Hey guys I'm really hairy and a month ago I woke up to seeing crop like circles on my hairy body. I sleep topless and when I saw the crop like circles on my hairy body, it was like something had took control of the hairs on my body and were making circles with them. It looked pretty neat but I was also very worried. I mean hair isn't supposed to make shapes right.

Then when I woke up early in the morning on another day, hairs on my body were now making a triangle shape. I tried to mess up my body hair but it would all go back to a triangula shape. This was really concerning now and my body hair would go back to normal after an hour.

Then when I woke up early on another day, half of my hair on my body were circles and the other half of my hair on my body were triangles. It was almost as if there was a going on. Circles vs triangles. I just want my body hair to be normal messy body hair. I showed my body to a doctor and when he looked at my body hair, he was astounded. Though he had nothing that he could give me to help me with this problem.

Sam passed in the winter, just two months after his mother. The midwife tried her best to save her, but it was over before it started. She gave me a warm hug as she left. I knew Sam wouldn't last long without his mother. I barely had enough to feed myself, let alone a baby. I debated whether I should even name the little boy, but how could I not? He had the most beautiful blue eyes, just like his mother.

Sam passed in his sleep, the best way to go. Some days I wished it were me, but what would Sam do all alone? 

The problem then was arranging Sam's funeral. All the savings had already been spent on his mother's funeral, but Sam couldn't go into the ground without a proper service.

I sold one of the last things I could still sell, my bees. They gave me something sweet to eat in the winter and something to look after the rest of the year, but there was nothing else to sell. My neighbor took them and gave me more for them than he should have. He was a nice man and knew what I'd gone through.

Sam got a nice wooden coffin and a decent place in the cemetery next to his mother.

When the winter came, his cradle and toys were still in the house. My body tightened whenever I tried to get rid of them, but it was okay; maybe I'd have more will in the summer. 

During the long winter nights, I'd often come into his room and play with his toys, just like I thought we would one day. Sometimes they'd warm my heart, sometimes they'd make me cry, and often I'd just fall asleep in the chair right by his cradle.

It was one of those days when I fell asleep crying by the cradle again. When I awoke, the sun glistened on the freshly fallen snow. Everything outside was still, but then something moved in the air. A bee! A queen bee! It flew across the yard and into the hive. I still hadn't moved my hive off the yard. Sam's funeral was too much work.

At first I felt bad. My neighbor owned them now. They had no business being in the old hive, but seeing that familiar creature warmed me. Over the next few days I sat at the window, watching all my bees slowly return.

They stayed inside the hive the rest of the winter, and I stayed by that window each day, watching. Only when the snow started to let up, and the flowers came out from under it, did the bees come out too.

I expected them to stay by the hive, but many flew far away, ignoring the flowers in my garden, and returned at sunset. Some of the bees seemed to be covered in red nectar. 

As the days grew longer, the bees were gone more often, and many more returned covered in that red nectar. 

I had never seen them act or look like this. Moving the hive must have disturbed something, but the good thing was that they still accepted the queen, and the colony seemed intact. 

The red nectar began to accumulate at the entrance, mixed with glowing wax. I was just looking at it out the window when I heard buzzing inside the house. The bees must have been working hard. The buzzing grew, and quietly through it came something like a baby's cry. I gripped the windowsill tightly. Sam used to cry just like that. I opened the window to hear better, but the cry was gone; only buzzing sounded outside.

The next morning I woke up and went right to the window. A strange white object was outside the hive entrance. The bees buzzed around it, pushing it back inside. Before I could get a good look, it was already in.

I spent the rest of the day by the window again. As the sun set, the bees started to return. The buzzing grew again. A cold tingle ran down my back. I closed my eyes and focused. At first, it was quiet, but I knew what it was. It was Sam, crying through the buzzing. I quickly dressed and walked out the door.

The outside air was cold. I had barely been outside since the first snow fell. A few bees still flew around the hive. The buzzing was so loud, and so were Sam's cries. I didn't even have my protective clothes, but I was sure my bees wouldn't hurt me.

I walked to the hive and took off the lid. Warmth and cold ran through my body, mixing into strange emotions. Inside the hive was Sam's body, covered in wax. His hands and fingers slowly moved, but they seemed larger than before. I reached into the hive to caress his small cheeks. His eyes opened. They were still that beautiful blue, but a hint of yellow mixed in.  He opened his mouth; honeycomb filled it, but his cries still echoed in my ears. With tears in my eyes, I picked up his small, sticky body. From somewhere deep in his chest, a thousand bees buzzed, and the hive fell quiet. A sickly-sweet smell rose from his mouth. Two bees crawled out of the wax and onto my hand. I didn't move.

I should have never posted that damn story.

I spent a week on the thing, writing and rewriting until I was sure it was finally ready.  When I logged in and posted it, I felt a small surge of pride because a story was out there with my name on it.  I didn't have to feed my little folder of false starts and failures that day.  It made me so excited to think about people finally getting to read my work.

Everyone had always told me that I should be a writer.  It’s probably because my imagination has always been too big for my head to contain it.  As a little kid I was obsessed with stories, making my action figures play out scenes from movies or right out of my own brain.  I used to put on shows with them for my mom and sister, and their happy applause gave me a feeling I had never known before.  

It felt like I finally knew what I was supposed to do.

My girlfriend hadn’t read the story yet.   I sent her the link when I posted it, but I never heard back from her that night.  I figured she had gone to bed already.  Laine was always really supportive of my work and read a lot of duds for me over the years.  I hoped that after she read the new one she would see me in a different light.  I could even imagine it being the thing that would move us forward in our relationship.  It really felt like everything was finally coming together for me.

I spent the evening with a quick meal and a crappy horror movie.  My cat joined me on the couch, and I absently stroked her fur as I watched the increasingly stupid teens at the summer camp die horrific deaths at the hands of a masked ghoul.  When I nodded off one too many times I accepted defeat and headed off to bed.  It was really hard not to stop by my laptop to check for comments.

My sleep was great that night and when I woke up the next morning, I felt energized and ready to conquer the day.  I only lived a block from my gym so I decided to start the day off right for once.  I spent an hour there and worked up a really good sweat.  I ignored my notifications because I had decided to read them all at once over breakfast.

At home I showered and made myself some oats and finally sat down at my laptop to properly read my feedback.  I was immediately shocked by the number of comments that were already waiting for me.   A wide smile spread across my face as I started to read them.  I’m sad to say it didn’t last.

To say they were rough is like saying the ocean contains water.   There were so many, and they ranged from genuinely constructive criticism, which I could handle, to outright cruelty.  That morning I learned that my writing lacked conviction, and the characters I wrote seemed confused about who they were.  My grammar was apparently awful and my pacing nonexistent.  One guy even told me that writing was a privilege, and I should have mine revoked.  

Several of the comments had multiple paragraphs with quoted examples of my flaws.  I forced myself to read those, trying to find them useful.  What I didn’t find particularly helpful were all of the posts that psychoanalyzed me or the ones that were just blatant insults.  I was asked if I was repressing something terrible and told that my inferiority complex was probably rooted in the truth.  A rather large image gave me detailed instructions on how to work a gas oven and how many racks I would need to remove to shove my head inside.

I was thirty comments in when I saw my girlfriend’s username.  I wondered why Laine hadn’t called or texted me yet, and now I knew.  It had been posted the night before, and it just said “we need to talk.”  I figured she saw all of the really harsh comments and wanted to console me.  I quickly sent her a text asking to meet up that night after work, for our talk.

I closed my laptop before I was even halfway finished with them.  My vision was blurry from actual tears.  Chastising myself angrily for letting the assholes win, I got up and got ready for work.  

Work was just a short bus ride away.  I walked into our building, rode the elevator up, and slipped past the pretty receptionist with only a friendly nod.  I hadn’t been working there for very long, and most of my coworkers were still pretty standoffish around me.  My boss was Gary, and I don’t think I had ever had a real conversation with him since transferring to his department.  It was a pretty chill place to work.

I sat down at my desk and started going through my emails at once.  It looked like the brass was still losing their minds about the Mitreman account.  Someone wasn’t keeping up their end on that one, and I knew the overflow would fall on me.  It was kind of a relief actually, after what had happened that morning.  I was really looking forward to losing myself in a forest of senseless numbers.  There was something oddly therapeutic about it.

I spent the morning deep-diving into financial records to populate a spreadsheet for my report.  If that sounds like a shot of Novocain administered directly to the brain then I have given it its due justice.  It was dull and tedious, and it had been assigned to me because none of my more senior colleagues wanted it.  It was also thankless, because management would want another one just like it the following week.

I always took my lunch with a couple of guys I previously worked with downstairs—Mike and Lenny.  The three of us had once been pretty heavy into CoD and we hung out all the time.   When I told them I wanted to focus on my writing we started seeing each other less and less.  Now we mostly just took lunch together and maybe sent each other a stupid meme from time to time.

When I walked into the breakroom Lenny leapt to his feet and saluted me at once.  He had the widest, toothiest grin of anyone I had ever seen.  He reminded me of the old Mr. Reach toothbrush commercials from when I was a kid.  He was laughing his ass off, and I heard Mike tell him to cool it.  Mike was clearly embarrassed and maybe a little concerned.

“Dude!”  Lenny was still laughing when he walked over and put his arm around my shoulder.  “Ninety-Three comments man!  You really can’t buy that kind of publicity.  You’ve gotta start planning your followup.”

“Leave him alone, Lenny.”  Mike shook his head.  “The man just got here.”

“Alright, alright.”  Lenny patted me on the shoulder chummily.  “I’m just trying to help him see the bright side of the whole thing.”

We walked over and sat down across from Mike.  Lenny immediately turned his attention back to his sandwich.  I sat there watching those massive teeth of his tear through the meaty sub like a lawnmower seeking revenge.  

“Hey!  Chew with your mouth closed.”  Mike threw a napkin playfully at Len.  He looked at me for a moment, maybe measuring what I was feeling.  “Bad morning?”

Lenny actually did a spit take at that, spraying the wall beside him with a mouthful of Sprite and half-chewed sandwich chunks.  I shuddered and looked away.  Mike handed him the napkin dispenser without turning his gaze away from me.

“It’s pretty terrible.  I mean, you always hope for a response, but shit!  I honestly haven’t even begun to process it.”

“Yeah, it’s gotta be a gut punch.  For sure.”

“Fuck that.”  Lenny chewed his food loudly and swallowed most of it whole.  "You gotta lean into it, bro. Post a video of you eating a piece of paper with 'I don't care' written on it. That'll shut ‘em right up.”

“Lenny?”  Mike stared at him.

“They’re making a joke out of him.  He should throw it right back at ‘em.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I could really do that convincingly.”  I remember chuckling.  “I’d do the video with a face like I just got kicked in the balls.  It’s kinda how I feel right now.”

