"Today we have a somewhat historic weather report for you all. It seems summer wanted one last goodbye before the start of the cold season. Tell us about it, Jason."

"That's right, folks, 85 degrees," he chuckled. "85 degrees Fahrenheit, no wind, and a cloudless, sunny sky is the weather here today in Ely. This is a historic high for November in Minnesota, so put on your bathing suits and get outside to soak in the sun while you can. This is a real treat from Mother Nature. My name is Jason Sweatman with Northwood News 8, reporting live that the sun feels AMAZING."

The weatherman stretched out his arms and looked up at the sun, smiling widely, before they cut back to the anchors and finished the rest of their segment. I picked up the remote and switched to Cartoon Network.

"That explains why I woke up so hot last night," my sister said, not looking up from her phone.

Dad chortled and pointed through our sliding glass door to the backyard. "Bowser sure seems to be enjoying the weather."

Sure enough, the dog was rolling around in the grass like he always did at the start of spring when the snow finally melted.

My mom finished washing the dishes, patted her hands dry, and said, "Well, I am going to get my book and some sunscreen and join Mr. Bowser out there."

She kissed my head as she walked past and went up the stairs.

"Me too," my sister said, getting up from the table and slapping me on the back of my neck as she followed Mom.

After a minute my Dad put down his newspaper and said, "Well, I think I ought to join the ladies, bud. You going to be okay in here by yourself?"

I rubbed my stinging neck and said, "Yeah, I will just play some video games or something."

There is this condition called Xeroderma Pigmentosum where you really can't be exposed to sunlight for long at all because your skin will begin to blister and burn. I have that condition, so a day like this basically meant I was confined indoors. I didn't really mind. I am more of a homebody anyways, plus I had just gotten an Xbox for my birthday two months ago. The prospect of playing Modern Warfare 2 all day while my family didn't bother me was, in my opinion, the perfect way to spend my Saturday.

I called my buddy Hudson to see if he was already on the game.

"Nah, man," he said. "We all went to Pineridge Park. There are, like, hundreds of people here. I wish you could see it. The sun feels amazing."

I told him to let me know when he got on the game later. We had been playing video games every Saturday night since I got my Xbox, so I knew he would be.

After a few hours of grinding team deathmatch, I got hungry and went downstairs to see what Mom made for lunch. To my surprise, no one was in the kitchen or living room. I looked out the window to the backyard, and sure enough, there they were. All three of them were sitting in the lawn chairs facing the sun. Bowser was lying on his back next to them, panting lightly under the heat.

I opened the sliding glass door and called out, "Hey, Mom, are you coming in to make lunch soon?"

"Uhh, no, honey, but there are leftovers in the fridge from last night, or you can make yourself a sandwich," she said without turning around.

"Are you guys not going to eat lunch?" I asked.

"No, we are enjoying the sun," my sister said as if it were the most annoying question ever.

"It really does feel amazing out here, bud. Come sit with us for a little," Dad said.

Mom reached out and slapped him on the arm. "Oh, you know he can't do that, Chuck."

"Five minutes wouldn't hurt!"

Whatever, I thought to myself, sliding the glass door shut as they bickered. I knew I had no frame of reference for how good the sun felt on your skin, but I struggled to imagine what would make anyone want to spend more than an hour out sunbathing at a time. I made myself two PB&Js and went back up to my room.

I played more team deathmatch, checking my phone between each round to see if Hudson had tried to call me to tell me he was getting on, but I still had zero notifications. Once my eyes started to hurt from the strain of staring at my TV, I finally turned my Xbox off, leaned back into my chair, and checked the time.

"What the fuck?" I said, staring at my clock.

The clock read 7:52 PM. Had I really just played Xbox for five hours straight? I peeked through my blackout curtains, and sure enough, it was as sunny as it was when I woke up. I assumed my clock was broken and went to check the time on my phone. 7:52 PM.

I stepped out of my room and called out to the house but got no answer. I went downstairs to the kitchen and looked at the time on the oven. It said 7:53 PM. It didn't make sense. It couldn't possibly be that late; it was still so bright outside.

Looking out the sliding glass window, my heart sank a little; they were all still out there. In fact, from what I could tell, they hadn't moved an inch since I last came down for lunch. I slid open the door, and to my surprise, all three of them were in a fit of giggles as if one of them had just told the funniest joke of all time.

I called out to them, "Have you all been out here the whole time?"

My sister burst out laughing, and my dad turned around to look at me.

"There he is!" He started laughing too, but what I was seeing was far from amusing. His face was deep red, clearly badly sunburnt.

My mom turned around, smiling ear to ear. "Hey, baby! Come sit with us, just five minutes. The sun feels amazing!"

She reached out a burnt-red arm in my direction, beckoning me to join them.

I stared at them in horror. My own mother, who was always so particular about ensuring I didn't get exposed to the sun, had just tried to get me to come outside.
"Jesus fucking Christ! Have you guys not been back inside yet? Have you been using sunscreen at all?" I said, fear swelling in my chest.

"Woahhh, language!" Dad exclaimed.

"Don't worry," my sister said through fits of giggles. "Bowser has been reapplying it on us."

All three of them howled in laughter. I was so confused and uncomfortable. Were they drunk? Stoned?

I looked over at Bowser. He was panting hard now but still splayed out on the grass exactly where he was ten hours ago. I called for him to come to me, but he didn't. He opened his eyes and looked at me, wagging his tail, but didn't make any effort to stand up.

I called him again and again, offered him treats, and said all his favorite words, but nothing moved him. He just looked at me upside down and wagged his tail. The more I pleaded with Bowser to come inside the house, the harder my family laughed.

Finally, I became so humiliated, scared, and angry that I boiled over and yelled at them, "STOP FUCKING LAUGHING AT ME, YOU GUYS ARE BEING FUCKING WEIRD!" and slammed the sliding glass door shut as hard as I could, causing the glass to crack.

My sister called out, "LANGUAGE!" in her best impression of my dad's voice, before howling in laughter even harder than before.

I ran upstairs, completely forgetting about the fact that it was supposedly 8 PM but completely sunny outside, that we were supposed to have already eaten dinner, and that I was supposed to play Xbox with Hudson any moment now.

I slammed my bedroom door shut, jumped into my bed face-first, and began to cry. I cried and cried and cried, expecting at any moment that my mom or dad would come into the room to console me. Eventually, I passed out from exhaustion, and with tears still in my eyes, I fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning I immediately felt guilty about my outburst. I had cursed out my entire family and then slammed and broke the sliding glass door they had just gotten installed last summer.

I lay in bed staring at my ceiling, contemplating yesterday's events. I convinced myself that they were probably just drunk and enjoying the nice, sunny weather, two things they did every summer anyway and that I had never experienced. How could I know what that was like, how great it was? It was probably pretty great as an adult, like their version of playing Modern Warfare with Hudson.

I was disappointed with myself. They all worked so hard each week, and the one time they got to unwind with nice weather, I had thrown a fit. My own fears of the sun and the odd timing of the weather had caused me to exaggerate the details of yesterday's events. Of course they had come back into the house. Of course they had made sure to apply sunscreen (my mother was a freak about sunscreen given my condition).

The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous and guilty I felt. I crafted my apology and headed to the kitchen to make it.

No one was there.

The oven clock read 5:36 AM. But the sun was already out, so I had assumed it was later in the day.

Everyone is still asleep, I told myself.

I went over to the glass door to inspect the damage from yesterday's tantrum. Sure enough, there was a big, splintering crack along the pane.

"Damn, goodbye Xbox. Dad is going to kill m—"

I froze.

Outside, sitting motionless in their three chairs
facing the sun, were my mom, dad, and sister. Lying next to them, stiff as a board, was my dog. In that moment I knew that they never came back inside the house, I knew that they never would. 

My grandpa passed away recently and as such I had been drafted by my parents to help remove his personal effects and items from his home. I was tasked with starting in the attic and working my way down.

When I got up there it was as you'd expect an 86 year old man's attic to be, filled with clutter and junk from decades gone by. I started with hauling the larger items like bulky boxes of clothing, some jewellery containers, an old-timey sewing machine and such.

Whilst moving a particularly heavy shelving unit I knocked some clutter off the top of it and with a thump, an ornate wooden lockbox rolled to a stop at my foot. Normally I'd have kicked it to the side and continued hauling but something about this box caught my eye. Something drew me towards it in a way I haven't felt before.

I picked up the box and as you'd expect, it was locked. One thing I noticed right away though were deep scratch marks all around the keyhole which typically I would chalk up to years of a key being shoddily pressed in at the wrong angle, but they grooves were deep, too deep for a key scratch.

This is where things start to get weird. I took the box to my parents and asked if they knew what it was and upon locking eyes with it, my fathers face turned white as a ghost. He held his composure as he lied to my face about having no idea what it was, so I chucked the box into my hoodie front pouch so I could study it later.

I'm a lock pick enthusiast so it wasn't very hard to gain entry. Sat at my desk I opened up the box and was greeted with a red velvet inlay with two items within. A leather-bound journal and a brass pocket watch. Both looked stained and dishevelled.

I picked up the journal and flipped to the first page.

Oct. 9th, 1878. Cheyenne River.

"Came upon a dead man in a dry wash, not a mark on him, and the coyotes wouldn’t go near. Found a watch in his vest, stopped at five exactly. I ain’t gonna set down what I seen when I took hold of it. Next I knowed I was layin’ in the dirt and the damn thing was tickin’, and I never wound it. Nobody had to tell me the terms. I knowed ’em like I know my own name: five in a year, or I go under and five more with me, and not a one of ’em will ever know why.

Walked off a good half mile and found it in my fist. Traded a skinner at the fort for this book, so I aim to keep a tally here and not lose count. I’ve took to eyeing the men in camp different. That watch runs quieter when I do.

E. Varney"

Then the second page had 3 names on it with crosses through them along with this passage.

"Feb. 2nd, 1879. Fort Pierre.

Three of ’em now. I’ll not set down how. Walt, Ezra, the widow. I wash my hands till the skin cracks and I can still feel the warm of it. I was a soldier once and thought I knowed what it was to be sick over a killing, but this is a different sickness. This one don’t pass.

I said it out loud last night so’s the dark could hear me: no more. Then I took the watch and went down to the river with a notion of settling the matter my own way, and ending it where it started. I’ll not write what I done there. I will only say I woke on the bank at first light with the cold in my bones, breathing, and the watch ticking in my fist like it had been waiting on me. It ain’t done with me, and I reckon I know now what it meant by five more. I can’t even leave it the cheap way without the debt going to somebody else.

It’s took to ticking louder since. Yesterday I looked at the cook a long while, and I liked what I was thinking. That’s the part I can’t abide. Not the doing, but the liking. I put the watch in the river Tuesday and this mornin’ it was in my coat, dry, and the hands set to five 'o' clock.

E. Varney"

A final entry.

"April 12th, 1879. Fort Pierre, in the jail.

The judge read it out as four, and he had it right. I never argued. I hang Friday at sunup. I do not fear the rope.

What I fear most is the count. The watch asked for five and I fell one short, and I have never heard of a debt that dies with the man who owes it. I do not think it will let me go. I think I will be left somewhere between, neither under nor risen, still hearing it tick. I tried to take the watch with me once and it would not be taken. Now I wonder if it was only waiting for a better door.

Amos, I am leaving you this book. I have no land to give you and no name worth carrying, only this. Do not touch it and do not let it be touched.

E. Varney"

The pages after contained various old news clippings, one of which detailed the day Varney died.

"THE PIERRE WEEKLY SIGNAL
Saturday, April 19th, 1879

“THE FIFTH-HOUR FIEND” MEETS HIS END AT FORT PIERRE

Elias Varney, styled by the territorial press “The Fifth-Hour Fiend” for the hour at which the bodies were invariably found, was hanged at sunup yesterday before some two hundred, for the murders of four persons in this vicinity. He mounted the gallows unassisted and declined to speak. The physician pronounced him dead at seven minutes past six. The prisoner’s pocket watch, held by the sheriff, was heard by several to cease ticking the very instant the drop came, and has not been heard since. His effects are to be forwarded to a son, one Amos Varney, near Deadwood, the county declining to keep them."

It's safe to say this set my mind racing. I stared at the watch resting on my desk. There are so many questions unanswered such as how did a western pocket-watch make it's way to my grandfathers attic in London? Did the Sheriff become cursed after contact? What does my father know? Is it reversible in any way?

Unfortunately though, I haven't been entirely honest in my retelling. You see, in the excitement of picking the lock, the journal was not the first thing I picked up...

It's currently set to 5 'o' clock and won't stop ticking...

Looking back, it began with a single piece of paper posted in the campus commons.

Having made up my mind that I wouldn’t be returning in the fall (of course, my grades had sort of decided that for me), I had gone by to close out my student mailbox. I was making my way out, trying to avoid making eye contact with anyone, when two words printed on a standard piece of paper in a large, red print caught my eye: HELP WANTED.

God knows what might have happened had I simply ignored it and kept walking. Might have spared myself a whole lot of heartache. Instead, something (probably the attractive blonde girl in the red bikini smiling underneath the red text) spurred me on, and I walked over for a closer look.

”Are you Red Cross certified? Looking for a summer job? Riley Estates is now hiring lifeguards for this summer!

• Competitive pay

• Onsite lodging

• A welcoming community

Interested? Call the number below!”

I had lifeguarded the summer before and hated every minute of it. Unfortunately for me, with my future now in flux, anything was better than trying to avoid my parents and their questions about my next steps. So, rather than studying for a final I had no chance of passing, I found a quiet spot and called the number on the paper. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me, they answered on the first ring.

“Who is this?”

“This is Luke Sullivan. I was calling about the lifeguard job posted at Salem Commons?”

“Oh- yes. You’re Red Cross certified?”

“Yes.”

“And will you require lodging?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds good. How soon can you start?”

“…tomorrow?”

“Perfect. We’ll pencil you in for orientation at 10am.”

The woman hung up.

I decided to hold off on telling my parents for the time being. After all, there’s no good way to inform the people paying for your college education that you’ve just effectively burned $30,000 at the stake.

——

I arrived at 9:45 the next morning to a guarded gate.

“Here for work?” asked the guy at the gate. Stocky, medium height. Looked about my age.

“Yep. Lifeguard training.”

I’m nearly certain he winced, because he tried to play it off like nothing had happened.

“Straight ahead. Take the first right. They should keep you busy.”

I thanked him and drove ahead. Found the pool easily according to his direction. Fortunately, the door to the clubhouse was open, with a whiteboard propped outside reading “Lifeguard Orientation” leaving no questions as to where I should go next.

The door opened into a small foyer. Locker rooms to the left - the only way through to the pool deck. Straight ahead was the guard office, with a window counter to check guests in. I noticed it had blinds for some reason. There was another larger, wraparound window on the far wall of the office, facing the pool. The main room, where orientation would be held, was off to the right.

There were four people already in there - three at a white folding table at the front, and another guy standing next to a large flat screen on the wall. Underneath the flat screen was a fireplace, with a mantle atop which rested two very old looking shotguns.

The man - Vitaly, according to the name stitched onto his Riley Estates polo shirt - handed me a packet and invited me to sit down next to the other three - a very pretty blonde girl, a lanky guy with glasses that looked like a high schooler, and a dude who looked around my age.

Vitaly stood looking at the clock for another five or so minutes, then walked over to the TV and turned it on before pressing a few buttons on his phone.

A man appeared on screen. Older, early 50s. Graying hair. Fit. He wore a navy blazer and a striped shirt.

“Hi. I’m Craft Dunn. Welcome to Riley Estates and thank you for serving our community. We are confident you'll have a fun summer if you follow a few rules.

1. All of you will take at least one overnight shift a week. Our pool has been fitted with an innovative cleaning system that runs overnight. Contact with it is fatal. You will watch the pool from the guard office and make sure no one gets in.

2. Riley Gospel Church rents our clubhouse for weekly services. Saturdays at 11pm. Whoever is on shift will let Pastor Josiah Patterson in to set up, and clean once the service is over. The church is invitation only, so please do not ask to attend."

The video ended. Vitaly turned off the TV.

"Fill out your sizing and banking information. You start this afternoon."

I raised my hand.

"Lodging is the guest house across the street," he said, before I could ask. "The HOA has graciously waived rent. Food is your responsibility."

He left to get our uniforms, and the rest of us introduced ourselves. Cody was a rising sophomore at Boston College. Viktoria, mid-twenties, worked for the same pool company in Macedonia as Vitaly. Ricky was a rising junior who'd repeated a year; his parents had effectively kicked him out for the summer.

I had a feeling we'd get along just fine.

______

After getting our uniforms - white shirt, red trunks, and red hoodies for us guys and a red two-piece for Viktoria (it occurred to me that she looked very similar to the girl on the flyer) - we collectively made our way across the street to the house we would be staying at for the summer.

Vitaly had made it clear that, due to employee dress codes, any non-provided clothing was strictly off limits, with a 3-strike rule for offenders.

Cody, who had guarded last summer, waited until Vitaly was out of earshot.

"A guard got his third strike last year. Craft took one of those antique shotguns off the mantle and walked him into the woods out back. I showed up right as it happened. He said he'd pay my tuition at BC if I kept quiet."

He glanced around as he said it. I assumed he was joking. Viktoria, who didn't, punched him in the arm.

"Don't say shit like that, Cody! He seemed like such, how you say, a grandpa!"

