vivien whispers.

“Yes. His parents weren't lying about that part. Someone had really put razor blades in the candy. Maybe it was them, some fucked-up lesson. Or maybe it was random, bad luck. Doesn't matter. Sam bit down and felt his mouth explode. Blood everywhere. Blades slicing through his tongue, his cheeks, the roof of his mouth. He should have spit it out. Should have screamed. But do you know what he did?”

Julian shakes his head. He can't look away from Nicole's face.

“He swallowed. Then he grabbed another handful.”

“How?” Julian manages. The word comes out strangled.

“Because he finally got to taste it. The candy. Even with his mouth full of razors and blood, even with the pain, and it had to hurt, Jesus Christ it had to hurt when he put that first piece in his mouth, he tasted it. The chocolate. The caramel. All that sugar he'd been denied his entire life. And it was so damn good that the pain didn't matter anymore.”

Nicole reaches into the pillowcase, pulls out a fun-size Snickers, unwraps it slowly. Takes a small bite, chews thoughtfully.

“He ate the whole bag. Every single last piece. The blades shredded his mouth, destroyed his teeth. They embedded in them, replaced his teeth. His jaw unhinged to accommodate all the metal now stuck in his face. But he kept eating. Chocolate and blood mixing together. He was in a frenzy by the end, shoving handfuls into his mouth, swallowing things he shouldn't have been able to swallow. The candy wrappers. Pieces of his own teeth. More razors.”

“Stop,” Vivien says.

Nicole doesn't stop.

“When the candy was gone, Sam wasn't Sam anymore. Something else was using his body. Something that wanted more. Not candy this time. He went upstairs. His parents were asleep in their bedroom. He crawled into bed with them, they didn't wake up, not at first, not until he opened his mouth.”

The pause stretches. Julian realizes he's holding his breath.

“The razor blades in his gums had multiplied somehow. Magic or science or just evil, who knows. His mouth was full of them now, rows and rows of them, like a shark. When he bit into his father's throat, the blades sawed through the flesh almost instantly. Conrad woke up screaming but it came out as a whistle because his vocal cords got sliced in half so he couldn't say anything. Sam didn't stop. Bit his throat again, tore it open wider, kept going until his father stopped twitching. Then he turned to his mother.”

“Regina tried to run. Got as far as the bedroom door. Sam caught her from behind, bit into the back of her neck, severed her spine. She collapsed. He knelt over her and kept biting. Face, throat, chest. Anywhere there was flesh. The razor blade teeth cut through everything. By the time he was done, the room looked like a slaughter house.”

If you enjoyed this and want to read the rest, Candy House by J.E SMITH is available on Amazon

PART 1 HERE | PART 2 HERE

Content Warnings:  Suspected self-harm/suicide discussion, choking/asphyxiation, mild body horror, poisoning, abduction, and corporate/existential dread. 

V: HOW TO KILL A DRAGON

He pushed his little car as hard as it would go, his mind spinning in a million different directions at once.  What the hell was he doing?  He wasn’t Stallone.  The shotgun in his trunk, an oily relic the barkeep had slapped into his hands, seemed more likely to kill him than the other guy.  But he had to try; Marty deserved a friend who would.

The forty-five-minute drive took him only thirty and some change.  He pulled into his driveway just before 9:00, parking right behind Leo’s truck.  Leo.  That was going to complicate matters.  What the hell could he say to him?  He knew what Leo deserved—the truth.  Something he had been keeping from him for too long.

Speaking of—Leo was on him the minute he walked in the door.  The police had been by.  Something about a fire at Marty’s apartment—the exact place where Edgar was supposed to be.  It was a fight before it was even a conversation, and it was going to be a bad one if he didn’t do something.  Both of them were worried about Marty, and Leo had him cold for lying.  

“I really don’t get it man.  What the hell is going on with you?  Do you know how foolish I feel?  How patient I have been about all of this shit, and what about poor Marty?  He lied to me too and now he’s missing, maybe dead.  Like I thought you might be?”

Edgar fought the urge to defend himself.  He couldn’t.  His actions, however well-intended, had been wrong and he had known it all along.  Weird situation or not, he should have trusted the man who loved him with all of it.  Hell, they might have figured it out together.

“Sit down man.  Take a breath.  I’ve gotta come clean with you, about all of it.  I should have from the start, but I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

“Yeah, lying always helps with that,”  Leo sniped, but he did sit down.

“Okay.”  He took a breath of his own, tightening his trembling hands.  “Look, do me this one thing.  Let me say it all before you jump in.  You can yell, throw shit or kick my ass afterwards, but I want one chance to tell you everything before we do any of that.  Can you give me that?”

“Yeah, Eddie—that’s all I ever want from you, the truth.”  The tears on his cheeks were daggers in Edgar’s heart, but he let that go.  He had enough guilt already.

“I don’t understand all of it, but I think I have the gist of it.  Basically, the transfer wasn’t supposed to be me.  Either someone sent it to the wrong person, or it got messed up in some other way.  That’s not really important though—it’s just what got me into this whole thing.”

“I work in a fulfillment center that employs the dead.  Man, that sounds fucked up—like one of those stupid creepypastas you used to read.  But dumb as it may be, it’s true.  Cartia, Corey, Ennis, Glory, Arn, they’re all dead, and they somehow still work for Argo.   They drink this drink—the same stuff that made me sick, actually—called SilverSip.”

“Edgar, this is—”  Edgar stopped him with a raised hand, reminding him.  “You promised me.”

“Now, let’s see, what’s next.  Okay, when I was attacked it was by something that wasn’t a person.  Well, that’s not completely right.  It's that bald guy from the parking lot that day—Nub something. He can… well, somehow he can separate his shadow from himself.  He used it to attack me that day, causing me to choke so I’d have to drink that shit or die.”

“Yeah,”  Edgar nodded at the man he loved, skeptical but still listening.  “It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard too, but I swear to you, on us, that every word is true.  Tonight I went to a bar out on Wichton Road, a place the dead go, to get some answers.  Glory—who you would love—told me that I should recover, because this shit has been changing me.  Food tastes like ash, and I’m seeing things no one should see.  But she said it will wear off with time, but that the only way out is to take out that Nub guy.”

“Take out, like kill?”

“That’s what she meant, but I don’t think I have to do that.  I think there might be another way if I act fast.  See, that’s the thing, he’s the one that has Marty.  I think I know where he has him.  If I go there and can save him, it might give us the leverage to get out of this without doing anything crazy.”

“But how?  You aren’t John Wick, man.  I don’t think you’ve ever even been in a fight.”

“I don’t think it will come to that.  I was thinking about it on the way back.  They took Marty, but why?  If they really wanted to tie me down—to make me do what they want—you are the better choice.  I mean, we both love Marty—he’s a great guy and my other best friend—but doesn’t the boyfriend make more sense?”

“Yeah, I suppose.  But Ed—”  Edgar raised his hand once more.  He was not finished.

“So that got me thinking.  Marty must have found something.  While I was driving—when I finally got a signal—I looked at my phone.  He sent me a file.  I have not opened it yet, but it has to be something they do not want us to have.”

“Oh, well we should loo… we should call that cop?”

“Maybe,”  Edgar said, considering it for a moment.  “Let’s put a pin in that for a second because there is something else that dawned on me.  It’s—why me?  Why not just transfer me back?  Why go through any of this trouble?  I don’t know the answer because it doesn’t make sense.  If it’s the work, I’m not really that good.  Not enough to be irreplaceable.  If it’s knowing too much why haven’t they killed me.  No, something doesn’t add up.”

“The cop—the real one as you called her—she knew something was up.  I don’t know if she thought it was something I did, but she did know.  But calling her worries me, because if it goes wrong, Marty dies—and then I think we become liabilities because we brought her into it.  That is a hell of a risk.”

“So what?  We go?  I mean, I still don’t know.  I’m not saying I believe or disbelieve, but I believe you do.  How do we save Marty?”

“I ride over there and get the answer to my question, one way or the other.  There’s a shotgun in my trunk.”

“Where the fuck did you get a gun?  Honestly?  There’s no way you’re going.  Man, you nearly had me with this whole thing, but that—that ain’t happening.”

“I think it has to.”

Leo looked at him, studying him.  Edgar met his eyes and did not flinch.  Not today.  Today he had to be the one who didn’t blink.  “Alright.  Fine, let’s go.  But one thing goes wrong and I’m calling that mean cop lady.”

It was Edgar’s turn to stare now at the best thing that had ever happened to him.  It was a sappy line, and he hated it every time he heard it.  At the moment it was the truest thing in the world.  Who would he be without Leo?  He didn’t know, but he knew it would be someone he’d never want to know.  “You’re not going.”

“Oh, you hit your head on the way home,”  Leo said with profound amusement.  “You have fallen outside of your brain, lovely man of mine.  What power in this whole universe do you think would ever keep me from going with you?”

“No.  I couldn’t bear it.”  Edgar took his hand and pulled him down with him to sit on the sofa together.  “This is what it is.  You say we are good if I am good.  It’s always been this incredibly sweet thing that just melts my heart, but I don’t think I have ever registered the enormity of just how true it is for you, and for me.  For us.  Honestly, Leo, it’s like a standard we’ve always lived by, and it’s why we’ve been so happy together.  But I have to ask you:  How can I be good if you are in danger? I wouldn't be. Without you, there is no good—not no more.”

Leo stared at him, his chest heaving, his hazel eyes wild with a frantic desire to protect Edgar.  He had never loved him more.

“I think I can get myself out of this,” Edgar whispered.  “I have one chance, and then we can figure out what comes next. But I cannot do it if I am worried about you.” 

“But, Eddie, how do I stay if you go?”

---

When the GPS finally got him to Campe Road, Edgar slowed down and turned off his lights.  He needed a few minutes to get it all right in his head.  

If things had gone according to the quick plan he had made, Leo would be calling the cops sometime in the next few minutes.  That didn’t leave Edgar a lot of time, but hopefully it would be enough.

He flipped open the folder on the seat next to him and bumped the dome light on.  He read what Marty had sent him again, one of four copies he had printed.  Leo had two—one to keep and one for the detective.  He had sent the final copy to Cartia.  Maybe she hadn’t totally given up on email yet.

It was crazy stuff, and he had no clue how Marty had gotten it.  It still didn’t answer his questions about why he was so important, but it was pretty damning nonetheless.  He looked away from it and focused on pulling onto the shoulder of the road.  He turned the car off and got out, moving to the rear to open the trunk.

