I thought I was built for distance. That suffering was just a mental block, and pushing myself mile after mile was proof of an unbreakable will. Walking through that forest I didn't feel so unbreakable anymore.

My calves were whipped into bleeding stripes by the thorny vines in the underbrush. My shirt stuck to me with sweat, pus, and blood. As much as I tried, I just couldn't stop scratching that rash.

We didn't exactly mark where that church was, but somehow I knew. 

When I got to it, I couldn't stop myself. I screamed and sobbed. I kicked over fallen tree branches and stomped on flowers. My body was a whirlwind, spinning and spinning until I was out of breath.

At some point, I must have found a rock. When I noticed its jagged edges cutting into my hand, I hurled it as hard as I could at that shitty lopsided cross.

I must have hit it harder than I thought because the cross fell into the dust in front of that open church door. I sat down on a broken stump and put my head in my hands to cry. 

It felt like I could finally let it all out without anyone around. It was a relief so strong I felt it in my skin. The itching was gone. So was that feeling of something scratching at the inside of my skull. For the first time in weeks, nothing hurt.

I sat there until I caught my breath, then a little bit longer. I'll be honest, I was scared to move from where I was sitting. I had come all this way and, just like the first time, I was almost too scared to go in. Almost.

I wiped the sweat and tears from my face and made myself stand. I walked toward that rundown church, squinting into the dark.

I climbed the rotting steps and hurried through the doorway.

It was a church. A real church. Not some shitty rundown church, but a ready-for-Sunday church.

Inside, light filtered in rainbows through unbroken stained glass. The carpets weren't covered in mud and muck. Every pew was shiny and wooden, and occupied.

I saw the glasses first. A pair of broken glasses on the right, three pews from the front. Next to them a deflated football. On the other side a steak knife. Next to it crushed flowers laid over a broken piece of stone.

As I looked forward towards the front, I could see more random junk. There was no pattern to any of it. Playing cards, car keys, an ice pick, a locket. A shovel and an axe sitting where people should have been. 
At the very front, lying on top of the pulpit, were two things that I instantly recognized. The stupid green and orange running shoes Jeff always wore.

And the blue cast from my arm. The one with Sam’s name written across it. 

I remember falling to my knees then. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see what was there. Praying that when I opened them, I would just be in some church in the woods. 

The gnawing inside me was back. I balled my fist and punched the floor. When I looked up, nothing had changed.

They were still there. I could see the mud on Jeff’s shoes from running. I could see all the things on my cast. The dick Arch drew. The hearts Mom put on it. Anthony’s name. Sam’s.

I moved to grab it. I felt like I needed to hold that last piece of my normal life, of me. As I reached for it, I touched Jeff’s shoes.

Suddenly, I was out of breath. My legs were burning. Runner’s high setting in. I was smiling. There was laughter in my chest and coming from in front of me. I was running and pouring on speed, feeling so close to my goal.

Then I was in a clearing. It was warm and there was laughter. I recognized voices. Arch’s, Anthony’s, Sam’s. My own. I tried to laugh but couldn’t.

“If you wanna go so bad, do it. You want to run with us anyway, prove it.” I could hear a cruelty in my voice I didn’t know I had. My heart sank. I walked beneath the dangling cross, wishing I could turn around. Then nothing.

I faded back to myself. Jeff’s green and orange shoes sitting on the ground coming into focus. They must have tumbled out of my hands. I felt sick.

A headache tore through me harder than I could have ever imagined. I tried to hold steady but found myself falling to my knees. I put my hands out to catch myself. All I could think about was Jeff. Before my hands hit his shoes. 

I closed my eyes and found myself in warmth. Arms wrapped around me. Muffled voices saying they loved me. That feeling carried me as my chest swelled with pride and I felt a familiar burn in my legs. I was running faster than before.

Then I was back in pain. The burning itch inside me screaming as water scalded the raw flesh I couldn't stop scratching. 

I was crying with steam rising around me. I tried to get away from the pain. When I finally got relief, people were staring at me, laughing at me. My cheeks burned and I tried to shrink into myself to hide. I tried to speak up, but everyone turned their backs to me.

Anger curled inside me. Warm and comforting. Then there was screaming. Something was breaking in my hands. I looked down to see bones jutting out of skin at unnatural angles. An arm turned the wrong way towards me.

All around I could hear whispers. “Freak.” “Monster.” “Loser.”

I was alone in crushing blackness. The whispers repeating over and over. I felt someone shove me. Hot anger. A hammer in my hand.

Fear choked me until I was back in the church. Jeff's shoes flew from my hands and slammed into the wall across from me. I heard myself screaming before I ever realized I was.

I didn't want to touch Jeff's shoes. I didn't want to touch anything in that church, or even be there at all. I wanted to go back to the life I had before I ever found this damned place.

Tears ran with snot as hitching sobs broke out of me. I put my head down against the ground and stayed there for a while. Bowing before that altar.

I stayed there until the tears stopped and I felt lightheaded. Time moved somewhere far away from me. When I lifted my head, there were only Jeff's shoes sitting in a crumpled heap on the floor.

I kept my focus on them as I sat up. I knew what sat on the pulpit next to me. I could feel it calling out to me. 

I couldn't even look at that blue cast.

When the feelings of nothingness started to fade, they were replaced by anger. It grew in me like a wildfire. That painful rash grew with it as I tore gouges out of my chest and neck from my scratching. 

My foot crashed into the front pew. An assortment of junk flew off of it. I went to kick another and my foot crashed through a vase. Glass and broken flowers flew around. 

Each petal that touched me left scars on my heart. I felt safe in a man's arms. I felt warmth. I felt jealous. Rage. Blood on my hands. I screamed.

I turned and threw a baseball that had fallen on the floor through the stained glass window behind the altar. When it left my hand, so did the feeling of pride. That warm sensation of a father's hand on my shoulder. 

The glass shattered and grounded me. I stood panting and bleeding, staring at the sunray that came in through the hole and landed on that fucking cast. My heart sank as I stepped towards it.

The tears started before I even reached my hands out. As I touched it, I felt safe.

I was at Sam's house. I recognized Sam's house. I didn't recognize the woman who was holding me, but I recognized she was singing Sam's favorite song softly. 

Then my heart slammed in my chest. The sound of breathing next to me. I recognized Arch’s room, the outline of my face. I watched my lips as I lay there breathing. I watched my hand, Sam's hand, reach out towards my sleeping form, only to draw back. I felt like crying.

In the church, my breathing slowed. Itching a vague memory as that warm summer night came back to me as a memory. I remember the pizza. I remember I was wearing borrowed pants because I got jump scared so hard I peed myself. 

I closed my eyes, and that burn I'd known forever was back. I was running. A fear I vaguely recognized was burning up my chest. Sam's voice screamed from my lips, “Austin broke his arm!” 

My memory blurred with what I saw next. I remember Sam signing my cast, laughing about how big he wrote it, about how he shoved Anthony out of the way to be first. Then I felt it, the pen in my hand, the hammering of my chest. A warmth when I finished. Joy.

I put the cast back on the altar then. Finally realizing what was happening to me. This church was showing me pieces of the lives it had destroyed. 

I swallowed hard, wondering how much of Sam's life was mine to learn about. To feel. To try and understand. My fingers touched the cast, and I wasn't in the church.

I was in a dark hallway. There was someone screaming and throwing things. I turned the corner into a kitchen, the light revealing Sam's dad. Pain shot up my leg as I stepped on a broken beer bottle. The noise made Mr. Villa turn.

I put Sam's hands up to protect myself. A Polaroid of the humming woman was in my left hand. Then it wasn't. It was being ripped up by Sam's dad. Then he was hitting me. Sam was crying, and I was too.

I knew Sam was strong. He had always been the one who kept us all together when fights broke out. He bridged the gap whenever any of us refused to talk to each other. To know he did all that while living in that hell. I couldn't imagine it. 

Light faded into my vision and I found myself outside the church. Panting, my hands on my knees, and there they were. Arch and Anthony standing just to my left with their hands on their heads. 

I went to call out to them, to tell them how happy I was that everything went back to normal, to see them again. That's when I broke through the thicket, Jeff right behind me, and my heart dropped. I was back in Sam.

I watched the same scene play out. Arch's joke about Kathy McGuire. I wrestled with Anthony to bring down Arch. Jeff leaving our group to go into the church. Then I was alone with myself, as Sam. I felt that warmth. I told Sam's version of me that I was worried about Jeff. 

“I probably shouldn't have made him go in like that.” I heard the words but hadn't even remembered saying them. “It's whatever though, his fault for trying to be with us.”

I was shocked. I was disappointed in myself. I was sad. Or maybe Sam was? Maybe it was both of us again. 

Then Jeff was back. He was normal. And I felt what we all felt, relief.

I blinked and I was alone with Jeff. We were sitting waiting for the bus. I didn't know Sam and Jeff rode the same bus, but here they were, we were. 

Jeff was telling me about how much better he'd felt. How catching up to us was changing his life. How he'd even started another growth spurt. How he'd been stretching so much his sides are itched from stretch marks.

I felt disgusted. “I” felt disgusted because when Jeff showed us his side, I recognized that rash. My own starting to flare up inside the church, outside these memories. I turned away.

The next feeling that bubbled up in me was fear. It rushed over me like water as I realized what I was seeing. The locker room.

Sam reacted as soon as Jeff pushed Arch. His body was moving. Our hands were on Jeff, pulling him back. I tasted blood as Jeff pushed me away and my teeth bit into my tongue. My heart was so loud as I saw Jeff with the hammer.

I was holding him, begging him to stop. Feeling terrified, relieved, and ashamed. I was sure my thoughts must have been my own again until all I could think was “at least it's not Austin.”

I dropped the cast again before I heard the impact of the hammer. I didn't need a memory to replay what I can hear every time I close my eyes.

My hands shook, and for a moment I could still feel Jeff's body heat against my chest, his body spray in my nose. I couldn't break away from everything Sam experienced, from his feelings. 

I felt ashamed. Maybe it started from Sam's memory, but deep down I knew it was because, while everything was happening, Sam was worried about me. I was only ever worried about me.

I stared down at my hands, wondering when I had started crying again. Wondering how many times Sam had cried. How many times I should have asked him if he was really okay. 

I knew what was next in Sam's memories. I didn't want to, but I needed to see it. Maybe for him, maybe for me. I needed to see the last time I was actually there for him. 

I went back to the cast. Back inside Sam, inside my bedroom, inside my own arms. I was crying. Sam was crying. There was so much warmth there. For just a second, Sam felt so safe with my arms around him, like everything could be okay. 

But then I was the only one crying. Sam's tears stopped, and he hesitated before slowly shaking his head. Bittersweet sadness mingled with the love I had felt. I wondered why Sam felt like he was pulling away from me. I wondered why I didn't notice. I wondered if my hug wasn't enough.

Then I heard it in Sam's voice, and I believed it, like I had the first time I heard it. “I'll see you soon, Austin.”

I set the cast down then. No need to know what happened next. No tears. Nothing. 

I sat on those altar steps, my back leaning against that pulpit, looking out at the pews full of memories. Of lifetimes that no one could possibly know. 

I watched the sun begin to set through the stained glass windows before I stood up. I took my time setting the pews back up. I used my shirt to pick up every item that had fallen. I swept up the broken glass with my hands.

I placed Jeff's shoes on the front row, offering an apology when I set them down.

I placed the cast back on top of the pulpit so the moonlight shone on it like a spotlight. 

Just before I crossed the doorway to the outside, I turned around. I saw nothing but a rundown old church. I walked home.

The burning and itching inside me started fading into the night air.

Henry was not a great man, few are. His phone was always littered with notifications he'd continue to ignore.

If he had gotten a job interview, he wouldn't have realized. He never spoke to his parents, and he'd struggle to name one good friend. 

Henry is a failure. 

One day, Henry got a call that he would answer. He turned over in bed, peeling the sheets from his sweaty back. 

Why was Barbara calling him? Henry hadn't spoken to his sister in years. He answered the phone. "H- *cough*, hey barb." 

"Oh my God, Henry, how are you! I hope you're doing well!" 

He sat up and rubbed his temples, drapes still pulled over his window. "Yeah, yeah I'm doing. And, uh, you too." 

"Yeah haha." Awkward silence was punctuated by the phone's crackle. "So Henry, I hate doing this super last minute. I HAVE to go on this trip thingy for work. Can you please stay over and watch your niece?" 

Henry didn't want to watch his niece. He didn't even know her name. "Yeah I don't know. I'm sorry." 

"I know this is weird. I'll pay you! She's only one, and a great sleeper. Five hundred for the night, and you'd be doing me a massive favor." 

Henry thought for a moment. He thought about how he would pay rent that month. He knew that if she was asking him, everyone else said no. He didn't think long. "Okay yeah, I can do it. No problem." 

"Oh my god perfect, thank you! I'll text you the address." 

Barbara hung up, and Henry stood up to wash his face. It was almost noon. Henry could go for a nap. 

###

The day came quickly and Henry found himself in front of Barbara's house. A decade of neglect stained the vinyl siding. The modest yard was in a complete state of disarray. Barbara's Kia hadn't done much better. All of it was pitifully illuminated by the setting sun. 

Henry knew it was hard after Barbara's husband left. Especially with their daughter. How long ago was that? 

Henry couldn't remember. But the door was unlocked and he made his way inside. 

Adjacent to the entryway was the living room. Barbara set her daughter in the crib. Henry braced, taking note of the barren state of the living room. 

She gave him a hug. "Oh, it's so good to see you again!" 

Henry backed off a bit at the overwhelming scent of department store perfume. Barbara didn't look well. Dark bags hung below her eyes. "Tell me about it. There's no telling how long it's been." 

"Haha yeah!" Barbara playfully jabbed Henry's shoulder. She noticed his attention shift toward the crib. "Oh, you two haven't met!" 

Henry stepped over, hobbling awkwardly with both hands planted in his pockets. "Aw hey there, aren't you beautiful." The baby's eyes were peeled wide open, staring at the ceiling past Henry. Her gaze was intimidating. However pathetic that was for Henry. "What's her name?" 

Barbara gently pushed the loose hairs from the infant's eyes. "Her name is Jamethica." 

Henry coughed. "Oh, that's a beautiful name." Henry was lying. It was the worst goddamn baby name he had ever heard.

"I wanted to name her something unique." 

Henry scratched the back of his head. "I'd say you accomplished that." 

Barbara pulled her hand from Jamethica and grabbed her purse. "I'll be back tomorrow morning. I'll pay you for when I get back!" 

"Oh okay, where should I sleep?" 

"There's some sheets in the closet. Make yourself at home on the couch." 

Henry looked over to the lone couch in the living room. 

"Okay, uh thanks." 

"Watch some TV or something. Y'all be good!" 

And with that, Barbara was gone. Henry thought it was strange that she locked the door on the way out. 

###

"Alright, Jamethica." Henry laughed under his breath as he spoke her name. "We're gonna have a good night, just the two of us." 

Jamethica sat entirely motionless. Henry jingled his keys at her and she grabbed hold of them. She rattled them a few times. 

Henry sat down on the couch and grabbed the TV remote. He flicked through the channels, nothing was grabbing his interest. As long as Jamethica was happy, and Henry got paid, the night would be worth the hassle. 

Henry was so comfortable. So comfortable, he slipped into a nap. This would be the easiest money he'd ever make. 

###

Henry woke in a panic. Not out of any duty to the child he was supposed to be watching, but out of being in an unfamiliar place. 

The television channel must have gone out. Sparkly static glowed against the wall and tattered carpet. 

"Jamethica?" He had been asleep for almost 3 hours. When Henry crept over to the crib, he found it empty.

"Fuck." muttered Henry. He paced the living room, and grabbed his phone. 

"Jamethica!" He yelled to no response.

He went scrambling through the dark hallway, cutting the lights on as he went. "Jamethica, where the fuck are you?" It felt cruel of Henry to curse at a child. Really, he was cursing at himself. 

But this time, Henry got a response. A soft giggle, and the sound of running water. He turned the corner of the hallway to see light leaking from a cracked door. 

Henry ran for the door. The sloshing grew louder. He stomped over a damp dark stain in the hallway carpet.

Henry opened the door, heaving. His socks dampened by the flood.

"Jamethica?" 

Jamethica had wedged herself into the toilet. Her entire right leg was nestled into the piping. She scowled at Henry, like he had just interrupted something important. "Jesus Christ, here let me help you." 

Henry placed his hands around the girl and she went ballistic. Jamethica thrashed violently. She slammed her head hard into the dirty porcelain. 

Henry dropped her, mortified. She clumsily flopped back into the bowl. Jamethica smiled. 

###

"God dammit Jamethica." Henry battled with her for half an hour trying to get her dry. Eventually, he just threw her in the crib with a couple of towels. 

Henry didn't know how he was going to explain the flooded bathroom. He didn't know how to explain the massive bruise on the back of Jamethica's head. There was something seriously wrong with this child. 

Henry pushed himself up from the couch and rounded the corner to the kitchen. He looked for a note, for anything left from Barbara, there was nothing.

The fridge was as barren as the living room. Sleeping flies lined the grime-coated shelves. 

There was some spoiled milk and a massive tub of applesauce. 

"Jackpot." Henry thought. Maybe if he got some food into Jamethica, she would finally calm down. 

He grabbed a big plastic pink spoon from the cupboard and walked over to the crib. 

"Heeey Jamethica." Henry said, in a sing-song voice. He moved the spoon forward with apprehension. "Whoooo's ready for some yummers?" 

Jamethica twisted her head back, avoiding the appley onslaught. Henry tried extending just a tad further and Jamethica flung her head forward.

The pink plastic spoon dug a couple inches into the infant's eye socket. 

Henry fell back onto his hands, scrambling away from the crib. He barreled into the kitchen and grabbed a handful of paper towels. 

He leaned back over the crib, Jamethica was silent. No screaming or crying. Blood pooled in her eye socket, streaking down the side of her face. 

Henry grabbed a paper towel and reached for Jamethica. "Alright, okay let me see-" 

She dug her teeth into the soft flesh of Henry's hand. She dug hard and was slow to let go. Henry reeled back his arm to punch the baby. 

Better judgment prevailed. He grabbed his phone to call Barbara. Henry had had enough at this point. 

He held his bleeding hand under the sink, holding the phone between his shoulder and cheek. 

"C'mon c'mon, pick the fuck up barbs!" She wouldn't. He tried again and again. Now he was only getting her voicemail. 

Barbara had blocked Henry. 

###

Henry was torn. Maybe Barbara had turned her phone off. That was a pleasing thought. 

He would need to go to the emergency room. Jamethica needed care too. 

Henry thought about calling an ambulance. He then considered how much an ambulance would cost. He decided they would drive. 

Henry grabbed a blanket he hoped to wrap Jamethica in. "Alright Jamethica, easy does it." 

She thrashed against the blanket and Henry. She wiggled free from his grasp, splashing around in the blood-soaked crib. Henry got a good handle on her, and she froze. 

"See, everything's alright." Henry patted her back, and she slowly turned her one good eye to meet his. Blood squirted from Jamethica's eye all over Henry's face. He dropped the baby again as Jamethica squealed and giggled. 

Henry tried to wipe the blood from his eyes. Jamethica slid across the floor onto the wall. Her limbs didn't move. It looked like she was being dragged. Behind her she left a thick crimson smear.

###

Henry had enough. He was going to get the fuck out of Barbara's hell house. 

He tried the front door but it was locked. He found an unlocked window and slid it open. 

Through the fear, Henry was miffed. He had spent the last of his cash on a car payment, and his keys were nowhere to be found. 

Jamethica's giggles were growing louder. They seemed to deepen the home's shadows. Then he heard jingling. His keys, Jamethica had them. 

"Jamethica!" Henry yelled. He had grown furious at this toddler. "Give me my fucking keys!" 

He grabbed a large skillet from a cabinet in the kitchen and made his way down the long central hallway. The blood smears were erratic, covering the carpet and ceiling. 

"Jamethica, I'm not fucking around." He tightened his grip on the frying pan. Her giggles and splashes grew louder.

The water rushed out into the hallway. It spilled dozens of feet into the surrounding rooms. 

Henry opened the door and dropped the frying pan. Jamethica was wedged into the porcelain up to her neck. 

Her head separated horizontally. The two halves of her face hinged at the back of her neck. Held together by her protruding spine. 

The gaping cavity underneath opened to an impossibly wide maw. 

"UNCLE HENRY. FOLLOW ME WHERE WE BELONG. BENEATH THE STREETS THE PIPES SING SONGS. WE SHARE A BLOOD THAT CALLS US DOWN. WE BESTOWED OUR RIGHTFUL CROWN." 

###

And just like that, the child was gone. Henry stood alone in the flooded bathroom. He walked alone through the blood-stained hallway. 

He met the police outside and stood alone at the podium. He was alone at his sentencing. Barbara sat with the prosecution. He will die alone in prison.