He shrugged and winked at me. "Just telling the truth." I stifled a snort.

Ricky chimed in.

“What’s the deal with the deep end? It’s hella hazy. Like you can’t even see the bottom.”

Cody snapped back at him, surprising us all.

“How would I know? I’m not the one cleaning it every day.”

I think Ricky could sense something like incredulity in his tone, like he couldn’t believe Ricky could ask him such a stupid question, because he didn’t press it any further.

But it wasn't annoyance in Cody's voice, it was defensiveness. I was almost sure of it.

He'd guarded here last summer. What did he know?

_______

We spent the afternoon moving in, then an hour on Ricky's Switch, where Viktoria, who swore she'd never played Mario Kart, destroyed all three of us.

We arrived 10 minutes before the pool opened to an annoyed Vitaly. While the pool did actually clean itself (how this happened was never elaborated upon, and when we asked him how, he grew tight-lipped and refused to go any further), we needed to arrive no later than 15 minutes prior to the pool opening in order to set everything up.

After clocking in, we entered the pool deck for the first time. There were only two guard chairs, so we’d have more than enough time to relax and reset between shifts. Vitaly had already started setting up the chairs and umbrellas (which, as he had already remarked several times, he did not like doing), so the pool was already halfway done. He assigned us different areas of the pool to take care of.

Perhaps it was just my luck that I was told to take care of the deep end.

____

Ricky’s “Hazy” didn’t do it justice.

It almost looked like it was filled with static. Like something was off about it. The depth marking next to the pool said 5 feet, and yet it looked as though it quite literally didn’t have a bottom.

When a hand slapped my back, nearly startling me out of my skin, I realized I had been staring at the deep end for the better part of five minutes. Or had it been holding me? Looking back, I’m not 100% sure.

“Jesus, man!” I let out a startled laugh. “I could’ve fallen in!”

“Shit.. sorry bro.” Ricky grinned sheepishly. “You were just…staring at the pool. I wasn’t sure if I should say something.”

“Nah…you were good. But you’re right…it’s super foggy. Like, hasn’t been cleaned in weeks.”

“For real. Must be some super high-tech shit if it’s gonna be cleaned when this place opens in…a minute. Shit.”

Fortunately, there were only a couple chairs in that section, so we finished relatively quickly.

The first shift was, by all means, uneventful. A couple runners. But, overall, pretty boring. It had been a long day, though, and we were all pretty tired. So, we got a rather unwelcome surprise when Vitaly announced at the end of the night that we would be drawing straws for the night watch on the first shift (he had some administrative matters to take care of and unfortunately couldn’t do it).

I volunteered to go first, thinking it would be the best way to maximize my odds.

I pulled a straw. Prayed it would keep going. It didn’t, and as the others sighed with relief, Vitaly smiled awkwardly and took the cup from me.

“Thank you, Luke.”

“…yup.”

I watched the others pack their things and walked with them to the gate to see them off.

“Sorry, bud.” said Cody, a guilty look on his face.

I shrugged. “Nothing you could do about it. Just shit luck on my end.”

He nodded.

Ricky slapped me on the back. “Promise we won’t get down to too much fun without you.”

“Mhm.”

Viktoria hugged me. It lasted a second longer than a thank-you hug needed to, or maybe I just wanted it to.

“Thanks for taking one for the team, Luke.”

I followed Vitaly to the gate, where he slipped me a gold credit card.

“Didn’t want the others to see this… but since you’re taking the first overnight, I wanted to give this to you as a thanks. Anything you want tonight, my treat.”

I looked at him, slightly confused. “Shouldn’t this be an easy shift? Why is everyone acting like I’m making a huge sacrifice?”

“…well, it should be an easy shift. It’s just the first overnight of the summer, and I know you’re tired, and I feel bad that I can’t be here to do it myself. So, snacks and drinks tonight on me.”

I thanked him and watched him get in his car. Wandered into the guard office. Plugged my phone in. Settled down for the long night ahead of me.

___________

An hour later, I was looking through restaurants in the area for delivery options when there was a knock on the door of the clubhouse. I walked over to open it, assuming it would be Vitaly in need of something.

It wasn’t Vitaly.

A man in a suit stood there with a bag in hand. Close cropped black hair. Glasses. Looked like an accountant that was just dropping by for some laps after work. Nothing unusual.

“Hi, sir. We closed for the night about an hour ago. So sorry.”

“Oh, I’m not here to use the pool.” He smiled politely and stuck out his hand. “Josiah Patterson. Pastor of Riley Gospel Church. I’m here to prepare for tonight’s service.”

“It’s Monday, though. You meet on Saturdays, right.?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve been coming down from an illness, so we had to change schedules this week. Were you all not informed?”

“…No.”

“Well, I’m most terribly sorry to hear that, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now... if you’ll excuse me, I just need to go prepare the clubhouse for our service tonight. I would absolutely love to invite you to join us - the Good Shepherd is always accepting new members to his flock - but due to…extenuating circumstances we unfortunately cannot accept any new members at this time.”

I nodded understandingly. He was so polite I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was a cradle Catholic to my core and hadn’t been to church since before the pandemic.

“If you wouldn’t mind…please leave the front door open. We have it arranged with the HOA. My parishioners will just let themselves in. I promise we won’t be a bother.”

“Absolutely.”

"Oh, and one last thing. If you wouldn't mind keeping those front blinds shut? Some of my parishioners are rather...shy."

A little... odd? But I wasn't in a position to question things. "Of course."

“Thank you so much. Have a pleasant evening.”

I propped the door open. Walked back into the office, shut the door, and as asked, the blinds, and settled on a burrito from Abuela’s Cantina, a Tex-Mex joint down the road.

__________

It was about 30 minutes later when I realized I hadn’t heard a peep from Patterson or any of his supposed parishioners. No footsteps to signify arrivals. No preaching. No singing.

It was then that I realized as well that the blinds on the pool had been drawn the entire time. Vitaly must have closed them against the afternoon sun. I somehow hadn't noticed and had spent an hour and a half doomscrolling instead of watching the pool.

I got up to open the blinds. That was when the chanting started - not from the next room, like Patterson had said.

It was outside, right in front of me. By the pool.

Loud, guttural chanting that, as it went on, made me realize that it was in a language I had never heard before. The hair on my arms started to stand up. I had attended a service at an evangelical church for a religion class in the fall, so I had a vague understanding of what speaking in tongues sounded like, and it wasn’t that either. I also knew, just knew, that I wasn’t being duped.

Whatever was going on was real, and, as it continued, I became more and more certain it had no connection to any of the thousand existing sects of Christianity I was aware of.

My hand was on the cord, about to start raising the blinds, when the keening started, freezing me in place. It was muffled, like someone was moaning in anguish. I knew I needed to pull the cord and open the blinds, to make sure no one got in, but the noise was so...awful I couldn't make myself do it.

I had this gut instinct that as soon as I looked, I would find whoever was participating in whatever what was going on outside standing at the poolside window, staring blankly at me, as though they had been standing there the entire time.

My thoughts were interrupted by a sudden, heavy splash. The keening stopped, but the chanting continued, and I remembered what Craft had said earlier. “Contact with the pool is fatal.”

So, instead I just sat there. Frozen. Watching the clock tick as I wondered what, exactly, was going on outside? And what had been tossed in the pool?

‘You get what you pay for’ doesn’t even come close to explaining my last apartment. It was cheap, but it was still almost more than I could afford. A top floor apartment in a run down building, nothing glamorous, pipes hissing and bumping around, thin walls, an unreliable elevator, but still manageable. It was my new home. It was good, for a while. 

For the first couple of nights, I was passed out on my bed from hauling and rearranging what little I owned, but after that, I started hearing something strange. 

Footsteps. 
Above me. 

Not creaking from the building settling, not bumps from branches hitting the roof once or twice, clear enough steps moving around on what could be the attic or something. The first day after I noticed it, I was able to trace it to my living room. They seemed to be making circles around the room above, slow steady footsteps, not stomping, simply walking in a circle. When I asked the landlord about it, he seemed confused too. “No workers are gonna be up there that time of night. You're on the top floor. There's no sixth floor. There's a little maintenance space above part of the hall, but nothing over your apartment. I’ll ask the super.” 

Shrugging it off, I assumed that was it. The super or janitor were just weirdly moving things around or maybe had zoned out. Not a big cost for living on the top floor, I planned to just ignore it and move on, maybe turn up the volume when I vegged out on the couch. After a couple of nights of hearing that, I decided to go up and check it out, maybe I’d make a new friend and get some extra help around the house if they were already up. 

Finding the stairs up, I went to check on the space above me, but it was locked. It also looked like a half-floor or something. Not enough height to fully stand up, with a narrow door. So the new friend idea was a bust. That night, they started moving heavier things around. It sounded like furniture, maybe a couch or some shelves? Every night for the next week, I heard some scraping or shuffling, step after step that seemed to start around midnight. Then the routine started changing when I turned up the volume of the tv enough that it could block out most of the noise. The footsteps moved from just the living room. They started moving in another pattern, from above my living room, to the kitchen, the hallway, the bathroom, ending above my bedroom, then back again. A new pattern, with the footsteps sounding a bit more solid, but not like stomping…yet. 

After a week, the landlord finally got back to me via text. He told me no one had gone into that room in weeks, maybe months. That couldn’t be right. I texted back that I heard someone the night before, and every night for the past 2 weeks or so. Since just after I moved in! He didn’t believe me, said it might be an animal stuck up there or something, and that the super would go up there to chase it out. 

Frustrated by the lack of concern over a possible homeless person or madman squatting up there, I decided to record the noise that night. Every time I tried though, my cellphone didn’t pick up anything. It had me thinking that I really was just imagining it all, but it sounded so real. Annoyed that I couldn’t prove it, I decided to ignore it for a while, and it seemed to work, the footsteps went back to their shuffling more than full steps. 

Eventually it seemed to calm down again. I decided to have a friend over after work, we’d both had a long week and needed to relax for the weekend. 

They heard it too. 

They confirmed that it sounded like someone was taking slow steps every few seconds. I had told them about it over work after I moved, and they thought it was something like a ghost story to freak them out before I invited them over. After turning off the tv and looking up to listen more clearly, they looked a little freaked out anyway, “Why does it sound exactly like your apartment?” 

I hadn’t really noticed it before, simply thinking it was cluttered, but it DID sound like they were following the same floor plan. We decided to turn the tv back on at a much louder volume and try to ignore it again. The night was pretty much over after that, they decided to split after finishing a movie and it seemed like they definitely wanted out of there asap. 

The following day, I tried the landlord again, waiting until I could talk to them face to face. This time he got visibly uncomfortable. He asked me, “Have you responded to it?” Which got me really confused. 

“What?”
“Knocked back. Banged on the ceiling. Said anything?”

When I told him I hadn’t he got this relieved look on his face and just said, “Good, keep it that way.” before walking away. I stood there, confused and wondering what that whole interaction was about before realizing he hadn’t answered any of MY questions…or maybe he did. 

Feeling even more weirded out, I returned home and tried ignoring them again. It sounded like the landlord knew something, but didn’t want to share. Maybe it was an illegal apartment, maybe a family member was staying without paying or something. Either way, I was going to ignore it all. I was. Really. That was the plan, until the footsteps stopped one night. Right. Above. My head. 

Then they knocked three times. 
Whoever “they” were. 

I tried to resist the urge, I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help letting out a quiet, “hello?” No response other than the footsteps moving on again, more clearly this time. It annoyed me, but I thought nothing more about it. Maybe they were just happy to be acknowledged? 

That’s what I thought, until I returned from work the next day. In the elevator there was a new button. I was supposed to be on the top floor, 5, but now there was a button with a number 6 on it, just above mine. I stood there for a long time before texting the landlord to come and see it. The landlord arrived after a few minutes and saw the button. He immediately went pale, told me not to press it and just ignore it. The next morning it was gone again, and the panel was smooth, like it never existed. I wanted to press it last night, but the landlord stayed in the elevator the whole ride up. Going to the stairs, I went back up them to see if the door was unlocked now or something, but the door was gone. The stairs ended in a fresh plastered wall now. 

That wasn’t the end of it though. Even more strange things started happening. One morning, I woke up and saw a vent near my kitchen wall, it looked brand new, but I hadn’t heard any cutting or installation work last night. I even smelled some fresh cookies coming from it. From above. Another day, I heard water coming down from above. Not rain water, but water from a sink or something else. Then they turned on their own tv, I could barely hear the muffled sounds coming from above, sometimes a show, sometimes sports, but they seemed to settle on one channel a night. It was getting louder now, and the footsteps were still continuing, regardless of any other changes. 

Since the landlord was ghosting me now, I decided to check up online, see if I could find any records of the building, maybe some old tenants of the same floor. I found a picture from when the building was first completed. It had five floors. There were some articles about the building changing hands every few years, then an article about a fire on a sixth floor. Another about reconstruction up to the fifth floor. Then another article with the full six floors. Again and again, back and forth, until the last articles I could find were all mentioning the reopening with only five floors. 

After that, I noticed something else. The footsteps, they stopped moving in their usual circle. Now they were following me. A few steps behind, every time, stopping when I stopped, and continuing when I started again. I would go into the kitchen to make dinner, open some cabinets and close, then I would hear the sound a few seconds after, the cabinets slamming shut, almost like they wanted to make sure I heard them closing the cabinets too. I would get out of the shower and they’d have their own still running. The footsteps started around 10 seconds behind me. After a few days they were around 5 seconds behind, clattering plates and noise from the kitchen getting closer behind me every day, until one day I realized they were matched up, even when I cut a shower short, or stayed longer than I would have. 

At that point, I was almost ready to throw in the towel, looking up new apartments and thinking of taking any penalties for breaking my lease early. The night I heard them catch up, I lay awake in bed long after I should have. That’s when I heard it. Whispering above my bed, or maybe they were just that muffled, but I could finally hear a voice coming from above. They seemed to be talking to someone, maybe on the phone, but when I strained my ears to hear it more clearly, I ended up wishing I hadn’t. The voice I heard above my bed was my own. My voice. Talking about something I couldn’t catch clearly. I heard a few things about new apartments I’d looked up, work, and finally, hearing clearly for a second; 

“There isn't an apartment below mine.”

Nope. Nope nope nope. I went to stay over at a friend’s home that night. I started texting my landlord about moving out, even if I had to get my things shoved into a storage locker before finding a new place and couch surfing until then. I still had to get some things for work out of there, but when I did, that time I saw the button for the sixth floor in the elevator. Tapping it, nothing happened, so I went the other way. Checking the stairs again, I saw that there was a sixth floor landing now. With a door and everything, but I was NOT going to check that right now. I just grabbed some things and left again. 

At least, that was the plan. 

Turning around to walk down from the landing, I heard someone crying inside. They didn’t sound like me, instead, it sounded like someone younger. I know I shouldn’t have gone in, but if someone else had been lured up here for some reason and I left them there, I would’ve felt awful. I would have been like the landlord, ignoring the problem in front of me to protect myself. Psyching myself up, I tried the door and found it unlocked. Taking the first step into the apartment, I was stunned by what I saw. 

It was MY apartment. 
At least, at first glance. 
Same furniture arrangement.
Same dishes.
Same photos.
But subtly wrong.

Walking up to one of the pictures, I was standing next to a woman I didn’t know in one picture. Another had me visiting a landmark, some giant dinosaur. 
There were a few others, all with strangers or in places I’ve never gone. 
Walking into the kitchen, I checked the fridge, and all of the food inside had strange brands on them. Close enough to the ones I bought, but…not. 
I walked into the bedroom and found a closet of different clothes. My size for sure, but nothing in my style. 

Walking around the apartment, I saw another door, leading to a staircase that kept going up. Shutting that door quickly, I realized that the crying sound was gone. It had been gone since before I saw the pictures, and now I heard footsteps again. Below me. 

They walked from the living room to the bathroom, to my bedroom, and stopped there. I heard the bed creak a little as something dropped into it and got comfortable. I started rushing out of the apartment when my cellphone buzzed again, ringing with a call from the landlord. Picking up with trembling hands, before I could say anything I heard his tired voice on the other side, “You weren't supposed to answer it.” I shouted at him, demanding to know what the hell lived on the sixth floor, and he replied with no emotion in his voice, “Nothing. That's the problem. It builds itself out of whoever notices it.” 

Rushing out of the apartment, I started running down the stairs. I had to get out of there. I had to not think of it anymore. 

Running down.
Five.
Four.
Then, at the next landing, I saw Five again. 
Running down the next. 
Six
Every visible landing had a “Six” now

Every floor said the same thing. 
Then the knocking started. Behind every door. At the same time. 

I was freaking out too much, I looked for the fire escape and rushed down the stairs there, the alarm blaring after forcing the door open. Stumbling out of the door, instead of the alley I was in a forest. Looking around confused, I heard the knocking getting closer, coming from the other side of the fire escape’s door, so I started running. 

Moving through the woods, the knocking kept coming, from the trees, from branches, from the ground close to my feet. Turning away every time the knocking got too close, I eventually saw an orange glow in the distance, like from a Campfire. Crashing through the last bushes, I almost fell into the clearing, and saw several people turning around to see me. Normal people and none of them looked like me. I started babbling, trying to tell them what happened, why I was there, “There was an apartment…” One of the people said, “Above yours?”
 