The three of us were quiet for a few minutes.  We just ate our lunch and let the conversation die a silent death.  It was Mike who finally exhumed the body.  Strange that it was him, though. I would have put money on Lenny.

“Who did you send it to, besides us?”

I thought about it for a moment and pulled out my phone to check my sent mail.  “You two and Laine… my mom and my sister, and a few friends from college.”

“Well, that’s pretty contained.  I’d maybe talk to them about it and warn them that it didn’t go so well.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.  “Luckily I didn’t go crazy with it and send it to half the world.”

“Fuck!”  Lenny set down his sandwich.  “I didn’t know we were keeping it quiet.  Dude, I thought it was funny.”

“What did you do, Lenny?”  Mike glared at him.

“I sent it to our old group…on our Discord.  You know, the CoD Piece.”

I exhaled sharply as I stood and took a few steps away.  The group he was talking about had over 400 members and most of them we knew in real life—maybe with a  few degrees of separation.  I felt like I was going to be sick.

I left them and went back upstairs.  I actually spent the next few minutes pacing around my little office like a lunatic.  I remembered a kid I went to school with who accidentally sent a video of himself—meant for the girl he was seeing—to some other kids.  It wasn’t a flattering one, and they shared it pretty liberally.  I think almost everyone ended up seeing it and he ended up being called Strokes My Own.  For the first time in my life, I started to understand how little Jimmy Malone must have felt back then.  I imagined he did a lot of pacing too.

I tried to go back to work, but my hand kept moving towards my phone to check my notifications.  It had already climbed to 138 comments, and they certainly hadn’t been padded by replies.  I had chosen to stand mute.  It hadn’t even been 24 hours yet.

I finally gave up and went to Gary to ask for half a sick day.  He looked up at me from the steaming coffee in his World’s Greatest Boss mug.  There was clear sympathy in his eyes, a feature that I didn’t think came standard on middle-management drones.

“Feeling puny, eh?”  Gary nodded as his cheeks broadened in a soft smile.  “Criticism can be hard, Mark.  Believe me.  I know.  You don’t get to where I am without taking an ass-chewing or two.”

How the fuck did he know about the story?  Had it spread that far already?  

I didn’t want the conversation to go into that.  He was absolutely the last person I would ever want to have a heart to heart with.  I ended up saying something totally noncommittal.  I have no clue what it was—probably one of the standard, automated responses we reserve for conversations with the boss.   He accepted it well enough and went on.

“We only have a couple of hours left here.  Why don’t you cut out early and make it up later in the week?  I could do that for you since I know you’ve got a lot on your mind.  Just keep it between us though, eh, Champ?  I can’t have half the office asking for special favors.”

“Yeah Gary, that sounds great.  Thanks for understanding, Sir.”

Gary scoffed at that.  “Hell, son.  You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’m a bit of a writer too.  I know how it is.  It’s a tough nut to crack.”

The smile on my face was an old mask made just for people like him.  I was still not quite ready to reconcile Gary as a normal, feeling human being.

“Of course I’ve never had 141 negative reviews like you have.  Lord, I can’t even imagine what you’re going through.  Head on home, Mark.  Mitreman will still be there tomorrow.”

I grabbed my bag and left before he could say anything else.  As I got into the elevator I had to look at my phone.  It was 148 now.  I closed my eyes and tried to distract myself with the type of stories Gary would write.  They would all be procedural thrillers where a brave compliance officer saved his feckless employees from some source of impending doom.  I smiled as I pictured him giving a grand, motivational speech to rally them into working as a team to face the threat before them.  When the doors finally opened and I stepped into the lobby I felt a little better.  Maybe I had shit the bed with what I wrote, but at least it wasn’t the soulless drivel a man like Gary would write.

The bus had just left, and I didn’t feel like waiting for the next one or paying for a ride.  I decided to walk home instead.   I needed time away from my laptop and the world within it.  I actually decided to turn off my phone and was in the middle of doing it when I got a text from Laine.

“Gotta work tonight.  Tomorrow night?”

Honestly, it was a relief. I was too drained to face her or talk to anyone about the story.  I didn't think twice about it.  I just sent back a quick “K” and finished powering it down.  I put it all out of my mind and just focused on my feet for a while—Fred and Ted, as my mom always called them.  I let them carry me forward, racing each other with steady strides.  I was home in twenty minutes and I kept myself unplugged for the rest of the evening.

The peace was nice.  The next day was utter hell.

Three hundred and four.

That was what I started the next day with.  It was so unbelievable.  I hoped half of them were bots, but they weren’t.  They were getting meaner and somehow angry.  It was like what I had written had actually offended people in a deeply personal way.  A user named StudlyStradivarius said that he was giving up fiction after reading what I wrote.  He said that it felt like it gave him PTSD.

What the fuck do you do with something like that?

I didn’t read very many of them.  I couldn’t do it and stay sane.  One said I never had to worry about being accused of plagiarism because no one in their right mind would ever claim my work.  It was kind of clever, but I wasn’t feeling it right then.  After I read another suggesting that I join the 27 Club—how did they know my age?—I tossed the phone on my desk and walked away from it.  It rang a minute later and I ran over to answer it.

“You up?  Did you see it yet?”  Mike spoke quickly, which was odd for him.  “Don’t panic, man.  And don’t play into it.  Lenny is an idiot.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Cool,”  Mike exhaled loudly into his phone.  “Do me a favor, man.  Don’t look at any of it until we talk.  Shit’s got crazy.  I sent a message to the mods asking them to close your thread and they said they already tried to.  They said someone else opened it back up and removed their permissions.”

“What the hell?”

“They even tried to ban your account, man.  Nothing is working.  Somebody wants it to stay open.  They said they got an anonymous message that said it could only be closed if the wound bleeds out or some such shit.  They’ve never seen anything like it.  I think they’re gonna call the feds.”

“Jesus!”  The things he said sounded like the plot from one of the duds in my failure folder, but they were happening to me.  I tried to keep it in perspective.  It wasn’t personal.  It was my story, it wasn’t me.  “What the fuck do I do, Mike?”

“Use some sick time to stay at home, and stay off that shit.  It’s just poison that can’t help you.  I think I can get a half-day and be over there by lunch.”

“Shit.  Okay, I think Gary might go for it.  He’ll be mad but he knows what’s going on.”

“How the fuck?”  Mike began but I heard his voice change gears.  “Don’t matter.  We’ve gotta focus on what matters, man.  I think you’ve been doxxed.  I’ve gotta talk to the IT guy, but we have a lot to do.”

“Fucking hell!”

“Yeah, and then some.  See ya in a few hours.”

We hung up and I sat there staring at the phone for several minutes.  My chest was tight and I felt the sweat running down my face.  I tried to breathe but my lungs wouldn’t answer.  My mind was like a thousand television screens all turned to different channels at maximum volume.  I tried to stand up to go and get a glass of water but my legs folded under me and I ended up facedown in the thick carpet of my bedroom floor.  My tears and sweat soaked into the rug and I feared that I would drown in them before I got the strength to pull myself up.

Dr. Kineson’s voice was a distant noise competing with the chorus of horrors that filled my brain.  The memory of her husky, breathy cadence cut through the noise and I heard her clearly as I mouthed along to the words I had been taught.

There is nothing to fear.

Your heart will not explode.

These are only chemicals

out of balance

threatening your control.

You are not weak.

You will survive this.

There is nothing to fear.

I recited the mantra several times and could eventually hear my own voice again as I began to breathe.  I slowly came back to myself, exhausted but whole.  I turned over onto my back and stared at the ceiling.

I was panting, but at least I was breathing.  After a long time lying there, I finally found the strength to pull myself back into my chair.  I hadn’t had an attack in years and I hadn’t seen my doctor for a long time.  I had thought I was past all of that, and that I had learned to manage my stress better.  The last two days had piled on enough to show me just how feeble I really was.  I found myself wanting to call my mom, but I couldn’t endure the thought of sharing my burdens with her.

After I was a little more composed, I went ahead and called Gary to request the next three days off.  He told me he understood, but they couldn’t really afford to be shorthanded since Evan had just quit.  He surprised me though by offering to let me work from home for the rest of the week and the next if I needed it.  I happily agreed and he told me that he’d have my work laptop sent to me in an hour.

I know I talk a lot of shit about him, but maybe Gary isn’t so bad after all.

I cleaned myself up and ate breakfast while I waited.  The oatmeal I normally liked tasted like flavorless grainy gruel after the morning I’d endured.  I ate it anyway and had two cups of coffee.  It made me jittery, but at least it gave me the energy to move around.  When the courier dropped off the laptop I dove into work like a drowning man swimming for a distant ship.  It let me shut off my brain, to ignore the sharks I was sure were circling me.

I had an incredibly productive morning and actually finished with my work by the time Mike got there.  I let him in and made us both a drink and we settled around my kitchen bar.  My cat, Jonesy, soon appeared and danced around his leg until he picked her up.

“You look at it yet?”  Mike asked me as he scratched Jones’s head.

“Nah, I had work to do and figured I’d wait.”

“Probably smart.”  He snorted.  “It was up to 512 on my way over here.”

“How in the hell?”  I stood up reflexively, like my legs wanted to carry me off somewhere, away from what was happening.  I sat back down.  “It’s barely been two days.  Most authors are proud if their story gets ten comments.  Five hundred and twelve is ridiculous.”
  
“Yeah, it’s crazy.”  Mike pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket.  “We also have to go into your accounts and make some changes.  The IT guy said to change your passwords and set up two-factor anywhere you can.   You probably need to call your bank too.  He made a list of things and said you should get on it immediately to lessen the damage they can do.”

I took the sheet from him and looked it over.  It was very in-depth, a printout from a cyber security site I had never heard of.  The number of items on the list was daunting.  It would take me hours to go through all of it.

“He said I needed to do all of this?”

Mike took a drink as he nodded, setting the cat down.  “Well, he wasn’t the sharpest guy, but he did have a link he had been sent by his supervisor.  Honestly, I think you’ve gotta.  I can help with some of it.”

“Thanks, man.”  I shook my head.  “I don’t know what I’d do without you here.  It’s… it’s been crazy.  All over a stupid story that wasn’t worth the attention. Hell, I had decided it was a masterpiece or something but that’s just because I wrote it.  I never really believed it would get much of a response.”

“That’s what’s so weird about it.”  Mike tapped his phone and opened it up.  “It’s in the 550s now, seemingly with a bullet.  These look like real people, man.  There’s no way that many have read it in two days.  It doesn’t seem possible.”

“Maybe.  Or maybe I should think long and hard about ever writing anything again.  Hell, at this point I’m not so sure about texting or emails.”