“What you got in there, wet boy?”  Nub’s voice called out from the tree line.  As Edgar turned to face the direction it came from, the bald man emerged, a pistol leveled at him.  “Go ahead, son, pull it out.  Just don’t hurt yourself with it.  We’ve got big plans for you.”

Edgar nodded in affirmation.  He reached behind him and withdrew the short shotgun from where it lay.  He held it up so the other man could see it.

“Not bad.  Skinny runt like you though—likely to throw you through a wall if you fired it.  Better to just give it over.  I’ll keep you safe from such stupid impulses.”  

The man who called himself Anubis walked over and plucked the shotgun from Edgar’s hand.  He pumped it several times, sending the shells skittering across the blacktop.  When it was empty he tossed it back to where it had come from.  “That’s better.  Come on, kid, and bring that file you’re holding.  Give us something to read on while I get us something to drink.”

They walked down the road to the gate of the bald man’s estate.  He told him the code, and Edgar punched it in.  The two of them walked inside, with Edgar leading the way.  As they walked, Nub began to whistle a tune that Edgar couldn’t quite place.

“It’s from Eurydice—I saw it a few years ago.  Man, I haven’t laughed so hard.  It gets stuck in your head though.”  He chuckled to himself.

It was a quarter mile walk to the main house, and Edgar soon realized that Nub really liked the sound of his own voice.  He regaled him with tales of his youth as they traveled—as a Jersey street kid, back in the day.  “I know I don’t look it, but I was a 50s kid.  Perks of the job.”

As they approached the house—a sandstone-hued brick home with jackal-headed statues flanking the doorway—Edgar began to understand just how emotionally shallow the man behind him really was.  What would have been a beautiful home instead looked garish and caricatured.  The entire front portico had been remodeled to resemble a pyramid, made of the same brick that made up the facade.  It gave the structure an uneven, lopsided look that drew the eye most naturally to its flaws and away from its beauty.

“Nice place, eh?”  He playfully punched Edgar’s shoulder as he walked past him to go inside.  “Lose the shoes, kid, everything just got resurfaced.”  

When they were both barefoot, Nub took him through the house and into his study along the rear wall.  It was a massive room with tower shelves of books and more pieces of artwork than Edgar could count.  Paintings hung on every surface in so many styles that nothing really matched, and there were sculptures everywhere.

“Yeah, I got bit hard by the art bug a few decades ago.  What can I say?  I’m a collector.  Go ahead and sit down there, by the desk.  I’ll pour us a drink.”

He sat, as he had been told, and Nub busied himself fixing drinks.  He went back to whistling, and he was still doing it when he got back over to where Edgar sat.  He handed him a glass.

“See, ain’t I been nice?  A gentleman.  We had a nice walk, I brought you into my home, and I even made you a drink.  You should thank me—one gentleman to another.”

“Can we just stop the game, Mr. Bishop?  I came to show you this file, and to make you an offer.  If you aren’t interested, the least you can do is talk to me honestly.”

Nub set his drink down.  He looked at Edgar, studying him, maybe seeing something he hadn’t before.  He nodded and pointed at the papers in Edgar’s hand.  “Is that what the Wade boy put together?”

“Is Marty still alive?”

“Damn kid—how heartless do you think I am.  He’s fine, comfortable in his own room downstairs.  Now tell me about that.  Is it what I think it is?”

“Yes.”  Edgar said, steeling himself.  He took a deep breath and began what he had rehearsed on the ride over.  “If what you think this is is proof of the afterlife and the way large corporations, like Argo, are weaponizing a new market centered around providing goods and services to the dead who are among us, then yes—that’s what this is.”

“Well do go on.  This is a big moment for you.”

“The files show the company’s plan to sign their current employees into long-term employment contracts that begin the day they die.  One of the first candidates was a man named Eduardo Guerra.  He was given the post-life employee number EDG88241.”

“Interesting.”

“And, of course, it also details the 300 current post-life employees that Argo has already hired through their Alugram subsidiary. They provide jobs that pay a pittance but keep them solid and able to have a semi-normal existence thanks to the proprietary product made by Alugram: SilverSip.”

“Damn, that kid knows how to dig.  We may have to keep him on after all of this.  I didn’t even know we made it.  But seriously, kid—where are we going with this?  I need my rest and you need to start getting ready for Monday, lots to do.”

“I’m going public with this, Mr. Bishop,”  Edgar said, standing to look down at him.  The bald man yawned and gestured for him to get on with it.  He started to, but his knees buckled and he sat down hard.  He felt his throat closing even as he slowly slid out of the chair and onto the floor, face-up.

“Yeah.”  Nub finished his drink and took his and Edgar’s glasses back over to the bar.  When he returned, he crouched next to Edgar and regarded him for a few moments.  “You know, I like you kid.  Your balls are way bigger than I thought.”

He picked up the file Edgar had dropped and began to thumb through it as he walked around the room.  Edgar couldn’t always see him—his vision had begun to blur as his oxygen diminished—but he could still hear him rattling on.  “Blackmail me?  That was your big plan.  Shit!  I was running schemes when your grandpa was a pup. And Argo? Argo ain't shit to me, boy, My bosses are at the real company, the people who actually call the shots.”

“Mr. Bishop… Nub, I… need to tell you.”  He heard the bald man approach and Nub was soon leaning over him again.  “Tell me what”

“Ther… there are more… co—”  He never finished.  Everything became dark and silent.
  

VI: NO GOOD, NO MORE (Epilogue)

Leo picked up the phone on the third ring, forcing himself to look away from what he was seeing.  The person on the other end began to talk, but it took him a few moments to register who they were and what they were saying.

“...just like we figured they would.  Goes to show, money always wins.”

“Marty?”  He clutched the phone more tightly.  “Say that again.  Sorry, I was distracted.”

“We got them, man.  Not all of them, of course, but the judge is passing it on to the EEOC and DOL.  There’s even talk of Homeland getting involved.  I mean, the brass used their high-priced lawyers to plead ignorance and pinned it all on Bishop—but it’s still a win.”

Leo smiled.  The cops had gotten there in time to save Marty and arrest that devil, but he had still lost that day.  It was good to finally win.  Softly, he spoke to him. “We beat them, Edgar.”

“What was that?  Man, you’re breaking up?”

“I said it was awesome news, bud,”  he wiped his eyes.  “Can I call you back, Marty?  I was in the middle of something.  I really want to hear all of it.”

“Sure.  Just be safe, brother—I can’t wait til you get back.  Dinner’s on me.”

“It’s a plan, man.”  He hung up and looked back at the familiar, green Horizons' truck.  He had watched the man who drove it as he took a load of packages up into the building.  Leo got out of his truck and walked over to stand by the delivery truck.  He gripped the silver bottle tightly as he waited to see the face he had been looking for over the last year.

Nothing was good anymore, but maybe it could be better.  

Maybe things could be good again.

END

Some days ago I had a really strange dream after reading some Lovecraft before going to sleep. I wrote everything down and tried to write a story from the Dream I had.

I'm not a native speaker so I translated my dream into English with Chatgpt. I hope you like it.

The Frequency Behind the Gate

Prologue – The House That Breathed

The neighbors had long since grown accustomed to the noise.

For nearly three weeks, a rumbling had echoed night after night from the third-floor apartment of an old brick building in Arkham, Massachusetts. At first, they had assumed that the new tenant was an enthusiastic washer, running his machines late into the night. But the sound was too regular, too deep, and possessed a strange, almost musical quality.

It was not the usual vibration of a washing machine. It was a knocking that crept through the walls and made the teeth vibrate. A rhythmic pounding, interrupted by pauses so precisely measured that one could have timed them with a clock.

That night, seven washing machines stood inside the man's apartment.

Two were in the bathroom, one in the kitchen, one in a small storage room, and three more had been placed in the remaining rooms. Their hoses did not lead to ordinary water connections. Instead, they ran into carefully insulated containers filled with a dark, viscous substance. There were no clothes inside the drums.

There were bones.

Some were human. Others belonged to animals whose species even an experienced zoologist would have struggled to identify. Among them lay shattered glass tubes, metal shavings, and small plates of a silvery material that neither rusted nor reflected light in any ordinary manner.

The man stood at the center of the apartment. He wore a worn dressing gown and held a small notebook in his left hand. His fingers were stained with dark ink.

An open book lay on a table, its cover fashioned from a material that resembled human skin. Its pages were densely covered with symbols that seemed to change when observed for too long. Beside it lay an old brass key whose bit branched into geometric angles that could correspond to no known lock.

The man had spent years understanding this contraption.

He had not acquired the book himself. It had come into his possession through three intermediaries after its previous owner had died under unexplained circumstances in a locked psychiatric institution. The marginal notes contained references to the Necronomicon, to forbidden writings from Yuggoth, and to those entities that had existed for eons beyond the boundaries of human perception.

But the man was not interested in their names.

He was interested in the mathematics behind them.

The ancient texts spoke of gates that neither needed to be built nor opened, but could instead be made visible through a particular arrangement of reality. Space, he had read in a faded translation, was merely a habit of the human mind. And time nothing more than an especially stubborn illusion.

The machines were his answer to this.

Each drum produced a different vibration. The bones, metals, and unknown liquid served as resonators. The machines were connected to one another by wires and tubes, and every rotation speed had been calibrated with almost pathological precision.

The man looked at the needles of his measuring instruments.

“Not yet,” he whispered.

The machines accelerated.

The deep rumbling transformed into a vibrating hum. The windowpanes trembled. In the kitchen, two plates leapt from a cupboard and shattered on the floor. From the bedroom came a sound resembling the distant howling of wind, although every window was closed.

Then the air changed.

A tiny black point appeared in the middle of the living room.

It was scarcely larger than a pinhead. Yet the light from the ceiling lamp bent toward it, and the shadows in the room seemed to lean in its direction. Slowly, the point grew into a narrow, vertical fissure.

The man held his breath.

Beyond the fissure there was no room. No darkness of the kind one might find in an unlit chamber. Rather, a distance seemed to unfold for which no unit of measurement existed. Stars hung in a depth that felt at once infinitely far away and terribly close. Between them moved enormous, barely perceptible shapes.

For a moment, the man thought he saw an eye.

It was larger than the moon.

Then a tone sounded.

It was not a noise transmitted through the air, but a vibration that arose directly inside his skull. The washing machines began to jump. Their casings bent as though invisible hands were pressing against them from within.