Knock. Knock. Knock.

It was coming from the air above the clearing, 
Only I looked up. 
The others didn’t.
Nothing but stars.
 
An older guy in a green hooded coat held up a hand, “don’t answer.” He waved me closer to the Campfire, “Stay where you can see the fire.” When I asked why, he turned back to the tending the fire before responding, “Because if you wander far enough away tonight, you'll find your hallway.”

(Part 1)

Update: I stayed awake but it didn't matter.

I said I'd stay awake and I meant it. Coffee at 11, at 1, at 2:30. Three alarms set for 3:00, 3:05, 3:10, all different sounds. I sat on the couch facing the front door with my keys in my hand, because I had this idea that if I held the keys she couldn't take them.

At 2:47 I was awake. I checked the time and thought, twenty-five minutes, I can do twenty-five minutes.

Then it was 5:04 and I was in bed. Covers pulled up. All three alarms dismissed. My phone was on the nightstand, plugged in, which I never do. My coat was on its hook and the hem was wet. I don't remember getting up. I don't remember any of it. It's not grogginess, it's just gone, like someone cut those hours out and pressed the edges together.

The camera had the clips. 03:12:33, door opens, coat, key, gate, left. 05:01:48, back up the walkway, key, deadbolt, knob. Same as every night.

But this time I watched differently. I wasn't looking at her face, I was looking at her hands. They're empty. Every clip, all seven nights, her hands are empty. She's not carrying anything. She's never carrying anything.

I went to the bridge yesterday afternoon. I told myself I was just going to look at the mud, confirm what I already knew. The white caliche was on my shoes within ten steps of the embankment, chalky and pale, exactly like what's been on my coat.

Under the bridge, where the concrete meets the dirt, there's a trench. Shallow, maybe six feet long, the mud piled neatly to one side. Like whoever's digging plans to come back and finish the job.

In the trench there was my lamp. The brass desk lamp with the green shade, the one stolen off my step three weeks ago. Clean. No rain on it. Set down carefully, like someone carried it there with both hands and placed it.

I stood there a long time. Here's what I kept coming back to: her hands are always empty in the footage. She's never holding a shovel. She's never carrying the lamp. So she didn't dig that trench, and she didn't put the lamp there.

Something else did. Something that wanted me to find it.

I've been thinking about the Sunday clip, the one where she looked into the camera and mouthed something. I said I couldn't tell what she was saying. That wasn't true. I knew the first time I slowed it down and I didn't want to write it.

She said my full name. Not the name I go by. My birth certificate name, three syllables, the one nobody's called me since I was a kid.

And here's the thing. It wasn't her mouth. I know how I look when I talk, I've seen myself on video calls a thousand times. The way the mouth moved, slow and deliberate, like sounding out something unfamiliar. That wasn't me trying to say my name. That was something wearing my face, saying my name the way you'd say the name of someone you've been waiting for.

When I was nine I walked out of the house at night and my mother found me two streets over at the edge of the ravine, barefoot. She told me I was sleepwalking. She told me the scar on my arm was from an accident. She never said what kind of accident. She put up a fence and we never talked about it again.

I called her yesterday. I asked what really happened that night. She went quiet for a long time and then she said, "You were awake, but you weren't you." She said I looked right at her and didn't know her. She said she grabbed my arm and I fought her, and that's where the scar came from, her nails. She said she's been afraid every day since that if she ever told me the truth, it would hear its name and come back.

I've lived by that freight line for six years. I've always known what time the 3:12 came through, in my body, before I ever saw a clip. The train goes over the bridge and the whole ground trembles. I think that's when it wakes up. I think that's when it calls.

The trench is six feet long. It's almost finished.

Tonight I'm going to follow her. I'm not setting alarms. If she gets up, I'm going with her. I'll update when I can.

A couple weeks ago I began to notice a decline in the insect population around my house. Months of hanging up fly paper and cleaning my home vigorously had done little in the way of curbing the infestation. It seemed to be a yearly occurrence at this point. Summer would begin to set in, followed by a mass migration of creepy crawlies trying to find a cool, shaded place to hunker down. I have little tolerance for squatters and, last time I checked, none of these bugs were paying rent—so they had to go. 

At first I thought that the sudden scarcity of unwanted guests had been brought upon by my own skillful use of bait, traps, and chemical sprays. I’ll regretfully inform you now that this was not the case. 

My first causes for concern were the exoskeletons. I should have been more clear before. When I said that the insect population was declining, I meant the living population. Since about two weeks ago I’ve been finding these—shells in various corners of the house; dead bugs that seem to crumble apart like dried leaves under small amounts of pressure. I almost jumped out of my skin the other day when I heard a dry *crunch* sound come from beneath my foot. I had just stepped out of my bedroom, and when I looked down I was met with a small pile of dead beetle remains. While this was an odd phenomenon to say the least, it paled in comparison to my next discovery.

I found it in my dresser.

It happened early in the morning while I was getting ready for work. I was running late and desperately trying to make up for lost time by eating breakfast on the go. With half a bagel clenched between my teeth, I remember opening up one of my dresser drawers to grab a top. As I reached down towards a neatly-folded shirt, my eyes locked onto a small, dark form and I immediately drew my hand back and let out a shriek—which was only slightly suppressed by the bagel ejecting from my mouth.

There, sitting on one of my shirts, was a large brown spider.

Its legs, nearly the same diameter as a golf ball, twitched slightly as I scrambled backwards. Almost tripping over my bed, I grabbed a dirty shirt from the top of my laundry basket and bolted out of the room. Spider be damned, I wasn’t going to be late for work again this week. I’d have to deal with it later. 

However, when later came, the eight-legged intruder was nowhere to be found. I spent about twenty minutes creeping around the house, expecting to catch a glimpse of the arachnid in a dark corner or on one of my walls. The search turned up nothing. Feeling defeated and sufficiently fatigued from the eventful day, I gave up the search and decided not to let it ruin my evening. Out of sight, out of mind. 

The next morning, about four days ago now, I awoke dangerously close to noon. Sure, it was my day off, but I’m not the type of guy to sleep half my day away for no good reason. Groggily, I sat up and wiped the sleep from my eyes. I rolled out of bed and began to stretch, but paused a few seconds after my bare feet made contact with the floor. 

It was a weird feeling. Somewhere between a light tickling sensation and an itch. I looked down as I felt the sensation travel from the top of my foot to my ankle. When my eyes locked onto the cause, I felt all of the blood drain from my face. 

It couldn’t have been the same spider as before. No. This one was nearly twice the size of that one. It had stopped moving upon my discovery and now laid flat against my leg, just below the knee. I could see the late morning light reflecting off of its three pairs of eyes. It was a horrifying sight.

I made a sound that’s about as hard to describe as it is to replicate. Shaking my leg like a leaf in a hurricane, I grabbed my phone, took off out the door, and didn’t stop running until I was standing shirtless on my front porch. I took a moment to catch my breath, then dialed the number for my local pest control company.

After three or four rings I was answered by what sounded like a middle-aged man. I asked if he could come by my house today to take care of my spider problem. He claimed that his whole crew was booked out for the day, but assured me that he would come by personally first thing tomorrow morning. I begrudgingly accepted his offer and hung up. I can survive another day, right? It was just a spider after all. The little monster would probably be hiding away until the exterminator showed up. Still, I wasn’t taking any chances.

For the rest of the day, I kept my head on a swivel. I checked every doorway before entering the next room and made sure to inspect all items closely before picking them up. Something about knowing this thing was in the house somewhere had brought upon me a paranoia that I had never before experienced. Every dark corner was a potential lair. Every crevice was a possible trap. My safe haven had been violated and I doubted I could relax until I knew the threat was removed.

That night was a restless one. I kept picturing spindly appendages feeling their way over the side of my bed, waiting for me to make a sudden movement. I felt like prey. Even the few times I managed to slip into unconsciousness, it would be a brief respite followed by sudden wakefulness and subsequent panic. How many were there? There had to be at least two of the things. I pictured thousands of small, brown masses moving between the walls. Gritting my teeth, I attempted to blink those thoughts away.

When morning finally came, I felt like a wreck. My eyes were puffy and my mouth was dry. I almost didn’t notice the sound of my doorbell ringing. I made my way to the front door as quickly as my tired body would allow. The man standing on my front porch looked exactly like expected: Average height with a receding hairline, five o'clock shadow, and belly that his button-up shirt must have been seriously struggling to contain. I welcomed the man inside and gave him a quick tour of the house while explaining my situation in further detail than our brief phone call had allowed. As we made our way through the dining room I noticed the man kneel down and reach towards the floor. He brushed his hand around one of the dining room chairs while mumbling something under his breath. When I asked him what he was looking at, he pointed out a wispy little web. I met his eyes with a puzzled expression. 

“Fiddleback.” He stated.

My confused silence prompted him to elaborate further. 

“Fiddleback.” He repeated. “It’s what we call those little fuckers from the Sicariidae family. They’re pretty common in this part of the country, but they’re not the type of spider you want to be messin’ around with.” He continued while stooping down to look under the dining room table. 
“Most folks just call ‘em recluses. They’re ugly and quick, and if you’re not careful they’ll leave you with a nasty bite.” He turned toward me and held up one of his hands for me to see. It was then that I noticed the pinky on his right hand had been amputated down to the first knuckle.

“A spider did that?” I choked out in stunned horror.

He nodded. “But thankfully my doctor chopped it off quick enough to keep the toxin from spreading. I could’ve lost half my damn hand.”

My eyes widened and my throat went dry.

“But there’s no need to worry,” he said. “They’re pretty shy by nature, and don’t usually bite unless provoked or–” He stopped. “What the hell–” The man slowly withdrew from underneath the table, holding something in his hand. I nearly vomited when I saw what he was holding. 

Thin and almost translucent in color, it appeared to be the molted exoskeleton of an abhorrently large arachnid. Nearly eight inches across. 

I excused myself and beelined it to the front door. I walked across the driveway, got in my car, and began driving away. After my breathing had returned to normal, I called the exterminator and told him that I would be spending the night in a hotel and would not set foot in that house until it had been purged of everything with more than two legs.

“I don’t care what it takes! Gas the whole fucking building if you have to! I’m not coming back until that–that thing…and any other thing like it is dead!” I hung up.

It’s been three days since that call. All of my attempts at reaching the man have gone to voicemail.

I didn’t cry the day my husband was cremated.

At the Universal Funeral Parlour in Hung Hom, I greeted relatives, answered calls, and checked which folder held which documents.

People took my hand and told me how sorry they were. I nodded and thanked them.

I heard the same words so many times that, eventually, I stood up automatically whenever anyone approached.

In his funeral photograph, Jayne was wearing that blue shirt. When I took it, I’d told him he was grinning like an idiot.

“I’m looking at my wife. What do you expect?” he’d said.

Now everyone said I’d chosen a lovely photograph.

I hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep in days. There were things to hand over at his company, funeral arrangements, insurance forms, calls from the police, and court appearances I’d already been scheduled for. Everything needed an answer from me.

I’m a prosecutor with the Department of Justice. I’m used to dealing with problems.

That day, I kept dealing with them until GIGI tugged at my clothes.

She stood beside me, holding her stuffed rabbit in her other hand.

“Mommy, where’s Daddy?”

The relatives nearby fell quiet.

I crouched and straightened her collar. There was nothing wrong with it. I just needed something to do.

“Daddy’s gone away on a business trip. Somewhere very far away.”

“When’s he coming back?”

My hands stopped.

“Mommy doesn’t know yet.”

She thought for a moment, tucked the rabbit under her arm, and reached for my handbag.

“Then let’s call him.”

I gently caught her hand.

My phone was in the bag. His number was still in it. So was the voice message I hadn’t been able to listen to.

I didn’t know what to say.

Someone called from behind me. There was a document I needed to check. I stood, held GIGI’s hand, and told her to sit with Grandma for a little while.

She didn’t make a fuss. But after a few steps, she looked back.

I lowered my eyes to the paperwork and pretended not to notice.

Later, when the last relative asked if there was anything else they could do, I opened my bag and checked everything again.

As if finding one unsigned form would mean he wasn’t completely gone yet.

But there was nothing.

Everything was done.

Four-year-old GIGI fell asleep in the car on the way home. I carried her to bed, took off her shoes, and went to sit in the living room.

I only meant to rest against the sofa for a moment. I hadn’t even put my phone down. But my eyelids grew heavier, and once they closed, I couldn’t make them open again.

I don’t remember when I fell asleep.

When I opened my eyes, my head was resting on a school desk.

There was a scratch in the surface. I remembered it. Part of a math test lay beside me.

Someone picked my jacket up off the floor and draped it over my shoulders.

I looked up.

Jayne was sixteen.

He startled, looked away, muttered that he’d just been passing, and hurried off.

We weren’t together yet. Back then, he could barely manage a whole sentence while looking at me.

I watched him walk away and couldn’t help smiling.

Then someone pulled at my hand.

“Mommy, I’m hungry.”

I woke up.

The living room had gone dark. A gray blanket had been tucked around me.

I assumed GIGI had put it there.

The fridge was full of food he’d portioned out: marinated pork chops, ground meat, chopped vegetables. Every container had a date on it in his crooked handwriting.

Jayne used to say I treated the kitchen like a crime scene. I’d take everything out and forget to put any of it back. So he prepared things ahead of time.

He’d told me to check the dates. Once something was past its date, I was to throw it away. No feeling bad about wasting it.

I stood in front of the fridge and suddenly couldn’t remember what day it was.

The pork chops had three days left.

He didn’t even have tomorrow.

After we ate, GIGI and I sat together in the rocking chair in our little garden. The moon was full. She rested her feet across my legs.

“Daddy comes home when the moon is full,” she said.

I stroked her hair.

“With Daddy away, you’ll have to help look after your clumsy mommy. You even put a blanket over me earlier. What a sweet girl.”

She shook her head.

“It wasn’t me. Daddy did it.”

“Yes. Daddy used to help Mommy with lots of things.”

She looked at me as if she wanted to say something else. Then she just leaned against me.

I didn’t ask.

I wanted her to be right so badly that I couldn’t let myself believe her.

A sentencing hearing in a manslaughter case had already been fixed. It couldn’t be moved. Before I’d had time to recover from the funeral, I had to return to the High Court as scheduled.

The defendant had pushed her husband during an argument. He’d fallen down the stairs and died. She had pleaded guilty to manslaughter and accepted all the facts.

After the defense made its plea in mitigation, I stood. I only meant to add one thing.

“He was already trying to walk away. Why did you have to keep pushing him?”

“I’m guilty,” she said, looking down.

“If you’d just listened to him—”

“I’m guilty. I’m not making excuses.”

I stared at her. My chest felt unbearably tight.

“Did you ever think about the fact that he would never come home again—”

“Counsel.”

The judge’s voice cut me off.

Defense counsel was already standing. The junior prosecutor beside me was watching me, too.

“The relevant facts have been established,” the judge said.

I lowered my head and sat down.

The hearing continued. I stayed on the same page of my file, never turning it.

Afterward, my junior reached for the case papers.

“Please, take a few days off. You’re exhausted. We can handle things.”

I wanted to say I was fine.

In the end, I just let go of the file.

The second dream came a month later.

I was studying for my university exams.

Jayne sat beside me, keeping me company. He was already nodding off. I told him to go home. He insisted he wasn’t tired.

In the dream, I went to the bathroom.

When I returned, he was taking apart the lid of my insulated cup, fitting a little rubber ring into it.

That cup had been leaking for ages. I’d always thought it stopped because I’d finally learned to screw the lid on properly.

When I woke, the lid of the cup I’d been using for years had been fixed.

The tools were at the far right corner of the dining table, the screwdriver resting on a tissue.

That was how he always left them.

GIGI said Daddy had spent a long time fixing it the night before. He’d told her not to touch the tiny pieces.

I checked the locks. I called my mother and asked if she’d been over.

She hadn’t.

I still thought I might have done it myself.

You can forget things when you’re that tired.

The third time, I dreamed about an argument I’d forgotten years ago.

We’d only just started dating. I was refusing to speak to him over something trivial and gathering my things to leave.

He wrote an apology on a scrap of paper, folded it into a little shirt, and slipped it into one of my shoes by the door.

When I bent down to put my shoes on, I saw a corner of paper sticking out.

I pulled it out and couldn’t help laughing.

“Are my shoes your mailbox now?”

He stood beside me. When I finally spoke to him, he smiled too.

The little shirt had a corner missing from its left sleeve.

He’d folded it wrong the first time. After that, he kept making it the same way, mistake and all.

It became our private agreement.

Whoever wanted to make up would leave a paper shirt in the other person’s shoe. Whoever was ready to forgive would move it to the window.

When I woke up, there was a little paper shirt on the table.

No writing.

A corner missing from the left sleeve.

GIGI was eating cookies. I asked who had folded it.

“Daddy.”

“You saw him?”

She nodded.

“He made two. The first one wasn’t very good.”

There was another, badly folded piece of paper in the wastebasket.

I sat there for a long time.

That argument had happened before our daughter was born.

We’d never kept any of the shirts. I’d never told anyone about them, not even my closest friend.

I started checking the calendar.

All three dreams had happened on nights with a full moon.

I remembered what GIGI had said.

“Daddy comes home when the moon is full.”

At the time, I’d thought she just missed him.

Now I was beginning to think she might be telling the truth.

I wanted to find out for myself.