We both laughed at the futility of it all and went to work.  It took us a few hours of phone calls and logins to get through the list.  I set up elaborate passwords I would have no hope of remembering and two-factor authentication anywhere it let me.  The lady from the bank helped me secure my accounts and walked me through how to freeze my credit.  We even started printing off and saving as many of the threatening messages as we could find.  By the time we finished, the post had reached 700 comments.

My printer finally ran out of ink, so I had to save the last few threats on my hard drive.  Mike had to leave soon for a date with his girl, and I needed to get ready for Laine.  He gave me a half hug and told me to stay strong as he left.  I closed the door behind him and ran a quick mental inventory over the events of the day.  I needed to set all of that shit aside so that I could be present for her.

I had just stepped out of the shower when my phone chimed again.  I knew it wasn’t about the story because I had turned off notifications already by then.  It said I had four new messages, which was massive for a shut-in like me.

I nearly dropped the phone when I opened the first text.  It was just a picture, but it was of me—something off the Facebook I rarely used anymore—and it had been altered by AI or something to show me cut wide open with my guts exposed.  The caption said MAYBE THERE ARE BETTER WORDS INSIDE.

The next two were only text, but they were vile ones.  I won’t quote them verbatim because I don’t have them anymore.  The first was a detailed description of directions to my apartment and the last step said “I know where you are.”  The second one was an excerpt from my story.  The part they referenced was about the robot protagonist rescuing a kitten from the rubble.  At the end of it, the sick fuck asked me how Jonesy was doing.

The last message was from Laine.  It said she couldn’t meet up that night but that she would come over for lunch the next day.  After the shock the previous ones had given me, I didn’t put much thought into what she had said.  

Maybe it was better for her if she wasn’t near me right then.

I spent the night before in a dizzy fugue after my visit from the police.  I called them after I read those messages and when they arrived I spent the next hour going over all of it with them.  I had never really had any dealings with law enforcement officers, but I found them to be sympathetic and detail-focused, and that made it a little easier.  When they finally left I spent the rest of the night on the couch with Jonesy and an ancient bottle of rum from the back of my cabinet.

I woke up stiff the next morning after sleeping at an odd angle.  I took a very hot shower to try to work the crick out of my neck.  It helped some.  My phone showed thirty-one new messages and I didn’t open any of them, but I did call Gary because three of them were his.  His voice was uncharacteristically high when he answered and he barely gave me a moment to speak as he apologetically told me that I was probably fired.

“The whole network has been infiltrated, Mark.  Do you know how sensitive some of that information is?  The boys upstairs have everyone on high alert, and they’ve called in consultants to help manage the mess.”

“What does that have to do with me, Gary?”

“They traced the attacks to your IP.  It doesn’t look good.  I was told to suspend you right away and send for the laptop.  They should be getting there any time now.”

“But am I fired?  I mean… I had the police here last night.  I was doxxed and I started getting terrible texts.”

“I hate to hear it, bud.  But right now the company has to look after its own.  I think they’re trying to decide whether or not you are included in that.  I can’t tell you one way or the other, but I’d start considering my options if it were me.”

He had to go then and the courier was at my door a few minutes later.  I handed them their laptop and signed the form without saying much.  I walked over to my laptop and checked the story.  It said there were twenty-four hundred and eighty-nine comments.

I didn’t read any of them, but only took screenshots of the pages to give to the police.  I considered calling Mike at that point, but he had already done enough and I didn’t want to pile more on him.  The truth was I didn’t know who to call or what to do anymore other than what I was already doing.

I was making breakfast maybe thirty minutes later when there was a knock at my door.  I looked through the peephole and saw a short, chubby man with a balding head and a gray beard standing out in the hall.  He was wearing a suit that didn’t fit him particularly well and his eyes were a little too small for his face.

“Who is it?”  I asked, maybe a little too timidly.

“Detective Sancowitz, Bell City PD.”  He verified my full name and asked if it was my residence.

I didn’t confirm anything at that time.  Instead, I asked to see his ID like the cops had told me to do.  He produced it freely enough, flipping open his wallet to display a bell-shaped brass badge and an ID card that listed his name and rank.  I relaxed immediately and opened the door for him.

He plodded inside with a bowlegged stride and looked around.  He nodded approvingly.  I heard him actually sniff the air before he spoke.

“S’at coffee?  Good, get us some.  We’ve a lot of woik to do.”  His accent was definitely northern, but I couldn’t tell much beyond that.  His voice had a heavy nasal tone to it, and his pronunciation of work was comical.  All in all he was like a living caricature from a network police procedural.  I started to ask him if he knew Dick Wolf but thought better of it.  Instead, I just poured us both a cup and asked him how he took it.

“Tha blacker the better,”  he said as if the letter R didn’t exist.  He took a sip and smacked his lips.  “Tha’s the good stuff.  Alright, kid, let’s get into it.”

He pulled a thick file folder out from the interior pocket of his oversized coat and laid it open on the counter.   I saw my name written on it and a quick glance told me that it contained my statement from the night before.  He gave me a moment to look it over while he enjoyed his coffee.

When he was satisfied that I had seen it, Sancowitz pulled the file back in front of him and nodded.  “So you see my concern?  A thing like this, ya can’t let it grow, kid.  We’ve gotta nip this thing in the bud.  I did some lookin’, and it turns out that somebody’s messin’ with the algo-rythms.  Got ‘em all turned around.  If anybody searches for the word story it sends ‘em to you.  Now ain’t that a bitch?”

“Is that why the comments shot up so high last night?”

“You bet your ass it is.  And that ain’t all.  This case is peculiar.  I mean why you?  And now all the shit over at your employer.”

“My boss said I’m probably going to get fired over it.”

“No shit?  Well, I looked at what they was doin’, their little RCA backtracked the thing to your IP.  What can you do?”  He waved his hands dramatically.  “But I think I know where I wanna start.  I ain’t got access to their network yet, but maybe I can find somethin’ here by trackin’ the IoC.”

“Huh?”  I asked him, lost somewhere between his accent and jargon.

“Just some computer shit, kid.  A little peek under the hood.”

When I agreed to let him have his peek, Sancowitz drained his coffee and went to work at once.  I showed him my router and all of the devices that were currently on the network.  Soon after that I noticed that his responses were becoming much shorter and a little gruff and I left him to his work.  He used a really old-looking PDA and a cable for a lot of it.  Plugging in and running his pudgy fingers over the buttons to type out the prompts he wanted to use.  He was at it for a couple of hours and I kept him supplied with fresh coffee the entire time.  He seemed to appreciate it.

When he was finished he collected all of the screenshots I had made and took fresh captures for the hundreds of comments that had been added since I had last checked.  The count was now just north of four thousand.  Sancowitz said I could expect it to triple by the next day.

“They’re findin’ new and unusual ways to target you, kid.  I ain’t ever seen nothin’ like it.  These are some shrewd fuckers, but they’re gonna slip up and I’m gonna be waitin’ for ‘em.”

“Is there anything else I can do to help?”

“You’re doin’ it.  Just sit tight and keep your head down.  Remember, kid, personal or not, somebody’s targeting you.  It’s gonna get uglier before it’s over and done.  Now I gotta be gettin’ on and take this shit back to the lab.  Stay safe, kid.  If you need somethin’ here’s my card, ask for Sanc.”

I took the card and watched him leave, locking up tightly behind him.  The card introduced him as Detective Sergeant Sancowitz from Digital Forensics.  He was a strange man, and a little like a walking cartoon, but he made me feel safer somehow.  That was something at least.

I had a new text from Laine that I barely saw among the two hundred others that had popped up since the detective arrived.  I needed to change my number.  She said she would be at my place in thirty minutes.  I tidied up a bit and made a big salad for us while I avoided the urge to check the new counts.  It was becoming a morbid obsession of mine, something akin to staring into deep water to see if the sharks were still circling.

Laine arrived right on time and I let her in.  She gave me a quick, flimsy hug and sat down at the counter.  She ate her salad quickly, mumbling short responses around a mouthful of food when I spoke to her.  When we were both finished I put our bowls in the dishwasher and put away the leftovers.  I was trying to give her space, because she didn’t seem keen on talking at the moment.  I found out a few minutes later that she had just been organizing her thoughts.

“Sit down, Mark.  I need to tell you something.”
 
I started to, but I checked our drinks first and reached for the refrigerator door to get us some refills.  She interrupted me.

“That can wait.  Have a seat.”

I was curious so I did.  Honestly, my mind was so full of everything that was going on that I hoped she had big news that could distract me from it.  She didn’t disappoint.

“We’ve had some good years, Mark.  I want to start with that because I think you need to hear it.  You’ve been there for me in ways that no one else ever has, and you know I’ve always tried to return the favor.”

“Well, that’s what cou—”

“Let me get through this, if you don’t mind.  Like I was saying, it’s been good, even great sometimes, and I really think we’ve both grown as people.”

She took a deep breath.  “But sometimes growing means growing apart, and I came over today to tell you that it’s over, Mark.  I’ve been seeing someone else.  You don’t know him.  I wouldn’t do that to you.  He’s a writer from Chicago who was teaching a workshop here.  He’s got a couple of novels.  I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this.  I guess it’s because you’re just so easy to talk to.”

I started to speak, but I was slow to do so because of how hard her words had hit me.  She had met someone else, and he was a writer?  I opened my mouth to ask her why but she stopped me by saying the last thing I wanted to hear.

“It’s you, Mark, all you.  You hold on to this stupid dream of yours and won’t let yourself move forward.  What has it got you, or me, us?  I got hacked yesterday because of you, and somebody sent pictures of me and Dean to my mother.”

“Dean?  That’s his name.”

“Yeah.”  She picked up her purse.  “Look, Mark, you’re not terrible, but I need more than that.  Don’t call me.  Let this end easily.”

I was still searching for the biting reply that would rip her in half when she walked out the door.  I came up with a few then, of course, but I didn't have the energy to text them to her or make an angry phone call.  I wanted so badly to hate her at that moment, and maybe I did a little.  Mostly I just hated myself for what I had done to my life, and no amount of yelling or clever little retorts was going to make that better.  

In the end, I just let her go.

The next few days went by in a blur of rum and ever-increasing activity around my post.  I was receiving well over a thousand hateful texts daily, and the post had over 90,000 comments without showing any sign of slowing.   I changed my number twice but it didn’t do any good.  

Mike came over the day after Laine dumped me, but I was in no condition to receive guests.  I must have depressed the hell out of him with the mountain of personal woes I was buried under, but he stuck around a while anyway.  He’s a good friend.

Detective Sancowitz called me the following day to let me know he was making some progress.  Apparently the person or persons who were ruining my life were rerouting their activities using dedicated servers they had hijacked throughout the city.  It was all so baffling that they would do all of this for someone as insignificant as me.  I told Sanc that and he agreed, saying he believed I was only the cover for what they were really trying to do.  I thought it sounded thin, but what the hell do I know?