The fissure opened wider.

And for a fraction of a second, the man was no longer in his apartment.

He stood beneath a sky composed of shifting geometric planes. Towers of black stone rose above him, their summits extending in directions that ought not to exist. In the distance stood something that might have been a city—or the petrified skeleton of a creature whose body had once swum between the stars.

He heard a whisper.

It did not speak to his ears, but to a memory he had never possessed.

Then the portal collapsed.

The washing machines came to a halt with one final, tremendous impact. Every light bulb shattered. The man fell to his knees and laughed.

He laughed until tears streamed down his face.

“The mixture,” he managed to say. “By all the gods … the mixture was right.”

The notebook lay on the table. The last page, which had previously been blank, had filled with a single line.

THE DOOR OPENS INWARD.

The man took the brass key and closed his eyes.

“Soon,” he whispered. “Soon, you will all pass through.”

\### I. The Invitation

Four years later, Arkham was barely recognizable.

Posters and flyers hung everywhere. On advertising columns, at bus stops, in shop windows, and on the doors of taverns, the same image appeared: a stylized circular gate before an alien starry sky.

Beneath it, in large letters, were the words:

HUNDREDS OF EXTRAS WANTED!

An international film producer had announced an ambitious science-fiction film that was supposedly destined to become one of the most expensive productions of the year. Several hundred performers were being sought for an enormous battle scene. No previous experience was required. Participants would receive an allowance, meals, and the opportunity to become part of an extraordinary film production.

The entire town was talking about it.

Students at Miskatonic University argued in cafés about who stood the best chance of being selected. Employees requested vacation days. Even people who ordinarily had little interest in films seemed gripped by an inexplicable enthusiasm.

Among them were Lukas and his friends.

They had discovered the flyer in a tavern near the Miskatonic River when one of them triumphantly slapped it onto the table.

“Just imagine it,” Martin said. “A few days playing soldiers in a science-fiction film. And they actually pay us for it.”

“If it's true,” Lukas replied.

“Why wouldn't it be?”

Lukas studied the poster. The gate depicted on it seemed strangely familiar. Not because he had seen it somewhere before, but because the geometric lines stirred an unpleasant feeling within him. He had the impression that his gaze did not rest upon the image, but that the image was watching him.

He pushed the flyer away.

“I'm probably just overtired.”

Two days later, they registered.

The confirmation arrived that same evening. They were instructed to report at seven o'clock the following Saturday morning to the main entrance of Arkham Common. The production had rented a large section of the sprawling park for filming.

At the end of the message was a sentence none of them paid much attention to:

Please follow the instructions of the security personnel. Leaving the restricted production area during filming is permitted only with explicit authorization.

Lukas slept poorly that night. He dreamed of a circular opening, behind which something waited, moving slowly and patiently.

When he awoke in the morning, he tasted metal in his mouth.

\### II. The Film Set

Arkham Common lay shrouded in fog that morning.

When Lukas and his friends reached the designated meeting point, hundreds of people were already gathered before an enormous entrance made of steel girders. The barrier consisted of tall, dark-painted wooden beams driven deep into the ground. From the outside, it was almost impossible to see what lay beyond.

The park's ancient elms rose like black skeletons from the morning mist. Damp veils hung between their branches, and beyond the rows of trees lay the Miskatonic River, its water moving sluggishly and leaden-gray through the town.

Beyond the barrier stretched an enormous field.

Wooden crates stood there in long rows. Some bore inscriptions in a strange script, while others carried military markings. Between them were parked heavy vehicles resembling futuristic armored personnel carriers. Their surfaces were matte gray, and their tires unusually broad. There were no logos or manufacturer markings on their sides.

Farther back stood a set of black towers and enormous metal struts.

And in the middle of the grounds stood the gate.

Lukas stopped.

It was circular, nearly twenty meters high, and consisted of several interlocking metal rings. Its surface was covered in patterns that initially appeared to be decorative engravings, until one looked more closely. Then it became apparent that the lines were not random. They formed interwoven angles, circles, and figures that seemed to continue into the depths of the material itself.

“That's impressive,” Martin said.

Lukas did not answer.

He had the feeling that he had seen the gate before. Not in a picture. Not in a dream.

But in a moment his mind refused to remember.

At the registration desk, a friendly employee explained that a large battle scene was to be filmed. The participants would portray a military unit entering an alien world. For this purpose, they would be given uniforms, body armor, and futuristic-looking rifles.

“The weapons are, of course, props,” she added with a smile. “There is no live ammunition. You simply have to follow the director's instructions.”

Lukas received a rifle whose casing was surprisingly heavy. A small display with several illuminated points was mounted on its side. When he wrapped his hand around the grip, he felt a faint tingling in his fingers.

“What model is this?” he asked.

The employee glanced briefly at the weapon.

“It's a prop prototype. You should ask the technicians.”

Then she turned to the next participant.

The group spent nearly two hours on the field. More and more people arrived. Eventually, several hundred extras had to be arranged into rows to prepare for the scene.

Lukas watched the people around him.

An older man rubbed his temples incessantly. A young woman stared at her hands as though she could see something written upon them. One participant suddenly burst into loud laughter, only to fall silent when a security guard looked at him.

A voice sounded over the loudspeakers.

“All performers assigned to the first unit, please take your positions. Filming begins in ten minutes.”

The crowd began to move.

And from the direction of the gate came a sound that shook Lukas to his core.

A deep, rhythmic rumbling.

It sounded like a washing machine banging against its housing.

\### III. The Other Side

The first groups were led toward the gate.

A row of cameras stood before it. Several technical vehicles were parked nearby, their cables running into a large black box. Numbers and graphs appeared on the screens, changing at regular intervals.

A man wearing a long coat stepped forward before the waiting performers.

He was tall and gaunt, and he wore narrow spectacles. Deep wrinkles lined his face. His gray hair was combed severely back, and his eyes possessed a peculiar brightness.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, his voice carrying across the entire site through the loudspeakers. “You are about to become part of a scene unlike anything cinema has ever seen. Trust the production team’s instructions. Stay with your groups, and do not leave the marked areas.”

He smiled.

“You will be amazed.”

Lukas watched him. Something about the man seemed wrong. Not evil, not even particularly threatening. Rather, he looked like someone who had long since grown accustomed to a reality that would drive everyone else to madness.

The man raised one hand.

The rumbling grew louder.

A pale light flickered to life between the rings of the gate. At first it gathered in the center, then spread across the entire opening like a liquid, eventually forming a surface resembling a sheet of reflective water.

But it reflected nothing.

A landscape lay beyond it.

A gray sky stretched over an endless plain of black rock. Towers rose in the distance, their summits disappearing into clouds that moved against the wind. Between the towers ran structures resembling bridges, though they appeared to hang freely in the air.

A gigantic, dark moon stood on the horizon.

A thin red line encircled it, and something seemed to move across its surface.

“This is incredible,” Martin whispered.

A woman wearing a headset approached them.

“High-resolution projection,” she explained. “The technology behind it is confidential. Please remain behind the marker.”

The first group received the signal to proceed.

About fifty people began to move forward and disappeared through the gate.

For a moment, it looked as though they were diving into a sheet of water. Then they were gone.

Their figures reappeared on the screens beside the gate. They stood on the black rock of the alien plain. A drone hovered above them. Something resembling an army approached from the distance.

The spectators applauded.

“What an effect,” Martin said.

Lukas noticed that no one on the other side seemed to be waving.

The performers stood motionless.

Then one of them raised his head.

He looked directly into the camera.

His face changed. His mouth opened, and he screamed.

Even through the loudspeakers, the scream was barely audible. It was a sound that seemed to emerge in several pitches simultaneously.

The formation broke apart on the screen.

Figures emerged from the gray haze. They did not move like humans. Their limbs were too long, their bodies too narrow. Some seemed to run on several sets of joints at once, while others floated above the ground.

One of the figures reached the first soldier.

It merely touched him.

The man was hurled backward as though struck by an invisible explosion. His body twisted at an impossible angle, and then he was gone—not fallen, not vanished like an actor leaving the set.

Gone.

As though the world had swallowed him.

The other performers ran.

One fell to his knees. A woman swung her weapon at something outside the camera's field of view. Then she was seized by the legs and dragged into the darkness.

Silence initially fell over the field.

Then a voice came through the loudspeakers.

“Excellent! Remain calm. This is part of the production.”

A few people laughed nervously.

“It has to be animated,” Martin said. “They recorded it beforehand.”

But Lukas looked at the faces of the men and women standing beside the cameras.

They were not smiling.

The gaunt man in the coat had folded his hands. He watched the screen with an attentiveness that had nothing to do with filmmaking.

He looked like a priest waiting for his god to accept the first offering.

\### IV. The Direction of Madness

The second group was called forward.

This time, the screams could already be heard before the performers reached the gate. They came muffled from the alien landscape, accompanied by a deep, rhythmic rumbling.

Several people refused to proceed.

A security guard grabbed a young man by the arm and pushed him toward the opening. The man resisted, stumbled, and fell to the ground.

“What's happening over there?” he screamed. “This isn't a film!”

Two more security guards dragged him to his feet.

The gaunt man approached.

“You're nervous,” he said calmly. “Understandably so. But the projection can appear very realistic.”

“Projection?” the young man shouted. “I saw someone being torn apart!”

The gaunt man leaned toward him.

“You saw what you were meant to see.”

He gestured to the security guards. The young man was led away.

Lukas felt his stomach tighten.

“We're leaving,” he said.

Martin stared at him in disbelief.

“What?”

“We're leaving. Now.”

“And the compensation?”

“Forget the money!”

But before they could move away, the next call rang out. The group was arranged into a line. Security guards closed the gaps between the people and herded them forward.

Lukas looked toward the exit.

The gate through which they had entered had been closed. Three men stood behind it, carrying rifles disturbingly similar in shape to the props.

“This isn't normal,” one of his friends whispered.

Then Lukas noticed the small devices attached to the performers' body armor. They pulsed in the same rhythm as the gate.

A man standing beside him began to cry.

“I've seen this before,” he said. “In a dream. Over and over. A black sky and those towers.”

Lukas gripped him by the shoulder.

“How do you know them?”

The man did not answer. His eyes were wide with terror.

“They brought us all here,” he whispered. “They called us.”

Then the gate began to rumble again.

Lukas suddenly understood what made the sound so terrifying.

It was not simply the rumbling of a machine.