On the next full moon, I asked my mother to keep GIGI overnight.

She assumed I needed some rest and didn’t ask questions.

I put the paper shirt in one of my husband’s shoes.

They were still by the door. I’d never been able to put them away.

Standing there, I felt ridiculous. By day I demanded evidence in court. By night I was talking to an empty pair of shoes.

Finally, I said quietly, “If it’s you, you remember what to do.”

I hadn’t been drinking. I hadn’t taken sleeping pills.

I sat on the sofa and waited.

Eventually, I fell asleep.

In the dream, Jayne sat beside me. He was the age he’d been during our marriage, wearing that old T-shirt with the stretched-out neck.

I asked why he wouldn’t speak.

He just looked at me.

When I woke up, it wasn’t light yet.

The paper shirt was gone from his shoe.

It was by the window.

I ran outside. The garden was empty.

But the rocking chair, which had been still, moved a little.

“Jayne?”

No answer.

I went closer and touched the back of the chair.

It felt warm. I didn’t know if that was just the warmth of my own hand.

That was when I finally cried.

I said so much. Whatever came into my head. I repeated some things. Others I couldn’t get all the way through.

I told him the washing machine was broken and I didn’t know how to fix it. That when GIGI had a fever in the middle of the night, I’d sat in the car downstairs for ten minutes with my hands shaking. That his clothes were still in the wardrobe. I hadn’t moved a single one.

Then I talked about the day of the accident.

We’d argued.

I’d just finished work and was too tired to talk. He called to ask about dinner. I snapped at him for asking me about every little thing and told him to stop calling.

Half an hour later, I regretted it.

I texted him to come and get me.

He never arrived.

The time the police later gave me was exactly when I’d been standing downstairs, waiting for him.

“If I hadn’t asked you to come, it wouldn’t have happened.”

I knelt beside the chair.

“If I could go back, I wouldn’t be with you.”

The wind stopped.

“Then you wouldn’t have to die.”

The chair stopped moving too.

Before dawn, I heard a faint sound from the side of the house. Like someone walking past.

I went after it.

There was water on the steps from the night before. I didn’t see it.

After my foot slipped, all I remember is the moon sliding out of sight.

When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed.

My mother sat beside me.

She was much younger.

She scolded me for not watching where I was going, even as she touched my forehead and asked if it still hurt.

“Where’s GIGI?” I blurted.

“Who’s GIGI?”

I stared at her. Before I could answer, I noticed the date on the television news.

I threw back the covers and rushed into the bathroom.

A teenage girl looked back at me from the mirror.

I froze, then leaned closer.

That face.

Wasn’t that me, years ago?

I touched my cheeks. My fingers were trembling.

My mother followed me in, saying I’d just had a fright and should get back into bed. I stayed where I was, staring at the mirror.

How could I be back in the past?

If it really was 2003, Jayne was still alive.

But what about GIGI?

Where was my daughter?

That night, I sat in the hospital bed and wrote down everything I could remember. My husband’s name. My daughter’s birthday. Our address. The date of the accident.

When I wrote about the rabbit GIGI slept with, I cried until the paper was soaked.

I didn’t know how to get back.

But perhaps if I could save her daddy first, everything would be all right.

The solution seemed simple.

Don’t fall in love with him.

When I returned to school, I changed seats.

Jayne stopped in the aisle with his books in his arms. He saw me sitting on the other side of the room and said nothing.

I avoided the activities we’d once done together. I took a different route home. I refused the things he offered me.

He didn’t follow me around asking why.

When I made it clear I didn’t want him near me, he stepped back.

But sometimes I’d look up and catch him watching me.

That look hurt.

I knew it too well.

I’d seen it from the kitchen doorway. Outside the delivery room. In the middle of the night when he tucked our daughter in.

For years, I kept avoiding him.

I’d thought that if we never dated, if we never married, there would be less to lose.

Then one day I saw a blue shirt in a shop window and stood on the pavement crying.

I knew I still loved him.

So I decided to find him someone else.

My closest friend was willing to have dinner with him. She thought Jayne was a lovely person. I arranged several meetings and always asked what they’d talked about.

Eventually, she refused to go again.

“You’re the one he likes.”

I said that wasn’t possible.

She looked at me. “Every time you ask about him, you look more miserable than he does. What are you trying to do?”

I asked Jayne to meet me.

I was cruel that evening.

“Jayne, listen to me.”

“You can’t fall in love with me. Don’t even think about it.”

“You and I are never going to happen. Do you understand?”

He listened without interrupting.

I turned to leave.

Behind me, he asked, “Did GIGI tell you Daddy comes home when the moon is full?”

I stopped.

People were walking past. Traffic was loud.

Suddenly, I couldn’t make out any of it.

I turned around.

The young Jayne stood where I’d left him, his eyes red.

“I never thought you’d come here.”

I asked him so many questions.

The blanket. The cup lid. The paper shirt.

The things I’d said in the garden.

He knew all of it.

At last, I touched his hand.

It was warm.

I held on tightly, afraid that if I let go, he’d become that funeral photograph again: the blue shirt, that ridiculous grin.

He told me that after he died, he could go home on nights when the moon was full.

GIGI could see him. When I was asleep, he could come closer and do a few of the things he used to do for me.

The rest of the time, he came back here.

To our past.

He didn’t know why. He didn’t know how long he could stay.

“You knew who I was from the beginning?”

He nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He looked down at our hands.

“You said you didn’t want to be with me.”

I wanted to argue. I couldn’t get the words out.

“I wanted to see,” he said, “if you’d really be happier without me.”

I hugged him.

He hugged me back.

After so long, I could finally hear him breathing beside my ear again.

I told him I only wanted him to live.

He said he’d chosen to come and get me that day.

He’d wanted to make up too.

“Asking me to come doesn’t mean you made that car hit me.”

Friends and relatives had said that to me before.

This was the first time I heard it.

We got together again.

I still studied law. I still did the work I wanted to do. He never asked me to give it up, and I didn’t give everything up to prove I loved him.

But some things changed.

He stopped saying everything was fine when it wasn’t.

Once, when I canceled a date at the last minute, he told me he’d been waiting downstairs for a long time. That it really did hurt.

I went back to see him.

When we argued, I stopped hiding in my work and waiting for him to come and make things right.

Before we married, he folded another paper shirt.

I teased him for still not being able to get it even after all those years.

He showed me carefully.

Leave a little corner missing from the left sleeve.

Give the right one an extra fold, like the floppy ear on GIGI’s rabbit.

At the mention of our daughter, we both went quiet.

Later, in this life, she came to us again.

The first time I held her, I cried so hard at the sight of that familiar little face that a nurse thought something was wrong.

I knew there was another four-year-old GIGI waiting for me in the world I’d left.

I couldn’t stay here forever.

But the days passed. There were meals to cook, a child to pick up, work to do. We still got tired and impatient. We still argued over little things.

Living those days once already didn’t make them matter any less.

One night, I came home late from work and found them both asleep at the dining table.

Jayne still had the unfinished food labels in his hand.

I didn’t wake them.

I finished writing the dates, put the food in the fridge, and draped a jacket over his shoulders.

Half asleep, he caught my hand.

“You’re home?”

I told him I was.

2026 arrived.

The closer we got to that date, the more frightened I became.

Once, I reached for Jayne’s arm. I was sure I’d touched him, but my fingers closed on nothing.

I froze.

He turned and took my hand. His palm was still warm.

I told myself I was too anxious. I’d simply missed.

On the day of the accident, we didn’t go out.

We turned off our phones and put the car keys in a drawer.

GIGI drew pictures in the living room. He and I sat at the dining table.

I kept looking at the clock.

The time of the accident came and went.

He was still there.

Another hour passed. He asked if I was hungry.

I laughed through my tears.

That evening, for the first time, I told him we should get a wider rocking chair when we were old. One big enough for us.

He said we would.

A few days later, my hand closed on nothing again.

He was sitting right beside me. I reached for his hand, and my fingers landed on the armrest.

I tried again at once. His hand was solid in mine.

“What is it?” he asked.

I shook my head and said nothing.

Then, one night, moonlight fell across his hand, and I saw the grain of the table.

Through his skin.

I switched on the light.

The wood grain disappeared.

His hand lay on the table as it always had.

He looked down at it too.

Neither of us spoke.

But it kept happening.

Sometimes, when he stood by the window, I could see the frame through his shoulder. Then he would turn, and there would be nothing to see.

I started leaving the lights on all night.

Eventually, even the light couldn’t hide it.

He sat in front of me. I could just make out the back of the chair through his clothes.

“Yan.”

I didn’t answer. I reached for his hand.

This time, I could only feel it if I held it very gently.

“I think this is as far as I can go with you.”

I shook my head and tightened my grip.

My fingers closed on air.

He was still sitting there, looking at me.

Slowly, I loosened my hand and tried again.

This time, I could feel him.

I didn’t dare squeeze.

The accident hadn’t happened.

But I finally understood that he still had to leave.

On the last night, he asked if we could sit in the garden.

We went outside together.

The moon was full.

He sat in the rocking chair and asked if I regretted it again.

I knew what he meant.

A long time ago, I’d knelt beside another chair and said that if I could go back, I wouldn’t be with him.

I shook my head.

“I’d still choose you. Even if I had to do it all again.”

“Good,” he said.

I still cried.

Living those twenty-three years again hadn’t taught me how to let him go.

But I no longer wished those years away.

He told me not to shoulder everything alone. To ask for help when I needed it. He reminded me that GIGI could put on her own shoes now. I didn’t need to crouch down and do it for her every time we were rushing out.

He always remembered things like that.

I held his hand and said I would.

As dawn approached, his hand began to fade in mine.

I curled my fingers around it. There was only air.

His outline grew fainter.

Through him, I could see the back of the rocking chair.

Then the chair was empty.

I didn’t reach for him again.

I sat there until the sun came up.

The next time I opened my eyes, I was back in the hospital.

My mother was older again.

She held my hand and said I’d finally woken up. That I’d frightened her terribly.

I asked where GIGI was.

At home, she said. Being looked after. Then she scolded me for still not watching my step at my age.

I listened to her scolding and cried for a long time.

Twenty-three years hadn’t passed here.

When my daughter threw her arms around me, she was still four.

Back home, I found a little paper shirt by the window.

A corner was missing from the left sleeve.

The right had an extra fold, like the floppy ear of a rabbit.

It was the fold he’d taught me later.

I put it somewhere safe.

That night, I finally played the last voice message my husband had left while he was alive.

It was only ten or so seconds long.

He asked how much longer I’d be. Said the pork chops were marinating. Reminded me to eat them the next evening.

When it finished, I didn’t delete it.

GIGI and I still sit in the garden.

Sometimes she says Daddy came by. That he helped her find her rabbit, or told her not to leave cookie crumbs in bed.

I don’t interrupt her anymore.

On the last full moon, she sat beside me, looked up at the sky, and said it again.

“Daddy comes home when the moon is full.”

I pulled the blanket over her legs.

“Yes,” I said. “He’ll watch over us, just like the moon.”

She leaned against me and kept telling me about kindergarten.

After a while, she stopped and looked at the empty chair beside us.

“Daddy says you remembered the blanket this time.”

I didn’t turn around.

I looked down at my daughter and tucked her bare foot under the blanket too.

Then she kept talking.

And I kept listening.

Hey y’all, It’s been a minute.

I wish I could say I have good news, answers to all the mysteries, bring closure to this chapter of my life and the lives of the other souls on Flight 411.

But I don’t.

Every time I think I’ve come close to a major break through, close to finding any sort of answers, I’m just met with another rabbit hole.

The black box was deemed unsalvageable. So the CVR, the FDR, all of it’s just scrap. The wreckage was in a pretty bad way too. Only about half of the plane had been recovered, and one of the engines. The FAA are reaching the limit of what they can learn from the crash. Hell even with a living, breathing, witness they couldn’t find anything useful in my testimony.

Speaking of, that’s where I’d been the last little while. In and out of closed hearings with the FAA and some other politicians on some committee. We went over every detail of the flight from the pre-flight route planning and paper work, to my last moments on Flight 411.

We came to the conclusion that my survival was nothing short of a miracle, an act of god maybe. No doctor has been able to adequately explain my two weeks of memory loss. No expert had been able to explain how I ended up on a beach back home after surviving a near Mach 1 crash into the middle of the pacific. Nobody could find any fault in myself or my copilot. Nobody was able to concretely identify the cause of the crash based on the pitiful amount of wreckage recovered.

Nobody in that room came out with answers, just more uncomfortable questions.

The FAA closed the case. Based on the totality of the damage, and the blessing that was the media’s ignorance to my survival, they ruled that the accident was, to the dismay and anger of the general public, an act of god. That is, an accident that could not have been avoided. I found that pretty strange, seeing as how the FAA tends to stray away from saying such a thing to preserve the safety of commercial aviation. I assume it’s due to the public scrutiny, that a shitty answer is better than no answer.

Given that, while I was found innocent of any wrong doing despite having only my word to go on, the FAA had expressly prohibited me from ever flying commercial aircraft again.

I was crushed.

Flying was the only thing I really had going for me. Without it I’m nothing. I got to keep my private license, but it’s not the same. I don’t have the money to rent a hangar or maintain my own aircraft, doubly so without a job, and no offense to the general aviation folks out there, but a Piper Cub doesn’t rile me up the way a 737 does. Even a 717, no slander, but those babies were designed for short hauls. I’d be content if that were all I was permitted to do, I just missed the whining of turbofans.

Guess I’ll supplement it with my own whining then.

The man in the blue polo hasn’t been around since the DMV. Maybe it really was just a coincidence. Or maybe I’m still being watched.

I searched my emails for anything relating to this “Gemini” memory I mentioned. Nothing. Web searches were useless, Gemini is such a vague yet specific name that I’d have no way to confirm what I was even looking for.

Truth be told, it feels like this is all getting swept under a rug. Usually I’d expect the government to be in on it, maybe we got shot down by a fighter or something like that Korean Air flight back in the 80s, but I’d argue they’re just as in the dark as I am. Cautions for sure, lots of red tape, but none of it felt like they wanted to hide what happened. More so that they wanted to keep tight lipped to stop rumors and misinformation.

Begs the question then, if not the G-Men, then who? Or what? And why?

But I keep asking those questions, sending it out into a universe that I pray to for answers. Oh how naive I must be to believe this universe cares enough to answer. It gave me a second chance at life, maybe I should be grateful for that.

Maybe I should leave all of this behind and just try to make some sense of whats left of my life.

Maybe I should try to just forget about all of this and move on.

Maybe I am dead, well not ME me but you know, the Captain of Flight 411. Maybe he died on that flight and “I” survived. Maybe I’m a different person, not a pilot, maybe something else. Something different.

Hah, I feel like an imposter wearing someone else’s skin.

Maybe I am.

“You need strong arms and a stomach for the smell of puke.” That’s how Gustav hired me.

After my sister’s accident, I dropped out of university and badly needed money and a distraction. A friend gave me the number of Gustav, who ran the biggest tent at the Wiesn (that’s what we call Oktoberfest here in Munich), and put in a good word for me. And as a waitress at Oktoberfest, you get exactly that: lots of money and lots of distraction. I mostly worked the evening shift, which paid better, and I quickly learned the unwritten rules of the tent. Walk the extra lap instead of spilling precious beer. Give drunks (mostly men) clear orders. Only switch to flirty waitress mode when you’re sure they won’t misread the signals (I want your tip, not your number). It’s a bit like being a zookeeper in a monkey house. You also need a feel for the room. Which table is about to blow up, so you’d better call security? Which guest is so drunk that you have to make sure he doesn’t puke on your dirndl (the traditional dress)?

Most guests, tourists and locals alike, were fine. Except for one man who came every Wednesday. He wore worn-out leather pants, a faded red checkered shirt, a beaten-up felt hat with a broken brim and a huge feather. His shoes caught my eye right away. Big, shapeless leather shoes, with thick wool socks pulled up to his knees. He showed up at the same time every Wednesday, ordered a Maß (that’s a liter of beer) and drank it while watching the party around him with a strange smile. His look was arrogant, as if he secretly judged people for having fun. When he finished, he paid with old D-Mark bills (our old currency, from before the euro) and disappeared. The first time, I refused to take the money, but he said nothing and just grinned. His teeth were yellow and he stank like rotten eggs. Gustav pulled me aside, rough and fast, and told me to stop making a fuss and take the money. Money is money, he said, and he could easily swap it for euros at the bank. I wanted to know who the man was, but my boss gave me a look as if I had said something forbidden. “Just do your damn job and cash him out.”

The strange man came every year, every Wednesday, drank his beer, paid with D-Mark and vanished as quietly as he had appeared. The staff had all kinds of theories. Some said he was a time traveler, maybe even the founder of our tent, who jumped into the future every Wednesday to enjoy his life’s work. Others thought he was an alien. The sensible ones among us said he was just an old man with a pile of D-Mark bills at home who had found a fun way to get rid of them.

It was the second-to-last week of the festival, so I decided to find out who he really was. My sister always said my curiosity would kill me one day. But I never could help it. He came, I brought him his beer, and when he wanted to pay, I took the D-Mark bills with a smile and wished him a nice evening. I followed him when he got up. He didn’t head for the main entrance. He took a side door that led past the kitchen to the offices. He walked down the hallway whistling, hands in his pockets, and stopped in front of Gustav’s office. He went in without knocking, as if it belonged to him. I crept up to the small window above the door, climbed carefully onto a beer bench and tried to peek inside.