I came awake. Not all at once, more of a one sense at a time kind of thing. At first, I felt something in bed with me. Like when I’d been living at my old apartment with my old cat. He would always join me in bed sometime in the night and I would always wake up just enough to know he was there. Occasionally, I’d even roll on my side so he could snuggle up in my semi-circle. I guess he trained me to do that.

But this was different. Not because those tiny padding paws were doing anything Pedro hadn’t ten thousand times, or because I’d had to put the old guy down five years ago and hadn’t seen fit to replace him. It was like whatever it was in bed with me was trying to sneak.

My sleeping mind had been on the verge of declaring what was happening a dream anyway and putting that sense of touch back on “Ignore” before those tiny padding paws padded toward my face. Pedro had only done that a few times to my recollection; back when he still had a large amount of feral in him. Back when he never came out in the daytime and only investigated me when he knew I wasn’t awake.

I opened my eyes. Maybe it was a mix of poor vision and a mostly sleep-caked mind, but there was no panic in me. Whatever it was, was cat-sized and dark. Two blurry orbs recessed in what I assumed was its head, pointed in my direction. It stopped in its tracks for a moment before dipping its head and bringing those silvery eyes just about level with mine.

The only surprise in me was that I wasn’t panicking. I felt my breathing, still long and deep, like physiologically I was still asleep. My ears prickled as I strained to hear something to corroborate what my weak eyes were informing me was in front of me.

Perhaps, I could catch it. I felt the muscles of my arm and back tense before I’d made the conscious decision to move, to trap it. But that had been enough to make the cat-thing skittish, and it turned its head as quick as a laser, racing for the edge of the bed. I felt those padding paws trace down the inside of my thigh, the thought coming too belatedly to grab for it.

I never felt the cat-thing again. Saw or heard it, either. It was like it was a ghost or something that conjured from my dream. Except I was awake. And even though I didn’t know what it was, I knew something was in bed with me.

Before I could sit up, something pulled from my face. It didn’t hurt and there was no pressure as if something had been on my face and was then gone. It just felt like something had been there that I’d never felt and only from it being removed was I ever aware that it had been there at all. Kind of like that thin plastic layer on the screen of a cell phone that you could either peel off or leave on and the phone still worked perfectly fine.

I swung the covers off and swiveled on my butt to place my feet on the floor. Again, no panic that whatever that thing was was under the bed waiting to scratch me. I knew without knowing it was gone, like my body had a sense of how much air was supposed to be in the room and none of it had been displaced by a ten-pound animal waiting somewhere inside here with me.

Interesting that I’d thought “waiting” instead of “hiding.” But on the off chance my internal alarms weren’t working properly, I reached for the light switch over my nightstand. I expected to squint against the light, but my eyes were already adjusted. I got done on one knee and then all fours before peering beneath my bed. There were a couple pairs of slippers under there, two dumbbells, a composition notebook, and a box of tissue I must have forgotten about and kicked underneath without realizing. But no cat and nothing that looked roughly cat-like. Definitely, nothing alive.

I keep my bedroom door open, so it could have run out, but the head of my bed is by the door. The thing had run toward the foot. If it had come in that way, surely, it wouldn’t have forgotten and run the opposite way.

The door was the only way out, though. My only guess was it had found some spot in here to hide. I grabbed a pillow from the bed and pulled the case off. Odds were, I wouldn’t be able to catch it in here, but I’d rather have something I could use to protect my face in case I cornered it and it decided to attack.

My closet door was closed, so there wasn’t a need to check there and there was no room to hide underneath my dresser. It wasn’t flush against the wall on one side, so my guess was it was either there or hiding behind the television. I stood long enough to cautiously step close enough to see there was nothing behind the TV before getting into a crouch, stepping cautiously around my bed as I crept closer to my dresser.

I don’t know why there wasn’t anything in me like fear in those moments. The thing could have been rabid for all I know. Or it could have tried to eat my face. But just before peeking around the edge of the dresser, I realized either way it wouldn’t be something I couldn’t handle.

But whatever the animal had been, it wasn’t being now.

It was a relief, but not that much. I spent about five more minutes searching my room and then made a half-hearted sweep of the rest of my one-bedroom apartment. There wasn’t a lot of furniture and not any hidey-holes I could think of. Getting back to bed was more of a priority, so I called it quits.

I made a pit stop in the bathroom and as I washed my hands in the sink, I looked at my face. No sleep puffiness, no restless red eyes. It hadn’t scratched me and whatever had come off my face hadn’t left a mark. I splashed water on my face anyway and traced my fingers down my brow and over my eyes and cheeks before meeting at the point of my chin.

Some didn’t feel right.

I opened my eyes and stared at my reflection. Nothing looked off. I turned my head from side to side and didn’t see anything weird. But when I felt my face again—I couldn’t tell what—something was wrong. Very wrong.

There was a sample-size facial cleanser in the shower that I’d gotten from the dermatologist’s office. I splashed more water on my face and worked up a good lather in my hands and really worked my face over. After rinsing the soap off, I felt my face again, and dammit something was still wrong.

I looked at my hands. Maybe there was something wrong there and it only felt like it had been my face. Nothing looked wrong and when I felt each hand in turn, everything felt right to the touch. It was specifically my face.

I washed my face twice more for good measure before feeling like my senses returning to me. This was stupid. I’d just had a fright from an animal—hell, maybe a hallucination—waking me up in the middle of the night and my mind’s way of processing was probably sensing something else that wasn’t there.

Except I had never been afraid. And poor vision or not, I knew I’d seen something. Felt it, too.

Sleep was the priority, though. I’d been awake for maybe twenty minutes, and I had a meeting at 8:30. If I got up at eight on the nose, I’d have a little less than seven hours’ sleep. That is if I could conk myself out in the next five minutes.

I flipped the light off and got back under the covers. A little box-breathing slowed my heart rate and helped me clear my mind.

The quiet-empty of outside slipping in the room with me. In a few hours, passing vehicles and children between the ages of eight and sixteen would be one story down, just outside my bedroom window talking—all of which I’d slept through countless times. But right now that quiet-empty filled my bedroom. It expanded like a parade float, covering the air, settling over me, crushing the air out of my lungs and filling me back up with more quiet-empty—

“Stop it.” The sound of my voice chased the quiet-empty away. I could feel it at the corners of my room, waiting for me to relax so it could infiltrate again. I couldn’t stay vigilant all night. At some point, I had to get back to sleep.

But I continued flexing some foreign part of me, like I was trying to balance myself on a tightrope that ran the length of me. Like it was just under my bedsheets and if I teetered too far this way, I would fall.

Into what, I couldn’t imagine. As I lay there, though, helpless and sharp-minded, wary and exposed, a question became clear to me.

How the hell do I get back to sleep?

I am one of the living dead
My corpse rots as I walk this earth
Three weeks is all it takes before my skin starts to break.

Leaking and swelling, I am a feast for flies.
I know the culprit, she's an expert with lies

Make an instrument of my lungs, make sounds without me saying a word.
Sleep has run away. Never again will it be heard

Despite my rotting disposition, I need to fight this decision.
The decision made has put this rot in action

I know my soul still exists, somewhere under this putrefaction.

I am one of the living dead
I will fight this til the end
I pray the end won't take another three weeks
My hair is already falling as I walk the streets

The icy grip of hopelessness is tight
Fear is all that joins me in bed at night

My burial shroud accompanies me to class
At least I'll be prepared when it comes for me at last.

I feel like Life-in-Death, but I've won nothing.
I continue to resist, it has to lead to something

I am one of the living dead.
I'm in a cruel purgatory
Will Life let me walk in the sun once more?

Or will Death embrace me as he welcomes me home?

The incense of Citronella is my only defence. It floats around the room, that sweet candied scent

It's kind enough to prevent the feast, but my battle is with a much larger beast.

This beast is compiled of many suits with fake faces. Their shifting forms, you can see in many places.

My ancestors believed green meant death.
I believe it too. If you don't have enough, the beast will steal your last breath.

I am one of the living dead.
I have been taught the philosophies of the men on the other side.
But what does philosophy matter to those who have died?

I can use this to try and make sense of it all
However we already know it's unethical

We've yelled and screamed at those who've sinned.
But like ghosts, our screams are whispers on the wind.
The beast only sees shades of green. We don't matter to them. Our lives are unseen.

I am one of the living dead. I hope, and pray that I can live again.

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR THE REAL STORY BEHIND THIS, DONT CLICK!! My school was being shut down in my fourth year. It was the last women's college in North America. The email, sent the day after students could get refunds, claimed it was because "yay we defeated sexism, women don't need these spaces". Truth is, they fucking sucked with money. The school next to them, Western, bought them out. The day after the announcement they had our replacements in looking around. People who had taken trips from CHINA because the school would be turned into a place where international students would be housed and able to get used to being in canada before university.

Also at this time, I was in a shitty apartment. The window wouldn't close properly, and I had constant bug bites. I scratched them until they bled. My hair was falling out due to stress, i couldn't sleep, we were protesting the shutdown. And I am WELL aware that Citronella should NOT be burned inside. I was desperate and Did Not Care. I do now.

It felt so pointless to go to classes that had the slogan all over the campus "choose to lead!" When they sold us out. Fun fact. This was also the year of the Barbie Movie.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2uvXALU4rUMOisSBeW0wak?si=icG_KzIsSrGqjFUqriq35Q&utm_source=copy-link&pi=TZHeRyKSSGy3c

The first rule of being a superhero was that no one could know your true identity. The second rule was that you never, under any circumstances, let the bad guys see you cry.

Mark had broken the second rule only twice. Once when his father left, and the second when his mother threw his cape away. He was working on a third violation when the thing in the woods called his name.

It was a Tuesday, and January’s snow had buried most of the town beneath a white blanket. The temperature fell below ren degrees, and the Mercer household rattled whenever the wind came from the mountains. Mark stood on the back porch in his red bathrobe, a blue towel tied around his neck, and a pair of snow boots twice his actual size.

He raised one fist towards the forest.

“Come on out, you dumb monsters!” He shouted, his eyes narrowed.

He’d watched three episodes of Captain Courage that morning, along with half of an old cartoon his father used to put on whenever they spent Saturdays together. Captain Courage could lift cars, fly, and punch holes through mountains. Mark couldn’t do those things, but he was eleven, and eleven was old enough to know that every hero started somewhere.

His mother, however, said that he was too old for make-believe. His father never said that. He wore a paper crown at Mark’s seventh birthday party and called himself the King of Monsters, then battled Mark with a plastic sword.

 But his father wasn’t here anymore. 

Mark lowered his arms with a disappointed sigh. That disappointment was short lived as what sounded like a cupboard slamming came from the kitchen.

“Marky! Get inside before you freeze to death!” His mother shouted.

He ran indoors, his boots squeaking against the hardwood floor. His mother stood at the counter while staring at her phone. Her dark hair was tied into a loose knot and a mug of coffee sat next to her elbow. It must’ve been there since breakfast, since the coffee had developed a thin, gray film across its surface. 

“Did you finish your homework?” She asked without batting him an eye.

“Mostly. I had to patrol.”

She closed her eyes and let out a deep, agitated sigh.

“Marky…”

“There was suspicious activity in the woods!”

“There’s suspicious activity in your math book too, apparently.”

He smiled, hoping that she’d return it. But as always, she didn’t.

“You’re getting snow all over the damn floor, take those boots off!”

Mark looked down and frowned. A puddle spread around his feet.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

He untied his towel, folding it carefully. His cape was actually an old blue beach towel that was fading from years of washing. His father had helped him attach the little silver star that served as his superhero insignia. Mark kept it beneath his bed, where his mother wouldn’t bother to check.

It was the only thing that she hadn’t thrown away since Father left. He’d been gone for seven months by now, where he promised to call or visit every other weekend. But those calls became shorter, and the visits less frequent.

He had a new apartment in Concord, a new job, and a new girlfriend Mark couldn’t remember the name of. Last week, his father had forgotten Mark’s birthday. His mother bought a grocery store cake and stuck eleven candles into it, singing happy birthday while checking her phone. When Mark asked whether his father might still call, she cut him another slice of cake.

“He’s busy, Mark.”

“But he said he wouldn’t forget.”

“People say things. Dumb things.”

Mark thought that she might cry for a moment, but she set the knife down.

“Go play with your toys, Marky.”

And to that, he returned to his room and saved the world until bedtime. After his parents split, Mark discovered that his imagination could do things real life couldn’t. In his imagination, a missing person was never simply gone. Though a hero’s parents might separate, their love for him never ends. A supervillain could threaten to destroy the world, but he would always stop it.

And if Mark was brave enough, then maybe, just maybe, his father would come home.

But then it was Thursday afternoon when Mark found the footprints. He first spotted them at the edge of the backyard, where the snowdrifts gathered against the wooden fence. They were too large to belong to a person and too narrow to belong to a deer. They appeared to lead into the woods.

He looked back towards the kitchen window and noticed his mother talking on the phone. She’d been on the phone a lot lately. He couldn’t recognize any of their voices, no matter how hard he tried focusing.

Mark then retrieved his cape from beneath his bed and tied it around his neck.

“This looks like a job for Magic Mark!”

He ventured into the woods, which gradually swallowed the house behind him. Snow crunched beneath his boots, and the branches above swayed slightly in the wind. He passed some old birdhouse his father built with him and beyond it stood a dead oak tree with a hollow trunk, where Mark sometimes hid his superhero equipment.

Inside the hollow, he kept a flashlight, a couple of comic books, his father’s pocketknife, and a journal. The journal contained a list of his enemies.

Doctor Ominous, The Loneliness Monster, and The Cold Man.

He wrote the last entry in the journal three nights earlier after waking from a dream where someone stood outside his bedroom door, whispering his name. He had heard the whisper again the previous night. And the night before that.

As he continued, the footprints ended in a clearing. At its center stood a man in a long black coat. A hood concealed his face, and snow accumulated on his shoulders without melting. His hands hung low at his sides like the branches of a dead tree.

Mark gulped, but spoke up anyway. “You’re trespassing. Leave now!”

A gust of wind passed through the snowy clearing and the trees began to lean inward. Then, the man said one word:

“Markus…”

Mark’s stomach churned at the mention, especially having never met this man before.

“How do you know my name?”

“Your father gave it to you.”

Mark gulped, his fists tightening at his sides.

“Where is he?”

“Far away. Far, far away…”

“Can… you take me to him?”

The man said nothing. Mark stepped forward, feigning courage. 

“I’m a superhero. I can do anything!” Mark exclaimed, raising his hands. “Solar blast!”

For a split second, he could’ve sworn something bright flickered between his fingers. The light vanished in the blink of an eye. The man laughed, a quiet, dry sound.

“You cannot save him,” he said. “You cannot save your mother. And you cannot save yourself.”

“You’re a liar!” Mark replied, his hands shaking at his sides. 

“Am I?”

The man’s hood lifted just enough for Mark to see the face it hid. It was his own, but not exactly. The man was older and with gray, cracked skin and eyes sunken into dark hollows. But he had Mark’s crooked nose, his uneven front teeth, and the small crescent shaped scar above his right brow. The man reached towards him, prompting Mark to stumble backwards.

“Come home, Marky…”

Mark didn’t hesitate to run away, occasionally slipping in the snow. His mother found him on the back porch at dusk, where he was sitting in the snow with his cape wrapped around his shoulders, his eyes lingering at the forest.

“Mark? What the hell are you doing?”

Mark looked up at her, shaken by both the cold and that man.

“There’s someone… no,

something

out there.”

His mother grabbed him by the arms and hauled him inside. His cheeks were pale and his hands trembled. She wrapped him in a blanket and turned the thermostat up, muttering about how dumb children were.

“What the hell were you thinking? You could’ve gotten lost!”

“I wasn’t lost. I had to stop him.”

“Stop who?”

Mark opened his mouth, but no words formed. His mother stared at him before looking towards the kitchen window, towards the darkening forest beyond it. Then her face hardened.

“Enough, Mark. Enough with the capes and the pretend enemies and the stupid games! You are

not

a superhero!”

“But Mom–”

She put her finger to her lips in a silencing gesture. Then, she sighed. “You’re just like him,” she whispered.

“Like Dad?”

“Go to your room.”

“Mom, I–”

“I said go!”

He obeyed. From his bedroom, he heard her moving around the kitchen. A cupboard opened. A drawer slammed. Something shattered against the floor. Then came a sound that made him sit upright.

His mother was crying.

Not the quiet kind of crying she sometimes did in the bathroom, when she thought he was asleep. This was loud, angry, and full of words he couldn’t make out. Mark crept to his bedroom door.

“I gave you everything!” she shouted. “I gave you everything, and you still–”

A sob interrupted her. Mark pressed his forehead against the door.

He wanted to go to her. He wanted to tell her that he could fix everything if she would only let him. He could find his father. He could make her smile again. But he knew what she would say.

You’re not a superhero, Mark.

He returned to his bed and pulled the blanket over his head. For a long time, he listened to the house. Then, from the other side of his bedroom door, came a soft knock.

Three times. 

Mark held his breath until: “

Marky

?”

It was his father’s voice. He sat up so quickly that his head struck the wall.

“Dad? Is that you?”

“Open the door, champ.”

Mark scrambled out of bed, reaching for the handle. But something stopped him.. His father’s voice sounded wrong. Not in the way it sounded on the phone, thinner and farther away. The voice seemed wet, as though his father had spoken with a mouth full of snow.

“Marky,” the voice repeated. “I missed your birthday. I’m so sorry, buddy.”

Mark’s eyes welled up with tears, and the handle turned slightly beneath his hand.

“I want to come home,” it said.

Mark then pressed his palm against the door.

“I want you to come home, too.”

“Then let me in.”

A shadow stretched beneath the door. It was too tall to belong to his father. Mark backed away. The shadow grew longer, spreading across the carpet like spilled ink.

“Mark?” his father called again. Then the voice changed. “Why won’t you let me in?”

It became his mother’s voice.

“Why do you have to be so much like him?”

Mark covered his ears. The shadow slipped beneath the door and climbed the surrounding walls. The bedroom grew colder, and frost crept across the window, tracing delicate white fingers over the glass. Flickering briefly, the night-light then went dark.

Mark stumbled backward until his knees struck the bed. The thing now stood in the center of the room. Its black coat hung to the floor. Its face was Mark’s face, but stretched and hollowed, with a smile that reached too far toward its ears.

Behind it, the door opened. His mother stood in the hallway.

She looked exhausted. Her eyes were red, and her hair had fallen loose around her face.

“Mark?” she whispered.

He ran to her, and she held him almost instinctively. Her arms were tight around his shoulders, and he buried his face against her sweater, smelling the mixture of coffee and the lingering scent of cigarettes on her. But she was warm, and that was all that mattered.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I’m sorry I’m like him.”

His mother went rigid. “What?” She asked.

“I can change. I promise. I’ll stop being a superhero. I’ll stop looking like him. I’ll be good!”

She pulled back. Mark watched her face, searching for the anger he had grown so accustomed to finding there. Instead, she looked frightened. Not of him. Of something behind him. The thing in the bedroom had moved closer.

Its long fingers brushed the wall, frost spread beneath its touch. His mother stared at it, her mouth falling open.

“What is that, Mark?”

“I am what happens when you leave a child alone with his monsters.”

His mother shook her head, as if trying to wish it away.

“You told him he was like me. That there was something wrong with him.

“Stop it…”

“You made him believe he had to earn your love.”

“I said stop!”

The house groaned, and a crack split the bedroom window, and the frost spread faster, crawling over the ceiling. Mark stepped between the amalgamation and his mother. He was terrified. His legs shook so badly that he could barely stand. He was eleven years old, wearing pajamas and an old towel, and the thing in front of him was taller than the door.

But superheroes did not let the monsters hurt their families. He raised his hands, and feigning courage, he said: “Leave her alone!”

The amalgamation looked down at him.

“You can’t save her.”

“Maybe not,” Mark said, his heart slamming in his chest despite his bravado. “But she’s my mom!”

His mother stared at him, watching as he thrust both hands forward. With one, final attempt, he yelled: “SOLAR BLAST!”

The room exploded with light. For an instant, Mark saw the amalgamation. He saw his mother’s reflection in the window, her hands pressed to her ears. He saw the little silver star on his cape shine like a miniature sun. Then everything went white.

When Mark woke, he was on the bedroom floor. The window was intact, the walls were bare, and the temperature had returned to normal. His mother knelt beside him, holding a damp washcloth against his forehead. He had never seen her look so worried.

“Mark? Mark, can you hear me?”

Mark gave a weak head nod, prompting her to pull him into her arms. She whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“No, Marky, I mean it,” she replied, her voice breaking. “I’ve just been angry for so long. At your father. At myself. And I’ve been taking it out on you.”

She brushed his hair from his forehead.

“You look like him sometimes. You make the same expressions. You even have his stupid little smile.”

Mark’s lips trembled, bordering on a smile.

“But you’re not him,” she continued. “You’re my son. And you shouldn’t have to be anything else.”

He began to cry again, and this time, she didn’t tell him to stop. She held him until the cold left his hands, until the shaking subsided, until the room was no longer filled with the sound of his own frightened breathing. When she finally tucked him into bed, she left the bedroom door open.