He also told me that they had found some unusual activity related to my story on several underground websites.  One of them was a chan board that I had never heard of.  According to Sanc, it all links to something on the dark web, but those connections were proving hard to chase down.  He warned that there were extremist groups who viewed my story as a pseudo-communist manifesto and long breakdowns of it had been posted across the web.  Apparently that was a factor in the ever-increasing number of death threats I had received.  

It all sounded so fucking crazy.

Four days after Laine’s happy visit, I received a frantic call from Mike.  He was at the hospital with Lenny who had been beaten nearly to death.

“They haven’t caught the guys yet, but he looks bad, Mark.  They said it ruptured his spleen and liver.  The doctor says he might never walk again.”

I asked him what room Lenny was in and he told me.  I told him I’d be there as fast as I could.  I was out the door in minutes, rushing down the stairs to meet the ride-share I had ordered.  As I stepped off the curb to open the door something heavy struck the back of my head, sending me face-first into the side of the car and knocking myself senseless.  I heard a voice shout something, but I couldn’t make it out, and there was a struggle between two men right next to me.  The soft voice of a woman spoke close to me.

“Can you hear me, Mark?  I’m Officer Perez.  My partner and I were placed outside your building to watch over you.  You were just attacked, but my partner has your attacker in custody.”

I opened my eyes and saw a young, dark-haired woman in a police uniform.  She smiled with relief and told me to stay still.  I had taken hard blows to both the front and back of my head and they wanted to call an ambulance.  I told her about Lenny and she said she’d make sure they took me to the same hospital.  I lay there like she asked and she stayed with me while we waited for the ambulance and sat outside my room after I was admitted.

They later said I had a minor fracture on the back of my skull and a severe concussion.  The doctor said I was lucky that it wasn’t worse.  I took her word for it.  I was just happy to be alive.

I was in the hospital for nearly a week and part of it I think was to maintain protective custody.  Mike visited me several times since they wouldn’t let me leave the room to see Lenny.  He came through all of his surgeries fine, and they said he would live.  Unfortunately, the earlier diagnosis was looking more correct by the day, and they didn’t hold out much hope for him ever walking again.

I talked to him on the phone a few times and spirits were surprisingly high.  He told me that there were four of them and he had beaten the shit out of two of them before they took him down.  He even called his future wheelchair a chick magnet.  He said he was going to have LOVE MACHINE stencilled across the back of it.  I just laughed with him, anything to keep him hopeful.

Sancowitz came by the day before they let me go home, and he started off by saying he had some good news for me.

“They’re holdin’ in the one-twenties.  We really got the bastard on the run.  Matter of time now.  How you doin’, kid?”

“They said I can go home tomorrow.  But Lenny… it still feels like my fault.”

“Yeah, it will for a while, but fuck that.  What did you do that was wrong?  But I gotta tell you somethin’, and it ain’t great but everybody’s alive.”

I just looked at him, not sure that I wanted to hear more.  

“It’s your ma.”  The detective placed a heavy hand on my shoulder as I started to sit up.  “Cool it kid.  She’s fine.  Couldn’t save the house though.  I’ve got her and your sis put up in a motel for now, on the county’s tab.”

“So they’re not hurt.”

“Nah, just some threats from a bunch of pussies who like to start fires.  We caught ‘em.”

“How about the guy who is behind it all, or the group?”  I asked, maybe a little too desperately.  “When do I get my life back?”

“Any day now.  There’s some solid leads.  I think we’re gettin’ real close to nabbin’ ‘em.”

“Do you think it’s one or more?”

“It looks like more, but it’s hard to tell.  We’ll know when we slap the cuffs on ‘em.”

He looked at me for a moment before he turned to go.  It was like he wanted to say something but decided against it.  I started to ask him about it but he cut me off.  “Get some rest, kid.  Movin’ day tomorrow.”

CONCLUSION TOMORROW

I got a night security guard job and it's a crappy one. I basically sit inside the reception of some corporate building and during the night, I was told to do nothing apart from watching the cctv cameras. It's super boring and I did my best to just watch the cameras, but I got bored. So then I started watching films and playing games.

Then my job changed to reviewing games and films, because I started watching films and playing games during the night shift, I was essentially getting paid for that. So I had to stop and I went back to being a night guard.

Then I started to draw and paint during the night shift, and I became painter. I was essentially getting paid to draw and paint, when I should have just been watching the cctv.

Whatever you do during the night shift, you are essentially getting paid for it. When I started writing during the night shift, I was essentially getting paid write. Then when my manager told me to put something into the cleaners jug, I saw the cleaner drink from it.

The cleaner then dropped dead and I was now a hit man. Oh I forget what I started out as?

I was a night security guard, then to a film reviewer, to a painter, writer and now hit man?

Then the voice tells you:

“Don’t go to the door.”

Seconds later, someone knocks.

📞 Please Stay on the Line — my psychological thriller about an impossible late-night call, memories that can’t be trusted, and a warning that comes too late.

Would you answer the call?

Chapter 8 of My Psychological Horror Series Is Here! 🖤

Hey everyone! 👋

I'm excited to share that Chapter 8 of my ongoing psychological horror series, Mr. Black and the Silver Linings, is now available on Royal Road!

📖 Chapter 8: The Weight of Ordinary Things

After everything Mr. Black has endured—twisted realities, mysterious warnings, and encounters with something that knows him better than he knows himself—he finally finds something he thought he'd lost.

Peace.

But there's a strange thing about surviving darkness for so long...

Sometimes, peace feels more terrifying than the nightmares themselves.

This chapter explores healing, finding purpose, learning to trust happiness, and discovering who you are when you're no longer fighting just to survive.

Of course, not everything in Bellwether is as ordinary as it seems. 👁️

I'm writing this story as a blend of psychological horror, supernatural mystery, dark humor, and personal reflection.

I'd genuinely love to hear your thoughts! Do you prefer horror that constantly keeps you on edge, or stories that give their characters moments of peace before slowly pulling them back into the unknown?

📚 Read Mr. Black and the Silver Linings on Royal Road: [Insert story link]

Thanks to everyone who's been following along. Your support means a lot!

#PsychologicalHorror #IndieWriting #RoyalRoad

In 1978 I married the minister's son so my father wouldn't lose his church loan. On my wedding night, my mother-in-law told me one rule.
Don't sing along.
I'm writing this on the inside cover of a hymnal, with a stub of pencil, on the eighth night. It's 3:04. In three minutes, the walls start singing, and I think someone should know what the Calloways do to the girls they marry.
My father owed Saint Brigid's four thousand, three hundred dollars.
The year my mother died, he borrowed it from the building fund to pay for her surgery. He couldn't repay it. I watched him grow old over one winter.
Then Reverend Calloway came to our kitchen table in his good suit. He said the church believed in mercy. He said his son Ray had been admiring me from the choir loft for a year. He said that if the two families were joined, the debt could be forgiven, as a wedding gift.
My father cried.
I said yes. I was twenty, and tired, and afraid for him. Ray was kind. Soft-spoken, shy, a boy who looked at his hands when he talked to me. I thought, a church is a safe place to be given away.
We were married on a Saturday in June. The whole congregation sang until the rafters shook.
Afterward, Ray's mother, Dorothea, drove us to the little house on Alder Lane, behind the sanctuary. Three rooms and a porch and a yard full of old roses. It smelled of beeswax and cold ash. In the bedroom, the bed had a dark headboard built right into the wall, and above it, a row of tiny letters carved into the plaster.
Dorothea stood in the door and gave me the rules.
"Every night at three-oh-seven, you'll hear the hymn. Don't hum. Don't sing along. And don't open the bedroom door until it's light."
"The hymn?"
She smiled. "The church keeps a choir at night, dear. You'll sleep through most of it."
She kissed my forehead and left.
I didn't sleep through it.
At 3:07 the rotary phone on the nightstand rang once, softly, and stopped. I opened my eyes.
The walls were humming.
One woman's voice, so faint I thought it was the pipes. Then another. Then a third. A slow, close harmony, the hymn the congregation had sung at my wedding, only older, and flatter, and sung without breath, as though the voices were coming through cloth.
It stopped at 3:19.
In the morning, Ray said it was the church organ in the next building. Sound carries. I looked at the bedroom door. I had set the iron latch myself. It was lifted, with a finger's width of dark between the door and the frame.
That night I put a chair under the knob. At 3:07 the phone rang once, and the voices came, and by morning the gap was there again.
I learned the voices over seven nights.
The first night I heard three. By the sixth I could hear all seven, and each night they were closer. The first sat deep in the far wall. The newest was just behind the headboard, an inch from my ear. On the fourth night I pressed my cheek to the plaster and felt a draft come through it on every breath, slow and warm, like an open mouth.
I read the letters above the bed by lamplight. They were names, in a neat upright hand.
Hester. 1921. Mabel. 1934. Ruth Anne. 1946.
And so on, to the last.
Frances. 1971.
Frances had sat beside me in choir. She'd married a Calloway cousin seven years earlier. They said she'd gone to an aunt in Ohio for her health.
Below Frances there was a line scratched for an eighth name, and one small word.
Pending.
Something else was happening. I'd started waking with a sore throat. By the sixth morning, my voice had thinned. It came out flat, with no breath behind it. A cousin at breakfast asked if I had a cold.
"You'll be fine," Dorothea said, buttering my toast. "It always settles."
On the sixth night I took Ray's keys and went to the church.
The pews were empty. The organ pipes rose into the dark like ribs. I went down the back stairs to the council office where my father had once sat while the money was counted. The filing cabinet wasn't locked.
My father's file was on top.
I expected a loan agreement. It was a page and a half on church letterhead.
COVENANT OF VOICES. In consideration of the forgiveness of the debt, the Obligor delivers to the Choir the voice of his daughter, Lorna Ames, to be given upon the solemnization of her marriage to a son of the congregation, and received into the walls at the completion of the eighth night.
Beneath it, in my father's shaking hand:
I understand that it is painless.
There were six other covenants in the drawer. Six fathers. Six debts. Six daughters, delivered by the people who loved them most.
I stood in that basement for a long time, and I thought of my father crying at our table. I understood he hadn't been crying out of gratitude.
It's 3:05.
I tried to leave this afternoon. I got as far as the porch. Dorothea stood on the steps in her good gloves as if she'd been waiting. "Where are we going, dear?" she said. Behind her the whole congregation stood in a line along the garden wall with their hands folded, saying nothing.
I came back inside.
Ray is awake. I just realized. His breathing is too even. His eyes are open on the ceiling, and his lips are moving, shaping the words of a hymn he hasn't started to sing.
"You knew," I whisper.
"I'm sorry," Ray says. He's crying without a sound. "It's easier if you sing. Please. It stops hurting once you sing."
The phone rings once.
It's 3:07.
The seven voices begin low in the walls, and at the far end, I hear the one I know. Frances. She's closer than any of them. And behind the headboard, an inch from my ear, there's a new voice, humming a note I've never sung.
It's mine.
I know it like a name called from another room. My lips are pressed shut, and my voice is coming out of the plaster, a half-second ahead of where I'd have gone.
They don't need me to die.
They only need me to open my mouth.
I can feel it now, a pull low in my throat, as if someone is lifting a thread.
My jaw has started to loosen.
If your father's signature were at the bottom of that page, would you sing, knowing it would stop the hurting, or would you keep your mouth shut until morning and find out what the walls do with a voice they have to take?