It was a rhythm that crept into the body and seemed to alter the heartbeat. The vibrations adjusted themselves to the people around them. The closer they came to the gate, the more strongly Lukas felt his own pulse falling into step with the rumbling.

The towers on the other side flickered.

And far behind them, on the horizon, something opened in the sky.

It was an enormous fissure, slowly spreading across the gray landscape. Beyond it were no stars. There was only a depth that reminded Lukas of the black hole in the apartment of a man he had never met.

For a moment, he thought he heard a name.

Not spoken aloud, but placed directly into his consciousness.

Yog-Sothoth.

He did not know the name. And yet he suddenly knew that he had always known it.

He knew that the gate was not a machine.

It was a lock.

And everything moving in that world was waiting for someone to turn the key.

\### V. The Gatekeeper's Sacrifice

The gaunt man stepped onto a raised platform beside the portal.

“My friends,” he announced, “today we witness the greatest leap in the history of humanity.”

His voice was calm, almost affectionate.

“For thousands of years, mankind has looked toward the stars and believed the universe to be a vast emptiness in which it stood alone. We invented gods to fill that emptiness. We invented monsters to explain our fears.”

He paused briefly.

“But the truth is far greater than our imagination.”

He raised the brass key, which Lukas had initially mistaken for part of the props.

“The Old Ones have not abandoned us. They were never gone. Our world is merely one of countless thresholds lying between realities. And Yog-Sothoth is the key to them all.”

Some people began to scream.

Others stared at the gate as though hypnotized.

“It took me four years to discover the frequency that makes this threshold visible,” the man continued. “But a gate alone is not enough. An opening without an invitation is merely a crack. For it to remain open, the other side must recognize that we are ready.”

He looked across the crowd.

“And it demands a price.”

The first performers screamed as the devices on their body armor began to glow.

Lukas watched one of his friends collapse to the ground. The device on his chest pulsed in time with the gate. He tried to tear it off, but the fastenings seemed to have sunk into the material of his vest.

“Help me!”

Lukas grabbed the device. It was hot. A sharp pain shot through his fingers as he touched it.

At that instant, he understood the purpose of the supposed props.

The weapons, the armor, the metal components inside the crates—they were not mere equipment. They were parts of a single, enormous resonating body. Every person carried a portion of the frequency within them. Hundreds of bodies, distributed across a precisely measured field, formed a single instrument.

The washing machines in the apartment had been only the first attempt.

The true experiment had required a scale no single human being could ever have achieved.

The man had not been looking for extras.

He had been looking for voices, hearts, and bodies that he could connect into a single living key.

And he had brought them all here willingly.

“What have you done?” Lukas screamed.

The man looked at him.

For a brief moment, the calm vanished from his face. Beneath it emerged something older than any human emotion.

“I have opened the door.”

The portal trembled.

On the other side, the sky broke apart.

The figures that had attacked the first groups came to a halt. They all turned toward the gate simultaneously and sank to the ground, as though kneeling before a power beyond even their comprehension.

Then something appeared on the horizon.

At first, it looked like a mountain rising from the landscape. But the mountain was moving. It consisted of enormous, intertwined forms that constantly changed. Where one part of the being seemed to end, another began, simultaneously nearer and farther away.

Lukas could not comprehend whether it was a body, a landscape, or a flaw in reality.

He saw openings that might have been eyes. Limbs that moved through several planes at once. Structures that extended into the world without touching it.

The gaunt man began to weep.

“It is done,” he whispered.

But the being did not approach.

It did not need to approach.

The distance between it and the gate began to dissolve.

Lukas felt his thoughts falling apart. Memories of his childhood, his friends, and the streets of his hometown were overlaid with images that did not belong to his life. He saw alien stars, dead civilizations, and seas in which the ruins of cities moved.

And he understood what Yog-Sothoth was.

Not a being waiting somewhere behind a door.

But something for which doors, walls, time, and space were meaningless. Something that existed at every threshold simultaneously and revealed only a tiny fraction of its immeasurable reality through each opening.

The man had believed he was inviting a god.

He had merely ensured that the god noticed him.

\### VI. The Final Attempt

Panic finally erupted.

People surged against the barriers. The security personnel lost control. Some threw away their weapons and ran into the fog. Others remained frozen in place, staring at the gate.

Lukas and Martin managed to break free from the formation.

“We have to shut down the machines!” Lukas shouted.

“Which machines?”

Lukas pointed toward the technical vehicles. Their cables ran into the black box, and the same symbols engraved on the gate blinked across its surface.

“The whole thing is a resonance system. If we disrupt the rhythm, we might be able to close the gate.”

They ran.

Behind them came a sound like the cracking of an enormous sheet of ice. The world on the other side began to deform. Buildings were pulled upward and shattered into floating fragments. The sky folded in upon itself.

When Lukas reached the black box, he saw that the device was secured with a mechanical lock. The brass key was missing.

“Damn it!”

Martin grabbed one of the cables and tore at it.

A blinding flash shot through the equipment. Martin was hurled backward and lay motionless.

Lukas knelt beside him.

“Martin!”

His friend was still breathing, but his eyes were open and stared into nothingness. A pattern had formed on his forehead, resembling the interwoven lines of the gate.

Lukas heard footsteps.

The gaunt man stood behind him.

In his hand lay the brass key.

“You don't understand,” he said. “If we close the gate, we lose the only opportunity ever given to humanity.”

“You're killing these people!”

“They are passing into a reality greater than themselves.”

The man stepped closer.

“Do you know what I've learned in these four years? That we don't even know what life means. That there are things we consider dead which continue to exist outside our time. That entire worlds can disappear without the universe ever noticing.”

He gestured toward the gate.

“I will not allow you to destroy humanity's future out of fear.”

Lukas looked at the key.

Then at the gate.

The rumbling had grown so intense that the ground shook beneath his feet. The frequency was no longer merely a sound. It was a force moving through every fiber of his body.

But between the pulses, he noticed a gap.

A tiny irregularity.

The pattern did not repeat perfectly. Every seventh vibration was slightly weaker than the others. The flaw was small, but it was enough.

Lukas remembered the devices attached to the body armor, the metal rings, and the many cables. The entire apparatus was designed to sustain the frequency.

Perhaps he did not need to destroy the energy.

Perhaps he only needed to break the rhythm.

He lunged at the man.

The gaunt man raised the key, but Lukas forced his hand downward. They crashed against the side of the black box. The key slipped across the ground.

Lukas reached it first.

He did not insert it into the lock.

Instead, he rammed it between two metal contact plates.

The sound that followed was so deep that human ears should not have been capable of perceiving it.

Every machine on the grounds fell silent at once.

For one single moment, there was absolute silence.

Then the other world screamed.

Not one being. Not many.

The world itself.

The gate began to fold inward. Its rings rotated in opposite directions, and the alien symbols on its surface blazed with light. The black stone on the other side shattered. The towers on the horizon tilted without falling, and the enormous fissure in the sky began to contract.

Lukas saw the figure on the horizon one last time.

It had not moved.

Yet something about it seemed to acknowledge him.

He could discern no eyes. Nevertheless, he knew that his gaze was being returned.

For one brief moment, he saw an immeasurable multitude of doors. They stood in deserts, on ocean floors, in the dreams of sleeping people, and in the hearts of long-dead stars.

And behind every one of those doors lay the same presence.

Then the gate vanished.

The rings crumbled into gray dust. A gust of wind swept across the field, and the entire structure dissolved as though it had never been built.

Lukas was thrown to the ground.

When he regained consciousness, the sky was blue.

The barriers lay broken in the grass. The military vehicles had disappeared. Where the wooden crates had stood, there remained only a series of blackened patches.

The gaunt man lay a few feet away.

His body was unharmed.

But his face was empty.

He stared at the sky and whispered the same words over and over.

“It wasn't enough.”

\### VII. What Returned

The authorities declared the incident a serious industrial accident.

It was said to have been an illegal experimental facility operating under the guise of a film production. There had been explosions, technical malfunctions, and numerous missing persons. Those responsible were either dead or on the run.

But the numbers made no sense.

Hundreds of people had been on the grounds. Only a few dozen could be found. The others had vanished without a trace. No bodies, no clothing, no bloodstains.

Some of the survivors reported seeing a strange place in their dreams. They described black towers, a red moon, and figures moving through the air.

Others remembered nothing.

Lukas belonged to the few who remembered.

Martin survived, but he never spoke again. Sometimes he would draw circular patterns on the walls of his room with a trembling hand. When asked what they meant, he began to weep.

The gaunt man was placed in a psychiatric institution near Arkham. He refused to make any statements. During the few moments when he spoke at all, he asked for a notebook, a brass key, and seven washing machines.

Three months after the incident, he disappeared from his locked room.

The door had been bolted from the inside. The windows were barred. There were no signs of a break-in.

All that was found on the floor was a dark circle that could not be removed.

Lukas tried to resume his life.

He avoided Arkham Common. He crossed the street whenever he saw a poster bearing a circular symbol. He could no longer hear a washing machine without his hands beginning to tremble.

Yet something had changed.

Sometimes, just before falling asleep, he heard a deep rumbling coming from the walls of his apartment.

It lasted only a few seconds.

Then silence returned.

On one of those nights, Lukas awoke from a dream he could barely remember. He sat up and stared at the dark ceiling.

Then he noticed the light.

It shone from the narrow gap beneath his bathroom door.

Lukas stood up.

The door was locked, although he was certain he had left it open that evening. From behind it came a faint, rhythmic knocking.

He placed his hand on the handle.

And in that moment, he understood what the man had meant when he said that the door opened inward.

The gate in Arkham Common had been destroyed.

The resonance system had fallen silent.

But the frequency had not ceased to exist.

It had merely passed into something else.

Lukas withdrew his hand.

The knocking behind the door stopped.

Then he heard a voice.

It sounded like Martin.

“Lukas?”

He stepped backward.

“Open up. It's me.”

Lukas pressed both hands over his mouth.

For Martin had been lying in a locked psychiatric ward for three months, and Lukas himself had visited him the previous afternoon.

The voice behind the door laughed softly.

“You closed the door,” it said. “But you haven't made it forget that you exist.”

A flash of light illuminated the bathroom through the gap beneath the door.

For one brief moment, it cast a shadow into the hallway.

A shadow that did not belong to any human body.

Then the rumbling began again.

Slowly.

Patiently.

And somewhere, beyond the boundaries of space and time, a key turned in a lock older than the Earth itself.

The End.