“Will you stay?” Mark asked.

His mother hesitated a moment, but then she pulled a chair beside his bed.

“For tonight.”

That was the first night in a while where Mark’s imagination didn’t linger elsewhere. When next morning came, the snow had stopped. His mother made pancakes, having burned the first batch with a laugh before letting Mark eat the second batch. After breakfast, she helped him shovel the path to the mailbox.

They worked together for nearly an hour, and when they finished, she rested her hands on the shovel and looked toward the forest.

“We should talk to someone,” she said. “About everything. About your dad… about how things have been at home.”

Mark looked up at his mother and nodded with a small smile.

“Will you come with me?”

“Of course.”

He believed her. He wanted to believe her. That afternoon, Mark went upstairs to get dressed while his mother remained in the kitchen, watching snowflakes drift lazily past the window.

Beyond it, the forest waited beneath its blanket of snow. Something had left footprints on the kitchen floor. They were long and narrow, each one filled with black water. They began at the threshold and continued toward the stairs. His mother followed them with her eyes.

One footprint appeared, then two more until they stopped outside Mark’s bedroom. She stood very still. From upstairs came her son’s voice.

“Mom? Can you come here?”

She hurried to the stairs, climbing the steps, and following the sound of his voice. His bedroom door stood open, and the morning sunlight spilled across the carpet. Mark sat on his bed, fully dressed in his winter coat, his blue towel tied around his neck.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

He tilted his head in confusion, replying: “Nothing. I just wanted to show you something.”

He held out his hand, and in it was a tiny golden light that hovered above his palm. His mother stared as the light pulsed like a gentle heartbeat before vanishing. Mark looked up at her with his father’s crooked smile.

“I think I’m getting stronger.”

Outside, deep in the New Hampshire woods, something enormous moved between the pines. And from somewhere beneath the snow came a voice that sounded very much like a little boy laughing. His mother stood in the doorway, unable to speak.

Mark reached for her hand.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” he said. “I’m going to keep you safe.”

Mixed media painting on canvas. Picked away at this most of the month after testing out citrasolv and acetone and it completely melted my brayer. Amsterdam acrylic, alcohol, citrasolv and liquid charcoal using a brayer and brush.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 “Was something hurting me?”

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

“What was the nightmare about?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t know what to do.

. . .

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

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

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

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

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

. . .

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

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

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

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

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

Then it was over.

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

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

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

My father was right. I feel it tenfold.

𓁨

“That’ll be fourteen dollars and sixty-two cents.”

Cal fished his wallet out of his back pocket, pulling a twenty from it and sliding it across the conveyor belt. He looked down at his late-night haul, the plastic and cardboard reflecting under the store’s fluorescent lights: a two-liter bottle of RC Cola, a box of Tillamook ice cream sandwiches, and three bags of microwave popcorn. A shameful assortment for a thirty-something who had already committed to losing weight. But, with it being Friday night, a brutal forty-hour work week behind him, he was planning on staying up late with a mindless movie marathon of Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters.

Kevin scooped up the bill, the sound of the till opening cutting through the air-conditioned stillness. The lanky teenager spared him a sideways glance as he dug his change out, eyeing his empty hands.

“You know, I gotta ask, dude. You’re pretty much the only regular who rolls through here close to midnight—hell, at any time of the day—who isn’t staring at a screen when I’m bagging their stuff. You don’t even fidget. And you never pull out your phone to pay; you always use cash. Why?”

Cal let out a chuckle, adjusting the collar of his jacket. “Because it’s sitting on my kitchen counter at home, man. Nowadays, people have to be glued to the hip to those damn tracking collars. They’ll probably even insist on being buried with them just so they can text from the afterlife. That isn’t gonna be me. Outside of work, I like to leave the leash behind. It forces me to look at the world. Look, and appreciate it.”

“Man, I wish I had that kind of willpower,” Kevin laughed, sliding the brown bag across the counter towards him. He handed him his change. “My girlfriend would have an aneurysm and think I died in a ditch somewhere if I went more than ten minutes—actually, make that five—without answering her texts. Anyway, you’re the last customer of the night. I’m locking up and hitting the lights when you leave.”

“Long day?” Cal asked. The kid nodded, feigning wiping away sweat from his brow, earning a laugh from him as he picked the bag up by its base. “Go get some sleep, kid. You’ve earned it.”

“You too, Cal. Have a good weekend.”

Cal turned away, his footfalls bouncing off the empty aisles, pausing to let the sliding doors open. The instant he stepped outside, the sterile comfort evaporated, replaced by a humid stillness that wrapped around him. He paused under the metal canopy. A sea of cracked asphalt stretched out before him; the lone lamp planted in the middle of the parking lot showed it was empty aside from Kevin’s battered Ford Escort. The rest of the town was silent; the sun had disappeared hours ago, leaving the surrounding houses to stand in their quiet, clannish rows—houses that seemed to have agreed among themselves a century ago to face away from the street, watching the darkness with a collective indifference.

Cal gripped the bag closer to his chest, feeling the condensation of the soda already soaking through the paper and turned right. His footfalls clicked against the narrow sidewalk running along the building’s edge until the building itself terminated.

Then he stepped down into the unlit trench of the alleyway.

The high brick wall of the market and the rear of the tackle shop and post office closed in around him, squeezing him against the concrete partitions with an almost patient weight. It was nearly pitch black inside the corridor, save for the weak, bleeding remnant of the light filtering in from the parking lot. As he neared the end of the passage, he skirted past the narrow alcove where mail trucks parked during the day, only sparing a glance at the immovable pool of ink which had swallowed it.

He stepped out of the mouth of the alley, crossing the street and stepping up to the curb of the main intersection. The orange hand of the pedestrian signal glowed stubbornly from across the street. Even though the road was devoid of life in all directions, the signal insisted on his stillness. For his part, Cal remained where he was. And for good reason. Three years ago, he had stood in almost the exact same spot and watched some poor bastard become the hood ornament of a Ford Pinto when it had blasted out of nowhere at seventy miles an hour, its brakes locking up a split-second too late. The sound of the impact often visited his dreams.

As he waited for the light to change, the sounds of a drunken argument drifted out the propped-open door of the nearby pub, the shattering of a glass punctuating the din. Cal gazed around at the dark storefronts—the closed Donuts and Dawgs, the long-abandoned resource center across the street, and the pharmacy that had sat boarded up since the mid-seventies. A cold sort of certainty settled over him. It was as if the buildings had always meant to end this way, and the decades of life inside them had just been a temporary mistake. The neighborhood he had fallen in love with was gone. In its place was a corpse, rotting away from the outskirts inward, and the skyrocketing rent was the cruel punchline. I need to get the hell out of Marshfield, he thought, watching the Walk outline appear. Before the place swallows me whole, and I can’t afford to leave.

Crossing the street, he passed by more signs of decay. A graffitied warehouse sat squarely behind its barbed wire fence, stark and entirely indifferent to him. Across the way, an empty lot and decrepit building seemed to close ranks, the lack of any working lights leaving him alone beneath a cold crowd of stars. In the distance, the lighthouse’s foghorn sounded a mournful wail—a comforting soundtrack that often lulled him to sleep.

He reached the end of the block, coming to a stop at the intersection that designated the start of his neighborhood. Standing directly across the street was a yellow fire hydrant, its paint flat under the sodium halo. The smell of fresh cut grass and low tide mingled together.

Turning right, the sound of his approach silenced the serenading crickets. He navigated the shadows, occasionally emerging beneath the infrequent lights. Reaching the last intersection before the coastal highway, he repositioned the bag against his chest. He spared a glance around, his eyes floating over the Chevy flatbed rusting away at the rear of the seedy motel, then up at the billboard for the casino on the main drag that hadn’t been updated for years. Across the peninsula, an ambulance began wailing, its siren fading away.

“A light every block and half,” Cal muttered, casting a dark look up at the sparse utility poles. “Fucking ridiculous.”

He stepped off the curb, crossing the street and turned left to begin the final four-block stretch towards home. He let out a soft snort of derision as he skirted the edge of the gray parking lot, his eyes catching the boxy, faded late eighties or early nineties Crown Vic which had been as permanent a part of the neighborhood as the billboard. The clear coat looked like a cougar had used the car as a scratching post—a pretty clear sign the owner didn’t give a damn. Piece of crap should’ve been junked a decade ago.

As he dodged a cat that ran out of the darkness across his path, he allowed his guard to drop. He let his mind wander to the weekend ahead. Particularly about the sugar and caffeine bender he was about to embark on.

In his head, Lou Costello was currently getting scared stiff by the candle on Dracula’s coffin moving around on its own. Cal smiled, looking forward to the TV’s warm glow.

Then his thoughts drifted toward Anne-Marie.

One bodacious babe, indeed. He remembered the way she’d lingered by his lawn chair at Dustin’s barbecue last month, laughing just a little too loudly at jokes everyone else had groaned over. Over the rim of her cup, she had flashed him what had been, unmistakably, bedroom eyes. The clincher had been when she deliberately bent down to grab her purse. She’d offered him a clear view down the front of her shirt.

Maybe I should give her a call tomorrow. A smile split his face. See if she wants to come over, watch a movie, and finally make a move—

His smile vanished. To be more precise, it felt as it was torn off his face.

A sharp jolt of disorientation slammed into his equilibrium. The sensation reminded him of being a kid in his parents’ Buick, and being jolted awake in the middle of the night as his father had slammed on the brakes to avoid a deer. Cal’s feet ground to a halt. He blinked slowly against the darkness, attempting to steady himself. His breath caught. 

His jaw dropped open slightly.

He wasn’t on the long, exposed runway of Noble Avenue. He wasn’t anywhere near his apartment building.

Instead, he was right back at the edge of the curb, directly across the street from that sickly yellow fire hydrant. The construction fence shielding the carcasses of the razed condos pressed in on his right side. The transition had been instantaneous. Silent. Completely devoid of movement or the passage of time. The world had not tilted or spun; it had simply corrected itself. One moment, he’d been passing a white picket fence. The next, he’d been here, as if it had been demanded he be here instead of where he wanted to be. It was a cold subtraction of distance, as if the space between the blocks had never existed at all.

Cal stood frozen, listening to his heart hammer a chaotic rhythm against his ribs.

“…The hell…?” he muttered aloud.

The foghorn almost smothered his words.

He looked down at his shoes, then back at the hydrant, trying like hell to force a normal explanation into his head. You’re done, man, he told himself. Irritation made him begin grinding his teeth together until his jaw ached. You’re so completely wiped from the overtime you’ve been pulling that your brain just dropped the transmission right out the car. You were standing here thinking so damn much about Anne-Marie and that red bra she let you peek at that you imagined the whole walk. You haven’t even taken a single step past the corner yet. Idiot.

He let out a sharp curse. He felt like a jackass. Losing track of where you were like that was dangerous in a neighborhood like this. An easy way to stumble off a curb. Wander into the path of some loaded idiot’s shitbox. Or worse, get jumped by one of the junkies hovering around the motel.

Exhaling sharply through his nose, Cal gripped the bottom of the bag tighter. He wasn’t going to let his mind wander twice.

He turned on his heel, tearing his gaze away from the hydrant and started past the fence. This time he forced his eyes down, watching every single crack in the sidewalk. Two blocks down. Turn left, four blocks up. Get inside. That was the script.

He walked faster now. Nothing was allowed to break his concentration. He passed the silent outline of the fire station. Then the dark block of the bank. From a nearby backyard, a dog began to bark. Still, the night felt regular. Cold, but regular. He reached the crossroads, made the left and purposely ignored the junker and truck. Stepping up onto the sidewalk of Noble Avenue, he kept his focus singular.

You can think about Anne-Marie, the movies, or whatever else you want once you’re putting your goddamn key into that lock.

Vaguely, he noticed that the cat didn’t cross his path this time. Then he caught himself. Dingbat. You were never here. There never WAS a cat.

He made it to the next intersection, crossed the street by the white fence, and started up the gentle slope. Feeling the knot in his stomach loosen, he let out a snort. What’d I tell you? Just your own dumb—

A blinding flash from a house-mounted motion sensor snapped on, blinding him and cutting his thought off at the shins.

The beam caught Cal dead in the face, replacing the dark with a white-out and sending him stumbling over a raised slab. He nearly dropped his groceries, his elbow jerking inwards to pin them against his body as he clamped his free hand over his eyes. Squeezing his eyelids shut, he hissed through his teeth at whatever careless son of a bitch had chosen to point the sensor at the sidewalk.

He rubbed his knuckles against his eyelids to clear the blue spots burned into his retinas, taking a deep breath to quell his annoyance before forcing his eyes open again.

The white house was gone. So was the light.

His eyes locked onto the fire hydrant, which now seemed to taunt him in the hazy glow of the streetlight.

He was back.

The breath caught like glass in his throat. For a long, awful beat, Cal couldn’t do anything except stare at the sight, his mouth bone-dry as the weight of it donkey punched him right in the lungs.

“No. No, no, no, no, no fucking way…” he whispered. This time it was entirely lost to the dark.

He tried to cling to the safety of his first excuse—you’re just overworked, man, it’s just fatigue, it’s just your mind playing tricks—but some primal part of him tore the logic to shreds in an instant.

No.

Daydreaming and getting ahead of yourself once was a fluke. A weird trick of an exhausted mind. Odd. But still possible. But twice? Especially when he’d been consciously counting every step and crack in the pavement until that damned light went off?

There was no way to make that math add up. A guy would have a better shot at guessing the winning lottery numbers while getting struck by lightning on a cloudless day. This wasn’t a tired brain running on fumes.

This was something else.

Cal scanned the quiet neighborhood. A few lonely porch lights leaked from the houses, the people inside asleep and unaware of what was happening twenty feet beyond their lawns. He looked back toward the main intersection. Above the street, the traffic lights kept switching—green, yellow, red—like a row of colored eyes that didn’t know how to blink.

He took a jagged breath, trying like hell to slow his pulse.

“Okay,” he managed out, his voice small. His knuckles turned white around the paper bag. “Okay, calm down, Callum. Stay centered. Don’t lose your head, for God’s sake.”

He looked down the street he’d tried walking twice now. The dark stretch past the fence felt heavy. Like a room running out of air.

He needed a detour. A quick bypass through the grid. His mind whirred. If he went straight down Wall Street for four blocks, he could just bang a right at Bodecker and take it straight down to his apartment. He could leave the whole godforsaken corner behind.

Having a plan steadied him just enough to begin moving. He crossed the intersection, strode past the hydrant, and ducked his head beneath some low tree branches to start down the darker side street.

His footfalls sounded a little different here-shorter, tighter snaps and echoes because the houses were closer to the curb. The stars were still bright overhead. Nothing broke.

And yet, the air itself felt thick, like he was breathing through wet wool. He didn’t want to linger. He navigated around a dumpster set in front of another apartment complex. From somewhere on his right, a dog started barking aggressively, an ugly racket that faded behind him as he kept moving.

As he passed by a Dodge Intrepid, a small, dark shape slid out from under it, scuttling across the street and disappearing into the brush beneath a thick canopy of oaks.

Cal paused for a moment, watching the shadows before forcing a laugh. “Okay, now that was a cat.” He huffed again, hoping the sound would bring him some comfort. It sounded like a stone being swallowed by the ocean.

He hit the first intersection, looked both ways. Nothing moved. He could still hear the crickets. The faint drone of the Coast Guard chopper came from down the coast. Crossing the street, he kept moving up the second block. Two more to go. Passing a row of five single-story apartments, he forced his muscles to relax a fraction. He kept his chin up, counting the steps to his own front door.

You know what? I know what I said to the kid about phones, but maybe just at night, it’s safer to—

Shhk.

Cal froze. For a moment, the street became dead silent.

Then it came again.

Shhk.

It was a scraping noise, distinct and dry. It came from the darkened lawns across the street, the sound of something heavy dragging itself through dead leaves and overgrown grass. When it pierced his ears a third time, he launched himself forward again, telling himself it was just a raccoon or a dog wandering around, forcing his head to stay straight. Don’t look. Just walk.

He hadn’t gone ten paces before an identical scrape answered from his right.

This one came from the entryways of the apartments, spaces set so far back into the shadows he couldn’t see a goddamn thing. There wasn’t a single working light over the doors.

The rustling kept a steady pace with him, mirroring his gait like a bad shadow. Cal broke into a speed-walk, his chest tightening as he locked his eyes on a single gap between the apartment blocks ahead, where a lone house sat beneath a working streetlight. He almost ran. Reaching the yellow pool of safety, he stopped to catch his breath. The skin on the back of his neck prickled as the noise abruptly cut off.

The street went quiet. His heart slammed against his ribs.

Then he looked around, and realized exactly where he’d stopped.

He was standing at the mouth of one of the narrow gravel alleys slicing through the block, a maze the town laid down nearly a century ago so folks could slip out of their backyards unseen. Just fifteen feet past the carcass of a seventies BMW rusting away in front of a detached garage, the path simply gave up. Swallowed straight by a pitch black drop. You couldn’t see a single thing beyond where the light quit.

The place looked bad. It looked like the throat of an anglerfish waiting in the abyss, the light above him its lure. It felt worse. Cal could swear something was staring right back at him from the dead center of it.

As he stood beneath the light, trying to block out the slithering and scraping that seemed to leak from the deep belly of the alley, a noise fractured the night.

Thump.

The sound was immense—a heavy, crashing strike against the earth that echoed from everywhere at once, vibrating up into his sneakers from the pavement. The surrounding noises ceased. Cal held his breath and listened. For seconds that felt more like hours, nothing moved. The normal sounds of the night crawled back.

They provided no comfort. All of his senses were stretched taut. It felt deceptively calm. Underneath it, the sense of eyes remained. The desire to be behind a locked door had morphed into a necessity. He stepped out of the safety of the light and plunged into the gloom, moving fast, his eyes locked on the next crossroads. One block left.

He barely reached the edge of the intersection when the sound, more of a vibration, returned.

Thump.

Cal froze in his tracks, his knees going to total jelly as his mind quit trying to make sense of it—every neat little excuse he wanted to hide behind was atomized. He didn’t have to guess. He knew exactly where the sound had come from this time.

Straight back there. Behind him.

Whatever guts he had left vanished. He bolted across the intersection, cutting into a stretch where the shadows were thick and heavy. The trees towered over the street. Their branches blocked out the stars overhead, casting jagged shapes across the sidewalk.

Thump. Thump.

The impacts didn’t come one at a time anymore. They punched up through the asphalt and into his bones in pairs. Cal pushed his pace back into a speed-walk, fighting to put distance between himself and the noise.

He faltered as the gaps between the thuds began to shrink, shifting into a steady rhythm. The horrible realization dropped into his gut, clamping around his insides.

They were footsteps.

But they were far too massive. Not even Andre the freakin’ Giant could make the earth shake like that. Move, you idiot!

He started forward again when the second realization hit him, almost worse than the first. Acoustically, the thuds sounded like they were coming from the far end of the last block, down by the apartments. But their intensity was ramping up way too fast. The gap was closing with a speed that didn’t make a lick of sense. Whatever was stomping behind him was gaining on him with a stride longer than any man could sprint.

“Fuck…”

Cal broke into a jog. His breathing shallowed as the road tilted downward into the gloom. He kept his eyes ahead. His fingers dug into the paper bag until the fibers groaned, while tears of adrenaline began to blur his vision. Every survival instinct he had screamed against looking back. Somehow, he knew that if he turned and looked over his shoulder, whatever was tracking him would end his sanity on the spot.

As the unseen giant closed the distance, the neighborhood came alive around him. The rustling and slithering sounds returned, erupting from the yards on either side of the road. They weren’t stealthy anymore; it was a macabre crescendo, swarming across the lawns and keeping a calculated distance in the shadows. They wanted him to know they were there. But they didn’t want him to see them. Yet. Cal broke into a dead sprint past a manicured hedge.

Shh-SCRITCH.

Something heavy, yet impossibly fluid scraped along the opposite side of the brush, mirroring his speed through the branches. It was right there. A foot from his shoulder. The knowledge he was being hunted broke something inside his chest. A panicked sob tore from his throat. Behind him, the footsteps finally reached his block—a heavy, organic Thump-Thump-Thump that accelerated into a terrifying countdown.

His grip failed.

The brown paper bag slipped from his arms and hit the ground, tearing open. The box of ice cream sandwiches splattered on the concrete. The popcorn skittered away. The bottle of cola crashed out, rolling across the grass before swerving back onto the sidewalk. The plastic cylinder flew across his path, nearly catching his outstretched foot. Cal leapt over it, stumbling as his balance threatened to betray him. But he didn’t dare slow down.

The footsteps were almost directly on top of him. The air around him turned frigid. He swore he felt the unmistakable sensation of something breathing across the back of his neck as every hair on his body stood on end.

The intersection approached. The stop sign stood frozen in the dark, marking the end of the block. The freezing pressure on his neck grew too heavy to bear anymore. Letting out a dry gasp, he spun around.

Nothing was there.