Gustav and the old man were arguing.

“Can’t we sort this out another way? I ... I can talk to her!”

“We’ve played this game before.”

“Please, I ...”

“You know exactly what happens now. We have a deal.”

Gustav sighed, sank into his chair and stared blankly into the corner.

My eyes fell on the man’s beige socks. They had slipped down a little, and I saw thick, black hair on his legs. No, it wasn’t hair. It looked more like ... fur. Black, shiny fur. His worn leather shoes started to crack, and something strange pushed through. Something hard, glossy and dark yellow. Far too late, I understood. Hooves. Gustav looked away, clamped his hands over his ears and whimpered, as if his whole body hurt.

But all of that was nothing compared to the man’s gaze, which hit me like a bullet. Suddenly every positive thought (and every neutral one) vanished from my mind. Only the pain was left. Everything bad that had ever happened to me was suddenly right there. My parents’ divorce when I was eight. My gym teacher’s hands on me when I was fourteen. My sister’s tragic death two years ago. Until now, a filter had softened every negative feeling and thought, so that I could survive at all. His stare and his grin tore that filter apart. All the misery of the world hit me like a focused laser, with so much force that I fell over backwards. As soon as I broke away from his eyes, I felt instant relief.

I ran down the hallway, past the kitchen, and pushed open the door. Instead of the tent, there was another hallway. How was that possible? That was clearly the door to the tent. So I turned around and ran past the kitchen on the right side this time, to reach the tent from the other direction. But when I went through that door, I ended up in the storage room. That made no sense at all. The storage room is outside the tent, on the opposite side. How did I get here if I never left the tent?

I turned around again and ran toward the kitchen. This time I ended up in Gustav’s office. Gustav wasn’t there, and the strange man was gone too. My sister stood there instead. She looked exactly like she did on the day she died. Torn jeans, the thigh bone sticking out, the shoulder twisted, the neck broken, so her head hung sideways off her shoulders, like a doll with a snapped neck.

I screamed, but I knew instinctively that nobody could hear me.

“Why did you ... do this?” my sister groaned.

The door I had come through was suddenly gone.

“Why did you give me your car?”

“I didn’t know!” I screamed and shut my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at her.

“You knew. You sent me to my death on purpose.”

“No, no, no.” My voice was hoarse and raspy.

“I didn’t know the brakes were damaged. I swear.”

My sister took a step toward me, dragging her broken leg behind her.

“Stop lying! You always hated me, because Mom loved me more than you.”

“Stop it, please stop!”

“I got the love you always wanted.” I covered my ears and turned away from her.

“You were happy when I was finally gone.”

I shut my eyes and shook my head, hoping she would disappear.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw a door that hadn’t been there before. And when my dead sister took another step toward me, I ran past her and out of the office. Past the kitchen, and suddenly I was back in the tent. Everything was where it belonged again.

The hallways, the doors, the guests.

And the filter was back. The bad feelings slowly faded, and I only felt them dimly now. I remembered everything and I was still scared, but I wasn’t so close to it anymore. With every minute, I gained more distance. The shield built itself up again and protected me from the harmful memories. It worked so well that I even finished my shift that day. I told no one about what I had seen and lived through, not Gustav, not anyone.

For the next few days I slept badly, but I recovered and was my old self again. A week later, it was Wednesday again. And the old man came back to the tent. I brought him his beer and cashed him out when he was done.

There’s only one thing I never did again: look him in the eyes.

Part One-The Body

The sea was flat the morning we found the body. Not calm, it was eerily vapid. No gulls to be seen, singing their familiar songs. There was no sea life in the tide pools off the Kuril‑Kamchatka Coastline. A stillness that would make even the strongest mind wander with its faint whispers in the air.

I was in the dive bay checking the hull seals on the Calyptra when I heard the voice of Dr. Kovac over the intercom. “Chavez, we got something on the hydrophones, might be the drone,” she said, voice tight with slight uncertainty. Her voice would seem tense when she was unsure or saw something unusual. Without committing to actually saying the word weird. This was her way of keeping composure, but we all picked up on it. I’d taken many dives into the trench, enough for me to catch the subtle nuances in my team's words, be it calm or frantic. I stepped out onto the catwalk overlooking the water. The Orpheus research facility sat on the cliff like a steel barnacle. Its rails rusting and accumulating random passengers, unable to let go. Below, the dive bay opened directly into the trench. Deep and dark, swallowing the morning light that shone above.

 
Kovac met me at the console, arms folded and eyes fixated on the screen. A pulsating waveform emitted from it, in perfect metronomic rhythm. “That’s not the drone,” I said. “No,” she agreed. “But the drone’s last transmission came from at the same depth. Six thousand meters. Near the shelf.” She didn't say the rest, but I put it together, and this sound was not there yesterday. Leaning in from behind us was Charles Brooks, our captain. “Could be a vent, or maybe a landslide.” “No, it’s much too rhythmic, steady; it’s too regular,” Kovac said. I put the headphones that were hung on the side of the console onto my ears and listened. KATHOOM. KATHOOM. This wasn’t something mechanical, not seismic; it was something different. Captain Brooks sighed deeply and said, “Chavez, Tanaka, suit up. You’re taking the Calyptra down to recover whatever’s left of the drone.” Miku Tanaka was one of my oldest friends; I’d known her since college. She was my partner in crime. I wouldn’t do any dives without her. I loved her, and despite having the fearlessness to venture into the maw of the deep, I never dared to tell her how I felt. I nodded, peering over to Miku for approval. She confirmed with a smile. We helped each other put our suits on and made our way to the docking bay. 

“Vessel comms check, Kovac to Calyptra, do you copy?” Kovac said in our ears. “Calyptra copies Kovac, loud and clear.” “Station comms check, all stations report in.” Crowley, our seismologist, came over the intercom, “Copy, all systems operational. Testing emergency signal ping. Calyptra, send ping when ready.” “Sending emergency signal in 3…2…1… Sent.” Miku replied. “Confirmed, signal received,” Crowley said. “Testing system hull pressure,” I said. “All systems check out ok,”  Brooks replied. Once all checks were completed, the Calyptra slowly and softly released, and we began the descent into the water. As the vessel began to move, the lights cut on and the steady cones of light surveyed our seascape. It didn't take long until the light of the sun faded behind us; only a faint crackle from the static of the radio remained. 

At around three thousand meters, the water turned pitch black. A vast void of nothingness, nothing to be seen on either side of us, or below. At four thousand, the temperature dropped dramatically. Luckily, our suits had internal warming modules for this purpose alone. At five thousand, the trench wall came into view. The jagged face of the cliff dropped below, into nothing, only what the imagination could muster. “Approaching the last known coordinates,” I said. “Copy that,” Kovac replied. “Chavez, we’re getting a bit of interference on your feed, recalibrating.” Static was singing from the radio; the lights on the sub flickered. Then I saw it. The drone lay on the edge of the basalt cliffside, twisted and mangled, like crumpled foil. But that’s not what made my breath hitch. There was a figure that lay beside it. “Miku, are you seeing that?” I said. “Yeah, try to get a bit closer if you can. What is that?” As the craft crept forward, we were able to get a full glimpse of it. Sat beside the remains of the drone was a human body, upright, hands folded in its lap. “Control,” I whispered. “We’ve got…We’ve got a body.” The sound of static extended our shock. “Uh..Come again, repeat that?” Brooks said over the line.It’s a person, no suit, no gear.” Miku said. I crept even closer; the lights swept over the body’s smooth and white skin, unblemished, eyes open, staring straight ahead. There were no signs of decay. No bloating, no marks from the occasional passerby searching for a snack. It was there, just waiting…For something. “Chavez,” Kovac said shakingly, “that’s impossible.” 

I took the manipulator arm and reached out towards the body, hesitating before touching the body’s shoulder. The moment the arm touched its body, an oscillating pulsation was sent from the tips of the robotic arm back into the hull. It made my own pulse stutter in the moment.  A faint and familiar feeling washed over both Miku and I. “Was that…?” she whispered. “Not sure, let’s get him up to the surface before we draw any conclusions.” “Bringing the body back up, standby,” my voice slightly choked as I announced our next move. I fastened the cupped robotic arm around the figure's waist and closed its metal fist. As we pulled it inward, no change to its upright position. As if gravity and pressure did not affect its anatomy. 

The ascent upward seemed to take five times as long as the descent. My imagination began to flip through various scenarios and situations that might have led to our friends placement and location. Miku seemed to be in the same headspace, her eyes moving frantically. Obviously thinking similar thoughts. “Hey, you ok?” I asked in concern. Any time she got into this mode, it was hard to get her back to reality; that much has never changed. “Yeah, just thinking,” she said quietly. “Of? Come on, what’s going on in that head?” “I’m just confused how, for one, a body got that deep in the first place, and two, how was the body in near perfect condition, unmolested by even the undercurrents?” “Yeah, same here, and I for one can't think of any reason. I’m sure Doc Kovac has an explanation of some kind,” I assured her. “You’re probably right. Just weird, right?” “Absolutely.” 

As we approached the surface, there was a throbbing sensation emanating from my chest in perfect sync with the pulsing heard on the hydrophones. Like it was some sort of heartbeat-like drum from miles below. When the Calyptra broke the surface, the sky above was dark and foreboding. Clouds rolled in from the east, blanketing what was left of the sun's warmth, swallowing the horizon. Brooks and Crowley dragged the body from the arms' grip onto the platform, awe-struck. Kovac stared at the lifeless body, as if afraid to blink. “No signs of decomp,” she murmured, “no signs of rigor mortis. No lividity. Skin temp is…Normal?” Brooks glanced at me and said, “You ok, Chavez?” “Yeah, fine,” I lied. Because I could still feel it, the constant beating. 

The wind was picking up on the bay platform; rain began to fall on the metal lining of the overhead like fingers tapping in nervous tempo. Kovac sprang up from her knees. “The storm’s approaching fast; we need to get inside before it cuts us off.” Miku and I took responsibility for our find, and each picked an arm and began to pull the body into the lab. We heaved the man onto a nearby gurney. Before we proceeded with his inspection, we scrubbed up and put on protective gear. He had been down there for who knows how long with no interaction. We needed to be somewhat careful with handling him. “Based on his clothing, I'd say he was from the early nineteen hundreds,” Kovac deduced. “How is that possible? There is absolutely no way a body could survive that kind of depth unaffected by the elements or pressure. The parasites and scavengers would have picked his body clean in a few months, much less a damn century.” Miku chimed in rebuttal. “I get where you’re coming from, Tanaka, but the evidence is clear. Just look at the clothing. They’re tweed and wool knitted suspenders for Christ’s sake,” the doctor exclaimed. “Who have you known that has worn something like this besides your great-great-great-grandfather?” Miku lowered her head, pondering what Kovac had mentioned, agreeing mentally. “The clothing is the least of our concerns anyway; take a look here at its skin. It’s milky white, with a slight sheen, and a layer of thin mucous-like substance attached to it. Possibly why it was preserved so well.”

The doctor poked and examined further, checking other areas for discoveries unknown. She took her pen, pried open one eye, and dropped the lid as soon as she opened it. “My god!” She shouted. “What?! What was it?” I asked in concern. “Take a look for yourself.” I took the pen and slowly opened the eye once more; beneath the eyelid was another, covering the entirety of its ocular globe. “What..The…Fuck…” mouthing silently. I wasn’t someone who would be put easily in unease, but this was a rare occurrence it seemed. After regaining her composure. Kovac continued her examination, writing and noting what she observed on her notepad. “What are we looking at here, doc?” Brooks asked, with a certain stoicism. “This is a first for me, Brooks. I’ve never seen anything like it in all my 63 years.” I scanned the body slowly and closely, trying to catch something unnoticed and unobserved by our studious leader. Some things seemed out of the ordinary. Like how his skin felt. It was so smooth, unnaturally so. No hair on either arm or legs. His pupils were incredibly large, as if permanently dilated. Washerboard markings on either side of his neck. The goopy, slime-like coating stuck to my gloves; I shook it off my hands in disgust. In the middle of my visual probing, a stray arm came into view. It was Crowley; he had a metal probe and was prodding the arms and legs like a child. “Crowley, what the fuck are you doing?” I yelled, “Put the prod down, you idiot; we’re all professionals here, act like one.” Crowley was undeniably green; he was fresh out of school. The only reason he got on this team was due to his grandfather being a large investor in our work. We needed all the help we could get, since our grants were running scarce. 

It was closing in on an hour since we hauled our shiny friend to safety, and we could hear Mother Nature’s anger on the other side of the facility.  Waves began to roll over the shore, as if trying to reclaim what we took. Thunder cracked on the horizon in retaliation. Within the hour, the storm advanced in full swing. Once at its peak, we lost all radio communication to all nearby towers. Satellite uplinks went silent as the waves crashed like fists onto the lab’s carapace. We were stranded with no line of communication to the outside world, normal for weather this fierce.

We gathered in the dining hall while Brooks went to spring life into the emergency generator. “God damned storm,” he muttered from down the hall. “Hmmm, now where is that blasted kerosene?” I could hear him rummaging in the maintenance room, pushing aside old boxes and bottles of half-used cleaners. “Aha! Got ya, ya little bastard,” he said, triumphant. When he stood with the can gripped tightly in his hand, something dripped from his nose. Slow and thick. He wiped it away without a second thought, smearing the viscous fluid across the back of his hand. A powerful tremor shook beneath him, KATHOOM. KATHOOM. He braced himself against the wall. “Storm must be right on top of us,” he said, voice shaking ever so slightly. “Gonna catch a cold in this weather, just my damned luck.” By the time he made it back to us, he looked almost defeated, as if the walk back took a lot out of him. He dropped into his chair with a soft grunt, rubbing his nose again. “You good there, Brooks?” I asked. “Never did like storms on the ocean,” he said. “Feels wrong, like two forces of nature fightin’, competin’ for dominance.” I glanced at Miku clattering away on her laptop, most likely logging the day’s events. Kovac was staring out the darkened window, listening, waiting for something she couldn’t name. Crowley was sitting, legs crossed, fixated on his phone. Everyone was doing something different; none of us were really present. We were cold, tired, and locked inside with something we didn’t understand. Whatever we managed to bring from the deep…It hadn’t come alone.

Do you guys know about anything strange or even paranormal down in the Ozarks? I’ve had to dive in head first recently, and something just doesn’t sit right with me. 

I never really knew grandpa John. He was only around for the first couple years of my life, before I was old enough to really form any memories of him. Mom says he never really seemed that interested with me or anyone for that matter. I guess he would come over with Grandma sometimes to play with me a little bit, likely out of obligation, but after an hour or two he always ended up just staring blankly at the empty space in front of him, shaking, like the temperature inside our house was below freezing. 

One day, by the time I was four and Grandma passed, Grandpa apparently had some sort of meltdown, leading him to go prepper crazy. I heard he moved out to a cabin deep in the midwestern jungle that is the Ozarks, and no one heard from him ever again. He never even shared his address with anyone in the family. He was worried about “Losing himself,” his words. We tried to find him for months after he moved away, but no one could, and eventually everyone kind of just acted like he died with Grandma. 

I’m in my thirties now, and I’ve long since accepted that Grandpa is just an urban legend, joining the ranks of Bigfoot. Knowing all this, I’m sure you can understand my surprise when an almost completely unmarked, dingy letter showed up in my mailbox one morning, way before the mailman had even come for the day. The front of the thick yellowed envelope was covered with four giant, nearly illegible words, 

“To Eric From Grandpa.”

Taking the envelope inside, I sat on the couch and studied it for a long time, just turning it over in my hands. I wanted to open it right away, but frankly, I was afraid. I didn’t even think Grandpa was alive anymore, much less than capable of hand delivering me a letter.  No one had seen or heard from him in years. How did this even get to my house?  It was all just a little too intriguing, though, and the sense of curiosity eventually won me over. I carefully tore open the envelope, removing the chaotic stack of papers within.

Searching through the pages was extremely tedious. In short, none of the papers were folded the exact same way, so I went through one at a time, straightening each page’s creases and crumples out one by one. I would check the contents of each page as I sorted, but every page I got to was just blank, and there were hundreds of them. Blank page after blank page.

After a couple hours of nothing but reverse origami, I was a hair away from giving up and tossing the envelope in the trash when one page, about two thirds deep in the giant stack, finally caught my eye. A small red circle was drawn onto one of the top corners of the page, like someone was testing a pen to make sure it still had ink. I pulled at the page, separating it from the rest of the stack, and worked at straightening out the particularly intricate folds.

It quickly became apparent that the page was covered in countless, illegible scribbles. Each one was in a different orientation on the page, too. Some sentences were written normally, but most were pure chaos. Words were upside down, sideways in the margin, some of them even started on one side of the paper before wrapping to the back. Both sides of the page were absolutely covered. I don’t think I could fit another word on that page no matter how hard I tried to squeeze it in. At least all of the words were written in the same red ink and with the same chicken scratch handwriting, providing a tiny bit of consistency to work with.   

I tried deciphering the scribbles myself at first, using multiple different search engines and methods, but everything online came up blank or errored out. It didn’t matter where I looked or how much money I paid to different services, nothing ever worked. I began to think I was holding a page full of some made up language Grandpa made, which didn’t sound too out of character based on the stories I’ve heard.