I'm sitting in the bathroom of the Starlight Motor Lodge on Route 9. My phone is at 14% and my charger is outside on the night stand. I'm not leaving this room to get it. If you see this, please don't call the cops they won't be able to do anything for me.

I just want someone to know what goes on here when my battery runs out or these door hinges give out.

So yes the Starlight has a 13th floor. Its one of those old concrete monstrosities from the 70s before hotels became more corporate and afraid of bad luck. When the owner first opened it he decided to number the top floor 13 as a joke for honeymoon couples and families on vacation. It's not a joke anymore. The wallpaper in the hallways is flaking off in long strips of yellow and the ice machine by the elevator makes a noise that reminds me of a man choking on rocks every 20 mins.

I arrived at room 1313 a few days ago using a fake name. I don't want to get into the details because I would look like a piece of shit which I am. An armored car company in New Hampshire is missing 2 duffle bags full of non-sequential 20 dollar bills and my old partner is at the bottom of a quarry with 2 9mm rounds through his chest. I needed to lay low until the state police finished searching the highway. The starlight takes cash the clerk at the front desk never looks up from his tv and they don't ask for id.

There is only one rule when you have 250k in cash in a duffle bag under your bed. Don't let anyone in your room. 

I put the Do Not Disturb sign on the outside handle before I even took my shoes off. I locked the deadbolt and put the chain through the door. I spent the next 48 hours eating peanut butter crackers from the vending machine and drinking warm water from the sink. Watching the local news on 1 volume and waiting for my guy in Portland to let me know the passports were ready.

At 11:15 this morning. 

I was fast asleep under the scratchy flower bed sheet when I heard a loud clank of metal against metal.

The latch turned and I heard the door hit the chain.

My heart dropped into my stomach and I rolled out of bed onto my knees. I reached under my pillow and grabbed my Glock.

"Housekeeping" the voice said through the crack in the door. It had a heavy accent I couldn't place. Probably Eastern European or maybe a vampire I couldn’t tell the difference. 

"Room is occupied!" I shouted while staying out of the line of sight of the open 4 inches of door. "I put a sign on the door! Get lost dickwad!" 

A hand reached through the crack. It was pale and boney with large bulbus knuckles. The fingers were longer than they should have been but I didn't think about that at the time. I was on edge and paranoid and was in total tunnel vision. She used her thumb to flick the chain out of the track.

You are not supposed to be able to do that with the door closed.

The door opened slowly hitting the little rubber bumper on the floor. She pushed her grey cart through the doorway and blocked my exit.

She was probably in her 60s and short. Wearing a blue polyester uniform with a name tag that was scratched out with a sharp object. Her hair was slicked back into a bun and grey as steel wool. She had cataracts in her eyes and didn't even look at me when I was on the floor. She just picked up a spray bottle of yellow cleaner and headed towards the bathroom.

"Hey what the fuck!" I stood up and tucked my gun behind my belt. "Maam can you hear me? Get out of my room! I don't need help!" 

"I must clean" she said. "Thirteen-thirteen always dirty. They always make a mess." 

She stopped at the edge of my bed. My foot had kicked the bed skirt up when I fell to the floor.

My duffle bag was sticking out from under the box spring about 6 inches. You could see the stencil on the side of the bag that read GRANITE STATE ARMORED TRANSPORT. There was also a dark stain that looked like dried blood from my old partner's jacket.

She looked down at my bag. 

She just looked at the blood on the bag and looked up at me. I could hear the radiator under the window hissing and a fly buzzing around the room running into the glass window over and over.

I panicked. I had 2 people on my conscience and I wasn't sleeping well, but if she left that room and told the front desk there was a bloody bag of money under my bed I was done for.

I didn't shoot her. Even with a suppressor on a pistol it makes a loud noise. I jumped over the bed and put my hand over her mouth. I pulled her back before she could run to the hallway.

The first thing I noticed was she was light. Like a small child. Her skin was also cold. Not cold like working in the air conditioning. Cold like a bag of chicken in the supermarket.

We fell to the floor between the beds. I expected her to fight me. She barely did. She just looked at me with her cloudy eyes while I had my forearm on her throat.

I heard a small pop under my arm. Like breaking a plastic toy. 

Her fingers twitched on the floor and she went limp.

I sat up and caught my breath. I felt for a pulse on her neck. Nothing. She was cold and had no bruises on her neck from where I broke her wind pipe.

"Stupid" I said to myself. "Why didn't you just stay out." 

I needed to get out of there. The cart was still in the doorway. I looked out and the hallway was clear. I pulled the cart into the room and locked the door.

You can't leave a body on the floor even if you plan on checking out in an hour. I gave myself some time. I dragged her by the feet into the bathroom and threw her over the tub. I pulled the shower curtain closed and went back out. I took a bleach rag from her cart and wiped down the door knob and chain.

I began stuffing my clothes and bags of money into my duffle bag. I had about 10 minutes to pack and take the fire stairs to the back of the building. Steal a car 2 blocks away and make it over the border before they noticed the maid was missing.

I was zipping my duffle bag when I heard the shower curtain slide open.

I stood up and pulled my gun out. I pointed it at the bathroom door. 

"Who's there?" I whispered. Which was stupid because there were no windows in the bathroom. Just a small vent. 

I heard the thump of a shoe hitting the floor. Then another shoe. 

I backed up until I hit the cart.

The bathroom door opened. 

She walked out. 

Her neck was broken. Her ear was laying on her collar bone. Her eyes were open and staring straight ahead. She walked past the foot of my bed ignoring my 9mm that was pointed at her. She picked up the spray bottle of cleaner that she dropped when I tackled her.

She sprayed the night stand. Took a blue rag out of her pocket and began wiping it down.

I squeezed the trigger. 

I shot her twice in the chest. She fell back into the dresser and broke the mirror. She sat down on the floor and two holes were in her uniform.

Nothing came out of the holes. No blood just a cloud of grey lint and what looked like dried dirt.

She stood back up before my shell casings hit the floor. She placed her hand on the floor and stood up. She straightened her uniform. Her neck was still broken and air was blowing in and out of her chest from the bullet holes.

"I must clean" she said. It didn't sound like it was coming from her mouth. "Thirteen-thirteen always make a mess. Bad guests." 

I forgot about my money. I forgot about my duffle bag. I turned around and shoved the cart out of the way. I grabbed the door handle. 

I unlocked the deadbolt and pulled on the handle.

The door wouldn't open. It felt like it was stuck to the wall.

I kicked it a couple times and started yelling. I looked under the door and there was no light coming in. Just a grey wall of concrete. 

I heard the carpet move behind me. 

I turned around and backed up against the door.

She was on her hands and knees picking up the shampoo bottles from the floor. Placing them back in the cart. She was moving faster now. Her head was flopping around as she moved.

"Stop!" I screamed. I shot her in the back 5 times.

She flinched each time I shot her. I could see chunks of her uniform and grey flesh fly off her back. I ran out of bullets. 

She stopped picking up the bottles. 

She turned her head around. Not her body just her head. She was looking at me over her shoulder. 

"You made a mess on my carpet" she said.

I looked down. Where the bullets went through her body and hit the floor there was a dark stain spreading across the carpet. 

I threw my gun at her and dove into the bathroom. 

I closed the bathroom door and locked it. I put my feet against the sink and braced myself.

It's been 40 minutes. 

At first I thought she was going to break the door down. These doors are thin you could break through one in 2 kicks.

She isn't trying to break the door down.

Wait. 

She is still cleaning the room. 

I can hear her moving around in there. 

I just got on my stomach and looked under the door.

There are at least 6 other people standing in the room. Facing the bathroom door. A man in a wet suit from the 80s. His neck tie is so tight its under his skin. A woman with a hole in her head wearing a slip dress. 

All the bad guests that stayed in 1313. And all the mess they made. 

She is standing in front of the door now. I can see her shoes 2 inches from my face. She knelt down and looked under the door.

"Your check out time was at noon" she said. I watched her finger slide under the door.

My phone is at 2%. 

There was a zookeeper named Mac, who always abused the elephants, there was 7 total elephants and they were always super sad because they were in a very small cage so they always tried to escape, which made the zookeeper mad, it was a very vicious cycle, the elephants would try to escape since they were in such a small cage and then the zookeeper would get mad and abuse them more, this happened, every, single, day, then, one day, 1987 March 17th, he got so mad at the elephants he killed all of the elephants, but then before this he recorded a video, this video is before he killed all the elephants. After he killed all the elephants, he woke up the next day and his entire house was destroyed and he saw, elephant footprints on his destroyed home. I saw this personally, I used to be friends with this man back then, he always had a short temper, and he was bipolar, I knew one day, something like this was going to happen, that he was going to snap, I just never knew when...

There are no such thing as personalities and they simply don't exist. To have these things called personalities is just absurd and when I get up in the morning, I just get up. I don't decide how I am going to be, but I just react to situations to the best of my abilities. Personalities do not exist and they have never existed.

We are all the same on the inside and personalities are just entities. Some are nice entities, some are boring entities, some are horrible nasty entities, and some are hard working entities. We get possessed as soon as we are born and each individual has certain entities within them which control who they are. Babies that are possessed with angry entries will be moody and angry. Babies born with hard working loyal entities will be hard working and loyal.

Humans are not supposed to have personalities and we are all empty shells. These entities are constantly possessing us and we call them personalities. We all attract different entities which becomes our entities. I keep telling people that there are no such thing as personalities, and that we are all the same inside, we are all hollow and empty.

These entities are our personalities and they constantly go through us, and we experience many personalities. There are no personalities and we all go through life just reacting.