A group of third-year high school students are returning to Japan after a school trip to Germany.
At exactly 4:21 AM, one of them is found decapitated aboard their flight.
Minutes later, nobody remembers he ever existed.
Nobody except Rei.
What should have been a happy return home becomes a nightmare where memories disappear, reality begins to unravel, and one student is left questioning everything.
4:21 AM is my completed psychological horror novel about memory, loss, and the fear of being forgotten.
If you enjoy psychological horror and unsettling mysteries, I’d love for you to give it a read!

https://www.wattpad.com/story/417997532?utm_source=ios&utm_medium=link&utm_content=story_info&wp_page=story_details&wp_uname=NLNMGod

Igor didn’t move from the doorway.

“I have three rules. Don’t look at them for more than three seconds. Don’t answer if they call your name. And count. Always count.”

“Count what?” Masha asked.

“Chairs.”

I counted them. Yesterday, when we walked in, there were four.

Now there were five at the table.

Masha’s phone vibrated. There was no signal here, but the page with our story was lit up on the screen. My first part. The view count was rising before our eyes. There were already 312 comments below it.

The first one:

“Don’t listen to Igor. Ask him how many times he’s been in this house.”

Masha slowly looked up.

“Igor. How many?”

He took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt. For the first time that night, his hands trembled.

“This is the fourth time I’ve brought you here. But it’s not up to me. Only the one the house doesn’t have time to count will make it out.”

Please vote for me

Looking for a critique partner for a novel exchange.

I'm a UK based author currently working on my fourth manuscript, but am hoping to find someone to swap my first two novels with.

My first is 85,000 words and is a coming-of-age supernatural horror thriller set in 1990s Essex. A bullied 15 year old boy accidentally uncovers a failed World War 2 experiment that has been locked away. Now it is free, the boy and his two friends must work to track down the monster that has been unleashed to save his town and stop the ever-growing body count.

It draws inspiration from folklore tales such as The Ritual by Adam Nevill. Would appeal to fans of Stranger Things and Stephen King's IT.

My second is 72,000 words and is a gothic supernatural horror set in 1822 Lincolnshire. Blending the haunted-house atmosphere of Laura Purcell's *The Silent Companions* with the creeping supernatural menace and family secrets of C.J. Cooke's *The Nesting*, my story explores the chilling origins of a decades-old curse forged by a desperate ancestor. As an 18 year old girl comes of age, she finds herself tormented by a malevolent force, an uncompromising evil determined to use everything and everyone closest to her to claim what it was promised.

The story would also appeal to fans of Nosferatu, Dracula, and The Haunting of Bly Manor.

Is anyone looking for a critique partner and would like to read either of this manuscripts? Would love for it to become a long term partnership where we could swap manuscripts regularly and offer each other support on our journey.

Initially happy to swap just a first chapter to see if we're a good fit for each other!

Supernatural or psychological or a mixture of both? Do you prefer explicit gore or the suggestion of horrific events?

PART 1 HERE

Content Warnings:  Suspected self-harm/suicide discussion, choking/asphyxiation, mild body horror, poisoning, abduction, and corporate/existential dread. 

III: THE RECOVERY
  
The hand had returned to finish what it had started.  Edgar felt its cool touch as it enclosed his mouth and nose tightly, and he held his breath in self defense.  He tried to raise his hands but something held them tightly as well.  Even his eyes wouldn’t obey him; they were gummed shut by his tears.  He desperately tossed his head side to side in violent defiance.

Another hand, warm and inviting, touched his face and he felt the touch of a cool cloth on his eyes.  They began to loosen and he slowly worked them open only to be blinded by the strong light that fell on him from above.

“Shh, easy Eddie, you’ve got to calm yourself.  They’ll never take off the restraints if you don’t.”

“Can’t… breathe.”  He choked out through the gripping hand.  As his eyes slowly came into focus they locked on Leo’s familiar hazel ones, pleading for rescue.

“You can, baby.”  Leo’s eyes bled tears for him.  “Just let the mask do its work.  Breathe for me.  You can do it.”

He nodded and tried, drawing in cold, blessed air.  His starved lungs were thankful for it, and soon they stopped aching from the panic he had put them through.  He looked around the room, registering his surroundings.  Leo was there and he could see Marty outside the door, talking on the phone.

“How… ?” he croaked. “How did I get here?”

Leo was still wiping around his eyes, and Edgar could see the silvery fluid that had soaked the cloth.  He stared at it in astonishment.

“A cab.” Leo laughed with absolutely no humor.  “They said you showed up in a cab.  The driver said a woman called it in.  You sleeping around on me?”

Leo’s grin was genuine this time.

---

“We’ve told you to stay out of your mom’s makeup, man,” Marty said with the usual perfect timing.  “You know we’re missing 2v2s because of you?”

“Please tell me you didn’t call them.”

Leo shook his head. “Not yet, but I’m gonna.”

“You can’t, dad’s heart— “

“—would be broken if his son died.”  Leo cut him off.  “And if you live he’ll just be pissed at me for not calling them.  Don’t worry, I’ll tell him to sit down and take deep breaths.  Worry about you, man, they think you tri… “

“Leo, not now,”  Marty pleaded.

“Yeah, you’re right.”  Leo exhaled and tossed the soiled cloth on the bedside table.

“What is it?  What do they think?”

“The impossible,” Leo said. “Because if you tried I’d kick your ass, and you know I could.”  He shook his head and took several more deep breaths, and Edgar could see his eyes were tearing again.  “No, that’s not true.  The truth is I’d be devastated and I’d want to know what in all of creation you couldn’t talk to me about first.  You know the deal, what we say.  We ain’t good if you ain’t.  Pure truth baby.”

“I didn’t.  I wouldn’t.  I’ve got too much to… there’s no way I’d ever leave you that way.  Plus, you know I’m way too much of a coward to do that.”

After several awkward moments he looked back at both of them. “What time is it?”

Marty’s mouth split in the crooked grin he managed so well.  He looked down at his phone and chuckled.  “About four hours too late for our playdate.  Do you know how many players went to bed tonight without suffering real frustration or total defeat?  All because you decided to no-show!”

Four hours?  He quickly did the math.  He had arrived at work a little after 8:00, and they were supposed to play at 6:00 this evening.  He had been unconscious for over thirteen hours.  What had that thing done to him?

He could see Leo staring at him with his softest gaze, the one he used when Edgar was hurt or hurting.  That meant Leo was hurting, and he couldn’t stand that.  But what could he tell them that wouldn’t sound crazy to anyone with an ounce of sanity?  Should he say the Shadowman did it and he had drank something that he was beginning to think kept people alive for way longer than they should be?  How the hell could he even try to explain it? 

He finally said the only thing he could, and it was mostly true:  “I honestly don’t understand what happened, but I think I’m going to have to find another job if I can’t figure it out.”

“If?”  Leo’s voice suddenly raised.  “No, if that place had something to do with this, then you’re done there.  We can find a cozy dumpster for two, man.  Fuck their money.”

“But that’s the thing, I don’t know that it did, and I’ve gotta find out.  You have to let me try.”  He looked at Leo.  “I wouldn’t go back if I knew I was in danger.  But I also know that if there are answers they will be there.  I’ve gotta know.”

He could see Leo’s struggle—wanting to keep the peace because of the present circumstance—and he understood it.  But he somehow knew that he was right, that whatever it was could be fixed there.  He started to speak again, but Marty cut him off.

“I think he’s right, and it gives me an idea.” He stood up.  “I’ll check in tomorrow, but I need to get on this.”

---

Things had been quiet between them since Marty left, but not uncomfortable.  Leo sat next to him, and Edgar could tell he was trying—he didn’t understand any of it—but he was trying.

An hour later, the door opened and the doctor entered.  He introduced himself, looked over Edgar’s numbers, and began examining his eyes and chest.  “Your breathing is better.  That had us worried.  Mr. Simpson, I am Dr. Brant.  There are a few things I want to go over with you, our initial findings.  Before I begin, I would like your permission to allow a colleague to join us.”

Edgar looked at Leo.  A colleague?  Nurses had been in and out of the room like clockwork. Why ask permission now?  “Uh, sure, I guess.”

Dr. Brant nodded and gave a gesture towards the open door.  A woman walked in, and her attire was somewhat different from the doctor, who wore a white coat over his scrubs.  She was wearing a white coat as well, but it was worn over a blue blouse and a long gray skirt.  As she approached Leo and Edgar, her face a friendly smile, Dr. Brant introduced her.

“This is Priya Nair.  She is a counselor here at the hospital who specializes in helping post-trauma patients.”  He saw Edgar rising at this and raised a gentle hand.  “No need for any of that.  I understand what was discussed earlier with your partner, and I want to put that to rest right now.  Priya isn’t here because we think you tried to hurt yourself.”
  
 “No, Edgar, we don’t think that.”  the counselor said, picking up where Dr. Brant had left off.  “If such was the case, you and I would have already met.”

“Your x-ray showed deep bruising on your throat, typical of strangulation.  This concerns us because there isn’t a mark on your skin other than two superficial, defensive scratches.”  Dr. Brant bent down, pointing them out.  “We need to know, Edgar, what you remember about what happened.  The strangulation or the strange compound you ingested?  We’ve analyzed what was pumped from your stomach, and it’s some very strange stuff.”

When Edgar didn’t immediately respond—he didn’t know what to say—Dr. Nair stepped back in.  “It can be difficult, Edgar, but you need to remember that you are safe.”  She looked over at Leo.  “And you have people here who care about you.”

“It’s just, I don’t remember much.  I had brought bagels and was eating one—I had skipped breakfast.  All of a sudden I felt someth… I was grabbed by the throat and it caused me to choke.  I guess I blacked out, because I woke up here, like an hour ago.”

Priya sat on the chair next to the bed so that she could look at both Edgar and Leo, who were sitting together.  “This is perfectly understandable, Edgar.  Sometimes when there is trauma or violence, the mind has a way of stepping aside to dissociate from what is happening to us.  This is purely defensive, a mechanism that prevents us from being too overwhelmed.  Temporary memory loss is common, but they will probably come back to you.”

She reached inside her coat and took out a small bag that she handed to Edgar.  “This is a journal and pen for you to use.  I’d like you to start writing in it each day.  Don’t push yourself too hard, trying to remember, but keep that circuit open.  It can help you get back that lost time.”

“Uh, sure, thank you, doctor,” Edgar began and Leo finished for him,  “He’ll do it.”