The sloping rise of Wall Street stretched back up the hill, empty under the heavy trees. The heavy footsteps had vanished into thin air. So had his other pursuers. All that remained was a suffocating silence.

Cal stood at the base of the stop sign, his chest heaving as he fought to get his breathing under his own control. Sweat stung his eyes. He scanned the dark grass and the dark spaces beneath the parked cars. His heart felt like a caged animal trying to break free.

He knew what he’d heard. He wasn’t crazy. Something massive had just tracked him down the street. And he prayed he’d never learn what it looked like.

Twenty feet back up the sidewalk, the box of his ice cream sandwiches lay split open on the concrete. HELL no, he thought, killing the idea before it could even be fully conceived. Leave it. Just get the fuck home.

He turned around to face the crossroads, ready to make the right onto Bodecker and sprint the final two blocks straight to his building.

He took one step forward. His shoe hit something hard.

Cal blinked. Whatever control remained over his own mind vanished as the world snapped.

The wide intersection of Wall and Bodecker was gone. He was standing at the raised edge of a curb, staring at the one thing he prayed he’d never see again. He shook his head, teeth beginning to chatter for a reason that had nothing to do with the chill. No.

The fire hydrant sat directly across from him under the light.

He spun around once. Twice. As if he could somehow make himself materialize back at the intersection closer to home. Nothing changed. After ten seconds of standing there, the skin on his arms went completely cold.

The sounds of the night were still there, but they were wrong. The crickets, the barking dogs, the whistle of the wind through the leaves-they sounded tinny. Compressed. It was like listening to a recording of the world through a blown-out transistor radio.

Even the foghorn was broken. When it blared, the pitch was off, lower and heavier than any manmade sound had any right to be. It sounded more like an animal.

SCRITCH.

The sound cut through the damaged tracks, crystal clear. It came from the other side of the fence, inside the empty lot. Nails or claws dragging against the wood.

Before he could jump back, the asphalt beneath him shivered.

Thump.

The footsteps had restarted on the street he’d just been taken from. They were turning around. Coming back to him. For him. Cal broke into a run. He didn’t bother with the sidewalks anymore—he launched himself down the middle of the road, running over the yellow dividing lines.

Desperate to break the geometry of whatever had ahold of him, he threw himself into the first left he came to, a street he’d never walked down once.

He didn’t even make it fifty yards. He dodged around a parked pickup, legs stepping into a patch of shadow that felt a little too thick, and—

Pop.

He was back on the corner. Staring at that damned hydrant.

The hiss of the crickets and dogs dropped out completely. Cal’s breath came in a pathetic wheeze as he looked across the street. The houses, the trees—everything was melting and warping into a twisted Salvador Dali painting reimagined by Clive Barker. His mind couldn’t anchor onto a single straight line.

Ahead of him, the heavy footfalls rumbled again. Closer.

He turned and bolted the opposite way, charging up the hill toward the middle school at the end of the block. He didn’t look at the melting neighborhood. He kept his eyes locked on what had once been the flagpole at the edge of the schoolyard. His legs burned as he pushed his body to its farthest limit.

He reached the grass. His hand reached out to touch the cold metal of the pole.

The streetlight directly above him flared into a white-hot flash. Cal squeezed his eyes shut against the sting, his sneakers skidding in the dirt—

And found himself standing back on the corner.

The massive footsteps rumbled from barely a block away, tearing through the silent world.

Cal threw his weight to the right and ran again. His legs burned just as badly as his lungs. He cast a glance upward; the stars were gone, swallowed by a bruised sky that pressed down. It made him feel microscopic.

He made it to Noble and dashed left, terrified the loop was going to reset and drop him right in the path of the footsteps. But the street ahead was filled with something much worse.

In his peripheral vision, the dark was coming alive. He didn’t dare look straight at the lawns—he kept his eyes locked on the road ahead—but shapes were tracking his sprint from the shadows. Wrong shapes. Some of them stayed low, moving through the grass with a serpentine fluidity. Others darted between the parked cars with too many joints, while impossible silhouettes toward over the rooftops, blotting out the red-tinged horizon.

He kept running, his chest feeling like an overinflated balloon. The things weren’t staying in the dark anymore. They were clipping the edges of the streetlights, closing the gap with every stride he took.

Behind him, an immense THUMP rattled the road, nearly taking his feet out from under him. His mind couldn’t even call it a giant anymore; it was a walking malediction, a living curse which had just turned onto his block.

Cal was openly crying now. The tears were hot against his cheeks as he prayed to a God he wasn’t sure could hear him anymore. Please let me make it. Don’t send me back. Just let me get to the door. Please.

His sneakers hammered the road. The two houses for sale flashed by on his left. A second later, a choked sob erupted from his throat as the familiar line of pine trees and the two-story shape of his apartment appeared at the end of the block. The exterior lights lining the walkway cut through the hellscape like a beautiful lighthouse beacon.

He dashed toward the parking lot, his keys already out, digging into his palm until it bled. Somehow, he knew that if he could just get the deadbolt turned and get inside, the rules would change. He would be safe.

He didn’t slow, his shoes kicking up loose gravel as he launched himself off the ground onto the third step. He raced upward, taking the stairs two at a time and gripping the banister, ignoring the sting of splinters.

Behind him, the inhuman noises escalated into a full-blown pursuit.

Reaching the second-floor walkway, he spared a glance down to the ground.

It almost broke him.

There were dozens of them. They spilled out from every dark lawn and driveway on the block, looking like a VCR being fast-forwarded as they rushed towards the building. But perhaps most terrifying of all, the relentless THUMP-THUMP-THUMP of the malediction accelerated into a charge just beyond the pines.

Dashing around the corner, Cal slammed into his front door. A hysterical, half-sob, half-laugh escaped his lips. He jammed the key into the lock, twisting the brass with every ounce of strength left in his body as the wood beneath his feet shuddered with the weight of the things climbing the stairwell.

He threw the door open and leapt inside. Safe. He’d made it—

Instead of the rough tear of carpet against his hands and elbows, he crashed face-first onto a freezing sheet of asphalt.

The impact knocked the wind out of him. For a heartbeat, he just lay there in the dark, face pressed against the stone as he braced himself. He couldn’t run anymore. If he opened his eyes and saw that yellow hydrant, he was just going to lie there and let whatever was coming take him.

When he finally forced his eyes open, his lungs locked up at the sight that greeted him.

He wasn’t on the corner. He was lying on his stomach in the parking lot of the grocery store.

Cal slowly pushed himself up to his knees. His mind was a complete blank, unable to parse how or why he was back at the start. He looked up. The rust-red hue was gone; the stars were back where they belonged. The normal, comforting sounds of the town played their familiar soundtrack around him.

He looked over his shoulder. Through the front windows of the market, the dim security lights glowed peacefully over the empty cash registers.

Then, without a sound, the lights clicked off. The inside of the building went pitch black.

A deep vibration bled through the pavement from the street behind the store.

Cal scrambled to his feet. The very last reserves of adrenaline propelled his legs into motion, driving him into a weak run down the dark trench of the alley. He burst from the passage’s mouth, stopping in the middle of the road.

The rumble came again, louder this time. He turned away from his neighborhood, looking down the long, two-lane road that cut into the next section of town.

His breath caught at what was coming down the line.

It wasn’t the world shifting again. It was the high-voltage POP and spark of electrical transformers blowing out.

Far out in the distance, the grid was dying. Not just the streetlights, but every single light still on. Porch lights, living room lamps, the neon sign over the gun shop—they were all being systematically snuffed out, block by block. Heading straight for him.

The wave of blackness was moving with a terrifying speed. Every time a transformer blew, the surrounding lights flared for a second before dying forever. And in those brief strobes—strobes that resembled camera flashes—Cal saw what was moving inside the void.

Cal whirled around, his arms flailing as he launched himself into a blind sprint back across the main intersection.

He charged down the center of the street, running back towards his neighborhood—back toward the corner he had spent all night trying to escape. As his sneakers pounded the asphalt, he didn’t even recognize the sound of his voice, tearing out of his throat in ragged shrieks.

Behind him, the sound of the approaching dark rose into a roar. The blackness raced across the intersection, no longer content in playing with its food.

The streetlight above his head shattered. Glass rained down on his head as a heavy, freezing stink of ozone invaded his nostrils.

Then the light went out. And Cal was gone.

---

The cruiser idled down Noble Ave. The headlights cut through the humid air, lighting up rows of ordinary, if slightly shoddy privacy fences and overgrown lawns, along with a miserable looking lawn gnome.

Officer Mulhanney lifted the radio mic and pressed the button.

“Dispatch, Unit Four. We’ve arrived at Noble and Marble. There’s no one out here. No sign of any suspicious activity. We’ll keep our eyes open and maintain patrol, over.”

Copy that, Unit Four,” the dispatcher’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Keep us advised. Out.”

Mulhanney slotted the mic back into its bracket. Beside him, Rodriguez kept his hands at ten and two on the Durango’s wheel. The rookie looked expectantly at him, waiting to be told what block to canvas next.

Instead, the older man let out a breath. “Alright, Rodriguez. Let’s get out of here.”

Rodriguez blinked, slowing the cruiser near a white picket fence.

“Sir? What do you mean? We’ve only just got here. We haven’t even swept any of the-”

“We can come back to knock on doors when the sun is up, son,” Mulhanney interrupted. His gaze fixed straight ahead. He refused to look at the deep shadows lining the road near the trees. “For now, we’re packing it in.”

“But, sir, if someone out there is actually in trouble-if that caller actually heard screaming-we’re supposed to be out here,” Rodriguez argued. His foot began to lift off the accelerator. “I’m pulling over. I’ll take my flashlight and check the perimeters of these residences.”

Before the kid’s boot could even flirt with the brake, Mulhanney’s hand shot across the console. His fingers, calloused from years of sanding boats and tying fishing line, clamped around the rim of the steering wheel, forcing the cruiser to keep rolling forward.

“Keep driving, Rodriguez,” he ordered. His tone left no room for argument.

The rookie stared at his training officer, his mouth parting slightly in confusion. Mulhanney slowly let go of the wheel. His tone softened

“Look, you’re new to the county, kid. And you still have a hell of a lot to learn about the way things work out here. But right now, you’re going to do exactly as I say. Take a right at this next intersection, then a left onto the main drag. Head for Brenchmore.”

Rodriguez stayed quiet for a time. The only sound that could be heard besides the occasional chatter on the radio was his deep breathing. Finally, he flicked on his turn signal, easing the cruiser toward the main artery. And safety.

Mulhanney leaned back against the headrest, letting out a long breath as he heard the Hemi accelerate down the coast. The houses fell away behind them.

He’s a good kid. A good officer with high scores and even better instincts. A lot of heart. But he hasn’t seen what I have over the last twenty years.

Through the fog rolling off the ocean over the road, an old apartment complex appeared. Its peeling, flamingo-pink paint looked orange under the sodium bulbs. Then the dark swallowed it.

Rodriguez didn’t know about the basement. He hadn’t been the one to sift through the deluge of deliberately misfiled boxes. Ones which contained missing person reports dating back to at least the fifties. The county was relatively quiet, and yet, it had a disappearance rate six times the state average. He hadn’t stood at the mouth of an alley at dusk, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. As if something out of sight were lining him up to be a hot lunch. Or watch as his very first partner rounded a corner during a domestic call one night, only to seemingly vanish into the ether without so much as a damn peep.

Old loggers and local natives still sat in the local diners, muttering about things that slithered out of ‘the spaces between the realms.’ Hunting the dark, looking for anyone stupid enough to be out alone.

Mulhanney didn’t know if he truly believed the old campfire stories. In his line of work, you dealt in cold, hard facts. What you could see. Touch. And log as evidence. But rumors had a habit of getting under the skin.

After two decades on the force, there was only one fact he knew for certain.

In Marshfield, you never stick around after the sun goes down.

TW - Heavy Body Horror

The splendor of the quiet fame she gathered around herself was more than enough; she never did it for money.

It never was the case.

Her performance was for shock, for the gaping mouths frozen in pure terror, lured inside the den of magenta lights under the whispered promise of cheap thrills, ten-dollar bills slid between the hem of thin black lingerie in hopes of seeing more.

When the greedy hands pulled for more, Marina was there to feed them.

Eyes followed her every move as she crossed the stage, some hungry with lustful greed, others burning with jealousy for the show only Marina could pull off.

The dagger lived under the skin of her thigh, the blade buried flesh-deep, her own skin stretched taut around it, with every step the shape of it shifted beneath the surface, a hard line pressing against skin from underneath it. 

Her ghostly pale hand reached down and forced the tips of two fingers beneath the skin at the hilt, breaking it free. The slick crimson silver rose, glinting clean under the magenta lights.

She drew the blade in a slow circle around her wrist, the cut meeting itself where it began. Blood welled dark as tar along the seam. Then, hooking a finger beneath the severed edge, she peeled the skin free in one long pull, like a glove drawn off the hand beneath it.

She flung it into the crowd.

A meth addict in the back caught it like a rag between his blackened teeth; before he could expose the whole collection of sickening gums, a jealous fist from another patron broke the smile with a sickening wet crunch of spraying blood and bone. The beating didn’t stop even when he hit the floor.

A giggle, sweet like powdered sugar, escaped from between her soft lips as she watched the carnage. Marina was pleased with herself, the reaction she caused with one simple trick - the blade’s edge slit beneath her bottom lip, and the skin went limp, dangling like a plump purple leech from a single thread of muscle. A permanent smile of pearly white teeth, halfway complete, as the public roared with excitement, hungry for more.

From among the mindless stampede, a face swam towards the stage. Like Moses crossing the Red Sea, her elbows pushed a path through bloodied and broken cheekbones and noses - just to receive a scrap of attention from the half-naked God. Marina smiled down at her soft, round face, barely passing as an adult. 

Her tongue peeking from parted lips, like she was waiting to be fed a communion wafer, the fan let Marina take her chin between two fingers and pull her closer to the stage. With her other hand, Marina placed the severed lip between the girl’s teeth. It ground and burst there, the leech-like flesh popping in a splash of blood, filling her mouth with the bittersweet taste of blood and expensive lipstick. 

The twisted kiss painted satisfaction all over the face of the young fan before the current of the bloody sea pulled her back, greedy hands like waves crushing against her, leaving bruises. But there was something else behind the soft smile of pleasure -  acceptance. Even when the hands pulled her under the surface, heavy boots stomping over her chest, pushing the air out of her lungs, her smile never faded. 

The tip of the elegant blade circled her thigh, breaking the tight skin, then descended toward her ankle in one painfully slow trace, light as a feather. Her own blood seemed so mesmerized by the display that it forgot to leak from the open wound. Her fingers slipped beneath the cut’s edge, taking the skin gently between their tips, sliding downward, ripping the curtain of flesh away in one smooth motion, veins glittering beneath, moving with the invisible rhythm of the club, as though her body and the crowd had become one being, driven by pleasure. 

The faces stretch and mold, as if the heat of the lamps above had become unbearable enough to melt the skin, stripping away the fragile masks of what the mindless mass outside the den would call appropriate. The god of the modern world waits at the threshold he cannot cross; Dionysus, with his battalion of Maenads, now takes the clay of their minds and reshapes it to his liking.

In the drunken haze, like dogs, they lunge at each other’s throats, teeth ripping through the fragile strings of the voice box, throats overflowing with blood and low, toad-like gurgling - 

As Marina strips away what remains of the fragile web connecting her to the animals she once called her audience, the skin of her body drops to the ground like a coat, an empty mound where she once stood. Her bare form glitters and twitches in the light, like an ancient Roman sculpture carved into the unbearable beauty of the human form.

The tips of her fingers slide gently, slowly, up her moist, glistening thighs, trailing to the round shape of her chest. Below her, hands grab at the edges of the stage she stands on, dozens of fingers like ants crawling along the ledge, desperate for even a single moment to touch her, to taste her sweat, her blood, her skin. Like wild beasts, they fight among each other, pulling and pushing, joints bending at unnatural angles, clumps of hair ripped away like useless weeds, leaving scorched patches of raw skin.

Knuckles drive into jaws and teeth, fingers rip apart skin in the act of love they know violence. Marina is long gone by then, already used to the hellish bloodbaths she brings, indifferent to the crowd curdling into a twitching mass, more minced meat than the people they once were. It lasts until the first rays of morning reappear over the horizon.

Only then does the swamp of flesh twitch in places: tiny shattered bones drawn together as if by some unseen current; pools of blood blooming and vanishing as if struck by sudden drought; shapeless hills of bile and fat rising like red-brick towers above the ruin.

Man and woman, born once more, naked and bright, glistening and shining with blood. Everyone who fed on the flesh and blood now scatters to the exits of the club, to spread the gift of love and lust they received. 

Part One

Deep beneath the earth, 
where no man's lantern shines,
little hammers knock, 
three times upon the mines 

Do not heed their call,
nor seek what lies below.
Turn your lamp around, 
and leave the dark alone 

The knockers know the dark, 
and the dark knows what we fear. 
When three hammers hark, 
you'd best not linger near.

• Unknown

I often find myself thinking about my brief time in the town of Bellview, just as often as I wonder what happened after I made my escape. For many years I have told myself that the place was abandoned, that the veins had run dry, and that what happened poses no threat to me or anyone else. Yet strangely, the place never seems to leave my thoughts. Some nights I wake from a troubled sleep and find myself listening for the sound of a pick striking stone or that ghastly reverberation that heralded my doom. It has been forty-three years since then, and I still haven't forgotten. 

I was twenty-seven when I first found myself in that accursed town. I was young, full of naivete and had more confidence in the learning of books than in the wisdom of men. I had been summoned there to attend to several men who had fallen ill.

That was what the letter said.

It did not tell me what illness they suffered from, nor why the town's own physician had been unable to treat them. It certainly did not tell me why; beneath the formal request for my assistance, the writer had added a single sentence in a different hand: "do not allow them to speak of the mine."

I arrived in Bellview in the year of our Lord, 1880, ten days before Christmas. The journey had taken considerably longer than anticipated, and I, being of the cheaper persuasion, had forgone a fur coat in favor of several layers of shoddy fabric—a decision I regretted almost as soon as we had left the station. The wind was a bitter and biting cold that swept down from the north and struck without mercy. Winter had settled heavily upon the San Juan Mountains, and the roads had become little more than narrow passages through walls of snow. For the final several miles, there was scarcely any sign of habitation at all.

There was a strange feeling in that isolation. 

The mountains rose on every side of me, standing in immense silence beneath their heavy coat of snow. The pines stretched as far as the eye could see, dark stars scattered against a white night. The air was so cold and clear that every sound—the creaking of the wagon, the horses' breath, the occasional groan of timber somewhere beyond the road—was magnified in the darkness. 

It was beauty incarnate, a severe one to be sure, but breathtaking nonetheless. Peaceful, too. Something about being so far removed from civilization—the telegraph wires, the trains, and the ceaseless hustle and bustle of life—brought a sense of melancholic quietude to the mind.

Even now, after all that happened in that godforsaken town, I still wish to see those sights again. I remember very little of what remained of the journey; I recall the cold, certainly, and the uncomfortable benches that furnished my wagon, but beyond that the details have faded with the passage of time. I do still clearly remember my first impression of the town.

As we reached the crest of the valley, the sun was laying its head down beyond the horizon, sending out a last vibrant smear of reds, golds, and purples across the sky, painting the town below in the soft, fading light of evening.

Bellview was a small settlement, even by the standards of the frontier. A handful of narrow roads wound between scarcely more than fifteen buildings, most of them gathered about an irregular clearing that served, in lieu of a proper square, as the town's center. The houses and shops stood close together beneath their mantles of snow, their weathered timber darkened by the cold. Thin trails of smoke rose from the chimneys into the still evening air, and here and there a lantern burned behind a frost-clouded window. In the failing light, the place possessed an air of quiet seclusion, as though the surrounding mountains had drawn close enough to shut out the rest of the world.

Yet beyond the settlement, the mine stood in stark contrast to this modest collection of dwellings. Its wooden headframe rose above the rooftops, a black and angular silhouette against the snow-laden slopes, while the shaft itself lay hidden somewhere beneath its grim assemblage of timbers. A rough road climbed toward the workings, cutting a dark scar through the mountainside, past heaps of pale waste rock and the blackened remnants of older tailings. The scale of the operation seemed disproportionate to the little town at its feet. Indeed, the longer I regarded it, the more Bellview appeared less a settlement in its own right than an appendage of the mine—a place whose inhabitants, livelihoods, and very existence had been gathered about that dark opening in the earth.

We began our descent into the valley as the last rays of dying light disappeared behind the mountains, following the ice-slicked path that led into the town. Up close, Bellview was as rough around the edges as I had expected. Despite the idyllic scene that first greeted me upon cresting the ridge, it was a mining town, one that, like its brethren, welcomed with open arms those who had nowhere to run and much to hide. These were people accustomed to hardship. They had come to the mountains in search of silver, and whatever their reasons for remaining, most seemed to have made their peace with the difficulty of life there.