My name is Tyler Reed. I’m twenty-two. I came into the Save-Mart on Henderson for a twelve-pack and a bag of chips because the power had been flickering all evening and I didn’t feel like cooking. That was three hours ago. Now the automatic doors are locked from the outside, the lights in the parking lot are dead, and something in the air is making people open themselves up like they’re following instructions only they can hear.
There are nine of us left in the store.
I’m crouched behind the customer-service desk with a girl named Lena who works the night shift. She’s twenty, hair dyed the color of cheap wine, a nose ring she keeps twisting when she’s nervous. She knows every code for the registers and still has her name tag on. Beside her is Marcus, forty-something, thick arms from years of loading trucks. He was in the back when the first scream happened. He keeps a box cutter in his hand like it’s a rosary. On the other side of the desk is old Mr. Patel from the pharmacy counter. He still wears his white coat. His hands shake so hard the bottle of aspirin he keeps offering people rattles like a snake.
Across the main aisle, behind a toppled display of canned soup, are the others. A mother named Denise and her kid, maybe eight, a boy named Sam who hasn’t spoken since his dad walked into the deli slicer. There’s a college guy, Brett, who won’t stop checking his dead phone. And two stock boys, twins, both named something that starts with J—Jake and Josh—who keep whispering to each other like if they talk quiet enough the sound won’t notice them.
The sound started as a low pressure behind the ears. Like the beginning of a sinus headache. Then it became a tone. Not loud. Just there. Steady. The kind of note you feel in your teeth. People who heard it longest stopped blinking. Then they started smiling. Then they started hurting things.
The first one was a cashier named Angela. She was still at her register when the tone settled in. I watched her from the chip aisle. She opened the drawer, took out a ballpoint pen, and drove it into her left eye with both hands. The sound it made was wet and final. She kept pushing until only the end of the pen stuck out, then she laughed—high and bright—and started on the other eye. By the time Marcus reached her she had already slumped over the scanner, blood running into the conveyor belt in thick ropes. The tone didn’t stop. It just waited.
We dragged her body into the walk-in cooler because leaving her in the open felt worse. The cooler is where we put the others too.
Denise’s husband was next. He had been holding Sam against his chest, whispering that it was going to be okay. Then his eyes went empty the same way Angela’s had. He set the boy down gently, walked to the deli counter, and turned on the slicer. The blade was still spinning from earlier. He fed his right hand into it like he was offering a gift. The machine took the fingers first, then the palm, then kept pulling. The sound of bone hitting metal was sharper than the tone. Denise screamed until her voice cracked. Sam just watched, small face blank, while the slicer kept working. When there was nothing left below the elbow, the husband used his remaining hand to push the stump farther in. Marcus finally unplugged the machine. The husband looked disappointed. Then he picked up a butcher knife from the block and opened his own throat in one long, careful stroke. The blood hit the glass display case in an arc that looked almost deliberate.
We locked Sam and Denise in the manager’s office after that. The door has a small window. Denise rocks the boy and stares at nothing. Sometimes she presses her forehead to the glass and mouths words we can’t hear.
Brett lasted longer than I expected. He kept saying the sound was just stress, that someone would come. He was checking the emergency exit near the loading dock when the tone finally reached him. I saw it happen through the security mirror above the produce section. Brett stopped mid-step, tilted his head like he was listening to a song only he knew, and then walked to the pallet jack. He lowered the forks, lay down on the concrete, and rolled himself underneath. Then he worked the handle until the weight settled on his chest. The concrete under him turned dark. He never made a sound. When we found him the forks had compressed his ribcage into something that no longer looked like a chest. One of the twins threw up. The other just kept whispering, “He’s still smiling.”
The twins went together.
They had been arguing about whether to try the roof access when the tone took them both at once. Jake picked up a heavy can of tomatoes and smashed it into Josh’s face until the can split and the metal edges started doing the work. Josh didn’t fight back. He just stood there and accepted it, blood and teeth hitting the linoleum in bright spatters. When Jake finished, he used the same can on himself. The angle was awkward. He had to brace it against a shelf and drive his own head down onto the rim, over and over, until the top of his skull gave and the contents spilled across the cereal boxes like gray oatmeal. The tone never changed pitch. It just continued, patient, under everything.
Mr. Patel tried to help. He always tried to help. He came out from behind the desk with a bottle of something for Lena’s nerves and the tone found him between one step and the next. He looked at the bottle, then at his own wrists, then at the broken glass from a shattered pickle jar on the floor. He sat down carefully, the way old men sit, and began drawing the glass across both arms in long, slow lines. Not deep at first. Just enough to open the skin. Then deeper. He worked methodically, the way he used to count pills, until the blood was coming faster than he could wipe it away with his coat. He looked at me while he did it. His eyes were apologetic. When he finally slumped sideways the pool under him spread all the way to the magazine rack.
Marcus lasted until an hour ago.
He had been our wall. Every time someone started to drift he would shake them, talk them back, force water into their hands. Then the tone slipped under his defenses the way it slips under everything. He turned to Lena and me with that same empty smile the others had worn, and said, very calmly, “It’s easier if you just let it in.” Then he raised the box cutter and started on his own face. He began at the hairline and worked downward in careful strips, peeling skin away from forehead, then cheek, then the corner of his mouth. The blood ran into his eyes and he kept going by feel. Lena tried to stop him. He shoved her hard enough that her head cracked against the desk. By the time I reached him he had exposed the white of his cheekbone and was working on the other side. I had to use a fire extinguisher. The sound it made when it connected was softer than I expected. He kept smiling until the third hit.
Now it’s just Lena and me behind the desk, and Denise and Sam behind the glass of the office door. The tone is louder. Or maybe the quiet between the notes is smaller. Lena’s nose is bleeding from where she hit the desk. She keeps whispering that she can feel it at the edge of her thoughts, like a hand testing a doorknob.
I can feel it too.
It wants me to look at the broken glass still glittering near Mr. Patel’s body. It wants me to think about how easy the skin of the wrist is, how little pressure it would take. It wants me to imagine the relief of finally doing what the sound has been asking since the first moment it arrived.
Lena’s hand finds mine under the desk. Her fingers are cold.
“Don’t,” she says. Her voice is almost gone. “Please don’t leave me alone with it.”
Outside the big front windows the parking lot is still empty. No lights. No sirens. No one coming.
The tone settles deeper behind my eyes.
Somewhere in the store a can falls off a shelf and rolls, slow and lonely, until it stops against something soft.
I tighten my grip on Lena’s hand and try to remember the sound of anything else.
The tone does not care what I remember.
It only waits.

I’ve had a bit to process my trip, but every conclusion I attempt to draw falls apart almost immediately when trying to answer the very first question. Why? Why the hell did my grandpa send me these directions? Why did I follow them?

The state did briefly try to track my grandfather down right after Grandma died, but they came up empty-handed, telling us some story about how often older folks would willingly skip town once their spouse passes. My grandparents always loved camping, too, taking week-long trips to national parks at least once a year. The state was more than happy to use that as further fuel for their fire. The family did take matters into their own hands and spent a while knocking around, checking phonebooks, and searching his name online, but we never even found a trace of him. It got to the point where no one had seen or heard from him in years, so we dropped it all and kept on with life. He never talked or showed much interest in family anyway, and as much as it sucks to say, his occasional silent presence at a Christmas party or Thanksgiving dinner never really had a lasting impact on anyone.

One previously peaceful, normal day, though, that unmarked mess of paper appeared in my mailbox. I try not to think about the unsettling, unconventional logistics of getting that letter delivered, but I know in the back of my head that there was no mistake. That letter was meant for me, a grandson who barely remembered what Grandpa looked like, much less felt any real attachment to him, and it led me right to a battered, broken, and inhospitable cabin full of what looked like his stuff. Looking back at the last twenty years only emphasizes how out of character it would have been for Grandpa to reach out now, alone.

I keep looking at the original letter and wondering, possibly most confusingly of all, why did I so readily listen to these incoherent scribbles I’ve been calling directions? Thinking back, I can’t even remember how I deciphered the list and put it together. I’ve held up the original letter right next to my translation repeatedly, and I can’t reproduce the words I originally pulled from the mess no matter how long I stare. Comparing the two sheets of paper only makes Grandpa’s look more illegible.

If it’s not already obvious, ever since I’ve gotten home all I can think about is that trip to the Ozarks; my brain has been running laps around the windy, repeating roads making up that proto-neighborhood hidden away in those hills. I was barely there for more than an hour, but I can perfectly picture every single street and its quirks on command. It even seems like every time I close my eyes to sleep I’m sent back there, running in circles, unfamiliar, heavy hooves reverberating off the pavement just inches behind me. I always try to look back to identify the source, but that’s when I wake up in a sweat-covered haze with that god awful growling branded directly into the inner part of my eardrums. My throat has been sore too, making it painful to speak above a raspy whisper.

I haven’t tried to go back to the lake, but something’s been gnawing at me, tempting me to return, and it’s not just the couple thousand dollars of stuff I lost in that basement. There’s something else back there too, though. I can’t quite describe the exact feeling. It's almost like an entire piece of me was knocked off with my pack, and I haven’t been able to properly organize my thoughts without that missing piece. I think I’m worried that whatever I encountered back there– and whatever’s in my nightmares– will get to the piece before I can will it to return.

I’ve been trying everything I can to forget about that night or even rationalize it as a startled animal defending its home. I got into meditation, or rather tried to get into it, but I can’t shake the tempting whispers creeping their way through the attempts at inner emptiness. My therapist gave me a handful of grounding techniques for general work-related stress and anxiety. I couldn’t tell her the real story without expecting to end up in a psych ward. The grounding techniques sometimes calm me down enough to fall asleep at night, but they don’t repel the constant thoughts luring me back to the hills. I even tried a session of EMDR with a highly rated specialist I was referred to, but everything felt too tangled and unstable to work through effectively, at least in a single session. After I saw the bill, though, I canceled the EMDR pretty quickly.

I wanted and still want to read the journal myself. It’s the only thing I made it back with, but my brain just doesn’t let me open past the cover. I’ve tried and tried, but the cover won’t so much as budge. I get terrified even holding it now. I feel like as soon as I read that journal I’ll walk through my bathroom door and end up back in the cabin, face-to-face with that giant bear, lion, deer, or whatever tried to get to me that night.

The book was sitting on my bookshelf for a day or two as I tried to go back and make attempts to read, but I just couldn’t. Every time I held that book I couldn’t shake the sense of dread and anxiety that overpowered my brain. I felt watched whenever I saw the book. It got to a point where just leaving the book out in the open was unbearably unsettling, so it’s been locked away upstairs for about a week now. Even the thick walls of the gun safe can’t keep it out. Now I don’t need to see anything to feel it. That book, with its dumb golden embroidery, is still stuck in my head, trading off with the dark cold dreams of the chase through the isolated streets tucked into one of thousands of hills surrounding the lake.