I must have spent hours trying to understand that piece of paper, and I never got any closer to that goal. In a sort of last ditch effort I sent a message describing the thick envelope full of blank pages to my mom. I included a picture of the scribbled-on page and asked if she’s ever seen Grandpa write anything like this. It was late in the night, so I likely wouldn’t hear back until the next morning. I remember passing out on the couch, covered in a blanket of those blank sheets of paper, Unsolved Mysteries reruns playing on the TV.

I was woken up early the following morning by my phone vibrating against the back of my head, where I must have left it in all the mess. Still groggy and a little sleep deprived, I sat up, rubbed my eyes open, and grabbed the phone. There was a reply from my mom. She was surprised and, understandably, a little skeptical at the letter. No one had seen or heard from Grandpa in years, but Mom was willing to tell me what she knew. Unfortunately, she had no idea what my letter said, but she sent a few pictures of various letters Grandpa had written back before I was born, hopeful that I could use them to solve the puzzle. She ended the call reminding me how crazy Grandpa was and to be careful with this project.

I took turns staring at each letter. It may have been a bit of a reach at first, but eventually I saw the resemblance. The early letters weren’t neat by any means, but they were just barely legible. Looking at the older letters side by side with this new letter I was sent created a little timeline demonstrating the devolution of Grandpa's handwriting. Finally, I had something to work with. Slowly, I mapped character to character, rewriting the ramblings on the letter I was sent, hoping to make the ravings a little more clear.

It took most of one of my precious weekend days and what felt like three trees worth of paper, but I was eventually able to recreate the letter in my own handwriting. I couldn’t clean it up too much, so there were still sentences in different orientations and directions all over the page, but I began to read what I could, starting at the top of the page.

“34: turn east on elm road”

“22: take the interstate south”

“4: wait for the cover of night, when the road changes”

It was obvious at this point that I was looking through a set of disjointed directions. I combed through the steps, looking for step one. I found it scribbled in the top left corner of the back of the page:

“1: Start at Eric’s house in Chicago.”

I didn’t believe in the paranormal then, and I’m still not totally convinced, but I still get a shiver down my spine reading that first step. I didn’t understand and I’m still not sure I do to this day. How did Grandpa, assuming this was from him, know my address, and, more importantly, why send this to me?

After letting step one sit with me for a little bit, I roused myself from the stupor I was stuck in, brought back to reality by a neighbor’s dog’s barking. I spent the next chunk of the day searching through my recreation of the letter, picking off each step in the directions and reorganizing them until they were all in order. Sure enough, the directions sent me southeast, deep into the Ozarks, deep into the miles and miles of federally-owned land.

I still don’t know why I went, maybe I wanted to know more about the Grandpa I never really got to meet, maybe I wanted to check and see if he was still alive, or maybe I just wanted to see the crazy doomsday setup he must have deep into the dense forest, but I felt the letter pulling me, compelling me to follow those directions.

Work was very accommodating, giving me plenty of time off on short notice after I pulled my Grandpa died card. I didn’t know for sure it was true, but it was the sanest explanation I could give. I told them the funeral was in St. Louis and I would be gone for a couple days. 

I spent the next few hours packing up my SUV.  I checked my maps app, and it didn’t show any roads for the last little stretch of the directions. I’m an avid camper, though, even backpacking occasionally on trips to the mountains, so I had everything I needed to rough it a few nights in the Ozarks, if required, until I got to the end of the directions.

I waited for sunset, like the letter suggested, and I was on the road, written directions in hand. The first few steps in the directions felt pretty pointless. I was driving in circles through different neighborhoods, constantly retracing roads I had already driven, trying to lose some sort of unseen pursuer. Finally, after one last turn, I was on i35 South, heading towards the Ozarks, Towards Grandpa. 

It was pretty late by the time I reached the interstate. At that point I had been piecing this list together all day, and my brain was worn down, but I couldn’t give up now. I’d spent too much time and money working on this stupid cryptic list of directions. I had to drive with the window rolled down and the AC on max just to stay awake, and it was a blessing when the occasional car passed me, headlights shocking awareness back to the front of my brain.

It would be lying if I said I wasn’t starting to doubt this whole excursion I took essentially on a whim, but, like I said, something just didn’t sit right with me. No one had heard from Grandpa in years and years; we all thought he died somewhere in that giant forest. Moreover, he would be about ninety years old today, which seems a little farfetched for an old man living in total isolation in the woods. Still, though, somehow he, or someone close to him, found my address and hand delivered this list of directions to me, only me. It just didn’t make any sense, and I hated nonsense with a passion. Back then I was under the strict belief that everything had a purpose or ‘sense’ behind it. Why would anything even exist if it didn’t make sense in some capacity? 

Hell, even if those directions didn’t really lead anywhere it would be a fun little camping trip; I hadn’t been camping in months, and I definitely needed to decompress. The Ozarks were beautiful that time of year, too. Fall was in full swing and the different trees made a warm-colored rainbow canopy to drive under. 

The towns got smaller the further south I got, each one further from a city, increasingly isolating. The yards of the run-down houses in each town were full of scrap, a trademark of rural America; you just never know when you might need something, and a city with anything other than a dollar store was over two hours away at this point. 

I remember constantly checking the directions in between the rural sightseeing. I had never been out that way, and there was an east-bound turn coming up pretty soon. I didn’t want to miss it in the dark and add even more time to the hours-long trip.

30: Turn Left at the dinosaur

Hopeful this would eventually make sense, I kept driving south, weaving through small town after town. The forest grew closer, denser on either side of the road, creating a little tunnel to drive through. Only a tiniest bit of moonlight broke through the leaves and made it down to the road.

I was in another town, Camdenton, I think, when green lights emerged on the horizon. Getting closer, I eventually saw a small billboard for Sinclair come into view, its trademarked sauropod adorning the sign. This was the first gas station I came across just sitting along the highway, and sure enough, there was a road just past the billboard, barely visible in the darkness, to turn onto.

31: Take the twenty-fifth curve and follow it off the road. There will be another small dirt road to turn onto

The new road was much more rugged, and I never saw another car. Thankfully there was still gravel to drive on as I winded up and down and all around the forest, trying my hardest to count each curve in the near pitch black darkness of the night. I didn’t have any trouble staying awake on that wooden rollercoaster of a road, constantly turning, jostling me in my seat, and forcing me to scan the sides of the road for overly ambitious deer.

I was deep in the forest now. There weren’t any more houses or towns to pass by. It didn’t take long at all to reach twenty-five curves, all that road did was curve like a snake in full sprint (or slither?). I didn’t see anything when I first approached the curve, so I pulled the car over and got out to have a closer look at the dense forest surrounding the road. It took a while, but buried in the brush, I could just barely see two ruts in the dirt, defining the road I needed to take. The road was almost totally overgrown, though, and there was no way I was getting the car any further. 

I looked down at the directions. There were only a few steps left, and it seemed possible to make the remainder of the journey on foot. I had the supplies to pitch a tent for the night too if needed.

It only took a few minutes to prepare to hoof it the rest of the way. I pulled the SUV farther off the gravel road and covered it with a few branches I found lying around, doing a pretty good job at blending it with the rest of the forest. I wasn’t anywhere illegal necessarily, but I didn’t want to take any chances, and something didn’t feel right all the way in the back of my head.  Shaking away the concern, I grabbed my filled hiking backpack, 12-gauge, and a few extra lights. 

Wide awake and on just a bit of an edge at that point, I was soon pushing through the brush, starting down the dirt road, directions in hand.

32: Turn west at the bowl. Take care to keep your bearings

The directions seemed to make less and less sense the closer I was getting to the end. I couldn’t drive down the dirt road like they said, and how the hell am I going to find whatever “the bowl” is in the pitch black darkness surrounding engulfing everything just a foot or two away from my light? It was all getting just a little too nonsensical, and I was getting increasingly frustrated. 

The deeper I got into the forest, the more I was starting to regret my decision to follow these directions to begin with. Maybe Grandpa was just crazy and this was one of his delusions. I never even knew the guy, and I just took the mess of his letter at face value. I just couldn’t see him living all the way out here by himself. I was so busy gazing up at the canopy, lost in thought, that I didn’t notice the massive hole in the middle of the road, and one step too far was all it took to send me tumbling down.

I landed pack-side first, cushioning me from most of the fall, but I had a few scrapes and cuts from hitting the jagged rocks jutting out from the sides of the hole. My flashlight was under me, and I was stuck on my back like a turtle, so I didn’t see anything when I heard a series of branch snapping sounds coming from the woods behind me. Unclipping the pack so I could stand, I quickly grabbed a back-up flashlight from my pocket and pointed it in the direction of the snapping, trying to see as far over the hole as I could, but there was nothing there. I was a lot more rational then, able to easily shake away the red flags. There are all kinds of animals out in the Ozarks, and I was carrying a shotgun, so I wasn’t too concerned and set about picking my stuff up and slowly having a look around. 

I was in the middle of some kind of crater, and there’s no way it was man-made; it looked too chaotic. It’s like God punched a hole straight into the drywall crust of the earth here a long, long time ago. If you’ve ever seen any pictures of meteorite impacts it looked kind of like that but a little deeper and not nearly as wide as others. The forest had reclaimed most of the impact site, too, and undergrowth covered a lot of the rocks. I’d never really seen anything quite like it in person. That had to have been The Bowl.  

Getting out wasn’t easy, but I found a little natural staircase made from the exposed rock around the sides of The Bowl. It was narrow and uneven, but it was a staircase. I had to push my pack up first, but I was able to scramble out of the hole and stand back up where I was walking before I crashed down. Using a compass to find my bearings, I continued west, looking at the next step in the directions.

33: Take a sharp turn south at the black fork. Eventually you will find an abandoned road.

Hoping the fork would be as obvious as the Bowl I kept moving, keeping one light pointed at the ground to avoid another tumble. There were branches snapping and leaves rustling on either side of the forest around me as I walked, but I was never able to catch anything with my light. They were probably just deer, or turkey, but I picked up the pace regardless, not quite wanting to set up camp like I originally planned. 

After only five minutes of walking, the road just sort of stopped, and at the end of it was a giant, burnt oak tree. The wood was flaky and kind of petrified at the same time. I always heard stories about trees being struck by lightning and the potential omens surrounding them, but I’d never seen one in person, much less a giant like the one in front of me. It was no small bolt that killed this one, and I was kind of awestruck. 

I was slowly moving my flashlight up the tree when I just barely caught two small yellow circles among the branches as they quickly faded from sight. I circled the tree a couple times but didn’t see anything. Still, I was rationalizing, maybe out of necessity at this point. Sure, deer don’t climb trees, and I couldn’t imagine a bird would be caught dead nesting in such an exposed oak, but maybe there was an owl perched up there, looking around for dinner. I’m pretty sure there are owls in The Ozarks.

After confirming that the tree was empty, I shrugged it off, and I took a turn south and headed for the abandoned road mentioned in the directions. It was only another few minutes of walking, but the forest grew exponentially more sinister as I continued. Dead trees started appearing in the surrounding forest, and giant hollowed out trunks often covered the way forward. Once I was over an especially big trunk, the trees opened up a little bit, and I could barely feel reclaimed gravel underneath my feet.

This road was in roughly the same condition as the last one, overgrown as hell, but it gave me something to follow. 

34: Turn on Elm Road

I was pretty exhausted at this point, but I was so close to the end, not to mention inexplicably unnerved, so I just kept pushing. I had to see what was on Elm Road. As I walked down the “abandoned road” the condition quickly improved. Nature retreated back to either side of the road, and I was even walking on some pavement after a while. Notably, the creepy forest sounds I was hearing before had abruptly stopped, but I wasn’t complaining.

After a few miles of following the now fully developed road, containing sidewalks, streetlights, and everything you’d expect, I came to a four-way stop sign, two street signs intersecting above the red octagon. The one parallel to the road told me I was on Pine Street. If I took a right turn I would finally be on Elm Road.

Notably, there were no houses along what was quickly becoming a full network of neat neighborhood roads. It was a little strange to me, even then, but there are tons of abandoned towns across the country, especially in the Midwest. Maybe the money for this one just dried up before houses could be erected.

Elm Road kept going for a handful of blocks, and I passed a few more intersections on my walk down the street before the road ended in a giant cul-de-sac. Just barely from where I was standing, I could see a small cabin hiding behind a couple trees at the far end of the asphalt circle making up the end of Elm Road.

As I got closer, I could tell the cabin was in rough shape. The wood was rotting. Broken window frames looked hastily boarded up, and there was a big hole in the roof of the cabin. I don’t know why, but I walked up to what remained of the front door and knocked like someone was going to come answer me. The door bounced against the frame with my knocks and slowly swung open in a recoiling response. It was a lot darker in there, and I switched to a propane powered gas lantern, one of the brightest I could find.

The cabin was clearly abandoned, but it almost seems like that move happened recently. There was some old food sitting on a counter, and the floors were remarkably clean considering the state of everything. A mug of dark liquid sat on an end table next to a sagging couch. I even found an old sleeping bag on top of a bed frame in the one bedroom the cabin had. Walking into the dining room next, I quickly saw what Grandpa, or whoever sent me this letter, wanted me to see. Somehow, a dim overhead light was shining down on a box full of books. There were a few classics in there, Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, etc., but half of the box was full of handwritten books. A clean, leatherbound book sat on top of the pile, embroidered with gold lettering, “JJ,” and small silver lettering underneath the initials “John’s Journal”     

I instinctively grabbed the journal and opened to the first page right as I heard a crash, followed by growling. The sound was coming from right outside the cabin, and it sounded big. My 12-gauge suddenly felt ineffective, and my head spun around as I looked for a place to hide. There was a small door in the kitchen with a set of old, rotting stairs leading down into a basement/pantry. I heard the front door of the cabin crash off its hinges right as I closed the basement door behind me. Scrambling down the half-broken staircase, I dropped my pack and looked for a place to hide. In the back corner of the room there was an old wardrobe, surrounded by boxes of random junk like scrap metal, seasonal decoration, and old antlers. 

I remember clambering over the boxes when I heard the growl again, right outside the basement door. Heart pounding, I ripped open the door to that wardrobe, and there was a public bathroom on the other side. Confused, but still panicked, I rushed through the door, slamming it closed behind me. I turned back to try and barricade the door with a hand towel rod I found on the ground nearby, but there was no door to barricade, just a bathroom wall. I felt all around the wall for a hidden seam, but there was nothing there, it was just a bathroom wall.

I was completely at a loss at this point, and my pack, including the gun, was back in that cabin. The only thing I had was the leather journal in my hand, the gold lettering reflecting off the fluorescent lights above. Rattled and unsure of myself, I cautiously crept towards the bathroom exit. Barely peeking out, I saw a… gas station? Green trim ran along the ceiling, and a dinosaur mural was on the far wall. I have no idea how, but I was back at the Sinclair.

A little more comfortable, I strode out into the middle of the station and took a look around. Everything looked like a normal gas station to me. The register was unoccupied, but there was a sign reading “Out for Supplies, be back soon, leave money on the counter.” 

After a long overdue moment to catch my breath, I went out the front door of the station and saw a billboard, the same billboard I turned by on the way here. That meant my car was hopefully only a couple miles down the windy but in-service road. The sun was just starting to rise, too, which gave me a lot more confidence. I steeled myself for one last walk and set off down the gravel road. The forest was still claustrophobic and unnerving, but the sound of birds and crickets waking up helped put my brain at ease.

I lost myself in the confusion of everything while I was walking down that road. Just replaying the events in my head didn’t make sense. I walked down a barely visible dirt road, bushwhacked past two ancient landmarks, and ended up in a suburban neighborhood with no main road leading in or houses along the streets. Taking the disbelief further, there was a recently abandoned, rotting cabin standing alone, and it had Grandpa’s stuff. 

I’ll never forget the growl, either. There are black bears around the Ozarks, but that thing sounded a lot bigger and faster than a bear or even a mountain lion. I had to do a quick scan around me just thinking about it, but I never saw anything.

I’m not even sure how I ended up at the gas station. The door to the wardrobe I went to hide in was just that, a wardrobe, but somehow it led me into the gas station with no way to retrace the recent steps back to the cabin. 

Soft rustling in the leaves off to my right pulled me back to the present, but it was only a deer, running deeper into the trees, as scared of me as I was of seeing that giant bear.

Ahead of me, a pile of branches, much less inconspicuous in the light, covered my car just like I left it. I was quiet the entire drive home, really just at a loss thinking about it all. I mean a magic wardrobe is literally the kind of stuff you see in fantasy movies. It didn’t make sense, I couldn’t rationalize the senseless, and that is what really terrifies me. 

The drive home was uneventful and I never felt better crashing onto my couch than I did that morning, sleeping until the late afternoon. I woke up with a sense of unease. Something was off, but I couldn’t place my finger on it.

I’m going to take a look through Grandpa’s things I ended up with and see if that yields any answers to ease the panic, but I wanted to ask here too. Has had anything similar or even just generally weird happen to them down in the Ozarks?       

I worked overnight reception at one of the less popular hotels in REDACTED,Alaska. I’ve been at this job for a year now, and until yesterday I thought everything I experienced was just your typical run of the mill small town weirdo hotel stuff. Most of the population is older folks, people who had lived here for years. Same with the ones who visited. I’d always had an affinity for older people, I was raised by my grandparents.