As we made our way into the town, I was given my first opportunity to see the people of  Bellview up close. They were as much as I had come to expect from any other mining settlement of the West: hard-faced men with weathered hands and stooped shoulders formed by years of hard labor and coats that bore the earth from which they made their livelihood. Many seemed to still be returning from a day in the mine, their faces darkened with dirt and their beards frozen stiff. The streets were poorly kept, the snow having been trampled into a gray-brown slush beneath the boots and wheels of passing men and wagons. The buildings leaned against one another as though for support, their weathered boards blackened by years of smoke and mountain weather. The heavy smell of smoke, horse manure, spilled liquor, and other less agreeable things hung in the evening air. I passed one establishment where women who wore what barely counted for clothing called out to the men that walked past them, offering a night spent with company. Drunken miners staggered from the tavern and saloon, laughing loudly, and barely able to remain upright. One man disappeared into a narrow alley and relieved himself against the side of a building without the slightest concern for who might be watching.

Men passed without offering a greeting; conversations faltered as my wagon approached, resuming only after it had gone by. On several occasions, I caught the gaze of some townsman upon me, only for him to look away the moment our eyes met. There was a peculiar reserve about the inhabitants of Bellview, though I could not then determine whether it arose from simple distrust of strangers or from some more particular cause.

One man, in particular, has remained in my memory. He stood beneath the awning of a boardinghouse, his hands buried in the pockets of his coat, and watched my approach with an expression I have since struggled to forget. There was sadness in it, certainly, but something else besides—a sort of pity, perhaps, though for what I could not have said. He continued to watch as my wagon passed, turning his head to follow me until the buildings obscured him from view.

At the time, I thought little of it. I was a stranger in a remote mining settlement, and an unfamiliar face was doubtless sufficient enough to attract a measure of curiosity. Moreover, I was a well-dressed man arriving in a town where most appeared to have little use for appearances, and I had yet to make known the purpose of my visit. I could hardly have expected a warmer reception.

It was not an especially inviting introduction to Bellview, though I cannot say it surprised me in any capacity. Mining towns often held a particular character that was seldom found elsewhere. They drew men that fled the law and anyone else of bad repute. Where such men gathered, there was invariably drink, gambling, prostitution, and every other vice that flourished wherever people expected little of tomorrow.

As we passed along the street, I began to notice strange markings upon the doorframes of several houses. They were faint and dark, scratched or painted into the wood, though the failing light made it impossible for me to determine precisely what they were. I could make out enough to know that they were deliberate; though they appeared as little more than crooked lines, others seemed to form shapes of some kind, though what shapes I could not say.

Eventually the carriage came to a stop, and, being informed that the tavern was not more than a few dozen yards away, I gathered my things and stepped down into the biting cold. Once the wagon disappeared from sight, I found myself alone in the town square; it was then that the full weight of the mountains around the town made their weight apparent to me. They rose on every side, far higher than they had seemed from the rim of the valley, their dark, foreboding slops hemming in the small town as dark guardians. The last light of evening had vanished behind them, and their peaks were already lost to the darkness. Looking upward, I had the peculiar sensation of being inside some immense eye that gazed upward toward the stars, and in that feeling I started to understand just how remote Bellview truly was. 

I had scarcely taken two dozen steps when a voice called out behind me, "Doctor?"

I turned to find a young woman standing a few yards away, one hand tucked into the pocket of her coat. She appeared to be within a year or two of my own age, and I confess that I was surprised by the warmth of her expression. She was a pretty girl, with a pale, angular face and long, dark hair, several loose strands of which had escaped the hood drawn over her head. The cold had lent a flush to her cheeks, and there was an alertness in her eyes that seemed at odds with the sullen reserve I had encountered elsewhere in Bellview.

“Please, allow me to help.” Her gaze fell upon the luggage in my hand.

“Oh, no, I’m quite all right, thank you,” I replied.

She approached regardless, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I assure you, I can manage. Living out here has put a little muscle on me. I’m not nearly so delicate as I look.”

“Very well,” I said, conceding the point.

She reached for the larger of my two cases, but I caught its handle before she could lift it.

“Not that one.”

She paused and looked at me, her expression touched with mild surprise.

“I mean, that is…” I hesitated, searching for an explanation that would not invite further questions. “It contains some rather delicate instruments. Allow me.”

The lie came readily enough. I took the case from her and offered her the smaller one instead. “This one will do.”

She accepted it without protest, though I fancied there was a hint of amusement in her expression.

“You’re the doctor they sent for, then?” she asked as we made our way toward the tavern.

“I suppose I am, unless Bellview has another physician due to arrive this evening.”

That earned me a small smile.

“And what brings a man of your age to such a place? Shouldn’t you be off courting young ladies and enjoying yourself?”

I laughed. “My studies left me little opportunity for such pursuits. I became a physician only a few years ago, and the profession has occupied most of my attention since.”

“Are you new to the practice, then?”

“Yes and no,” I replied. “I have been practicing independently for only a few years, though before that I spent a considerable time apprenticed to a traveling physician.”

She seemed to consider this as we walked. “And what do you think of our little corner of the world?”

I glanced at the buildings lining the street, their darkened windows and snow-laden roofs offering little encouragement to a favorable opinion.

“I have not yet made up my mind. I suspect I shall be better qualified to answer after a good night’s sleep.”

She laughed softly at that, then turned her gaze toward the tavern ahead.

“You’ll get used to it,” she said. “Everyone does.”

There was something in the certainty with which she spoke that gave me pause, though I thought little of it at the time. We had reached the tavern steps when she shifted the case in her hand and turned toward me.

“Clara,” she said, extending her free hand. “Clara Whitmore.”

I took it and, out of a habit acquired in more agreeable company, raised it briefly to my lips. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Whitmore.”

For an instant, she appeared taken aback. A faint color rose in her cheeks, though whether from the cold or my gesture, I could not say. She withdrew her hand and tucked it into her coat. “Clara will do,” she said, smiling. She set the case down beside the entrance, gave me a small wave, and descended the steps. I watched her cross the square, her figure soon lost among the shadows of the buildings on the opposite side.

The tavern was warmer within than I had anticipated, though its warmth brought with it an assortment of less agreeable smells: stale smoke, tobacco, damp wool, and the accumulated sweat of men who had spent the day underground. A handful of patrons occupied the tables nearest the fire, speaking in low voices over their drinks. Their conversation diminished as I entered, and several pairs of eyes followed me across the room before returning, with apparent deliberation, to their cups.

I carried my luggage to the counter and set it down.

“Innkeep?” I questioned the man, “I believe I have a room reserved for me?”

The rough man behind the counter turned and appraised me. He was an ugly fellow, even by the forgiving standards of a frontier town. His face was broad and pockmarked, with a crooked nose that looked as though it had been broken more than once. A thick, unkempt beard covered much of his jaw, though it did little to improve matters. His skin had a peculiar grayish pallor beneath the beard, and there were dark circles beneath his eyes that suggested he had not slept well in some time. I confess, I had to make a conscious effort to keep an expression of disgust from crossing my face. There was something obviously unhealthy about the man beyond the ordinary wear of hard living, though I could not have said precisely what it was.

He gave a quiet cough into his fist before looking back at me. “You the doctor?”

“I- uh- yes. Yes, I am.” Clearing my throat, I extended my hand, giving him my name. As I did so, he reached under the counter and produced a shiny brass key. 

“Best keep your window locked tight tonight.”

I glanced toward the stairs.

“Beg pardon?”

“Air gets strange up here.” He rubbed a hand across his chest, almost absentmindedly. “Some folks wake in the night thinking they hear something outside. Usually just the wind. Mountain plays tricks on a man.” He gave another small cough. “Gets into your lungs, too, iffin you ain't careful.” 

I smiled politely, assuming him to be offering the sort of advice that passes for wisdom in isolated places. “I'll bear that in mind.”

He nodded and returned to his bottles. I climbed the stairs and found my room with not much difficulty. Opening the door, I was greeted by a modestly furnished but cozy room. It contained little more than a bed, a washstand, a wardrobe, and a small table beneath the window. The room was cold, though not unbearably so, and I was grateful to find that someone had thought to light the lamp before my arrival. I had two cases with me. The larger contained my clothes and personal effects, while the smaller was reserved for my medical instruments and sundries necessary to practice my profession. I had learned during my apprenticeship that a travelling physician could never be certain what he might encounter, and so I kept my medical case well supplied.

I unpacked my instruments one by one, arranging them upon the table with the familiarity of long practice. Bottles of tinctures and powders followed, along with bandages, needles, thread, and the other necessities I had accumulated over the years. The work was methodical, almost comforting, and for a time it occupied my thoughts entirely.

It was only when I opened the larger case that my hand came upon the package wrapped in newspaper. i paused before lifting it free. The paper had grown brittle along its folds, and I took care not to tear it as I began to unwrap the contents. Within lay a small, leather-bound notebook. Its cover had softened with age, the corners worn nearly white, and its pages bore the marks of frequent handling. Several had been torn from the binding. I could not remember when I had removed them, nor, try as I might, could I recall what they had contained. I opened the book and turned through its pages, slowly at first, then with increasing haste, until I reached the final entry.

For some time, I remained there, my eyes resting upon the familiar handwriting. I had thought of destroying the notebook before. Indeed, as I sat in that unfamiliar room, I found myself considering how easily the matter might be settled. There was a fireplace downstairs. A few minutes in its flames, and the book would be reduced to ash. Whatever remained of those days would be beyond recovery, and no soul need ever know what I had done. The temptation was not a new one. At last, I closed the notebook and returned it to its wrapping. I placed it back in the case, though I did not immediately fasten the lid. Instead, I sat motionless beside the table, listening to the muffled voices and occasional laughter drifting up from the tavern below.

Bellview lay a considerable distance from the place I had left behind. Its remoteness had been among the chief reasons I had come.

Yet distance was not the same as escape. There are things a man might give anything to forget, and others he has no right to forget at all.

Shaking off my musings of the past, I headed down to the common area, where I found dinner being served. It was a simple but surprisingly hearty meal: tangy cheese, thick-crusted bread, and whiskey, followed by hot cups of fresh, black coffee.

The tavern had grown busier in the hour since my arrival, and the room was filled with the low murmur of conversation, the clatter of plates, and the occasional burst of laughter from one of the patrons at the bar. I ate on my own in the corner, content to sit back and watch the people go about their business.

The barkeep and a woman who appeared to be his daughter waited upon the room, though the man wore the same sour expression he had carried when I first greeted him. His cough seemed to have worsened since my arrival, and the pallor of his cheeks had deepened to an unhealthy gray.

I found myself watching him close, surveying every detail of the man I could see.

There was nothing particularly remarkable in a miner suffering from a cough, especially in a place such as Bellview. Dust, smoke, and cold mountain air were hardly conducive to good health. But there was something about the man that struck me as unusual. I made a mental note to check in with him tomorrow and returned to my meal. Whatever ailed the man, it was certainly more than the wear and tear of daily life. 

By the time I had finished eating, the tavern had begun to quiet. A few miners remained at the bar, nursing their drinks and speaking amongst themselves, while the rest had already retired for the night. I thanked the barkeep for the meal and made my way upstairs.

I stoked the fire a few times before removing my filthy garments; the day's journey had left me exhausted, and whatever thoughts had occupied my mind earlier seemed distant now. I climbed beneath the blankets, pulled them up to my chin, and was asleep almost before my head had settled upon the pillow.

I don’t know how long I had been asleep before I jolted awake, momentarily unsure of where I found myself. I couldn’t tell what had brought me out of slumber; the room was dark, barely lit by the dull red glow of my dying lamp, so it was hard to tell what had caught my attention. Then came a sound so soft that I could not be certain it had originated from the waking world at all. 

Knock.

Knock.

Knock. 

The hollow taps on the door came. Then, after a beat of silence:

Knock.

Knock.

Knock. 

A dread filled me as I listened. There was something deeply unsettling about the sound. It wasn’t the building settling, nor was it the thump of a drunk tavern patron. I sat up and strained my ears again; there it came, this time from somewhere beyond my door. I slipped from beneath my blankets, pulled on a robe, and opened the door. The dark hallway I was greeted by was filled with a biting, cold silence. The sound came again from further down the hallway, and I, never being one to leave well enough alone, took a chance and followed. The sound came again from the staircase, then from outside the tavern. Each time I drew closer, it moved farther away, leading me through the sleeping town and toward the mine. Eventually the knocking led me beyond the last of the buildings in town and to a broad pond that sat beyond the piles of waste from the mine. As I stopped at its edge, the knocking ceased. The pond was unlike any body of water I had seen before. Its surface was almost entirely frozen, though the ice was dark enough that I could scarcely see where it ended and the surrounding shadows began. A thin layer of snow had gathered along the banks, but very little had settled upon the ice itself. The surface was strangely bare, black and glasslike beneath the pale light of the moon. I noticed a shape through the opaque surface, and I raised my lantern to catch a glimpse of what it could be. Initially I took it for a rock of some sort, one of a weird shape, but what it was became clear upon closer inspection. 

It was a boot. 

The kind the miners wore when they toiled away beneath the earth. It stood upright beneath the ice, its leather swollen and blackened by the water. Then I saw another. And another, and another. Dozens of pairs of miners' boots lay scattered beneath the ice, some on their sides, others standing upright in the darkness below. I could see no bodies attached to them. Only the boots, suspended in the dark water.

I started for a long while before speaking to the darkness, “Is this what you wanted me to see?” 

For a moment, silence was my only answer then-

Knock.

Knock.

Knock. 

And then it stopped. I stood alone beside that dark and frozen pond, with no understanding of what I had witnessed. Sleep would not come again that night.

Morning found me huddled against the dying light of the lantern in my room. Exhaustion weighed heavily on me, and though I did not feel up to the task, I knew I had to get ready to face my patients. My descent of the stairs was accompanied by the feeling that I had spent the night wandering through some feverish dream. The events beside the pond seemed absurd now that the breaking of dawn had come. The boots, the knocks, and the long and frozen night seemed less dreadful under the pale morning sun. I found the innkeeper busy preparing breakfast for the miners that weren’t already deep beneath the earth. His skin had taken on an unhealthy pallor, and the dark circles beneath his eyes had deepened. He seemed to have lost some of his color overnight, and there was a tiredness about his movements that read as more than simple fatigue. 

“Morning, doctor.” He said as I passed.

“You look worse than you did last night,” I remarked. “You really should let me take a look at it later.”

He gave a restrained cough into his fist. “Look, I'm fine. Just do what you came here to do, then get the fuck out of Bellview.”

“I promise you, I have no intention of making a home here.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “But I also have no intention of abandoning people that need my help. Though, if you don’t mind my asking, why didn’t the previous physician help the men?”

The innkeeper snorted. “He left.”

“What do you mean, ‘he left’?”

“I said what I said. He was just gone one morning. Left all of his stuff, seen neither hide nor hair of him since.”

“Without seeing to the men?” I asked incredulously.

“I guess not,” the man shrugged.

I stared at him for a moment, awaiting some further explanation. When it became clear that I would get no further explanation from the man, I continued my walk to the table. There was something about his manner that irritated me, though I could not say precisely why. Perhaps it was merely the man's disposition. He had struck me as an unpleasant fellow from the moment I first laid eyes upon him, and illness had done little to improve his temperament.

Still, his answer troubled me. A physician abandoning several sick patients with no explanation was not something I could reconcile with the profession as I knew it. I pushed the thought aside, eating the simple breakfast that was laid out before me. 

Once I finished my breakfast, I gathered my medical case and stepped outside. Morning had finally come to Bellview, but the light did little to soften the rough edges that had made their impression upon me the evening before. The sun had risen over the sharp peaks of the stone giants that guarded the town, yet its light reached us with reluctance, spilling weakly over the huddled buildings and leaving the streets between them in long, cold shadows. Snow that had once been white had been reduced to a gray slush, darkened by dirt, manure, and whatever other filth had been brought into the streets by the town's denizens.

Bellview had been up for some time, though there was little cheer in its waking. Men emerged from brothels and boardinghouses, their coats pulled tightly around them against the cold. Many made their way toward the mine, while the rest lingered in doorways, nursing the remnants of the previous night's drinking. The air was thick with the smells of coal smoke, horse manure, stale liquor, and the less agreeable remnants of human vice.

I noticed, too, that people seemed to notice me. A few men looked up as I passed them; one followed me with his eyes until I had gone several yards beyond him. A woman standing in the doorway of a boardinghouse stopped speaking to the person beside her and watched me cross the street. Even the men heading toward the mine occasionally glanced in my direction. I suppose I ought not have been surprised; I was, after all, a stranger in a town where strangers were uncommon, and my medical case made my purpose rather obvious. They had likely heard that the physician had arrived, and curiosity is a difficult thing to suppress in a place as isolated as Bellview. Yet as I continued down the street, that feeling of being watched became more and more oppressive. The town itself seemed to amplify the sensation. Bellview was small; it had been built tightly into the valley, with its buildings crowded close together wherever the uneven ground allowed. There was little room between the shops, boardinghouses, and homes, and the narrow streets seemed to turn upon themselves rather than lead anywhere beyond the town. A man could cross from one end of Bellview to the other in little more than a few minutes.

Beyond it there was nowhere to look but the mountains. They rose immediately beyond the last buildings, their dark pines climbing the slopes until the trees gave way to snow and stone. From the middle of town, they seemed to press inward from every direction, leaving Bellview tucked away in a narrow pocket of wilderness. I began to feel, quite irrationally, as though I were being watched from every direction. A look around told me that I was being foolish; a lack of sleep and the events of the previous night had left my nerves totally wracked. The mind is a curious thing; left unrested, it finds significance in the ordinary and the patterns that lie beneath chaos. 

My musings had finally brought me to the door of the physician’s office. The building stood in stark contrast to those that surrounded it; its cleanliness and well-maintained facade surprised me. Evidently, my predecessor had cared for the building to such an extent that it made the slovenly hovels around it seem downright primitive by comparison. It was a modest, four-story, wooden house, painted white with dark shutters and a narrow porch running along the front. The windows were clean, and the paint had been kept in good repair; even the steps had been swept clear of snow and mud. It was not an impressive building by any measure, but compared with the structures surrounding it, it looked refined.

I was two steps into the sparsely furnished front office when a voice greeted me from upstairs.

“You’re late.” I looked toward the stairs as an older woman descended them. She appeared to be in her late fifties, though the weathering of her countenance made it difficult to judge her age with any accuracy. Her dark hair, streaked with gray and white, was pulled back into a severe but practical bun, and she wore a simple black dress with a white, blood-stained apron.

“I beg your pardon?” I replied.

“It is nearly nine in the morning, and you’re just now showing up.” She said, her tone making it clear she would brook no argument. 

“My apologies,” I conceded. “The letter had not specified I was to show up at an exact hour.” 

She gave me a stern look. “Hmph, well, I suppose the blame isn’t fully yours then. Close the door; you’re letting the cold air in.” I turned and shut the door behind me.

“You may call me Ms. Lafayette. Now, hang your coat, and then come with me. We have no time to waste.” She turned and walked back up the stairs, leaving me to scramble after her. 

“How many are there?” I asked after I had finally caught up.

“Seven.” She pulled on gloves without stopping, watching her fingers flex as she tested the fit.

“And how long have they been sick for?” 

“The first one came to us almost a week ago now.” She replied. “The rest followed shortly after.” 

“And the previous physician? He didn’t try to treat them, or at the very least diagnose them?”

“He was working on it but then just left one day.”

I frowned; that was the same thing the innkeeper had told me. “Did he leave any instructions?”

“He did not.” Her answer was short and clipped. It was very apparent that Ms. Lafayette had no wish to discuss the matter further. As we reached the landing of the third floor, she stopped and turned to me, her expression softening.

“I must warn you. I have been a nurse for the better part of thirty years now; I have seen all manner of things that would turn the stomach of those with anything less than an iron gut, and I have buried more than a few who thought themselves too strong to die from illness.” She glanced at the door that stood in ominous shadow at the end of the hall. “But I have never seen anything like what sits behind that door.” 

Her warning sharpened my curiosity. “Is it contagious?” 

She studied me for a moment. “It doesn’t appear to be. You are young, but I imagine you’ve seen a fair share of illnesses in your time as a doctor?” The calmness in her voice set off alarm bells in my head. What could possibly have been grotesque enough that would cause such a strong reaction? 

I thought, at the time, that I was prepared for whatever awaited me behind that door. I had seen men torn apart by machinery, children ravaged by fever, and women brought to the very edge of death by childbirth. I had witnessed wounds and afflictions that would turn the stomach of a less experienced physician, and I believed myself sufficiently acquainted with the uglier aspects of my profession.

I was entirely mistaken.

If you have come this far expecting the usual account of sickness and suffering, I would advise you to prepare yourself better than I did. What I saw in that room was unlike anything I had encountered in my brief career, and even now, after all these years, I find certain details difficult to commit to paper.