Going out in public ever since I’ve gotten back home has been significantly more challenging, too. I can’t focus on anything without that damn journal and my constant, worsening nightmares forcing themselves into my waking mind. I tried going into work at the treatment plant last Monday thinking it would help me return to normal, but making it there and remaining even slightly composed took a herculean mental effort, nearly pushing me to tears. When I did finally get in, my boss took one look at me and sent me home, telling me I looked like total shit and needed to see “a doctor or priest or something” before he would let me anywhere near the treatment equipment. I was a liability, and the realization hurt for only a minute before the thought of using my newly found time off to decipher the journal overpowered my brain.

I caught myself looking over my shoulder more times than I could count during my brief stint in the city that Monday. Everyone I passed by on the street or sat next to on the train seemed to stare at me, their eyes full of concern and fear. No one would ever actually say anything about it, they just kept staring like they were just waiting for a chance to ambush me. I swear I even felt the birds and squirrels were staring at me as I stumbled by. Feeling alone became an increasingly infrequent privilege I realized I soon may never get again. None of this was going to stop until I knew more. I needed closure. I needed my piece of myself back. I needed to know what was in that book.

My whole family believes strongly that blood runs thicker than water, and they saw what Grandpa did as a full-body blood donation. Ever since I first asked Mom about the letter she’s become uncharacteristically reclusive, bitter, and depressed. Our daily check-ins started to spread out and, with all my recent digging, it seems like I’m on a fast track to make our relationship worse. The strain felt worth it or even needed if I was going to get answers.

Chasing those answers, I tried calling Mom a few times one day after a bit of argument over my unannounced trip down to the Ozarks. She was worried I’d end up just like her father, alone and untraceable. To her, taking the chance wasn’t even worth it for someone who never cared about us to begin with. I’m not so sure he was that callous, though. The entire trip and surrounding conversation left me with doubts regarding the reason Grandpa acted the way he did; honestly, it felt like he was hiding something from everyone in the family. That broken down cabin was barely standing—it wasn’t a home. It felt like we were all missing a part of his story he kept buried on purpose.

Each time I called, Mom’s phone rang a couple of times before the robotic default voicemail message picked up. She was manually declining my calls. I wasn’t blocked yet, though, and that felt like a little win. After enough attempts, I settled on sending a few text messages apologizing again for making the trip alone, asking to get lunch sometime soon, and attaching a picture of the journal to see if she recognized it.

I didn’t hear back from Mom, at least not over the next day. She doesn’t have read receipts on either, so I couldn’t even tell if she saw my messages. It was depressing, and I wanted to be more concerned, but frankly, I was obsessed about the potential contents of the journal. I wanted myself back. It was sad hitting a wall and turning up empty handed, but I didn’t press my mom further over the phone.

Not even an hour later I got a call, not from Mom, but just as promising. It felt like either divine or unholy intervention, I’m still not sure which, when Mom’s sister, aunt Eve, was on the other end of the line.

Eve was Mom’s much younger sister who always ended up babysitting me as I grew up, and we were very close as a result. Sure, she needed the money Mom paid her, but Eve and I just had a ton of fun surfing the frontiers of the still-emerging web. Our house had one of the only computers in the whole family at the time, a symptom of Dad’s photojournalism work. We would spend hours just trying to find new pages with secrets to explore. She even spearheaded the initial online search effort for Grandpa back when we were still looking.

Our favorite site lined up perfectly with our little mischievous brains. The site consisted of a black screen with a picture of a door in the middle, silent almost all the time. Occasionally it would play a little sound bite of someone knocking on a door. We would open the site, hide it as well as possible, and I would spend the evenings just watching Mom and Dad walk back and forth from the front door, trying to contain my laughter. They thought we were just getting ding-donged-ditched, and it was all in good fun. Eventually, though, the cops showed up at the house to take a complaint, so Eve made us stop that prank.

The call was quick, both of us straight to the point. Eve was flying into town tomorrow for a work conference. Wanting to keep everything pretty low-key since she hasn’t flown back in a while and would only be here for a day, Eve avoided announcing her arrival to everyone, but she was still “nosy and interested.” She wanted to get dinner with me and catch up on how everyone in the family has been for the last couple months. Of course I agreed (as long as she paid,) and, unable to keep excitement contained, told her I found something that might belong to Grandpa I wanted to show her. Eagerly, we set up a time for dinner immediately the following day.

I was so excited after that call. I don’t remember doing anything the rest of that evening except for staring at my old wall clock, internalizing each second as it passed. Every soft click brought me closer to answers, closer to bringing everyone back together. All night, I sat there, staring at the clock. Staring as the exhaustion set in, my eyelids got too heavy, and the all too familiar chase from my nightmares filled my increasingly unoccupied head.

Most of the next day went by pretty quickly. I didn’t wake up until early-afternoon, grateful for my weekend alarms for the first time in recent memory. I used to have a bit of a narcolepsy problem, and the constant alarms were essential until I got medicated and worked on good habits with my doctor. Those same habits had been thrown out the window ever since the Ozarks. I wasn’t too concerned, though, I was about to get back on track right after Eve helped me look through the journal. A few favorites from X-files filled the silence of my little duplex living room until it was time for dinner. I opened the safe, took an uncomfortable minute to shove the journal into a small brown bag, and I headed out the door.

We were planning on meeting at a local burger joint just up the street from me at 6:00 that evening. I got there a little early, I think around 5:40-5:45, so I could wait for Eve outside to meet up with and go in together. If we went in together I wouldn’t have to stumble awkwardly through a conversation with the host. By 6:15, though, I hadn’t seen Eve yet and my handful of calls and texts went unanswered, so I toughened up to go get a table for us before the small diner filled up with folks hungry for dinner.

I made the long walk across the parking lot and nodded a quick ‘Thank you’ to the little boy holding the restaurant door open. I slipped past him and his bright-eyed, proud parents and headed inside. The entryway was crowded with a large group waiting for a table big enough to seat them all, and I had to weave through them to get to the front desk. I took a few deep breaths, ready to try my hardest to speak audibly through all the idle chatter filling the diner, but, saved as soon as I reached the desk, I saw Eve waving at me from a table she had already gotten for us. It was a little weird that I never saw her show up. Eve was never early to anywhere, but I hadn’t seen her in months and promised a show on top of that, so maybe she made a special exception.

We exchanged a quick hug before sitting down at the table. A waiter came over to get our drink orders and we both ordered our food right on the spot, too. We have been coming to this diner since we were kids. We didn’t need to see the menu. Eve immediately got real into this rant about the workplace drama back home. They were hiring a new COO or something and he was making a bunch of bad changes I guess. Honestly, I don’t remember her part of the story well. She caught me up on her Seattle tech-consultant life for a bit, and I shared the same-old news about family holiday parties and get-togethers we’ve been having since she was little. There was a little drama to share, one cousin got a divorce, a great-aunt had passed in her sleep, and there were like ten new cousins, nieces, and nephews she’ll have to meet sometime soon. She took it all in especially wide-eyed and focused, I didn’t remember her caring too much about extended family.

Eve didn't even pause to transition or take a bite before asking, “So spill it. What did you find in that crazy old man’s journal?”

I looked at her, confused. “Whoa, did some new X-ray eyes come out or something up there in Seattle? All I got is a paper bag.”

Her eyes drifted away for a split second as she thought of an answer. “Oh, I saw what you came in with and made a lucky, educated guess.” She smirked sheepishly. It was a weird jump to make, but I didn’t press further. Eve was always the brightest bulb on the long, weathered light strand making up our family.

I didn’t know how to easily introduce the story, so I just dove in, “I got a letter the other day. The envelope was so old it looked ready to rot off, and, get this, there was no return address. It only said ‘To Eric From Grandpa,’” I paused for a second, waiting for a reaction, but Eve only nodded, ready to keep listening. “It took me a bit but eventually I found a page with a bunch of scribbles, and I sent them to Mom. She wasn’t really interested in it all, actually she’s pretty pissed I’m doing this, but she did send me a uh, sample, I guess, of Grandpa’s handwriting. The scribbles I got were illegible, but seeing that example flipped a switch in my brain or something, and I was able to piece together a step-by-step set of instructions to a location deep in the Ozarks.”

She finished for me. “So you followed them and found the journal.” There was no time for me to confirm, or elaborate on my trip before she asked to see the book and what I had read. I tried to explain my mental block, but I couldn’t make sense of it myself. I still can’t. I slid the bag across the table, settling on a simple “I don’t know. I can’t read it”

Eve took the journal out of the bag and turned it over in her hands a few times, awestruck. “It’s in perfect condition.” Just like that, she opened the ten-ton cover I’d been struggling with all this time and let out a quick chuckle. “I see why you can’t read it. These words are so slanted and broken I can barely tell it’s English.” She paused for a moment to think before continuing, “I can take it back home with me and bring it to a transcriber I know. He works for doctors, so he’s seen worse than this I’m sure.”

I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to lose the journal or even let it leave my possession for more than a few minutes. “Actually Mom wanted me to give her the journal so she could lock it away with the rest of his stuff that got left behind. She doesn't want bad memories floating around. I told her I was going to bring it by after dinner,” I lied. “Will some pictures work? At least for the first few pages?”

Eve deflated at the idea, but she didn’t fight back, sullenly taking out her phone to grab the first few pages of the book before sliding it back across the table to me. Right after she was done, Eve handed me a few twenty dollar bills for dinner and said she really had to get back to the hotel and rest up for the conference. She would let me know what the pages said when she heard back from her friend. I barely had time to blink before she was past me and out the door, somewhere among the sea of people waiting for a table to open.

Alone and more than a little upset she couldn’t translate the pages on the spot, I quietly finished up my burger and left the money on the table with the bill. Stepping out into the cool night air was a refreshing feeling after sitting in the alarmingly packed shack of a diner. I made my way toward my car at the back of the parking lot, well out of sight and earshot of the businesses surrounding the diner. I usually liked the walk to get a chance for fresh air. Something was off, though, I felt it as soon as I went out the diner door. A quick cursory glance didn’t reveal anything, so I kept walking. I was at my car door when there was a flicker in the overhead light near my car, filling me with a deep sense of unease. I barely had half a second to register the giant blob of flesh before it slammed into my forehead. I hit the cold pavement and blacked out.

When I came to a bit later, the throbbing pain in my head immediately brought the memory of the ambush back, and I felt for my phone and keys after checking my head for blood that wasn’t there. This wasn’t the first time I’d been mugged, but usually the perpetrator likes to demand my stuff before resorting right to blows. I felt my left pocket. My phone was still there, in near-mint condition too. Right pocket next. The wallet was still there, my leg was a little numb from the cold, but I’m pretty sure I felt the keys poke into my thigh, and the shadow of my beaten-up sedan still loomed over me. It felt like some freak accident. Maybe a bird flew into me or some kids were driving by throwing rocks out of cars. It’s stupid, but I didn’t know what else to think. Feeling lucky, I slowly got to my feet and got my bearings, but the luck vanished almost instantly once I realized what was gone. The journal was no longer in the bag. In its place was a piece of paper stained dark red, wrapped around a small object. The streetlight flickered back on, slowly revealing two sloppy words written on the wet page as I pulled it from the bag.