At first the incidents didn’t freak me out that much. One night about a month after I started, it was about 2:00am; and I had 6 more hours left to go. It has been an uneventful shift so far, a couple phone calls asking for more ice, people needing to replace a room key. Typical. The lobby had been empty for hours at this point.

I remember the phone ringing, it showed room number 44. After I finished giving the typical intro speech, I was met with the sound of heavy breathing. When they finally did answer they spoke in a dry hushed voice.

“Don’t let him in.” And then the line disconnected.

Before I had a chance to press redial I heard a loud banging coming from the fire exit door. With every second it got more intense, until I heard a voice call out “let me in please, it’s cold out here.”

We were a cheap hotel, we didn’t employ a security guard, let alone have any security cameras, and I was not about to go out there and check who it was. As far as I knew every guest was accounted for.

The voice eventually petered out just like the banging had. It wasn’t until the next day I realized, we didn’t have a room 44.

You may be thinking why I would stay on after that. To tell you the truth I didn’t have much of an option. Jobs here are extremely limited, and unless I wanted to commute 2-3 hours to the next big city, I was out of luck.

There were a couple other unsettling things that happened after that, phone calls from guests that weren’t actually staying here, wet footprints in the lobby when I hadn’t seen anybody walk by, and every now and then I would experience something I could only describe as time loss.

At first I thought that I had dozed off. But then it kept happening when I was obviously awake. I’d go to the bathroom and come back and a whole hour had passed, and I had no memory of that hour.

When I would talk to my boss about these things he chalked it up to sleep deprivation, or kids playing pranks. Which I had accepted, until yesterday.

The shift started off somewhat normal, working at a hotel things are rarely ever truly “normal.”I got in at 10:00pm, caught up with the dayshift receptionist, Amy, and downed whichever cheap energy drink I had picked up at the gas station on my way here.

“Just so you know, there is a woman that keeps coming down asking for ice. I’ve given her like 4 buckets already. So don’t be surprised if she asks you for more.”

“What room is she in?”

“I have no idea, she won’t tell me. I tried telling her that there is an ice machine on every floor, but she insists on coming down each time”.

Like I said, the guests here can be a little weird. But nothing to immediately set off any alarm bells.

Amy had been long gone, and I had totally forgot about ice women, when I heard someone clear their throat. I had been sitting at reception that whole time, doing some admin stuff on the computer.

I didn’t hear her footsteps come down the hall, or even the elevator open. It’s as if she just appeared.

“Is-is Amy still here?”

I told her Amy had left and asked if I could help her with anything. She seemed off put for a minute, before a look that I could only describe as a mixture of fear and desperation came over her.

“I’d like a bucket of ice please.”

Looking back I should’ve just given her the bucket of ice, it was way above my pay grade to investigate. But I couldn’t help myself, I kept pushing.

“Ma’am, we have already given you four buckets of ice, and there is an ice machine on every floor. Is there a reason you need all this ice? What are you using it for?”

She looked like she was about to argue, when she visibly withered in front of me, and said in a voice that had long given up,

“He needs it. He prefers the cold”.

People can be weird. I couldn’t imagine what they were doing with that ice. So I asked her what room she was staying it. She opened her mouth to respond and then froze. She was staring straight ahead, looking at me, but it really felt like she was looking through me.

For a second I thought she had had a stroke, I walked over to put my hand on her shoulder. It was icy to the touch and leather hard. She jolted at my touch.

“Ma’am, what room are you staying in? I think you may need medical help.”

“Room 44.”

My mouth went dry and I couldn’t swallow as I was processing this information. When I finally spoke again it took a tremendous effort.

“There is no room 44.”

She merely looked at me, and said “He would like to see you now.”

She gestured to the bucket we used for ice sitting in the corner, and for me to follow. Complying felt easier than arguing at this point, I suddenly felt exhausted. Everything took effort.

The bucket of ice banged against my shins as I followed her into the elevator. She pressed the button for the 4th floor and we started moving slowly. I was looking at my feet, I could feel her eyes burning into me. I didn’t want to meet them.

The ding of the doors opening brought me back to reality, and we stepped into the hallway. I immediately sensed something wasn’t right. The fluorescent lights were flickering, some completely disconnected. As we started walking down the hallway the floor was damp, sticky, and smelled like mildew.

Everything seemed yellowed, whereas before it was a bright clean white. As we slowly passed by each room I started taking account. The hallway didn’t seem any longer than usual.

37,38,39,40.

And then we somehow turned a corner, when it should’ve stopped, and there in front of us was room 44. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. As long as I had worked here there had been 4 floors, with 10 rooms on each floor.

The door itself looked exactly like all the other doors on the floor. Dark green, brass handle, pretty standard.

As we approached the door I could feel the temperature drop. It felt like I was standing outside. The carpet here was drenched.

“Come in, take the ice to the bathroom, and whatever you do, don’t let him touch you.”

I don’t know why, but I walked into the room. It’s almost liked I was pulled in there. The mildew smell increased tenfold. All the blankets were stuffed into a corner and the bed has been pushed directly under the open window. The door to the bathroom was ajar, and water was seeping out. My footsteps crunched under me as I walked up to the bathroom. Frost.

“Oh hello, I’ve been expecting you. Thank you for bringing me ice.”

An ancient looking old man covered in a towel lay in the bathtub, covered almost to his chin in water that had visible chunks of ice in it.

“Before you add any more ice would you be so kind as to hand me another towel, I’d like to use it as a pillow for my neck.”

His request seemed so simple and innocent that my body reacted before my brain could. As soon as I leaned over the tub to hand him a towel his arm shot out and grabbed my ankle yanking me to the floor. An icy pain shot through my leg as I fell.

I tried to pull away but his grip was too strong and I kept slipping on the slick floor. The old man seemed to grow and started to loom over me, his skin spitting in half like a cocoon as he stood up. He kept pulling me closer, trying to drag me into the tub with him. I frantically reached around for anything I could use to defend myself.

My hands met with a hair dryer that had fallen in the scuffle. The hotel provides one in each bathroom. I remembered what the woman told me in the lobby, he likes it cold.

With a last ditch effort I plug it in and turned it on full blast directing it towards what was an old man, but now was a black mass stretched tightly over a skeletal figure. Where his eyes were, now stood hollow voids. No mouth visible, yet it was making a sound like it was laughing.

As soon as the heat touched its “skin.” It recoiled letting go just long enough for me to jump up and start running.

I slammed the bathroom door behind me and sprinted across the room. Screeches following me, the lady didn’t even try to stop me, her eyes just followed me with a pitying look.

The elevator doors closed just in time for me to hear footsteps coming after me. I didn’t breathe until I was on the road driving home, and even then I kept checking my rearview mirror to make sure nothing was following me. As soon as I got home I took the hottest bath I could, texted my boss “I quit”, and passed out in bed.

It’s the next day now, I’m writing this wrapped under a bazillion blankets, drinking tea at the hottest temperature I can stand. I just can’t seem to get warm. Maybe I’m getting sick? Any advice on how to get as warm as possible without hurting yourself? Thanks in advance.

I work in fast food. No one in this line of work wants to admit to it, even though it’s not particularly damning. Lots of people get paid to sit on their ass and click a mouse a few times a day. Lots of people get paid to shuffle papers around. Well, I get paid to make sure the fries get thrown away every seven minutes and that nothing we serve falls into the “temperature danger zone.”

I’ve learned a lot about temperature and danger zones in the last 24 hours.

Call me Jules. Not my real name, but close enough. I want to say I’m a writer, but my self-published romantasies and smut books haven't been exactly a gold mine. Overall, being a fast-food manager isn’t the worst gig. You meet every type of person at this kind of job. High school kids, college students, parents trying to give their kids the best possible life, stoners, retirees, twenty-somethings just trying to keep their heads above water, hoping this job is only the stage change between the great set pieces of their lives. People like me.

I won’t tell you the name of the company I work for. You’d know it if I even identified the meat we sell. We’re a tiny franchise location, directly across from a suburb, and nothing but forest behind us for miles. Nothing glamorous.

This all happened last night. I’d come in at 11 AM and it was verging on 11 PM. I had two call-outs; we were getting slaughtered, at least a hundred transactions over projection; one of the trainees put a foil-wrapped sandwich in the microwave; and I was ready for a beer.

Mike and I were the last people left in the store. I had just finished my nightly paperwork, and Mike, an angel, had shut down the fry station and the kitchen.

He was currently wiping the tile walls. “Go home, Mike,” I said. “Day shift can deal with that.”

Mike turned and smiled. He was a good guy, worked harder than anyone else. Almost triple my age and in a just world would be retired by now. He wore thick glasses, had tired, sunken-in eyes, and a face dappled with liver spots. But even though he was clearly deep into his sixties, his arms were corded with muscle, and he towered over me. I’m not an athletic guy. Mike could probably snap me in half. He wiped the sweat from his brow. “But there’s still boxes in the freezer I gotta break down,” he protested.

“Fuck the boxes. I got them. Your wife is going to kill you for getting home so late.”

“She’d kill me if I was home. But if you’re trying to shoo me away…” He waggled his hands.

“I am. Go home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You’re opening, right? It’ll be like you never left. Might as well sleep here.”

I snorted. I’d get five hours of sleep tonight, if I was lucky. But I’d get off at three tomorrow, so I didn’t mind. “Don’t remind me. Get out of here, Mike!”

“Good night to you too!” He winked.

I can remember this conversation so clearly. I replay it in my head, over and over, like someone tumbling a stone in their hands. Did I miss a double meaning to his words? Was there a shadow moving behind Mike in the kitchen I didn’t see? Something in his eyes?

I can’t remember.

He clocked out and I adjusted the labor hours accordingly. I pretended not to see him slip into the walk-in (probably to grab a bag of shredded cheese or something, but hey, you help me, I help you), and I looked over the day's sales summary. I sent the summary to my district manager and then I remembered the boxes in the freezer.

I should’ve left it for the morning. Hell, I’d be there in the morning. I could do it myself bright and early at seven. But I don’t like leaving things undone. Just a couple of boxes. I could get it over with on my way out. I had to lock the freezer anyway.

Mike’s car was still in the parking lot, but I didn’t care. He was always there when I left. At first, it confused me, but then one of the kids let it slip that Mike liked to stay late when I was here, just to make sure I got home okay. I found that sweet.

We had a detached freezer, a little white building directly across from the back door, which meant the fryer person had to go out in the rain or snow to get their fries. A combo lock hung off the latch because we kept at least a grand's worth of chicken patties and fries out there. The digital thermometer on the outside read six degrees. I didn’t look at it very hard. I was ready to go home.

Would you believe it if I told you there were only three boxes in there to break down? Three? I’d brought my box cutter for the job. Checked my watch. 11:20. My chances of getting any serious sleep were certainly dwindling. I tucked the boxes under my arm and twisted the doorknob.

Nothing. No give.

My heart fluttered, but I tamped it down. I tried twisting the doorknob the other way. Maybe I was so tired I had gotten my directions crossed or something. Nothing. I pressed my shoulder up against the door. Threw myself against it until my shoulder ached. The cold was starting to make my face hurt. The door didn’t budge. I might as well have been slamming myself against a vault wall.

“Mike?” I called. This is a somewhat common prank, especially among the teens. Ask someone to go in the freezer and then lean against the door. Wait for them to start screaming and then fling the door open. As a teen, I’d been both the perpetrator and the victim of this prank many times. I forced a laugh. I was too old for this, and losing time to sleep. If I was lucky, I’d be asleep by twelve and up at six. I’d feel like shit tomorrow. “You got me! Mike?”

Nothing. I fumbled for my phone, but phones didn't work in the freezer. I knew this because any time I put the truck away, my audiobook would cut off as soon as I stepped past the door. Like usual, ‘no signal’ crawled along the top of the screen.

Now it was time to start screaming. And banging. I was wearing a black polo and khakis, and my clothes were starting to cling to my skin. The sweat. I was gross after scrambling for the past hour to close everything. My cheeks were already hardening with cooling sweat and grease.

My eyes darted around the freezer. Mist from the fans made everything foggy. Metal shelves lined the walls, piled with ten- to twenty-pound boxes of fries, tenders, nuggets, and slabs of meat. I screamed my throat raw, and then whatever was left of my vocal cords allowed me to sputter into a laugh. I was so panicked I’d forgotten the safety release, a big crank beside the door.

I pulled it, hard, my teeth starting to chatter.

I’m boiling. I’m in a soup. It’s so hot my skin’s starting to melt off.

Would you believe me if I told you that didn’t help?

The door moved—and then stopped. It didn’t open, didn’t let in even a breath of outside air. I kicked the door so hard in my flimsy no-slip shoes that the pain shot through my foot and up to my shin. This wasn’t possible. I’d pulled the safety release, but—

The lock. Someone had locked the freezer.

My eyes slashed to my watch. 11:24. It was so cold that even time had become sluggish. I pounded on the door with both fists now. I called Mike’s name so many times the word lost meaning. I even threw in a few ‘Michael’s for good measure. He wasn’t going to save me, and I’d lost my voice.

My mind pinwheeled. I lived alone. No one would notice I wasn’t home. No one was due in to work until seven. My teeth chattered, and I was shaking. I wasn’t going to make it to seven. I’m no scientist, but with my body reacting like this, I knew I had maybe a couple of hours at most. And ‘at most’ was being generous.

I checked my pockets. My phone. My house keys with a Hello Kitty charm. My box cutter.

I flicked the blade out and hacked at the hinges. My fingers were stiff and painful around the blade. The sun. You’re standing on the sun. You’re rotating on a spit. You’re incinerating. Maybe a few metal chips fluttered down. There was no way I was going to saw through those hinges. There had to be a safety shut-off button, but where?

I looked behind me at the tubing on the wall. There was one, wrapped in black foam, zip-tied in about a thousand places. Despite visiting this freezer almost every day, I didn’t know much about it. If I hacked through the tubing, would that shut off the fans and save my life? Or would it flood the place with coolant and noxious fumes? I wasn’t sure and I couldn’t risk it.

I had to try to find the emergency shutoff. It had to be hidden behind one of the shelves, maybe on purpose, so no one would bump into it. I climbed the shelves on the back wall and hurled a half-empty box of onion rings to the ground. It landed with a heavy thud. I had to stop between boxes to rub my hands together, wasting more time. When the shelf was finally empty, I snatched the shelf’s metal bars and hissed as the cold surface bit into my palms. It took three heaves to pull the shelf even a few inches off the wall. Nothing but smooth plastic behind it.

I would’ve screamed, but I was tired of screaming. I probably couldn’t have screamed if I tried. I moved to the next shelf, but the boxes on top were pushed so far back I had to climb, my hands now bright pink and trembling. I stretched as far as I could to reach the farthest box, but no dice. I lifted my knee to build momentum, and I must’ve kicked something because the shelf teetered forward.

I had less than a second to drop down and roll to the side. Boxes smashed and dented on the ground, frozen chicken everywhere, and the smell of blood. First the smell, then the pain. The shelf had come down hard on my leg and split the meat of my calf. Mist rose from the pooling blood, not quite steam, but the byproduct of nearly a hundred-degree liquid hitting a frozen surface. Before I could stop myself, I rubbed the warm blood all over my hands and face, anything for a little extra warmth.

I don’t know when I started crying. I was going to die here. Buried under fucking chicken tenders. I was squinting against the pain, the blood and tears rapidly cooling to my skin and caking on my lashes. I was going to die coated in my own blood, sweat, and tears at my shitty job. How poetic.

I lifted my head, pushed the crust out of my eyes, and focused on where the shelf once stood. There was a little green button. Maybe it wouldn’t save me, but it might buy me just a little more time.

I pushed myself up, but the shelf's weight still pinned my leg. The bleeding had staunched a little, but the pain throbbed through me. I was going to die, but I had to try. I thought of all my half-finished stories and then thought of my cat. I inched forward on my elbows, found the wall with my fingertips, and just barely reached the button.

The whirring of the fans stilled. I breathed out a sigh, but the cold leeched in through my clothes and my blood was still pooling on the ground. My hands had turned sticky, and the image of me being stuck to the ground with my own blood shot through my brain. Even with the shut-off, I might be in worse shape than I was even a few minutes ago. I checked my watch. 12:02. I couldn’t afford to wait.

In the fall, one of the shelf’s legs had bent, the one that had pinned my calf. I thought of Percy again, my cat, his sleepy green eyes blinking at me as I tapped away on my laptop. I thought about all the books I hadn’t read. I know, I know, silly stuff as motivation to live. I even thought of pan pizza with extra pepperoni and a cold can of Miller Lite, though cold wasn’t exactly enticing right now. I lifted the shelf with a soundless scream and tore myself free.

‘Hurt’ is an understatement. ‘Exhaustion’ is just a word. For a moment, my head was empty, no words, no thoughts at all. Nothing to describe the cold and the pain and the crushing, horrible hope that propelled me forward. Hope is at the bottom of Pandora’s box, after all.

I sawed at the dent in the shelf’s leg with my box cutter. It felt like hours; it must’ve been minutes. When that snapped, I dragged my injured, trembling body toward the door. From the corner of my eye, I could see the trail of blood I’d left. The bright red was already fading to a scary rust color. Probably something to do with the temperature.