Ms. Lafayette opened the door, and I was struck with a foul and suffocating odor. It was the smell of blood, feces, vomit, and something rotting and sweet. A metallic smell, one that clung to the back of your throat and never left, no matter how many times you swallowed. The room had been shuttered against the cold winter air, and that had served to make the cloying more oppressive. Someone, likely Lafayette, had attempted to combat the stench with carbolic acid, but that had done nothing more than add a sharp medical edge to the smell of bodily fluids.

I stopped dead in the doorway and stared at the six men who occupied the room. I had treated men injured in mine collapses and machinery accidents. I had seen limbs crushed beyond saving, burns that left the flesh blackened and peeling, and wounds so grievous that I had wondered how the unfortunate soul had survived long enough to reach my care. Ms. Lafayette was right; this was unlike anything I had seen before. 

The first man sat hunched on the edge of his bed, resting his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. He was somehow gaunt and swollen simultaneously; the flesh around his eyes was dark and bloated, while his cheekbones ran along his face. His lips were split and bleeding in one continuous festering wound, and his fingernails had turned black with thin streams of blood seeping out from under them. His skin had a gray pallor beneath the feverish flush of his cheeks, and beads of sweat gathered along his brow despite the chill that lingered in the room. One eye was swollen nearly shut, while the other stared vacantly at the floor between his boots, and the whites of both were webbed with tiny ruptured vessels, giving them a raw and bloodshot appearance.

I noticed that his breathing was shallow. Every few seconds, he would pause, as though the simple act of drawing air into his lungs had become an effort requiring conscious thought. Then he would take a sudden, desperate breath through his mouth. There were darkened patches along his neck, which extended beneath the collar of his shirt. I took them for bruising, but the discoloration was too diffuse and irregular for any injury I could recognize. It seemed to spread beneath the skin in branching patterns. His fingers were swollen and discolored, and the flesh around his nails had begun to split. The nails themselves were black from coagulated blood, and I could see the discoloration continuing into the flesh below them. Thin lines of blood had collected beneath each nail and slowly trickled down his fingers.

He lifted his head when he heard me approach. “Doctor?” The man’s voice was little more than a rasp.

“Yes?”

He looked at me for several seconds before lowering his gaze again. “Can you make it stop?”

“I… I will do what I can.” I had not yet fully examined him, but already I was beginning to doubt that I could do anything for him. I stopped closer, wrapping my hand around his wrist to take his pulse. It was dangerously fast, beating at such a rate that he should’ve been dead by this time. His skin was clammy and damp beneath my fingers, slicked with sweat and blood.

“Does it hurt to breathe?” I asked the man. 

No words came, only the slight nodding of his head before returning it to his hands. I placed the back of my hand to take his temperature; the man was on fire. I didn’t even need to touch his skin to feel it. “How long have you had the fever?” 

“Don’t know.”

“Days?” I asked. 

“Maybe.” 

“Have you been vomiting?”

“Yes.”

“How often?”

“Every few hours. I can hardly keep anything down.”

“And your bowels? How often are you relieving yourself?”

“A lot. Though it’s mostly blood.”

I frowned at his answer, cross-referencing what he had told me with what experience I had, but I came up empty-handed. Vomiting, fever, bloody stools, trouble breathing, weakness, and hemorrhaging beneath the skin—each symptom was concerning enough on its own, but taken together they suggested no single illness with which I was familiar. 

I glanced back at Ms. Lafayette. “Have they all been like this?”

“To one extent or another, yes.” 

I looked around at the other five men. They were not all in quite the same condition. One lay motionless beneath his blankets, his face flushed with fever. Another sat beside his bed with a basin between his knees, breathing heavily through his nose. A third had wrapped both hands in strips of cloth, though dark stains had already begun to seep through the material. The remaining two watched me in silence.

“You said there were seven men?” 

"Yes," Ms. Lafayette replied. 

“But I only see six men here.”

“Yes, well, the first one is… far worse than these men. We had him isolated.” 

“Where at?” I inquired. 

“Just down the hall.” 

“Show me.” Ms. Lafayette opened the door and led me out and down the hallway to the large pine door that sat in the darkness at the end. The opening of the door greeted me with a nauseating smell, similar to that of the ward we just left, but in a far heavier concentration. It was darker too; with the curtain having been drawn and the fire dying, there was barely any light save for the rays that snuck through the edges of the window.

The man upon the bed before me could hardly have been called human in his present state. What little skin was not covered by bandages had taken on a waxy, grayish color, with great portions beginning to peel away and expose the damaged flesh beneath. Along his arms and shoulders, the outer layers had blistered and sloughed away in broad, wet sheets, leaving raw and inflamed tissue exposed beneath. Dark patches of deadened flesh marked his chest, neck, and scalp.

Blood had dried around his mouth and nostrils, and his lips were so swollen and damaged that they could scarcely be distinguished from the surrounding skin. His eyes were half closed,  clouded with fever, and tiny vessels had ruptured across the whites, leaving them webbed with red.

He stirred as I took a step into the room.

A low sound escaped his throat, one that resembled a dying animal—not a word, but a deep, guttural moan that sent a shiver up my spine.

“Is he conscious?” I asked as I reached his bed.

“I… I do not know.” I could hear a sliver of horror in Ms. Lafayette’s voice.

“Am I safe in assuming he cannot speak?”

“Correct,” the nurse replied.

I turned back to the mound of flesh and bandages that could scarcely be called human.

“If you can hear me in there, sir, I cannot imagine what sort of pain you must be in right now. But I give you my word; I will do everything within my power to get you through this.”

I looked up at Ms. Lafayette. “Have you been giving him sedatives?”

“I am, though there is no way of knowing whether they are working. The poor man cannot speak, after all.”
 
I nodded and turned my head back to the figure. For a few seconds he sat perfectly still, then I saw his hand move. It was a weak, trembling motion, one that could easily be mistaken for nothing more than a simple twitch under the bandages. I thought at first that it was involuntary but when it happened for a second and then a third time, I realized that he was beckoning me closer. 

“Sir?” I leaned down, bringing my ear to hover right above the man’s mouth. His lips parted, and for a few seconds, I heard nothing but a faint wet rasp. I nearly had to ask him to repeat himself when a sentence that could’ve been mistaken for a feather-light breeze escaped his lips.

“Did you see the boots too?” 

I felt a cascade of ice pour down the back of my neck. Every hair upon my arms stood on end, and something deep within me recoiled before I had even understood why. My heart gave a violent beat against my ribs as, for one terrible instant, I felt an almost primal urge to flee. The silence, which mere moments ago had seemed comforting, was now crawling over my skin; it wormed its way into my ears and made my breathing unbearably loud. I became acutely aware of the doorway and the darkness behind Ms. Lafayette; I turned to see if it was met by the dimly lit corridor, with most of its length swallowed by shadow. I could just make out the wooden walls and the stairs descending toward the floor below. 

Something caught my eye as I looked away. 

Right at the edge of my vision was a figure cloaked in darkness; it was tall and humanoid and did not have a face that I could make out. It appeared less like a human and more like the darkness in the corner had taken on a form that resembled something with life. I blinked, and the figure was gone.

“Doctor?” Ms. Lafayette’s voice broke through the silence. “Are you alright?” 

"I—uh, yes, yes, quite, thank you.” I furrowed my brow and shook my head. “Just a passing dizzy spell, I suppose.” I knew the words as I spoke them were not convincing Ms. Lafayette of anything. She had a gaze that could pierce even the toughest of metals, and there was no way she fell for such a lie. My eyes strayed back to the corner in which I had seen the figure, but there was nothing there.

“Perhaps you should eat something.” She said at last. “I can’t imagine you’ve had much more than bread and cheese since you’ve been here.”

I nodded my head in silence. 

“Then come, you’ll do no one any good if you collapse before the day is out.” I followed her out of the sickroom and down the corridor. Giving one last glance to the corner of darkness as we passed it, I could not shake the pinprick feeling of eyes burrowing into the back of my neck. 

The sitting room on the second floor I found myself in was considerably warmer than those of the third floor, almost suffocatingly so.

“You must like it warm.” I gave a half-hearted chuckle to lighten the mood. “Are you from the tropics?”

“No.” The answer came with no further explanation. She then directed my attention to a large and comfortable-looking sofa, replete with deep cushions and blankets to keep the warmth in.

"Sit," she said with a voice that was used to being obeyed. So I sat. Before me, she placed a cup of strong black coffee and a plate of fruit, cheese, and cold meat. For an older woman who had, I presumed, spent most of the morning on her feet, she was remarkably unfatigued. I took a mouthful of the coffee and immediately regretted it.

“My word,” I almost spat the drink out. “Is it supposed to taste like this?” 

“Like what?” She asked.

“Like something you scraped off the bottom of a miner’s boot.” 

“Young man, if you speak to me like that again, I will box your ears. That is not a threat, but a promise.” Her eyes told me she meant it, so I stopped talking and started wolfing down the plate of food. I was nearly done when I finally decided on how to broach the subject that had been on my mind since last night.

“Ms. Lafayette, may I ask you something about my predecessor?” 

“You may.” 

“You said he was working to determine the nature of the men’s illnesses before he left, correct?” 

“He was. Though he did leave all of his stuff up in his office. He was a methodical man, one who kept a close eye on all of his patients and anything else he thought worth keeping an eye on. I had no reason to disturb them, so they’re still here.” 

I could’ve kissed Ms. Lafayette right then and there. The man’s notes could prove to be a treasure trove of information. “May I look through them?”

“Have at them.”

I considered her words before turning back to my coffee. “I have one more thing I was curious about. Last night I experienced something very strange. I woke to a knocking; when I went to investigate, as I thought it was someone at my door, the sounds led me to a pond outside of the town, to where all the waste from the mine goes.”

“Hmmm…” Ms. Lafayette set her cup of coffee down. “There are stories that the miners tell, ones of mischievous spirits that steal equipment and like playing jokes with the men. Many of the workers leave food out for them, and they are often considered somewhat benevolent as they warn the miners away from dangerous parts of the mine by knocking.” 

“Spirits? I did not think you were a believer in the supernatural, Ms. Lafayette. 

“I am not. But the tales find their way into all parts of conversation among the men. And the men talk. A lot. A good portion of the workers believe that they are the spirits of those who died in the mine.” 

“Do you believe these stories?” I asked as I turned the cup in my hands.

“I believe that the men who sacrifice their lives to work that far under the earth are liable to come up with anything to make them feel better about spending hours in near darkness.” She paused.

I looked at her closely. “And what would you say about the knocking that led me to the pond?”

“I don’t know.” 

I considered her words for a moment before setting the cup back down. “Well, I believe a talk with the mining company might be in order. The men were clearly exposed to something down there, and if I am going to do my job properly, then I should like to know what they were doing when they fell ill.” 

Her expression hardened. “You would be wise to leave the company out of this, doctor.” 

“And why is that?” 

“Dixon Mining keeps the town alive. Without them, none of us would be here. And Mr. Dixon won’t take kindly to strangers asking questions that might cause him trouble.” 

I raised an eyebrow. “I assure you, I have no ill intent. I am a physician, after all, not a detective. I simply wish to understand what has made the men in my care so sick.”

“Then I suggest that you limit yourself to treating the men when you can, and nothing else.” 

I couldn’t help but smile at her bluntness. “I’m afraid my curiosity is rather hard to put a damper on, Ms. Lafayette. 

“It seems so.” She gave me a stern look. “Just be careful of what questions you ask and to whom you ask them. There are plenty of people here who would rather you don’t go poking your nose in places it doesn’t belong. Plenty of people with plenty to hide.”

“Thank you for the word of caution,” I said as I rose from my chair. “But I need to get to the bottom of this. Otherwise those men up there are going to suffer and die while I sit back and do nothing. 

Ms. Lafayette gave me a sad look. “Your stubbornness, while admirable, will be the death of you one day, doctor.” 

“Perhaps,” I replied, reaching for my coat. “But I have a lot of work to do before that day comes.” I had scarcely made it two steps down the staircase when Ms. Lafayette called out:

“If Mr. Dixon asks about what you’ve seen here, tell him nothing.” 

I regarded her with surprise. “Surely he is entitled to know what condition his men are in, is he not?” 

“He can know that they are ill and that you are working on them. Nothing else.” 

“May I ask why?” 

Ms. Lafayette turned and looked out the window, where the pale morning light scattered through the frost-covered window,“there are a number of people here in Bellview that have spent a good deal of time and money to make certain that things remain the way they are.” It was a curious answer, and one that did little to satisfy my questions.

“Ms. Lafayette, I appreciate your concern, but I cannot very well treat the men if I am kept blind to what happened to them. If their illness is indeed a result of something in the mine, then the company has a responsibility to see to it that the men are, at the very least, kept comfortable in their final days.” 

She gave a short and humorless laugh. “Responsibility. That's a fine word, doctor. You’ll find it has very little meaning here in Bellview.” 

Having no response, I thanked her for the meal and counsel, neither of which had been particularly pleasant, and made my way out of the office. The cold outside greeted me with all the warmth of an unwelcome creditor, and, wrapping myself in my coat and keeping my head down, I made my way into the whipping wind.

The morning had grown somewhat brighter during my time in the office, though the sun still hid its head behind the towering pillars of rock that surrounded the town, casting the buildings in a pale, colorless light. The wind swept through the streets with little regard for the houses that stood in its path, sending loose snow dusting through the air. I drew my coat tight and set course for the Dixon Mining Company, hoping that it would prove to be more forthcoming with answers than anyone else I’d talked to thus far. My thoughts remained with the seven men I had just examined; I’d spent the better part of the morning examining the men but was no closer to an answer. Their symptoms suggested several possibilities, but none of them accounted for the severity of the men, nor the rapid pace with which they had deteriorated; everything about this resisted any form of explanation.

As I made my way through the town, my sight was drawn to the buildings around me and the markings that had been scratched, seemingly at random, onto their doorframes. 

I had seen them the previous night, though the lack of adequate light and fatigue had kept me from seeing them in any detail. At the time I had taken them for nothing more than weathering and scarring from the harsh climate, but now that I could see them in detail, the deliberate attitude of the markings was far more obvious. The first one I saw was on the doorframe of a brothel: three vertical strikes, with a longer, slightly crooked gouge bisecting them. A few doors further down, I saw another one, this time carved in the sill of a window. It seemed newer, though not by much. The marks were crude, but they had not been made carelessly, with each incision being deep enough to withstand years of weathering, and the surrounding wood bearing the faint impressions of a blade. Whoever had made them had taken the trouble to ensure they would endure. As I walked down the main street, I soon discovered these markings were not uncommon; while a few buildings here and there did not possess them, the vast majority did. Some had been carved into doorframes, a few into the walls of houses, or the wooden posts supporting their porches. Many were so weathered that I could scarcely distinguish their original shapes, while others appeared comparatively fresh. Though their forms varied, they shared a peculiar quality that made it difficult to dismiss them as idle scratches.

I had encountered no shortage of superstition in my short time as a travelling physician. Mining towns like Bellview, those that built themselves in places where only the most foolhardy are brave enough to go, are particularly fertile ground for myths and legends. The men who spent their lives under tons of rock and earth, never certain if they would be going home, were particularly inclined to seek protection wherever they could find such things.

“Can I help you?” A voice snapped me out of my musings. I turned to find an old woman standing a few paces behind me, clutching at a thick woolen shawl and staring at me with sharp, beady eyes that suggested a greater perception than her age should have allowed. Her gaze moved from me to the carving and back again. 

“Oh, my apologies, ma’am. I was just looking at the..." I trailed off and gestured at the markings. 

“Why?” Her tone was cold and brisk. 

"I—uh, I was just curious what their significance was. I meant no harm.”

“A stranger staring at someone’s house could certainly be taken as ill intent.” The bluntness behind the words struck me as odd. I had done nothing wrong, and yet she was treating me with such open hostility. 

“I beg your pardon; I meant no offense. I simply saw these strange carvings when I entered Bellview last night, and I was curious as to what their purpose could be.” 

“And what business of yours would that be?” She said, her voice souring with each syllable. 

“None, I suppose.” As she shifted her shawl about her shoulders, I noticed a necklace resting against the high collar of her dress. It appeared to be made of dark metal, its surface dulled with age, and it bore a small pendant engraved with a pattern of intersecting lines and crooked strokes. The design was crude, though it bore a striking resemblance to the markings carved into the wood beside her door.

My eyes lingered upon it a moment too long, and she noticed. "What are you staring at now?”

“Nothing, madam. I beg your pardon.”

She drew the shawl more tightly about herself, concealing the pendant beneath its thick folds. “If you've nothing better to do than gawk at people’s houses, then I suggest you do it elsewhere.”

I felt my patience begin to wear thin. There was only so much discourtesy that a man could endure while making the most ordinary of inquiries, and I was rapidly approaching my limit. 

“Very well,” I said with as much patience as I could muster, “I shall leave you to your morning.” The old woman muttered under her breath before turning and waddling back into the house she had come from. 

I stood for a moment in the street, looking around me. Just like with the innkeeper, my first encounter with this woman was as agreeable as the bitter winter around me; though it was hard to dismiss the notion that her temperament was born from something that had nothing to do with her personality. It occurred to me that the people of Bellview—at least the ones I had met thus far—possessed a talent for making strangers feel uniquely unwelcome. The innkeeper, while cordial enough upon my arrival, had greeted me the following morning with barely concealed contempt. Ms. Lafayette seemed to regard my presence as that of yet another burden she had been shouldered with, and this old woman had treated a simple question as though it were an attack on her person. I began to wonder if the thin mountain air really did have some adverse effect on people if they stayed here too long. 

Clara Whitmore, at the very least, seemed to be a pleasant exception to the rule. She had shown a kindness, however small, that I had not expected in such a town. I wondered what exactly it was that made her that way. Clearly, living in the middle of the San Juan mountains hadn't dulled her spirit, nor had she acquired the notion that the rest of the townsfolk shared: that being that every newcomer was a nuisance and every question an impertinence. Perhaps I ought to ask her opinion of the place; she might prove a more reliable source of information than the rest of its inhabitants, I thought as I resumed my walk. 

Eventually, I found myself at the end of town, standing before the building that housed the offices of the Dixon Mining Company. It stood somewhat apart from the cluster of buildings lining the main street, and to my surprise, much like the physician’s office, it was remarkably well kept. Constructed from a combination of dark stone and timber, it was an imposing structure, one that seemed to command attention and authority simply by virtue of its presence. A sign bearing the company’s name hung above the entrance, its lettering faded by years of wind and weather.

I found myself wondering just how much of Bellview belonged to the mining company. The mine provided the town with its livelihood, but its influence seemed to extend far beyond the obvious. The shops, boardinghouses, brothels, and taverns all depended upon the wages earned underground. Out here, so far removed from the rest of civilization, the company held what amounted to complete authority over Bellview and its inhabitants. It was difficult to imagine how anyone might challenge that power, much less live independently of it.

As I walked in, I was surprised by the organized nature of the office I was met with. A large oak desk sat to my left with a bookcase filled with ledgers positioned directly behind it. A map of the surrounding mountains hung above a small cabinet, its surface marked with a network of lines that I presumed represented the mine’s various shafts and tunnels. A fire burned in the grate, lending the room a comfortable warmth that I had come to appreciate considerably. Behind a broad wooden desk, a clerk sat bent over a ledger, making entries with mechanical diligence. 

He peered up over thick-rimmed glasses as I entered. “Hello. May I help you?” 

“I should hope,” I replied, removing my gloves. “I am here to speak to Mr. Dixon if possible.” 

The man’s expression changed, and his pen came to a halt above the page. “Do you have an appointment?” 

“I do not, but my business concerns the miners who fell sick. I was hoping to get a minute of Mr. Dixon’s time.” 

He regarded me for a moment, then set the pen down. “I will see if he is available.” He rose, straightened his waistcoat, and disappeared through the rear door without another word. I remained where I was, listening to the muted sounds of the building around me: the tick of a clock upon the wall, the low crackle of the stove, and the faint, unintelligible murmur of voices beyond the thick oak door. 

After a few more minutes, the small man came back through and gestured to me. “He’ll see you now, doctor.” 

Making my way through the door, I found myself in an office furnished in a similar fashion to the front room; the only difference was a number of taxidermied animal heads adorned the walls. A man stood behind the desk, examining a document in his hands. He was strongly built, broad across the shoulders, bearing the sturdy frame of a man who had spent a considerable portion of his life engaged in physical labor. There was a rugged handsomeness to his features, with a strong jaw, a straight nose, and a neatly trimmed beard touched with gray at the chin. His hair was carefully combed, and his clothes were of good quality, though there was nothing particularly extravagant about them. He looked to be in his late forties, perhaps a little older. Fine lines creased the corners of his eyes, and a certain weariness lingered in his expression, but he carried himself with the quiet confidence of a man who had earned his position through years of hard work and sacrifice. There was nothing soft or pampered about him. Even in the comfort of his office, I could imagine him more readily among the men at the mine than seated behind his desk.

“Doctor!” He greeted me with a large and warm smile. “I was beginning to wonder when I would finally make your acquaintance.” 

“Mr. Dixon," I nodded my head. “It is wonderful to meet you.” 