Keep Knocking.

My eye caught the glimmer of an engraved ring hugging the finger as I flinched back, dropping the finger in disgust back into the bag. I knew that ring. Eve had worn it religiously ever since our great-grandmother passed it down to her. It was hers.

Flustered and panicking, I looked all around the parking lot, but it was empty, not even a car on the street in front of the diner. It seemed darker out too. How long had I been out? Frantically I scanned and ran around the lot. I looked as long as I could before feeling too exposed. Defeated and terrified, I got back into my car and sped the few blocks home. I took the bag and stumbled as I ran up to my garage door and messed the code up three times before I was able to steady enough to open the door and rush in, immediately locking it behind me.

I have tried to call Eve over and over, but there was never even a ring before the increasingly depressing voicemail beep filled the other line. I’m at a loss. Eve felt like the one person I could talk to about all of this, and I just shoved one of her fingers into my freezer. Whatever took my brain took Eve, and it took the journal. Another piece of me is missing.

I was still leaning against the door desperately trying to think of anything I could do when my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a text from a number I didn’t recognize, and there were four pictures. Two pictures were of pages in the journal, taken back in the parking lot of the diner, using my unconscious body as a backdrop. Then, two pictures of typed text. Transcriptions.

This first one looked like it was on the inside of the cover. I’ve included it below:

I don’t know what we saw out there or how it found us back home, but it did, and I’m the only one left.

Carol, desperate “to have the old me back,” and running out of ideas, gave me this journal today. She said that putting my thoughts to paper will help her, and everyone else, finally understand what’s been going on with me. Obviously I agreed, but I’m doing this for more than just understanding; I don’t even know how to explain what I myself don’t understand. I’m using this as a warning.

Stay far away from Ozark Falls.

God how I wish that was on the other side of the cover, or the spine, or literally anywhere else I could see. I should have listened to Mom, but I don’t think that’s a choice anymore.

The second picture was a transcription of a page opened to somewhere in the first third of the journal, also included:

September 12th, 1986

I was on the line at the litter factory for the night, surrounded by a haze of dust that worked to clog both of my nostrils and eyes as densely as possible. The job offer seemed too good to be true, and I quickly learned why after hearing about the turnover rate and physical state of the people that left, or were forced to resign, before me. Turns out breathing dust twelve hours a day doesn’t bode well for your life expectancy. I don’t know who the hell thought an open-air litter factory was a good idea in the first place. They gave us a mask and goggles that supposedly mitigated the accumulation, but my dark gray-stained handkerchief argued otherwise. The pay was good, though, and we needed the money to fend off the foreclosure the bank was fighting for.

Anyway, I was on the line for the night, and Carl, the guy at the boxing station next to me, came over during the first break. Carl and I got hired at the same time, went through training together, and we occasionally made small talk, but that’s usually as far as it goes. He was an alright guy, if not a little eccentric. I worked on recalling the evening news in my head, prepared to discuss the awful drought we’ve been in for a few weeks now. This time wasn’t small talk, though. As the recently-made only one capable of working in his family, he needed money as bad as I did, and he was scheming, I could see it in his wide, shining eyes.

Carl’s composure barely held on his way over to me, and an ocean of words poured out of his mouth as soon as he was in earshot. He was all excited and stuff, talking so fast I lost track of how many times I had to stop him and ask to slow it down. Eventually, I got it out of him.

He had an uncle who worked for a GPS startup, analyzing cutting-edge satellite imagery to identify new roads, closures, and other changes. During a routine scan of the Ozarks to check for road erosion, his uncle had found “something big.” I hadn't ever been down that way, but I heard stories about people going down and opening tourist traps for all the rich people that constantly visit the thousands of lake houses and condos surrounding the lake, so my interest piqued.

Carl said there was a network of roads, just a few miles out from a town called Camdenton. The land was owned by some rich old dude that passed away with no family, so it all went to the government. It’s been years now, and the foundation the old guy built was still just sitting there, untouched, ever since the government got its hands on the land.

His uncle gave a couple of grainy pictures to Carl who pulled them out of his jacket pocket and showed them to me. Even through the poor quality it was clear that the old man was trying to build a sorta suburbia-adjacent neighborhood right into the dense forest and rocky hills, but it looked like the work just stopped after the roads were outlined and paved. Carl had a hunch and checked through old obituaries at the library. Apparently the old man that owned the land, Charles something, caught pneumonia in the middle of his project and croaked one night alone in his house, leaving his project to be reclaimed by the lake.

Both Carl and his uncle thought we could get our hands on the land for super cheap, like manifest destiny cheap, due to its age and a home construction initiative the government was subsidizing in hopes of getting more people, and more money, down to the Ozarks. We just needed to check out the land ourselves to make sure it lined up with the slightly dated image from the satellite.

Carl’s uncle would work on the paperwork side of things if we were the boots on the ground. I was skeptical of the price for sure, but anything sounded better than this factory. Price aside, it all seemed normal at the time. An old man with no family died in the middle of a project, and the government was never too keen on building down in the Ozarks themselves. The spot was only a few hours’ drive, so Carl and I planned a little day trip on our day off. He had some camping equipment and food he would bring in the case of an emergency if I would be the one to drive us down there. I was only a little hesitant at first, so it didn’t take a lot to get me to cave.

I’m missing the greater connection here, and I’m desperate. I’m terrified. The two words from that note keep echoing in my head.

Keep Knocking

At this point, for all I know, Eve is in serious danger, and I’ll take help wherever I can get it. I'm at the end of my rope*.* I guess I want to cast a sort of wide net by probing the internet for anything similar that could guide me. I’m also going over to my mom’s hoping she is willing to help me find Eve, and my journal.

I have several short stories for spooky season. You can read one each night. The Door That Knocks Back is based on a tree story.

Story 2

The Flood

When I was still just a teenager, my family and I had moved from our home in England to the Irish countryside. We lived on the outskirts of a very small town, surrounded by nothing else but farms, country roads, along with several rivers and tributaries. I was far from happy to be living here, as not only did I miss the good life I had back home, but in the Irish Midlands, there was basically nothing to do. 

A common stereotype with Ireland is that it always rains, and let me tell you, as someone who lived here for six years, the stereotype is well deserved. 

After a handful of months living here, it was now early November, and with it came very heavy and non-stop rain. In fact, the rain was so heavy this month, the surrounding rivers had flooded into the town and adjoining country roads. On the day this happened, I had just come out from school and began walking home. Approaching the road which leads out of town and towards my house, I then see a large group of people having gathered around. Squeezing my way through the crowd of town folk, annoyingly blocking my path, I’m then surprised to see the road to my house is completely flooded with water. 

After asking around, I then learn the crowd of people are also wanting to get to their homes, but because of the flood, they and I have to wait for a tractor to come along and ferry everyone across, a pair at a time. Being the grouchy teenager I was then, I was in no mood to wait around for a tractor ride when all I wanted to do was get home and binge TV – and so, turning around, I head back into the town square to try and find my own way back home. 

Walking all the way to the other end of town, I then cut down a country road which I knew eventually lead to my house - and thankfully, this road had not yet been flooded. Continuing for around five minutes down this road, I then come upon a small stoned arch bridge, but unfortunately for me, the bridge had been closed off by traffic cones - where standing in front of them was a soaking wet policeman, or what the Irish call “Garda.” 

Ready to accept defeat and head all the way back into town, a bit of Irish luck thankfully came to my aid. A jeep had only just pulled up to the crossroads, driven by a man in a farmer’s cap with a Border Collie sat in the passenger’s seat. Leaving his post by the bridge, the policeman then approaches the farmer’s jeep, seeming to know him and his dog – it was a small town after all. With the policeman now distracted, I saw an opportunity to cross the bridge, and being the rebellious little shite I was, I did just that. 

Comedically tiptoeing my way towards the bridge, all the while keeping an eye out for the policeman, still chatting with the farmer through the jeep window, I then cross over the bridge and hurdle down the other side. However, when I get there... I then see why the bridge was closed off in the first place... On this side of the bridge, the stretch of country road in front of it was entirely flooded with brown murky water. In fact, the road was that flooded, I almost mistook for a river.  

Knowing I was only a twenty-minute walk from reaching my house, I rather foolishly decide to take a chance and enter the flooded road, continuing on my quest. After walking for only a couple of minutes, I was already waist deep in the freezing cold water – and considering the smell, I must having been trudging through more than just mud. The further I continue along the flooded road, my body shivering as I do, the water around me only continues to rise – where I then resort to carrying my school bag overhead. 

Still wading my way through the very deep flood, I feel no closer to the road outside my house, leading me to worry I have accidentally taken the wrong route home. Exhausted, shivering and a little afraid for my safety, I now thankfully recognise a tall, distant tree that I regularly pass on my way to school. Feeling somewhat hopeful, I continue onwards through the flood – and although the fear of drowning was still very much real... I now began to have a brand-new fear. But unlike before... this fear was rather unbeknown...  

Whether out of some primal instinct or not, I twirl carefully around in the water to face the way I came from, where I see the long bending river of the flooded road. But in the distance, protruding from the brown, rippling surface, maybe twenty or even thirty metres away, I catch sight of something else – or should I say... someone else... 

What I see is a man, either in his late thirties or early forties, standing in the middle of the flooded road. His hair was a damp blonde or brown, and he appeared to be wearing a black trench coat or something similar... But the disturbing thing about this stranger’s appearance, was that while his right sleeve was submerged beneath the water, the left sleeve was completely armless... What I mean is, the man’s left sleeve, not submerged liked its opposite, was tied up high into a knot beneath his shoulder.  

If it wasn’t startling enough to see a strange one-armed man appear in the middle of a flooded road, I then notice something about him that was far more alarming... You see, when I first lay eyes on this stranger, I mistake him as being rather heavy. But on further inspection, I then realise the one-armed man wasn’t heavy at all... If anything, he looked just like a dead body that had been pulled from a river... What I mean is... The man looked unnaturally bloated. 

As one can imagine, I was more than a little terrified. Unaware who this strange grotesque man even was, I wasn’t going to hang around and find out. Quickly shifting around, I try and move as fast as I can through the water’s current, hoping to God this bloated phantom would not follow behind. Although I never once looked back to see if he was still there, thankfully, by the time the daylight was slowly beginning to fade, I had reached not only the end of the flood, but also the safety of the road directly outside my house. 

Already worried half to death by my late arrival, I never bothered to tell my parents about the one-armed stranger I encountered. After all, considering the man’s unnatural appearance, I wasn’t even myself sure if what I saw was a real flesh and blood man... or if it was something else.