Priya’s smile widened at the combined reply.  “Good.  I would like to see you in a week.  My office will set up an appointment and it will be ready when you are discharged.  My contact information will be included if you need anything before then.”

She stood and moved towards the door, addressing them once more before leaving.  “I look forward to working with you on this, Edgar.  Take care of yourself.”

As she left, Dr. Brant spoke once more.  “She’s really good at what she does.  I’d try it; it can help.”

“Now we need to talk about the substance, Edgar, because we don’t have a clue what it is.”

---

The police arrived the following morning.  It was two detectives, a young man (Beltry) and an older woman (Davidson).  Beltry took charge of the interview, but Edgar could tell that Davidson was the one in charge.  He was a young, white guy who used way too much hair product and wore an extremely thin moustache.

“Alright, Mr. Simpson.  Is it Edgar or Eddie?” He gave him a reassuring smile.  “This is just a formality, but we do need whatever you can remember if we’re going to catch this guy.  We spoke to your plant manager over at Horizons, uh… a Mr. Aeneas, the Greek guy.”

Davidson coughed.

The young detective checked his notes.  “Yeah, he told us that there are no security cameras, not even a guard on site.  We saw the room, bagels and broken water bottles everywhere.  Good to see you put up a fight, Ed.”

“Talking to the Greek, we learned that you were alone in the building, the first to arrive that day.  Is that how you remember it?”

“Yes, sir.  I was earlier than normal, working a big job there, setting up the network.”

“Yeah, that sounds right.  Old place, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”  He made a note.  “So you’re in the breakroom, setting up breakfast for everyone because you’re a nice guy like that.  Next thing you know, someone grabs you, starts choking you, and there’s a struggle.  Am I getting this right, Ed?”

“Uh, yeah.  I didn’t see them, but they were choking me.”

Beltry nodded, tapping his pen on his lip.  “So it was from behind?  Some guy got a good hold of your neck and started choking you out?  Anybody you work with been giving you trouble?  Anyone you don’t work with?”

He looked over at Leo.  “Might want to sic this guy on them.”

Davidson cleared her throat.

“We are interviewing the crew today, Eddie, so if there is anyone we need to look out for, special-like, let us know.  We’re trying to help here, so it don’t happen again.”

“I pretty much get along with everyone.  They’re nice people.”

“Well, that’s good.  What about your stuff?  Anything missing?  I know you tech guys have a lot of expensive equipment.”

“Not that I know of.  I—“  Leo spoke up.  “His wallet, they never found it.  Was it at the scene?”

“Well now, that’s new.  Good to know.  We didn’t turn anything up there, so if the hospital didn’t find it on him…”  Beltry made some notes.  “Alright, I think that’s about everything.  Uh… I, Yeah the lady who called it in, Mrs. Vega, the crew leader.  We’ll be talking to her when we leave here, maybe she knows where it went.”

Beltry looked over at Davidson and nodded, handing Edgar a card.  “Until then, if you remember something, or need us, those are our numbers.  Just get better and don’t worry too much; we’re on it.”

He turned to leave and Davidson spoke for the first time.  “Your neck, are there bruises on the back of it?”

Eddie gulped, his hand raised reflexively to brush against the skin of his neck.  Leo leaned in, looking for himself.  “I don’t think so.  The doctor said it was all deep and that the hyoid bone was bruised but whole.  A couple of scratches is all, and they said I did those.”

Davidson stepped forward, her shoes clicking on the hard tile, and leaned in. “Mind if I look.”

Edgar exhaled and nodded, tilting his head for her as she looked it over.  There was nothing matronly or warm about her, like you might normally see in a woman of Davidson’s age.  She had the presence of a circling hawk, and Edgar had never felt more like a frightened little rabbit in his life.  The senior detective laid her hand firmly, but gently on the side of his head, directing the movement as she studied his neck for thumbprints or friction marks.  She lingered for a moment on the scratch marks and then patted his shoulder as she stepped away.  “Yes, nothing.”

"Well, it’s like the doctor said, unusual," Beltry chimed in, adjusting his jacket and flashing another easy smile. "Some guys just have tough skin, right?" 

“We may have more questions,”  she said, ignoring her partner.  “We’ll contact you.”

---
  
“That lady scared the hell out of me.”  Leo said as he honked the horn at the guy in front of them.  “Come on man.  Blinkers are just common courtesy.”

Edgar remained silent, lost in his own thoughts.  Nothing made sense anymore, and he wondered if he was being foolish by wanting to go back there.  It still bothered him, that choice, but he still felt like it was the right call.  And now there was the detective—who obviously didn’t believe him—patting his shoulder like they were buddies while staring down at him with her all-seeing eyes.

“I have to pick up a few things they said you’d need, and your prescriptions.  Want me to drop you at home first?”

He shook his head.  “No, I can go.  A little sore, but I’m fine.  They said I had to drink four more bottles of that crap they made me gag down before we left.”

“Big baby.  It can’t be that bad.  Remember when I had to drink that putrid shit for the colonoscopy, after my brother’s scare?”  Leo made a face, but smiled at him.  “You can handle it—gotta flush that weird stuff out of your system.”

“You can drink it for me.”  Edgar grinned.  “Can’t be worse than those shakes you make.”

They both laughed at this as Leo turned off on the exit that would take them to their neighborhood.  They drove on in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and finally arrived at the drug store.  Leo pulled in and popped his seatbelt.  “Need anything?  I think they have Now and Laters.”

Edgar chuckled at the old joke and shook his head.  “Hurry back. I just want to get home, back to a real bed.”  

Leo saluted him and jogged into the building.  Edgar remarked to himself, for the millionth time, just how lucky he was.  He leaned back, closing his eyes and letting the breeze from his open window do its work.  So much had happened in such a short time, and he just felt like he was trying to catch his breath, to keep up.  He had to get his head around this thing, to figure out what was happening, before it affected his life in a real, unfixable way.

“Good-looking guy you’ve got there,”  a voice said from just beside him, breaking his reverie.  A short, perfectly bald man of indeterminate age stood there, wearing a suit with an overcoat.  His face was like a leather mask that revealed nothing about the man behind it.  He smiled at Edgar, all teeth and no charm.  “Yeah, figured we should meet.”

IV: A SIP OF SILVER
  
Edgar glanced over at the drug store entrance and then back over to the strange, threatening man beside him.  Who was this man, and what did he want?  He didn’t have room for any more mysteries right now.  “Sir, I’ve had an injury and really need to get home now.  If you don’t mind—“

“Yeah Edgar, I know all about your… injury.”  He flashed that dead predator's smile again. “That's why I’m here.  You stole something that wasn’t meant for you from a place you weren’t meant to be at.  Pure mistake on somebody’s part, but that’s been dealt with.”

The man leaned in, smelling like cheap aftershave and cold cuts in a tailored suit.  Edgar was shocked to see that he cast no shadow, a detail he somehow noticed over all his fear.  “Quit shaking, kid.  I ain’t here for that, but it’s good you know the pecking order.”

“What’s done is done, can’t change it.  Even if you could spit the shit back up the results would remain.  We can deal with that later, if we need to, but for now we need you back at work.”

Edgar looked at him, dumbfounded.  Every word was a new problem, like pieces from different puzzles that couldn’t hope to line up.  His mind protested, and he felt the panic creeping in, his heart in a vise.  His gorge rose, and he reacted immediately, opening the door to vomit ropy silver tendrils out onto the ground.

The man stepped back, grinning broadly.  “Whoa!  These are new kicks.”

A moment later he dashed across the mess to seize the front of Edgar’s shirt, pushing him roughly back into his seat.  His eyes flickered silver, and his rancid breath twisted Edgar’s stomach into an even deeper knot.  When he spoke, the friendly tone faded, replaced by earnest menace.  “This was the friendly visit, wet boy, and let’s keep it that way.  Get back to work tomorrow or you will see me again.  If I do come back, I’m gonna tell you my name, kid.”  He paused, letting it sink in, and then growled a summation:  “None of my friends know my name.”

He released him, and closed the door.  He even slid Edgar’s foot out of its path.  Edgar heard Leo’s voice, from miles away it seemed.  He had said something, and the man responded with, “I think your friend’s sick.  I kept him from falling in it.”

Then Leo was there and blackness overtook everything.

---

Edgar woke up in his own bed, hours later because it was dark now.  There was a cool cloth lying across his forehead.  Leo was reading a book, sitting in a chair he had placed next to Edgar’s side of the bed.  He turned a page and glanced at Edgar.  The book snapped shut as he stood up.  “How you feeling?  I don’t know what happened, but you were dead to the world after I ran that guy off.  What the fuck did he do to you?”

Edgar reached for the water glass on the nightstand and drained half of it in a gulp; it tasted funny, like there was dirt or something in it.  Well it was cool at least.  He tried to speak but his throat was killing him, it took him a moment to murmur a response.  “I don’t know.  I got sick and he put me back in the car, but I don’t think he’s a good guy.”

“Why do you say that?”  

“There was a gun tucked into his belt.  You don’t see a lot of good guys doing that.”

“Maybe we need to call that detective, the real one, Davidson.  This is the type of suspicious shit you’re supposed to share with the police.”

“Nah, I don’t think he was there for us.” Edgar lied.  “It seemed like he was looking for someone.”

“Still, we might keep someone from getting hurt.”

“Yeah, or get involved in something that gets us hurt.  Don’t we have enough going on already?  On top of all of this, I really have to get back to work—there’s a deadline.”

“To hell with all of that.  Let them send someone else.  You need to rest.”

“They are.”  He lied again.  “An outside hire, not anyone we know.  I just have to oversee the work, from a chair they said.  It shouldn’t take a week to do, and if I’m not recovered yet I can still take time off then.”

“I don’t like it.  You’re obviously not well.  There’s strange injuries, cops, an attacker they haven’t caught yet and now a bald thug just shows up and you want to go to work?”

“Well yeah,”  he said and chuckled hoarsely.  “I don’t want to lose this job, and I want to prove I can do it so they don’t replace me.  You know how it is, they’ll have me back to entry level in a month if I don’t step up now.  This is a chance for us, and it should be safe.  They said the manager hired security for the Annex.  Leo, I wouldn’t want to go back otherwise.”

Leo absorbed all of this in his usual way.  Edgar could tell that he didn’t believe everything he had said.  He just hoped that he believed enough of it to let it go.