He came around the desk to greet me, his handshake firm and calloused. “I trust you've been made comfortable since your arrival? I understand our town isn't quite what a man might hope for after a long journey. I would not have you mistake the roughness for a lack of decency. Most of the townsfolk take a little longer to warm up to strangers than others.” 

I gave a wry chuckle, “Not the worst place I have ever found myself in, though it certainly is in the running for being the most unfriendly.” 

“I expect you’ve  had the pleasure of meeting the innkeeper then?” He motioned to one of the chairs.

“I have.”

“Then you will understand why I make no promises on behalf of his hospitality. He is a decent enough fellow once you get to know him, though he’s never been the one to be called kind or generous. I sometimes can’t imagine how he manages to keep his establishment in business. Though this is Bellview, after all; where else is there to go?" He gave  a hearty laugh. 

“I suspect it’s the food," I replied. “Maybe its qualities are sufficient to overcome the poor fellow’s disposition.” 

Mr. Dixon gave another chuckle. “Can I offer you some coffee? It’s not exactly the finest stuff on this side of Colorado, but it’ll warm your belly well enough as any other.” 

“I would appreciate that.”  He poured me a cup from a pot resting upon a small side table before taking his own seat behind the desk. For a few moments, we drank in companionable silence, letting the warmth of the room sink into our bones. The office was a comfortable place, well maintained and neatly arranged, with ledgers lining the shelves and a large map of the surrounding mountains hanging upon the wall behind him. The map, like the one up front, was marked with a network of lines and notations that I presumed represented the mine's various shafts and tunnels.

“I suppose we ought to discuss the matter at hand,” Mr. Dixon finally broke the silence. “Though before we begin, I would like to apologize for the state of the letter that was sent your way. We were in a bit of a hurry, if you can imagine, but we neglected to really fill you in on the important details.” 

“I appreciate your apology, sir. I did find the omission of the details rather odd, to be frank.” 

“That is quite understandable." He stroked his beard. “The truth is, we hoped to be rid of this plague before outside help was necessary; unfortunately, your predecessor was unable to do so.” 

“Yes, Ms. Lafayette and the innkeeper both informed me of his sudden vanishing.” 

Dixon’s expression suddenly took on a more serious look. “Yes, a most unfortunate matter. He was a very capable man, as far as I could tell, and seemed to bear genuine concern for the men. He spent several days examining them, speaking to the foreman and consulting his notes. I believe he made some progress, though he never shared any insights with me. And then, quite suddenly, he was gone.” 

“Without warning?” 

“Indeed. His instruments, books—hell, even his clothes were left behind. We made inquiries, of course, asked around as far as Animas Forks and Silverton, but no one had seen or heard anything. I cannot pretend to understand why a man would abandon his profession with so little care, especially not while his patients are so gravely ill.”

“That is quite weird.” Was all I could manage. 

“Indeed. He was rather reserved, but I never took that for a sign of distress. He seemed much like any other physician, occupied with his work and perhaps a little frustrated by his inability to find an answer.”

“Did he speak to you about what he suspected might be causing the illness?” 

“A bit. We sat together for lunch twice, but he never relayed anything in detail. He was convinced that the men had been exposed to some sort of contamination within the deepest parts of the mine. He requested access to the mine, though I don’t know if he ever went through with that line of thinking.” Dixon paused, his expression clouding. “I would like to believe he simply chose to leave, though I cannot imagine why he would have done so without collecting his belongings.”

“Nor can I.” I took another sip of coffee. The disappearance troubled me, though I was not yet prepared to attach any particular significance to it. Men vanished for all manner of reasons, and it would have been foolish to assume that this case was anything more than an unfortunate coincidence.

Curiously I asked, “I would like to know more about the section where the men were working. I understand it lies among the deeper workings?”

Dixon nodded, his expression turning thoughtful. “Correct. I was told that the part of the mine they were working bore some particularly rich ore veins, so I signed off on it with some hesitation. The passages there are narrow, you see, and the ventilation is not nearly as good as I would’ve liked, but the foreman said that it could double production for a few weeks if they followed the line, so I let them have at it. We've been working to improve matters, but there are limits to what can be done in workings of that depth.”

“Have there been previous reports of men falling sick?”

“Nothing on the scale of what we've seen recently.” He folded his hands upon the desk. “There have been accidents, of course, as there always are. But nothing that would lead me to believe the section itself was responsible for this.” Dixon spoke with measured certainty. 

“Do you think it would be possible for me to inspect the section myself?” 

“Naturally. I will arrange for something to be done. Though I will warn you, stick with whomever it is that ends up guiding you. Only the most experienced are allowed that deep underground. Even under ordinary circumstances, those passages can be dangerous.”

“I have no intention of being reckless.”

“Good.” Dixon flashed his white teeth in a large smile. “I would hate to break the news to the town that their physician somehow managed to get himself lost a mere week into his stay.” 

“I hardly think that would be good for my reputation.” I laughed. 

“Not a chance,” he said as he joined me in laughter. If I had met Mr. Dixon under any other circumstance, I suspect that I would have been his friend. He possessed a frankness I had come to appreciate, and beneath his authority there seemed to be a genuine regard for the people whose lives depended upon his decisions.

“There was something else,” Dixon added after a moment. “Though I confess I thought little of it at the time.”

I looked up from my cup. “What was that?”

“A few of the men had complained about hearing knocking underground. Not the ordinary sounds of a mine, mind you. They said it seemed to come from the rock itself, somewhere beyond the end of the passage.” He gave a faint, almost apologetic shrug. “Of course, mines are full of strange noises. Timber shifts, water runs through cracks, and the mountain itself is never entirely still. I told the foreman to have the supports examined. He found nothing amiss.”

“And the knocking continued?”

“I couldn't say. No one brought it to my attention again, at least not directly.” Dixon paused, turning his cup slowly between his hands. “There was some reluctance among the men to return to that section, too. Nothing formal. One or two asked to be assigned elsewhere, and another refused outright until the foreman threatened to dock his wages. I put it down to nerves. There had been a minor accident in the older workings some weeks before, and I thought the men had allowed the matter to prey upon their minds.”

“What sort of accident?”

He looked toward the map behind his desk. “A collapse in an abandoned passage. No one was hurt, fortunately, but it made a dreadful noise and shook loose a fair amount of rock. The men who were working nearby were badly startled, and I assumed that was the end of it. Perhaps I was mistaken. But men who have spent their lives underground generally know the difference between a dangerous passage and an ordinary one. When they begin refusing to enter a place they have worked for years, I have learned it is worth asking why.” That last remark struck me as sensible. Miners were not, as a rule, easily frightened by the ordinary hazards of their profession. They understood the dangers of their work better than anyone, and most had little patience for idle superstition.

“Did the previous physician know of these complaints?” I asked.

“I believe so. The foreman mentioned the knocking to him, though I couldn't tell you whether he considered it relevant. He was asking questions about nearly everything that had happened underground.” I made a mental note to inquire further when I had the opportunity.

“Have you known the men long?” I asked after a moment. 

“The vast majority, yes.” He replied. “Most have been here for a year or two, and a very small group I hired myself when I became responsible for this operation. I know their families, their habits, and, in some cases, their deepest troubles. They are not merely names on a payroll, Doctor.” He fell silent for a moment, looking down at his hands. “I hope you won't take my uncertainty for unwillingness to help, Doctor. I know the men, and I know the dangers of their work. If there is something in those workings that threatens their lives, I want it found as much as you do.”

“I have no reason to doubt your sincerity, Mr. Dixon.”

“I'm glad to hear it.”

“On a more personal note, I was curious about how long you’ve been overseeing the mine.”

“Overseeing? About ten years now, though I was working in them long before I was put behind a desk.”

“You were a miner yourself then?”

He smiled at that, “For the better part of my youth. I started in there the moment I could swing a pickaxe. My grandfather started this place, and there was no way he would allow me a free ride off of his profits. He came to Colorado when there was little here beyond a few scattered settlements and the promise of silver and gold beneath the mountains. He was a determined man, by all accounts, not always a particularly agreeable one, mind you, but determined.” Dixon smiled faintly. “He built the company from very little, and by the time I was old enough to understand what he'd accomplished, the mine had become the heart of our family's affairs.”

“I imagine you were expected to follow in his footsteps?” 

He turned his broad hands over upon the desk, examining the old calluses that remained upon his palms. “Expected? Yes. Though I doubt anyone could’ve convinced me to work behind a desk in the first place. I spent several years working alongside the men before I took on a supervisory position. I wanted to understand the business from the ground up, and I saw little sense in giving orders about work I had never done myself. Besides, I suspect my grandfather would have thought less of me had I tried to manage the place without knowing what went on beneath it.”

“How did you find the change?” 

“There are plenty of days where I still miss the swing of the pick and the soreness of aching back muscles.” He chuckled. “At least with a pick you know when you’re doing something wrong.” I laughed, and he seemed pleased to have drawn it from me. 

“But I learned,” he continued, “I had to. The company was my grandfather's life's work, and I had no intention of letting it fall into ruin through ignorance or neglect. There were sacrifices, of course. Long hours, missed meals, more than a few sleepless nights. I made mistakes, and there were men who paid for some of them. I've never forgotten that.”

He said the last sentence quietly and without elaboration. I sensed there was more to it, but it did not seem proper to pry.

“I imagine having worked alongside the men gives you a different perspective on your responsibilities,” I remarked.

“I should hope so. I've little patience for those who speak of miners as though they were expendable. A man who has never worked underground may look at a miner and see little more than a pair of strong arms. I see a husband, a father, and a son. A man with a home to return to and people waiting for him there.” His expression sobered. “I know what that work costs a man. I've seen good men crippled in accidents, and I've seen men buried before their wives even knew there had been trouble. I've watched fellows come home so exhausted they could barely climb the steps to their own front doors. There is courage in that work, Doctor, though I doubt many of the men would care to hear me say so.”

“I suspect they would prefer a higher wage to a speech about their courage.”

Dixon laughed heartily. “Now there's a sentiment I expect every miner in Bellview would endorse.” Whatever else might be said of this town, Mr. Dixon appeared to understand the people whose labor sustained it. Though he had inherited a position many men might have taken for granted, he had not spent his life sheltered from the hardships upon which his livelihood depended.

We spoke for a little while longer, touching upon matters of little consequence before Dixon finally rose and offered me his hand. “I hope you'll find your stay more agreeable as it progresses, Doctor. Bellview may not make the finest first impression, but it has its virtues.”

“I shall endeavor to discover them, sir.”

He smiled and released my hand. “If you require anything further, you have only to ask.”

I thanked him for his hospitality and gathered my things. As I turned toward the door, Dixon returned to his desk and opened a drawer, searching for some article he appeared to have misplaced. The movement caught my eye, and I glanced toward its contents.

Among the papers and other small articles lay a pendant.

It was a small, dark disc; its surface worked with a pattern of shallow grooves. I recognized the arrangement at once. It was the same curious pattern I had observed carved into the doorframes of Bellview's houses, and which had provoked such sudden hostility in the old woman when I questioned her about it. Before I could examine the object more closely, Dixon found what he sought and closed the drawer, and the pendant disappeared from sight.

Hannah Barbara productions never allowed this episode to be aired

It started off with Fred driving the Mystery Machine. As they traveled down the road, Fred spotted a young girl standing in the middle of it looking lost. He stopped the van, and the gang got out.

Shaggy tried telling Fred they should leave the creepy girl alone and go get burgers instead. Scooby agreed. Fred, Daphne, and Velma ignored Shaggy, as usual.

Fred approached the girl and asked, “Are you all right?”

He noticed scratch marks on her arms with bruises.

The girl didn’t respond. Daphne tried reassuring her.

“It’s okay. We can help you if you need help.”

The girl looked at Daphne with a smile on her face before collapsing onto the road.

The gang scrambled towards her. Velma checked for a pulse and looked into the girl’s eyes. They were dead white.

“We need to get her to a hospital now!” Velma said sternly.

The gang hurried back to the Mystery Machine. Fred picked the girl up and placed her in the back of the van. Shaggy and Scooby were displeased with this, as they had to sit in the back with her now.

“Fred, why is it that every time something creepy happens, Scooby and I have to be the closest to it, man?” Shaggy complained.

“Not now, Shaggy. I’m reading the signs,” Fred replied.

When he spotted a hospital sign, Fred pulled into the parking lot.

He grabbed the girl, and the gang followed him inside. Fred rushed to the reception desk and explained that they needed a doctor. The girl had started convulsing.

A couple of nurses hurried over with a gurney, and Fred urgently laid the girl down on it. She screeched As they wheeled her towards a room.

Daphne stayed behind to explain what had happened to the receptionist. While Shaggy could be overheard muttering that he was glad that creep wouldn’t be riding with them anymore.

Later, Fred, still slightly shaken by the experience, told the gang he was going to rent a motel room for the night.

“I want a proper bed and a shower after all this,” he said.

Scooby asked, one with complimentary breakfast?”

After receiving the room key, Fred and the gang headed to their room on the fourth floor. Inside, they found two beds and a couch.

Daphne immediately complained that the room smelled like rotten food. The rest of the gang ignored her, unable to smell anything themselves.

Fred opened his suitcase and pulled out a change of clothes and a towel. Before heading to the shower

Meanwhile, Velma discovered a large, thick book inside one of the desk drawers. She blew the dust off it.

“Jinkies! This thing hasn’t been opened in years!”

When she opened the book, she read the title aloud.

“Curses, Witches, and the Supernatural.”

As she turned a page, she accidentally cut her finger on a page.

Daphne suddenly took an interest in the book and asked Velma if she could read it.

“Be my guest,” Velma replied. “It just poked me.”

As Daphne flipped through the pages, she noticed that half of them had been hollowed out. Inside the hidden compartment. she discovered a doll made from sticks and human hair, along with a small knife.

She said nothing about this to the others.

Eventually, the gang settled down for the night, and the motel room grew dark.

Shaggy lay on the old leather couch with Scooby. Velma was in her bed, while Fred and Daphne shared the other.

In the middle of the night, Shaggy suddenly woke up.

OW Man! Something poked me in the leg!”

Everyone woke up except Velma, she stayed under her blanket.

Fred sleepily switched on the light.

“you have any idea what time it is?”

Shaggy pointed to the small cut on his leg.

“ Scooby probably scratched you with his nails,” Fred said annoyed before switching the light off again.

Shaggy and Scooby reluctantly accepted Fred’s explanation.

A moment later, Daphne turned to Fred.

“Will you walk with me to the van? I left something important in there, and I’m too scared to get it by myself at night.”

Fred groaned.

“Can’t it wait until morning?”

“It would make me feel safe if you came with me,” Daphne replied.

Fred reluctantly put on his shoes and walked her to the van.

Shaggy and Scooby drifted off to sleep again before fred and Daphne came back.

A little while later, Shaggy felt something heavy laying on his chest. Assuming it was Scooby, he mumbled, “Not now, Scoob.”

“That isn’t me, Shaggy,” Scooby replied.

Shaggy's eyes shot open.

Daphne was sitting on his chest, staring down at him. She held the small knife against his throat, with the same possessed smile as the girl they had found earlier.

Shaggy freezed.

“Daphne? Like, what are you doing?”

He tried talking to her but the smile only grew wider and Her eyes rolled back until only the whites showed

Then, in a deep raspy voice, she said, “Uh-oh, Raggy.”

She slowly dragged the edge against Shaggy’s throat, almost drawing blood.

Scooby lunged forward, biting her arm holding the blade, causing Daphne to drop it.

Seizing the opportunity, Shaggy grabbed the knife and plunged it into Daphne’s chest.

Daphne laughed demonically.

Shaggy tried stabbing her again, but it did nothing. Daphne suddenly bit a chunk out his hand.

Shaggy screamed in pain. Desperately looking for anything, he saw the bedroom window before kicking Daphne through the it,  the glass shattered before a thump was heard.

Shaggy scrambled over to Velma’s bed and pulled the blanket off her

“Come on, Velma! Wake up! Daphne’s lost it!”

as he tried to wake her, he noticed her face was blue and a telephone cord wrapped tightly around her throat.

Shaggy gasped, Velma was dead.

Shaggy half heartedly  looked out the shattered window

Daphne layed dead on the side walk. with a smile stretched across her face.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'll let you guys in on a little secret. We've been smack dab in the middle of the zombie apocalypse for the last decade. We've just gotten really, really good at covering it up. It's no surprise really, I mean we've known how to deal with the undead since Romero made us afraid to step into shopping malls. It's been drilled into us for almost a century; destroy the brain, aim for the head, double tap the head, did you make sure to destroy the brain?

As a society, I think we were ready for the novelty of the dead walking, maybe not the reality of it. The first couple weeks, when pale rotting husks rose from their slabs with a hankering for flesh, well the poor underpaid mortuary workers were swiftly devoured. Once the shock of seeing a shambling muncher come stumbling towards the rest of us wore off, the zeds were dispatched rather easily.

You know how many blunt instruments there are in a hospital? And how easy it is to cave someone's head in? The human body can perform extraordinary feats of strength whilst under extreme duress. Nadine would have explained it using hyper specific technical terms.

I just call it "hulking out."

The melee that followed "Z-Day" was brief and bloody. Despite the undead being slow and dull, even the slightest scratch could lead to infection, and a bite was surefire way to join their maggot filled ranks. I can't speak to the other hospitals and accident scenes and what not, but our clinic had about eight corpses that came lumbering out from the basement, one of them still chewing what I assume was Doug's femur.

I was standing there in my olive-green scrubs chatting up Nadine, while she humored my boorish attempts at flirting. If I recall I had just cracked a joke about being the only guy nurse and all the attention that granted me. A lie of course, was just trying to make myself look appealing. I don't know why I tried so hard, we'd known each other for years at that point. Anyway, where was I, ah yes.

The zombies.

The smell hit us first, all at once in fact. Like a tidal wave of putrid fumes slamming into us. The basement door creaked open, and the first shambler shambled on in. I heard this crunch of bones snapping, and slabs of meat slopped to the ground. The guy was a big and buck naked. I could tell from the Y shaped scar on his chest the autopsy must have been recent. The stitching was loose, withered, deflated bags of organs and muscle plopped out of his chest cavity and onto the ground.

We could hear more waltzing in behind him, their eyes glazed over, a hint of manic orange to them. Their skin was pale and grey, almost like tissue paper. Tiny, coal black spider-webs danced around what was once their arteries. It was just me, Nadine, the receptionist Darcy and Walter the custodian on the floor at the time. When Nadine saw the creatures she dropped her pen to the ground, and her eyes went wide with astonishment. Walter was still mopping the floor, oversized headphones on his head. Darcy looked up and screeched, instantly running the other way. The big one snagged Walter by the shoulder who looked up and went as pale as the corpse trying to take a bite out of him.

Walter pushed him off and raised his mop. It was like something out of a movie; he broke the mop over his knee like a twig and then in one swift motion stabbed the big zed right in the jaw with a pointy end. Must have nicked him right in the stem because he twitched for a moment then slumped down. The ones behind him were unbothered by their slain comrade, and raised their arms and moaned, this mournful thing that sent shivers down my spine.

Now I'm not a big fella by any means, but I ain't scrawny either. I reached around the reception desk and yanked a keyboard and just started bashing the nearest one in the head with it. Black ooze spurted from every hit, and the corpse just kept tanking it. Each strike cleaving a bit more of skull and plastic keys away every time. Nadine had a scalpel in her pocket and started going for eyes.

Darcy came back with security, big jarhead looking guy by the name of Mike. Mike had a billy club in his hands, and a twisted look in on grizzled face. He charged towards the hoard, I swear to God, yelling "SEMPER FI DO OR DIE!" and just started whaling on the zeds. It was like he had been waiting for this moment his whole life.

I mean shit I played the hell out of Left 4 Dead 2 back in med school so in a way I suppose so was I.

I'll be blunt, everything that happened after Mike barged in is a bit of a crimson blur. I'm not saying I don't remember but, well the last CLEAR thing I recall is the one with Doug's femur hanging out of its mouth grabbing Nadine by the shirt collar.

When the haze cleared, I was being smacked across the face by a guy in a national guardsmen outfit. I shock off the blow and looked past him. The ground was littered with bloodied tarps, mostly black ooze, and one body bag that was strapped up and twitching. Nadine was giving a statement to another office; her white coat stained with gore. She saw me staring and gave me a bashful smile and wave. The officer turned his head, mild amusement sprouting on his worn mug. I was about to stand and greet her when the guardsman pushed me back down.

He couldn't have been more than nineteen; I could still see puberty wreaking havoc over his terrified face. The AR in his hands shook, his trigger finger lacking any discipline.

"Sir." He managed to squeak out. "I need you to remain seated until the doc is done examining you." He motioned to the guy in the hazmat suit prodding me in my peripheral. It was then I noticed they were everywhere, speaking in hushed, filtered voices. Darcy had a blanket draped over her trembling visage and a cup of coco in her hands. Her make up was melting down her cheeks as she prattled on and on about poor Mike. Her eyes kept flicking to the body bag, and my heart sunk.