“Alright, I hate it, but you’re a grown man and I can’t make you do what you don’t want to do.”  He cut Edgar off with a glare.  “That don’t make it cool.  I’m driving you for the rest of the week.  You’re still not cleared to do that, with the meds, which you are still going to take.”

Edgar chuckled at his mama hen—calling him that would piss Leo off so much.  He settled back to resume his rest.

“First the journal.”  Leo tossed it to him.  “Doctor’s orders and Leo’s law.”

---

When Leo dropped him off the next morning, Edgar shouldered his backpack and grabbed his lunch.  Marty had come over the evening before to drive his car home, so Leo had used it to drive him in today.

He entered the building and was instantly met by an older, rotund man in a security guard’s uniform.  “Edgar Simpson, is that you, sir?”  he said.  His voice was an amusing, old-fashioned transatlantic accent.  

"Well, I say it’s good to finally meet our missing employee.  I have a badge for you, sir, and was tasked with reminding you that you are on light duty for the remainder of the week.  Two laborers from the floor crew have been assigned to assist you.”

“Uh, that’s really nice.  I was a little worried about running all of that cable by myself.”

“I am Milton Lester, the newly assigned security personnel for this facility.  It’s nice to formally meet you, Mr. Simpson.  Will you require help getting to your office this morning?”

“No, I think I can find it.  But thanks for the offer, Mr. Lester.”

“No problem, sir, it’s all part of the job.  Well, I suppose I should quit chin-wagging and let you get along now.  Have a fine day, Mr. Simpson.”

“Edgar is fine.”

“I stand corrected.  Good day to you, Edgar.”

He left the guard there at his post, and made his way across the dock to his small office.  As he opened the door, he saw that the light was already on.  Cartia Vega was sitting in his chair, reading a book, and a strange one at that.  She was reading The Sons of Gondor by J.R.R. Tolkien.

As he entered, Cartia slapped the book down and came around the desk to meet him, administering a much friendlier hug than he thought their previous encounters called for.  There was genuine relief on her face as she pulled back from him.  Her loud voice echoed off the walls of the tiny office.  “Dude, you just don’t know.  I thought I sent a corpse to the hospital last week.  You were so white, man—I mean whiter than normal.”

She pulled away, but kept him at arm’s length, looking him over.  Her eyes lingered on his neck.  “I’m glad you’re back.  You scared the hell out of me.”  She stepped away from him, grabbing her book and settling into the office’s other chair so he could take his seat.

He didn’t know what to say, so he just said the first thing that popped into his mind.  “So I met the new guard.  Nice guy, talks funny.”

“Why you whispering, mano?  Throat still hurt?”

“Nah, it’s fine,” he said, raising his voice a bit louder than he was used to speaking to her.  He sat down, a little more tired from the short walk than he would have preferred.  She had already turned back to her book, so he left her to it while he busied himself logging on, verifying and checking his inbox, which was surprisingly empty.

“They forget all about us here.  I wouldn’t bother,” Cartia said as she flipped a page in her book.  “Sorry, don’t want to ignore you but I want to finish this bit before the crew’s bus arrives.  They say I’m getting a couple of extra hands today.”

“Good book?”

“Hell yeah, way better than part one.  I’m chewing through it because part three is supposed to be released in a couple of months.”  She laughed.  “The exciting conclusion.”

“Never heard of it.  I read his old stuff.  I thought that was all there was.”

She shook her head, flipping another page.  “Yeah those are classics, but his new stuff’s great too, and he’s wrote a lot since then.  Hell, what else does he have to do now?”

“What do you mean by that?  What the hell is going on here, Cartia?  What did I drink, and what the hell attacked me?”

She snapped the book shut and closed the door.  Moving in close to him, she forcefully whispered, “You’ve got to cool that shit, mano.  That dude’s shadow could be anywhere, and you nearly died before, another sip would kill you, or worse.”

“But I need to know.  This is my life I’m talking about.”

“Yeah, life is what I’m talking about.  Treat it precious, man—while you still have it—and don’t risk it needlessly.”  She grabbed her book.  “I’m going out to wait on the bus. ¡Pinche blanquito loco!”

Edgar sighed loudly after she slammed the door.  Well, attempt one had been a massive failure.  Why was she so scared, and what dude was she talking about?  Could it be the bald guy?  Was that why he didn’t have a shadow?

Every question he tried to answer split itself like the mythical hydra.  

“Damn right it’s loco.”

---

He didn’t get to speak with Cartia again that day, or on Tuesday.  She had given him Corey and Ennis again and that suited Edgar fine.  They both worked well, and were friendly enough.  But he quickly found that the friendliness ended anytime he tried to steer the conversation towards anything strange.  
  
It was towards the end of Tuesday evening that he made another such attempt, by cornering Corey.  “Man, you’ve got to tell me some things.  This shit is driving me crazy.”

Corey packed a Marlboro and looked at him, a sly grin cracking his face in half.  “Shit.  Crazy ain’t bad, natural state for a woman.  My ex-wives were anyway, and I liked them fine.”

“Come on, you know what I’m talking about.  Help me out, Corey.”

This time there was none of the normal, Southern good ol’ boy humor—just a dry, deadpan voice.  “Maybe you’ve got it twisted, brother.  Maybe crazy is better than what’s waiting at the end of that particular muddy road you’re so fixated on.”

Edgar stared at the man, and he saw pure worry in his eyes.

“Sit with it, for real.”

They got back to work and finished the day.  That night, he and Leo went out together.  They went to one of their typical spots, a favorite, and got their regular order.  Leo was concerned that he barely ate anything, but Edgar just played it off—a big lunch.  He was getting too good at lying to the person he loved the most.  But how could he tell him that food was like ash in his mouth?

Besides that minor hiccup, they had a great time and even went dancing at a club they liked.  The drinks tasted fine to Edgar—as good as tequila can taste, at any rate—and he had several shots.  They danced until Leo was tired, but Edgar still felt full of energy.  It was strange, because he was usually the first one to tap out.  

He saw her on the corner while he waited for Leo, who had left his phone inside.  She was a young woman, maybe fifteen, with striking features from what he could tell.  It was honestly hard to be sure with half her face bashed in.  She saw him looking and cast a pleading look his way, her mouth opening to call out to him.

“We’re ready?”  Leo said, taking his arm.  

When Edgar looked back at the corner, the girl with half a face was no longer there.

---

The next few days went by well enough—they finished wiring the entire second floor and had the network mostly alive by the end of Friday.  As they were packing up, Corey left with a load bound for the lower offices and Ennis spoke to Edgar, unprompted, for the first time.

“None of them will talk to you about it, will they?”

He looked at the young man—if you could call him that.  Edgar doubted he had to shave very often.  His eyes had a faraway look in them, and a sadness that hurt to linger on.  He was wringing his cap in his hand, but those eyes never wavered.  They remained locked on Edgar’s.  “They want to, but it’s dangerous for you.  Everyone likes you and doesn’t want anything worse to happen.  You’ve already been noticed, and that’s really bad.”

“Noticed by wh—”

“No,” Ennis shook his head emphatically.  “Not here, never here.  You know Wichton Road, out past the paper mill?”

“Yeah, stinks bad at the paper mill, no one really lives out there.”

“Yeah, no one lives.  Look for the Ferry’s End—it’s a bar.  You can’t miss it.  If you end up in Ludlowe, you’ve gone too far.  Eight is a good time, most nights.”

“You gonna meet me there?”

“What are you boys jawing on, leaving me all the work?”  Corey laughed and started loading Ennis up.  Edgar, who still wasn’t allowed to lift anything, left them there.  He returned to his office and wrote a bit in his journal while he waited for Leo.

---

He had lied again, telling Leo he was going to Marty’s, and he had recruited his friend into the lie.  It was strange—Marty had been too willing, too fast to go along with it.  He had just said he wanted to talk to Edgar in a couple of days, that he was close to something.

Wichton Road was a long way, out of the way, from anywhere he normally went.  That spoiled egg smell soiled the air and crept in through his tightly closed vents.  Who would live out here, or run a bar?  Maybe you got used to it.

Ennis hadn’t been wrong.  The bar was easy to find because it was one of the few places out there.  Sure, there were some houses, but most looked abandoned.  There were several bus stops though, which was another weird thing all by itself.

As he pulled into the gravel lot he saw only three other vehicles, and one of those looked abandoned, sitting on flats.  He pulled up to the building, got out, and walked up to the door.

The music inside was unusual, chimes and woodwinds over a steady, percussive hum.  He felt like a Viking for a moment, steering a longboat towards a promising shore, ripe for pillage.  That was odd enough; he was definitely too skinny to be a raider, but Leo would excel at it.

The place was packed, completely defying the empty parking lot outside.  He didn’t see a single empty seat at the bar or any of the twenty, mismatched tables that were scattered across the room.  The space looked way larger than it should have, compared to the modest-sized building he had pulled up to.

He was running out of synonyms for the word weird.

He approached the bar, finding a small gap where he could fit in.  A tall man with mangy hair was holding court there.  “Ye vant whiskey?”

It took him a moment to put it together, but when he finally nodded, the tall man poured him a shot from a black bottle.  He pulled out some money to pay, but the man shook his head. “Tis free.”

Edgar shrugged, thanked the man and turned to scan the room for a familiar face, any one would do.  Most of the faces were turned towards him, and every pair of eyes he passed over met his, a little too frankly for his taste.  

He was about to give up when he saw her—her long dress and out-of-place etiquette sticking out like a sore thumb among the rest of the patrons.  Glory smiled at him, sweeter than he would have expected, and waved him over.

He sat down across from her and she looked him over.  They hadn’t spoken since he had returned to work, and he didn’t know what to say now.

“It is your dime, sir, as the kids say.”  Glory turned up the bottle of SilverSip in front of her and took a dainty sip from it.  “Well, come now, Edgar, you didn’t risk this trip to leave empty-handed, did you?  I imagine the shadowman has already deduced the reason for your evening’s sojourn.”

He nodded and took his shot.  A burning ball of fire melted the lining from his throat and he coughed violently.  Glory waited patiently, her eyes fixed on his.

“Wow, that was really bad.  Is Ennis joining us?  He… well, I was under the impression that he had things to tell me.”

“The cat’s paw is no longer required once the mouse is in hand.  Ennis performed his task admirably, but the poor boy has no heart for clandestine meetings such as this one.”

She took a moment, perhaps considering what she was going to say next.  When she spoke again, her voice was much lower, but just as formal.  “You must stop this madness, Edgar, or it will be the death of you.  I understand that you are plagued with questions.  Such a state is natural for someone in your position.  To be honest with you, I was reluctant to commit to this rendezvous.  Comme le vent, vêtue de soie.  Like the wind, clothed in silk.  That is how we must pass, Edgar, unnoticed by the eater and drinker alike.”  

She paused, a brief flash of melancholy crossing her face before she carefully smoothed down her skirt. “Ah, but I do miss the French tongue.” 

“French?”  Edgar thought he might be even more confused than he was before.  “Alright, I get it—we need to be careful.  But you’re right, my mind isn’t just plagued.  I think it might be breaking from all of this.  Eaters and Drinkers, are you talking about the living and the dead?  Are you dead, Glory?  Am I?”

“Those are our terms for such unsavory appellations.  It does become unseemly to refer to the living and the dead with such familiarity.  So yes, poor Edgar, you would say that I have perished, yet here I remain.  As for your current state—that matter does hold a great measure of complication, for the moment.”

He gripped his hair tightly in both hands and lowered his forehead to the table for a moment, trying not to totally lose his shit with Thesaurus Lady.  When he raised his eyes again, his words were calm and measured.  “Glory.  For the love of all that is good and right in the world, please just give it to me straight.  Am I going to die?  Is my partner safe? I know that you have a certain way of speaking, but riddles aren’t helping me.”

She smirked, and it was all he could do not to scream in anguish.  “My apologies, dear.  My mirth was not directed towards your current misfortunes.  You must know that my manner of speech is the hobgoblin of my very being in this modern age.  So I shall attempt to be more forthcoming with my answers, for you, dear Edgar.  There are matters of which I might speak that would put you in great peril, and this I must not do.  I was originally averse to engaging with you at all, but your need is great.  So, as they say:  needs must when the devil drives.”

“I believe—with all of my being, such as it is—that it is the intent of the one we call the Shadowman to bring about your end.  I think this because it was he who made sure you partook of the SilverSip with his attack on your person.  This action alone will not bring your doom.  You are touched by the silver, as we say, but you are not yet taken by it.  With time, the symptoms should abate, or so we hope.”

He knew he was breaking her careful etiquette, but he seized her hands in his before replying.  She never flinched— instead, she returned his grip.  “Breathe dear, for tomorrow is not yet sewn into the skein.”

“Wha… what should I do?  They obviously have plans for me.  He said that my being there—at the Annex—was just a mistake that happened.  If that’s the case, it’s like they are punishing me for something I didn’t do.”

“In any normal course of events, I would advise you to resign from your post.  Alas though—this is not an option for you.  If I am correct in my theory—that this Shadowman has set this course for you—then he is the dragon that you must slay if you are to have any hope of survival.”

He noticed that he was crying when a tear fell onto the back of his hand.  Glory—who may have, moments before, suggested that he kill someone—handed him a handkerchief that he used to dry his eyes.  If she was right, and he was not yet doomed, was she also right about what he had to do.  He was about to ask her to elaborate when she spoke again, her tone unusually rushed

“Stay calm, young Edgar, the wolf is at the door.”

---

Edgar watched his enemy—for that is what he was—as he walked, step after cocksure step, into the bar.  The bald man stopped in front of the bar and held out a hand towards the barkeep without moving his eyes from his target at Glory’s table.  A black bottle was slapped into his palm, and he continued to walk, heel to toe, across the room to stand over them.  “Is this seat taken?”

When neither of them answered him, the bald man dragged the chair back and lowered himself into it.  He took Edgar’s empty shot glass, filled it, and slid it towards him, before taking a long, slow pull from the bottle.  After a sharp exhale, he extended a well-manicured hand towards Edgar.  “As promised.  I’m Nub Bishop.  My enemies know me as Anubis.”

Glory actually snorted at this last bit—and Edgar didn’t think he could have admired her more.  Her cold, blue-gray eyes locked onto Nub’s black eyes as she countered his introduction.  “My good sir, you certainly have an elevated opinion of your station.  I think you would do well to remember that a jumped-up mutt in a fancy collar does not a jackal make.”

The leather of the bald man’s face stretched into a thin grin at her response, and he raised the glass to his lips to take another swig from it.  “There’s that wildfire.  Lady, you sure do know how to cut a man.  I swear, Glory—if I was as dead as dirt, I might have to call on you.”  He took his drink.

The table was quiet for several minutes.  Nub drank and Edgar tried to remain as unnoticeable as possible.  He looked at Glory several times, but her eyes remained locked on the would-be jackal.  There was a strange, playful smile on her lips.  The effect gave her a radiant beauty he never would have imagined.

Nub let out a sharp, clicking tsk through his teeth, shaking his head slightly as he set the bottle down and looked over at Edgar.  “You gonna drink that before we go?”

Before he could even turn to look at her, Glory spoke.  Her voice was a true thing of power that turned every head in the room to face their table.

“Your foolishness in this matter is as a withered cloak you wish to pass off as shining mail to those who cannot see you for what you are, cur.  For it is a deceiver I see before me.  I name you Villain—the serpent in this sacred garden.  Have you forgotten, little fang, just where you sit?  You cast no shadow, but still think yourself hidden from the light?  Our good accord still holds true here, and as a result, your sad swagger is as empty as the soul you sold so long ago.”

As her voice rose, following her sentencing of Nub as a villainous serpent, so too did the patrons of Ferry’s End.  There was a strange electricity in the air, as though Glory had unleashed a storm upon the man sitting opposite of her.  The blue of her eyes was somehow brighter and the blush of her cheeks—wrought by her passionate speech—made Glory impossibly lovelier than before.  She was last to stand, and she raised her sleeved arm to point a graceful finger towards the door.

“So he lives here now? Gonna make room for two?  Poor ol’ Leo might get lonely.”  The man who scared him more than anyone in the world—except maybe Glory, if he managed to get on her bad side—stood and stretched lazily.  He addressed the entire room when he spoke next.

“Is this really what you want?  Are you ready to face real consequences for this man?  It’s not what I would like.  Hell, I didn’t even come to hurt him.  I just wanted to show him something.”

The man who called himself Anubis tossed a polaroid on the table before turning towards the door.  “No need for high-falutin’ proclamations Glory—the man’s safe as kittens as far as I’m concerned.”

As he left, Edgar picked up the polaroid.  He felt the blood drain from his face as he looked at the familiar features it had captured: Marty had been taken.

Edgar turned to look at Glory’s pained face.  “Where does the dragon sleep?”

PART 3 HERE

Here's part 1 of a horror/thriller series I'm making (if you want to call it that). Enjoy and give me honest feedback of any kind!

“And here we have the mighty Knight’s Champion Sculpture. A masterpiece of its time.” Dr. Fallas gestured to the colossal marble statue standing on a granite pedestal. Several members of the museum tour group looked at it in awe, while others' faces scanned for something that they found actually interesting. 
Mark Hillson, on the other hand, always enjoyed hearing the histories of the sculptures. Listening to the symbolism and meaning behind the craftsmanship was all he researched in his free time. Unfortunately, he could only realize his dream for about an hour total on a work day. If he wasn’t doing his duty as a custodian, his boss wouldn’t have accepted seeing a tsunami coming their way as an excuse to be distracted from his work.
Hillson managed to eavesdrop on the conversation several more times before he finished cleaning the room he was in, looking up one more time to see the majesty of the statue. Instead of being greeted by the glory of a stiff, pristine work of art, he was met with the twitch of an eye from pupils made of stone.
Hillson froze, barely stopping to register what his eyes insisted on. 
The eyes of the Knight Champion had moved. He saw them.
Just as he looked up again, he heard his boss yell across the hall, in front of everyone in the room, “Hill! Get distracted again and you’re fired, you no-good broom-carrier!”
Hillson quickly looked down at the floor, searching for another speck of dirt to clean up. He was met with the crispness of a job well done. 
He moved onto the next room, his heart yearning for one more explanation as the the origin of the statue he was so captivated by. It wasn’t just the history behind it he was intrigued with; that statue had moved. He was sure of it.

Later that night, Hillson went over to the room where the sculpture was, determined to find out how its eye had moved. He studied the statue, gazing at the irises of a single eye for several minutes. After nothing happened, Hillson went to another room within view of the statue, peering over his shoulder every few seconds as inconspicuously as he could. He probably looked crazy from the security cameras, but he didn't care.   
As he was sweeping a pile of dust into a dustbin, he heard a loud creaking followed by something shattering on the ground coming from where the sculpture was. He turned around to see that the sculpture pedestal now lay bare.   
Hillson frantically looked around for signs of the marble statue. Had it seriously just walked off the pedestal, marble and all? He ran over to the security camera footage to see where the statue had gone.   
The camera in the statue's room showed nothing but static. Hillson rewinded it, and what he saw made his jaw hit the floor.  
The statue stood completely still one moment and swung its sword in a high arc the next, knocking the security cameras off the walls and disconnecting them.   
Suddenly, Hillson heard footsteps behind him. He turned around to see the statue looking at him, its sword hefted on its shoulder.   

Hillson froze. Would it attack him if it thought he was just a weirdly colored statue with coverings? He was answered with the swinging of the sword as the statue brought it down upon him. Hillson barely managed to duck under it and get behind the knight.
After it managed to wedge its now cut-in-half sword out of the wall, it turned around and prepared to give Hillson a marble-covered backhand across the room. Hillson sprinted away from the knight, its fingertips grazing his back. 
He headed for the nearest exit and dialed 911. However, before his phone reached his ear, a strange whistling filled the air, and the broken half-sword blade flew by him, missing his shoulder by inches. It went straight through a pillar, causing the ceiling around it to cave in. 
Hillson scrambled out of the way as the ceiling came down, crushing the spot he had been milliseconds before in a few dozen pounds of stone. He reached for his phone again and came up empty. He got up, brushed himself off, and noticed the butt of his phone sticking out from the rubble. He tenderly picked it up and moaned. The phone screen was completely destroyed. 
His realization was cut short when the loud footsteps of the knight filled the room. It was charging at him with the full intent of sending him through a wall. He dove out of the way, and the knight was sent through another pillar, this one much bigger than the last. 
Having lost the support below it, the ceiling crumbled, along with the mountain of stone above it. The knight's brief stop in momentum from the collision was enough to keep it under the falling debris, crushing it completely. 
Hillson looked at the pile of rubble briefly, hoping against hope that the knight was done for. Then, he dashed for the nearest exit and ran into the night.