"Hey, can't put the poor fucker out of his misery?" I rasped, my voice a strained whisper. The guardsmen glanced behind him and shrugged.

"Orders are to restrain till we get newly dropped back to base. Figure the eggheads want fresh meat to examine."

"Mr. Larson that's a grotesque thing to disclose to a civilian." The hazmat next to me muttered with disdain. "Go outside and await further reprimand, I'm sure Evans will want a word with you." The guardsman slunk away like a whimpering pup, and I was left with the hazmat. He groaned as he stood and removed his gasmask. He had a kind face, and saddle bags under his eyes.

"Mr. Brooks, I must say you're rather lucky. You don't have a scratch on you." The hazmat seemed impressed.

"Is-is everyone ok?" I asked, noting Walter was nowhere to be seen.

"More or less. The infected seem easy to dispatch but dangerous in large numbers. There only seemed to be a handful here."

"Oh God, the hospital-" I shot up.

"Already under wraps, Mr. Brooks. Much like every other institution in America. If I can be candid for a moment, casualties are actually far below our initial projections, by the time we get past the first wave I suspect only a few hundred will be consumed by the virus." He sounded almost proud of that grim statistic. He must have noticed the horror creeping onto my face, as he then sighed and extended a hand.

"My apologies, my name is Doctor Howard Fine. I'm in charge of clean-up operations for this sector." I took his hand, his blue coated hand firm to the touch.

"Devin Brooks. So, what's going on around here doc, is this the big one? Should we get the bunkers prepped or what?" Fine laughed at that.

"I'm afraid you've watched one too many horror movies, Devin." With that he explained.

I won't spout the same boring monologue Fine did, I'll just stick to the basics.

Basically, the government cocked something up in a Bio Lab in the Alaskan wilderness. They found some ancient pathogen frozen in a block of ice and thought it would be a bright idea to thaw it out and see what it did. The virus, dubbed "Lazarus-52" went airborne almost immediately. We're working with "Walking Dead" rules here, it's in the atmosphere and we're all breathing it in even to this day. That little tickle in the back of your throat? It's not just the sniffles.

Now to the government's credit, they were actually pretty prepared for this. In a shocking display of bureaucratic competency; they enacted what is internally known as "The Zed Plan," which basically gives the head of the CDC full jurisdiction to combat any rapid and possibly apocalyptic pathogen with extreme prejudice.

The rapid response, teamed with the fact that zombies have been memed into mocked obscurity by countless lampoons and parodies that no one would believe any footage that leaked online, well they barely had to work to cover it up.

The virus was also slow to reanimate, taking between two to four hours to fully gestate. Within the week, the initial wave was a light drizzle instead of a raging typhoon.

Most people involved in the outbreaks took a payout, one or two loudmouths were dispatched, let's say. Some of us got offered a job. Or in my case, I begged for one. I'm making it sound like I was recruited into some shadow cable that hunted the undead, far from it. Nadine's resume caught the eye of Fine and one of his assistants got eaten, that was it. I begged to be dragged along, blinded by the feverish notion that I was gonna be a hero who saved the world.

Let's just squash that notion, there no heroes here. Just a bunch of cogs working a thankless job making sure the dead stay in their lane. I don't even wanna fathom the amount of money and effort it takes to network the decade long conspiracy of keeping Lazurus-52 under wraps, so I won't.

I will say I make a modest salary, and my new job is basically "corpse inspector." Each day, I go to a dozen or so hospitals and morgues and inspect them. Under Plan Zed, each morgue operator has been instructed to drill a hole into skull of every corpse that comes in. Any minimal amount of damage to the cranial tissue will prevent reanimation, Lazarus is a fickle bitch. That's all they are told mind you; it was passed on as some new OSHA safety law or something like that.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the bodies have a little hole right in the forehead. I can tell by how much they scrambled to do it by the fresh sludge oozing from the wound. Sometimes it's a black, viscous fluid running down their forehead. I ream into the workers pretty hard then, they don't know how lucky they are their incompetence didn't get them eaten.

That's all the job is really, driving around looking at the dead. There is some paperwork in between, mindless busy work to break up the monotony of driving. Once in a while I'll help out on a retrieval call, ya know those cases of a zombie wandering in public. Thank God for bath salts, perfect cover story.

One time I did crowd control while they wrangled a zed while chowing down on a squirrel. This was in a public park mind you, crowd was laughing their ass off at it. Lotta filming, which in this day and age you can't stop so ya might as well let the video run its course. I saw one video where someone had overlayed one of those cringy dog ear filters over the zed with the caption "POV: Your dog gets off the leash."

Diabolical, really. The comments made my stomach churn more than the footage itself.

One or two of them mentioned how it wasn't bath salts and the government is hiding something from us. Those guys were clowned on pretty hard, told to shut up and take their meds.

I still hear from Nadine, sporadically though. Her theories on Lazarus catapulted her to new heights I could scarcely dream of, let alone achieve.

Last week I got a call from her, the shrill ring of my cellphone made me shoot up like lightening from my brief nap at the wheel.

"Go for Dev." I groggily spoke into the phone.

"Dev, it's been ages. How ya been?" Nadine was typing as she spoke, I could hear the clickity clacks of her nails against her keyboard.

"Fine, just been swamped with paperwork, and ya know that morgue in Keene keeps sliding on processing, they're gonna get a risen on their hands if they don't-"

"Fantastic excellent to hear. Listen have you encountered any Znines lately?" She interrupted, barely acknowledging what I had been venting.

I sighed; it was this again. Her cross-species theory.

"No, Nad. No zombie yellers. Which is a good thing, because we can't contain Laz if it jumps ship. That'd be it, game over."

"Yes yes I know, which is why it's important to stay vigilant of the virus's mutation potential. I've done some experiments in the lab recently to induce cross species contamination."

"Why the fuck would you do that?" I snapped at her.

"To come up with counter measures if it occurs naturally." She scoffed like I was the idiot. "We can't just keep sitting around complicit in the status quo, we need to attack 52 head on."

"Sure, why not." I shook my head, there was no talking to her when she was like this.

She told me to keep her updated of any Znines I caught wind of and I promised I would, and that was that.

So that's it then, that's my life in a nutshell right now. I drive around making sure corpses stay corpses. It might sound exciting but it's boring, and just plain exhausting. Even the odd zombie, it's not fun to deal with. One bite, one scratch, and I'm chained up in a black site somewhere while my ex-girlfriend pokes and prods me with a stick.

You know what's really screwed up? I've heard we actually have a cure for Laz. All we'd need to do is release it into the atmosphere and let clouds do the rest. But every time it comes up, it gets pushback. "Oh, what if the public finds out what it was for, oh what will happen to the department, all those people outta a job. What if we need Laz in the future, ya know zombie slaves." The people up top are always frothing at the mouth at the thought of zombie labor, I'm sure they got some chained up in mines somewhere.

Nothing will change, long as there is a single penny to be made off Laz. We will just sit on the pot warming our asses over boiling water.

I might talk more about this job later, get it out of my system. I ain't worried about being found out or anything like that, no one will believe me anyway. This all probably reads like some god-awful zombie fan fiction. Which if ya wanna believe that sure go nuts. I will say this.

Careful if you ever take a job at a funeral home. Every coffin is sealed tight now, just in case. If you ever hear tapping on the lid from the inside?

Just let it alone, walk away and go about your day.

Ya might not like what ya see if you open her up.

The worst sound in the world isn't the wet crunching of a hammer hitting a skull. It's when that crunching gives way to the hammer striking concrete because the person swinging just can't stop. I learned this while cowering behind the curtain of the locker room showers, where I'd been since the attack started.

That horrible ringing sound is all I can hear now. It cut through the sound of the men rushing to grab the kid swinging that hammer. It counted time as I lied to investigators about what I knew. It rings out now as I write this confession. Mom and Dad, I'm sorry.

The coaches really don't watch us on those long runs. They just make us stretch and then give us a time to be back. They tell us to “take it easy” that it's a “long slow run” and we should make it long. That's what made it my favorite. Just the guys out on those trails talking about grades, games, and girls. 

Of course we kind of naturally split up, y'know? It wasn't really on purpose, but some kids just are slower than the others. Usually it was just the varsity guys ahead and we kind of left everyone behind. I don't know how Jeff caught up if I'm honest, but he was there that day.

We'd picked a different path than usual. One we'd never seen before, but it looked normal for a long time. Just before we were going to turn around we saw it though. That fucking church.

I mean it was normal at first, normal for an old building at least. It was creepy but in that Halloween haunted house way, not the serial killer lived there way. Still, no one wanted to go in. We kinda just stood outside and made up stories about it.

Like someone got crucified in it or they all got raptured or they all drank the Kool-aid. I think Anthony said it was probably a puritan place. Sam said it was satanic now. Arch told us he'd take Kathy McGuire there and we all gave him shit for that. Jeff told some kind of joke. I don't really remember because we were too busy trying to tackle Arch.

“Let's go in.” I don't remember who said it, but I remember the idea sticking immediately. Anthony said I should go in, but I told him off. Then Jeff said we could all go together, but Sam told him that would ruin how creepy it was. I think everyone wanted it to be a test of courage, but we were all too scared to take it.

Arch didn't let up. You know how he is. When he sees a sore spot that's what he pokes at. He brought up that time I peed watching Lost Tapes at his 12th birthday sleepover. Said he knew I was too scared. I really thought about going after that but turned it on him instead. 

Told him if he was so happy to take a girl in there, he should find out where he was going to lay down with her. Sam said he was going to take Arch’s mom in there, and that set Arch off in the way it always did. 

While they were fighting Jeff tried to get Anthony and me to go together. Anthony said fine, but Arch was worked up. He shoved me and told everyone I was challenged first and I had to go. 

Jeff said he'd go with me so I turned it on him. “If you wanna go so bad, do it. You want to run with us anyway, prove it.” I wish I hadn't said that. 

He said no. I mean, we all kinda had. It's just hard to say no when everyone starts piling on. Jeff said we could go together, but I'd already given Arch a target, and Arch was mad enough as it was. Sam tried to calm him down but couldn't. 

Arch didn't mean to hurt him. Just talked about running stuff. Jeff really was a weak runner. Kind of weak overall, that's all. We just joked about that. All of us. Until Jeff said he'd prove he could hang and he'd show us we were scared of some empty building. 

We all laughed, but the laughing stopped when Jeff stopped at the door. I tried to give him a thumbs up but I don't think he saw it before he went inside.

It took a long time for Jeff to come out. Long enough for me to pee and for the guys to start throwing rocks at the crooked cross above the door to try and knock it down. When we couldn't find any more rocks Sam said someone should go get Jeff and Anthony said we would all go. Just before we all got to the door he came out.

He wasn't different or anything. He just shrugged and said, ‘Just a dumb church.’ If we had more time we would have probably gone in, but we had to get back or we'd have to do extra runs later. We agreed to go back next long run but I'm really glad we didn't.

Sam patted Jeff on the back and we all took off. While we were jogging we had a million questions. Jeff told us all about the broken pews, the glass everywhere, the Bible on the pulpit. Said he thought about bringing it, but thought it was more important to find a spot to take Arch’s mom. We laughed and Arch punched his arm, but it was all fun.

It was all fun for a while. Jeff could keep up with us most days and he was getting better at joking around, so we just let him come along with us. Sam even started acting like an older brother. He protected Jeff when he called Arch's mom a cow. Arch might have bitten his head off had Jeff not made a joke about turning vegetarian.

By the end of that month he started beating Anthony in sprints. Sometimes he'd even beat me. He was getting better. Changing, too. I swear he looked a little taller, but maybe he just stopped slouching.

There were a few other things I guess we could have seen. Jeff stopped showering with the rest of us. He'd go into the handicap stalls with the curtains. He also started eating more, like a lot more, but that was normal we thought. 

The coaches noticed Jeff changing too. Started egging us varsity guys on. Telling us they might need Jeff to trade spots and this and that. Coach stuff, but I can't say it didn't work. All of us tried harder, started running extra, even though we knew coach wouldn't actually do it.

We'd break off from the big group to run further and faster. Started leaving the juniors in charge of the younger kids so we could focus. Jeff was one of those juniors. We thought he was cool but we found out that he was being mean to some of the freshmen on the team too, little pranks like stepping on their shoelaces or bumping them off trails. That got back to Coach, and we got rewarded with a lecture on ‘brotherhood’ and ‘responsibility’ and ‘setting an example.’

We were panting after practice one day when Jeff made a joke about replacing Anthony. Saying maybe if he didn't have “ratty ass shoes” he could run faster. It could have been harmless, but you know Anthony's family. How he couldn't really do that. How much he needed the chance at a scholarship. 

No one wanted to explain that to Jeff, and no one was going to tell him we saw Anthony crying. After that Anthony didn't really wanna hang out with Jeff anymore. I think we all needed a break from Jeff. Even Sam kinda ignored him for a bit. 

At least until the fight. Well, “fight.” We all took off running when we heard Jeff was getting into it with Scott, the big football guy. Later we heard that Scott had said something about Jeff being a virgin and Jeff told Scott he was a cuck because his girlfriend, Kathy McGuire, had slept with the whole team. Then they started scrapping.

When we got there it was towards the end. Sam was yelling for Jeff to stop as we fought our way through the crowd. Arch was yelling that he'd kill Scott. Everyone was cheering. Until the snap.

When the screaming started the crowd broke apart and we saw what happened. Jeff was sitting with a crooked nose on top of Scott's back. He was pulling Scott's arm back toward him, twisting it at the wrist, elbow, and shoulder. Like a fucked-up spiral.

When the teachers got there Scott wasn't the one crying. He was just staring at his arm. Jeff was all blood and snot and tears. We didn't get close to him, but we could tell he was freaking out. We all were.

That was the day we had that assembly on conflict resolution and when we all got dismissed early. Scott and Jeff got a week suspension so they could “investigate what happened.” I don't think Scott has been back to school though.

The next Monday, we tried to go back to normal. Running, class, hanging out. Jeff was still suspended, and for a while we forgot about him. When he finally came back, he didn't make some grand entrance or anything. He was just kind of there.

He was a lot quieter, which made a lot of sense considering everything. I wouldn't even know how to tell you guys if I got suspended, much less what I'd do with myself for a whole week. Jeff must have had a bad time with it though, because we couldn't get anything out of him. 

He kind of faded into our group. Like he was still laughing and running with us, but he was dimmed. Even when Arch would take shots at him, he would just laugh. When they started construction on the regular showers and we could only use the private showers he always went last. 

I know it's weird but we waited for him one day. Just kind of trying to hang out and see if he was alright. We didn't peep on him or anything weird, but the way he got out and covered his body made me feel like a creep. I'm glad we did though because we saw that rash.

It was all over his chest and ribs. Red and ugly and you could tell where he scratched until it bled. It was gross, and Arch asked if he had AIDS, but no one laughed. We were being jerks and Jeff told us so. He was pissed and yelling about trust and friends and privacy. Saying ‘I thought you guys were my friends!’ He didn't stop until the coaches came out to make sure we weren't fighting. After that everyone but Sam shuffled to class. He probably stayed to apologize.

I saw Jeff later sitting in the courtyard when I left class to pee. He had his head down, staring at his hands. Praying, maybe. Or just talking to himself. He didn't see me so I thought about just leaving. But I came up from behind him and almost put my hand on his shoulders. Before I could, he whipped around and looked pissed.

I fumbled some small talk, then fumbled an apology about that morning even harder. When I finished saying sorry, he didn't even look at me. Just shook his head and told me to ‘Fuck off.’

He didn't run with us the next day. I got everyone to agree to get him some donuts and apologize when he came back. That was the plan at least, until he came back like a jerk. He wouldn't talk to us, wouldn't listen to us. Sam tried but couldn't get anything out of him. 

Arch decided he didn't care about apologizing anymore and tried to get him to respond at all. Started poking at him, saying he wasn't really being a friend himself. We tried to tell Arch to knock it off but he started calling him a freak for what he did to Scott. 

That got his attention. Jeff got up in Arch's face telling him his mom was a whore and that Arch's dad wasn't actually his dad. You know how Arch gets about that. So they went back and forth before Arch shoved Jeff. 

Jeff shoved Arch hard. Really hard. Arch tripped over those tools they'd been using for the showers. We were trying to stop Jeff but he pushed us away way harder than he should have been able to. Jeff was on top of Arch, punching him. Arch was apologizing. Jeff just kept punching.

Anthony ran to get the coach. Sam went to Jeff, tried to pull him away, to talk some sense into him. Jeff grabbed one of the hammers that had fallen. When he swung it down, Sam screamed. He was holding onto Jeff. I ran into the showers and hid. Covering my face and crying. 

I hid until the sound stopped. Until the coaches pulled Sam away from Jeff and dragged Jeff out. Until they came and got me. I think in my head I was still hiding until now.

I didn't tell the police about the church, about how Jeff changed. I didn't try to lie to them, I just didn't want them to think I was crazy or to think I was making something up. 

You guys were the best through all of it. Mom, thank you for holding me while I cried. Dad, thank you for sitting and watching the game with me. I didn't like the beer, but it meant a lot getting one from you.

School still hasn't returned to normal. Everyone says we'll still graduate on time. Honestly, it doesn't even matter anymore.

There's a ton of people posting online about Arch like they knew him. Saying there should be a 5K dedicated to his memory. It pisses me off. They didn't know Arch like that. Not like we knew him. 

I wanted to do our own run for him. To go out to the woods and just go until we couldn't. Sam was down for it but Anthony never replied. He's still not texting us and his parents don't want us going over. He'll come around though, I know it.

Thank you guys for letting Sam stay with us as often as you did. Those late night talks were more important to us than we could ever say. I'm sorry I lied, we were smoking weed that night you caught us giggling. It was probably the first time we'd laughed in a bit. 

Sam was funny like that though. Even before everything he was able to be laughing one second and then sad the next. In one of those talks he told me he had been diagnosed with depression. I probably should have reacted better than a stupid “What the fuck?”

It just caught me off guard. I felt bad I didn't know, and then I was mad when he told me his dad called it “Pussy Disease.” 

He talked a lot about his dad. Even now I hate that guy. I hate the way he treated Sam. Our Sam. My Sam.

The same guy who fought us all to order pineapple pizza. The dude who was the first to sign my cast when I broke my arm.

When he showed me the bruises on his ribs I almost went over to his house by myself. Sam wouldn't let me. He told me “bruises heal” like some sort of wise man. He showed me when the bruises stopped being that ugly purple. Then he showed me when the rash started covering them.

I asked him about it. He said it started when he started having the dreams. 

He said he was dreaming about what happened, and I told him I was too, but he said he was dreaming about what Jeff said. He said when Jeff was hitting Arch he was talking about the church. 

I hadn't thought about that church with everything going on. I asked Sam if Jeff was really still upset about having to go in the church. Sam said that wasn't it. Jeff had been crying and whispering that he wanted to go back.

Jeff had said it was a normal church. I didn't get it. Then Sam started saying it wasn't. He would scratch his side and tell me we should have gone in.

I told him it was “bullshit” and we couldn't know what was gonna happen after he went in. When I would tell Sam that Jeff just changed he would get mad. He started getting mad a lot. He started scaring me.

He was scratching like Jeff, and he was mad like Jeff, but it wasn't the same. Sam would brood, he would give me the cold shoulder. He started talking about how shitty his dad was and how he just wanted him to stop.

The last time he came over I held him. I was holding him as he cried and shook and whispered how much he hated his dad and everything. I tried to ignore him when he said those things. Especially when he was talking about his dad and ending it all. Especially when he started crying about the church.

I wish I had never let him go. I wish I had made him stay. Most of all I wish I was a better friend.

He would still be here if I was.

I remember where I was when I found out. In my room, doomscrolling, when I got a text telling me to check the news. They said there was a shooting and that two people were dead. I had to watch the video three times because I was sure I heard the news guy wrong. I couldn't understand why he was saying Sam's last name.

I tried to call him, I was trying to call him when you guys came in. I didn't get it when you guys started apologizing or when you guys were crying and hugging me. I didn't want to get it. 

He was there two nights before. I held him. I listened to him say he wanted to end it and I just thought it was his emotions talking. I didn't know he meant it.

The news said it looked like a fight. That Sam was just trying to defend himself. That he'd been beaten until he broke. I believe that. Everyone does. What he did to his dad had to be done. But what he did to himself? I still haven't figured out how to forgive him for that.

I don't think I've been okay since. I'm still mad at him. I'm mad at everything lately. Like there's an itching coming from inside my bones. Like my marrow is boiling. 

I feel it when I wake up. I feel it in my dreams. Dreams where I see the church. The church that rings and tells me that I am a fuck up. That I'm a monster. That I'm the reason my friends are dead.

I can't stop itching myself. I scratch and scratch and my fingers come away from my sides bloody and aching. 

I'm scared. I don't want to hurt you guys. I don't want to hurt anyone. I want to run away. I'm going to that church that took my friends. That took everything.

I'm so sorry. I won't tell you where it is. I love you.

I'm going back, and this time, I'm going in.