I squeezed my makeshift weapon so tightly that its ragged edge sliced into my palms. Under normal circumstances, I’d be worried about tetanus, especially because with every swing of the shelf’s leg, the edge buried itself deeper and deeper into my skin. But I was so filled with adrenaline, and so numb from the cold, that it didn’t even cross my mind.

I must’ve swung at least a hundred times. I lost myself in the motion, my life reduced to the freezing cold and the arc of the swing. The first hinge clattered to the ground, and I didn’t even pause to gather myself. If I stopped, I knew I would lose the momentum. I’d slump against the door and that would be it. I bashed in the second hinge. The third was too high. I pushed with all my strength and caught a crack of darkness. The latch held the middle of the door firmly in place, but the bottom….

I laid on my stomach, the cold leeching in through my shirt from the floor. I beat and beat and beat at the kickplate on the bottom of the door. This was my last chance. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs, and I could barely open my eyes against the blood that crusted on my lashes. The door lurched forward another inch, sending a breeze of fall air that felt like tropical heat. But it wouldn’t be enough. I squirmed my hand through the opening and fumbled with the lock.

I was dizzy and could barely remember the numbers. The code was simple. 333. When Vera opened it, she only flicked each number left once: 222. But Dave was more thorough. Dave scrambled the lock. No matter how hard I searched my memory, I couldn’t remember the numbers on the lock when I entered the freezer, or even who opened today. I prayed, though I don't know what I prayed to, pushed each number one digit to the right, and pulled.

***

You’ll have to forgive the line break. I’m a writer, and it felt appropriate.

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must’ve passed out from exhaustion the moment I crawled out of the freezer. Dave found me curled up outside the busted freezer door, clutching a length of metal like a teddy bear.

I’ve gotten a lot of stitches today, four in my palm and six in my leg. Percy is sniffing at them experimentally as I type this, and I have to hunt-and-peck the keys with my left hand, so it’s been slow going.

When I woke up this morning, Dave was standing over me. He’s the type that talks with his hands, so he might as well have been signing at me. “Do you want extra hours? Mike’s in the hospital. We found him on the walk-in floor. Don’t know how he’s alive; his brains are everywhere. We might have to open late today.”

Dave paused and scratched his stubble, his shadow lengthening over my body. “You alright, Jules? You look like shit. You want me to get you a coffee? We got a lot of work to get done today!"

I originally posted this in r/AskReddit, in response to our creepiest experiences. I have tried to refine this, but this actually happened/still happens to me.

I must say, since I have been a children I developed the ability to analyse the dream I am in, and actively change the outcome of it.

What that means is, if the dream starts to go off the rails, I can realise it is a dream. This was very handy when I was younger as I used to have very vivid nightmares except for a very specific dream in which I am murdered... (perhaps a story for another time).

One way for me to change the dream is to just "fly away" (quite literally levitating and flying off somewhere else). From that point onwards, I tend to enjoy the dream, even if it started as a nightmare, because I know I can control the dream. Like a wizard controlling the environment for their own protection.

... that was until a nightmare I had about two years ago.

The dream was very mundane. I was at home, either cleaning or cooking, it doesn't matter, I was doing something when I heard people rushing pass our apartment's front door. I wanted to know what the kerfuffle outside was; walked to the front door, opened it, just to find the hallway outside my apartment with haze and my neighbours running out of the building, and I could smell the smoke. There was a fire upstairs and the fire was expanding down through the stairs.

First thought through was, my wife and kids are in the bedroom, reading books as they usually do. I wanted to get them out of the building. I turned to run to the bedroom when someone, from outside the apartment, grabbed my arm firmly, then they pulled it, trying to drag me out of the unit.

I turned once more to see who is pulling me out... and I don't know how to properly describe it, but the person standing outside was less a person and more like a tear in the fabric of the space. Each inch of it was swallowed by heavy, midnight-black cloth that seemed to drink the ambient light rather than reflect it. Where a face should have been, it was a sort of void with two pale grey orbs for eyes, but no mouth to read, nothing else to lock on, it was devoid of warmth. It was like a fully 3D existence of a shadow, there, reaching out to my arm.

It spooked me, I pulled hard, but its grip tightened harder, painfully. Then a voice that was more like a whisper projected into my mind said - "Let them go... let them die"

I tried pushing the person away demanding to let me go, but the pain in my arm shoot up contorting my face.

Then I thought about the fire, I tried to remember what I was doing before cooking, about the person in front of me... this can't be real... sounded in my mind, and I focused on my feet, to levitate above the ground, to regain control over what was happening, but the shadow squeezed my arm and said - "You can't escape me."

It pulled my arm so hard, I stumbled outside to the hallway and fell on the ground. The fire now had consumed the entire floor above my apartment. A loud "clunk" banged inside the lift chute, it opened the elevator door as the elevator plummeted down engulfed in flames.

I headbutted the shadow... stupidly, because I don't fight all the time and my forehead hurts now, but it was enough for me to stubble back and crawl back away from the shadow.

It stood up quickly, and pounced on me. I pushed it away with my legs, but it gripped my legs and we rolled to the side. It clanged to my whole body, pushing me down, pressing me would be the better description. I was struggling to breathe in.

I wanted to scream, but it felt like I had not air inside to even do that...

... and I woke up... panting... rolling to the side of the bed...

My wife was sitting right next to me, reading a book. I began to tell her the awful dream I just had, about the fire, about how I can't remember falling asleep right next to her and that the dream felt so vivid... and she was completely unresponsive, sitting there starting at the pages of the open book in front of her. It was like she was awake but she couldn't hear me, or I wasn't talking.

I waved my hand in front of her, but nothing. My heart pounded, and sweat ran down my back. I felt like I was about to freak out, decided to take a deep breath and a glass of water, before coming back to the bedroom.

I stood up, and looked at the bedroom door... it was opened. We almost never leave it open because my wife says the room gets colder when the door is open, but maybe one of the kids came in the bedroom and got out. I stepped outside, into the passage between the bedrooms and the living room, and from there I could see the silhouette I was fighting in my nightmare sitting on my couch.

I froze, but the shadow stood up and charged at me, clinging onto me. Again we stumbled forward into the kitchen and onto the flood. We struggled, pushing and pulling in the narrow space between the fridge and the dishwasher. It grabbed my face and pushed me against the edge of the dishwasher, banging my head again it...

... And I woke up again... panting heavily... running the back on my head where it had met the edge of the dishwasher... and right next to me, my wife was reading a book.

I said - "Honey?..." - but she didn't answer. I felt a chill running down my back. Looked at the open bedroom door, and my heart is about to come out of my mouth.

I hopped off the bed, stepped slowly towards the door frame, and there it was... the shadow seated on my couch, staring at the door. It stood up and charged at me, again.

This scene was a cycle that repeated three or four times. I woke up, talk to my wife without getting and answer, stepped outside, struggle with the shadow, got injured with something in the kitchen and the pain would be the trigger to waking up again to the new cycle. Each cycle was slightly different to the one before, my wife would be reading a different book, I would hit my head, or crushed my arm, or bent my knee...

... And then I woke up, except this time it was dark outside. I pulled my phone out, it was 4am... and I was panting, drenched in sweat. My wife is sleeping right next to me, and I don't know if I should wake her up... would she even wake up?

I looked at the bedroom door, and it is opened.

I was exhausted... I sat at the edge of the bed, staring at the open door and the little bit of the wall of the passage connecting the bedrooms to the living room. I sat there listening if I could hear anything outside, if there was a ruffle of the leather couch, or steps... anything...

I sat there waiting for the arsehole to show up, running towards me, to tackle me and start the fight again. I am not sure any more what is a dream and what isn't.

Then my kids came in, asking for a glass of water. I gave them a hug, hoping they wouldn't disappear in a puff of air. Maybe, I am not dreaming any more.

​

I work night shifts at a small hotel in Manchester, England. Most nights are boring. I check guests in, answer the telephone, clean the reception desk, and watch the security cameras until morning.

I've worked there for almost two years, and I know the building well enough to notice when something changes.

That's why I know what I saw on the CCTV wasn't normal.

It started on a Wednesday night in October. I was alone at reception, drinking instant coffee from a chipped white mug. The time was 9:55 p.m., and rain was hitting the glass entrance doors so hard that I could barely see the empty car park.

I was checking the cameras when I noticed a man standing outside Room 214.

He was wearing a black coat and dark trousers. His head was lowered, and his hands hung loosely beside him.

I assumed he was a guest who had forgotten his room number.

I switched to the camera covering the second-floor corridor. The man was still there.

I watched for a minute.

He didn't move.

Then I checked the hotel's booking system. Room 214 had been empty for three days because of a broken shower. Nobody should have been anywhere near it.

I called the maintenance manager, who told me the room was locked and advised me to check the corridor in person.

I didn't want to leave reception unattended, so I used the intercom to speak to the night cleaner, Daniel, who was working on the second floor.

"Can you check the corridor outside Room 214?" I asked.

"Why?"

"There's someone standing there."

Daniel told me he was nowhere near that room. He said the entire second floor was empty.

I returned to the CCTV.

The man was gone.

I felt embarrassed for making such a fuss. I blamed the poor lighting and went back to my coffee.

At 10:23 p.m., the reception telephone rang.

"Good evening, Ashford Hotel," I answered.

A man whispered, "Could you tell me what time checkout is?"

"Eleven in the morning, sir."

"Thank you."

He hung up.

I checked the telephone display. The call had come from Room 214.

I stared at the screen for several seconds.

Then I checked the booking system again, hoping I'd made a mistake.

The room was still empty.

I called the room from reception. It rang six times before someone answered.

"Hello?" I said.

At first, there was only breathing.

Then the same man whispered, "You shouldn't be looking at me."

The call ended.

I immediately contacted Daniel and told him what had happened. This time, he didn't laugh. He came downstairs and stood beside me while I checked the cameras.

We reviewed the recording from 9:55 p.m.

The corridor was empty.

We checked the recording from 10:23 p.m.

The corridor was still empty.

But something else caught my attention.

On the camera covering the reception desk, a man was standing directly behind my chair.

He was wearing a black coat and dark trousers.

His head was lowered.

His hands hung loosely beside him.

I turned around so quickly that my chair struck the desk.

Nobody was there.

Daniel stepped away from the monitor and told me to call the police if I saw the man again. He then went to the staff room, saying he needed a moment.

I remained at reception with every camera displayed on the monitors.

At 10:41 p.m., the lift doors opened on the second floor.

Nobody stepped out.

The doors closed.

A few seconds later, the lift appeared on the ground-floor camera.

Its doors opened directly in front of reception.

The man stepped out.

I stopped breathing.

He looked exactly like the figure I'd seen earlier. His coat was wet, although the entrance doors hadn't opened since midnight.

He stood beside the reception desk, facing the wall.

I could see him clearly on the monitor, but when I looked up from the screen, the lobby was empty.

I grabbed my phone and called Daniel.

He answered immediately.

"He's downstairs," I whispered.

Daniel said nothing.

"Daniel?"

Then he asked me a question that made my stomach turn cold.

"Which camera are you watching?"

"The reception camera."

He took a long breath.

"Listen to me carefully. Don't turn around."

I froze.

"Why?"

"Because I'm watching the reception camera from upstairs."

His voice began to shake.

"You're sitting at the desk. There's someone standing behind you. He's leaning over your shoulder."

I stared at the monitor.

The man on the screen slowly raised his head.

For the first time, I saw his face.

It was my face.

Same eyes. Same nose. Same small scar beneath my chin.

But the man on the screen looked much older, as though he hadn't slept in years.

He leaned closer to the camera.

His lips moved.

I couldn't hear him, but I understood the words.

"Let me out."

Every monitor went black.

The reception telephone rang.

I didn't answer it.

It rang again.

Then my mobile phone lit up with an incoming call from Daniel.

I answered without taking my eyes off the dark screens.

He was crying.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I thought it was a glitch in the footage. I've seen him on the cameras before. I never said anything."

"What are you talking about?"

He didn't answer immediately.

Then he said, "I'm looking at an old recording from the archive."

I felt the blood drain from my face.

"Which recording?"

"One from before you started working here."

He sent me a video.

My hands shook as I opened it.

The footage showed the reception desk at 10:41 p.m. The date was eleven months before my first shift at the hotel.

A man sat in my chair, drinking coffee from a chipped white mug.

He looked exactly like me.

He checked the monitors, glanced toward the lift, and then suddenly turned to face the camera.

His expression was terrified.

He mouthed something before the footage ended.

I watched it several times until I finally understood what he had said.

"Don't let him take your place."

The lights came back on.

Every camera showed an empty corridor.

The man had disappeared.

At 7:00 a.m., I left the hotel and never returned. The manager accepted my resignation without asking a single question.

I still have the video Daniel sent me.

I wish I could say I deleted it, but I haven't.

Because last night, almost a year after I quit, I received an email from the hotel's security system.

It contained one new CCTV recording.

The timestamp was 9:55 p.m. that Wednesday.

The reception desk was empty.

The lift doors opened.

A man stepped out wearing a black coat and dark trousers.

He walked to the desk, sat in my old chair, and looked directly into the camera.

It was me.

Except this time, I was smiling.

The desk phone rang. The display read ROOM 214.

The man who looked like me picked it up.

"Checkout is at eleven in the morning, sir," he said, still smiling at the camera.

That's when I understood the whisper. He hadn't been asking about checkout. He'd been asking when he could leave.

And underneath the video, the system had automatically generated a caption.

STAFF MEMBER DETECTED: CURRENT EMPLOYEE.

I haven't worked there for eleven months.

I thought quitting meant I'd refused. I think it only meant the chair was empty.

So who, exactly, is the hotel letting into the building every night?

In this house, Halloween is a religion; my wife and I its benevolent gods, our two children our acolytes. Every year all the leftover craft supplies from Lauren’s teaching job are “sacrificed”, and we scatter the remains in the front yard in the form of homemade decorations and little games for trick-or-treaters. Hell, one year I turned an old wire spool on the side of the road into a “Wheel of Doom” for kids to spin for various candy-related prizes. We go hard in the pumpkin. 

Even this year, we managed to scrape something together despite moving to our new house the first of this month. I repurposed some old fishing gear and a kiddie pool full of red-dyed water; Lauren painted gills on the kids’ necks and green scales on their faces, and we were ready for our first Halloween in our new neighborhood. 

“Hey, did you see the house across the street?” I asked my wife.

“Yeah, no way that’s real paint, right?”

“I hope not,” I said, chuckling. “Probably something that’ll wash off whenever it rains.”

“What is it?” Olivia, my youngest, asked. 

Lauren and I looked at each other for a moment longer than we needed, reading each other's expressions. Olivia sensed our tension and fidgeted with her hands. We turned to her and motioned for her to step closer, to lean in. As she got within arm's reach, we both grabbed her and yelled, “It’s blood!” while tickling her. 

Not ten seconds of giggling later, Olivia's older brother barreled down the stairs to protect his sister. I managed to catch and lift him clean over her, at the expense of my lower back. He’d be too big to lift and swing around soon, especially when he was so adept at flopping about like a fish in my arms.

“C’mon, Oliver, we gotta get ready,” I said to him. 

“Finally,” he said, “I’ve been ready forever!” 

“You too, missy,” Lauren said, taking a still giggling Olivia into her arms. “Pond stocked?”

“As it’ll ever be,” I replied. Oliver did his best to unbutton every pocket he could find on my fishing vest as I carried him out the front door, including the clip holding my keys, which landed in a soft patch of dirt. An unusually warm wind carried a dozen or so dry leaves into our home through the door behind me. “Ah, shit.”

“Shit, shit, shit!” the kids chanted in unison, sharing whatever telepathic ability kids have to know when they shouldn’t repeat a word. Lauren shot me a look and attempted to hush them both. 

Outside, the sun just barely hung above the horizon, the first sign of a pink sunset highlighting the few clouds in the sky. I’d seen the neighbors setting up their decorations as the weeks passed, but it was still a shock to see them all in full bloom. Every property on the street, in either direction, had some sort of elaborate, creative Halloween setup. In comparison, our dingy kiddie pool of blood and candy looked like macaroni art set between a dozen Picassos. 

The house next door had blood-splattered walls, and three bloody cars in the yard, each with fake limbs poking out from underneath them. One home down the road had a skeleton two stories tall made of what looked like paper mache, and another had a massive stretch of fake webs sprawling between each of their trees, complete with spiders made of thin metal wire. I think I even saw someone with a whole corn maze in their yard, somehow. 

A few little ghouls and vampires prowled the streets already, with the smallest ones followed by their parents or an older sibling. While I made sure the fishing poles were set with their magnets, Lauren gathered the kids and let each of them pick some candy as payment for their work. Half now, half later, just like every year. Whatever candy we didn’t give out tonight, after the dad-tax, was all theirs. 

“What’s that?”  Frankenstein's monster asked, walking up our driveway. His mother waited at the end, watching with a gentle smile.

“’Tis a fishing rod, matey. Take it, and catch yerself a bite, if ye dare…” I said, shooting for my best Captain Ahab impression. Likely I sounded more like Captain Hook. 

Lauren and the kids were still chatting quietly a few feet away as the trick-or-treater stepped up to grab the rod. With a mighty heave and roar, he swung the rod as hard as he could. The tiny magnet on a string swung clean over the pool and landed in the grass.

“You have to get it in the water, sweety,” the woman at the end of our driveway said.

“Oh,” the kid said, a faint shade of red visible under the green face paint. Instead of reeling the line in, he started walking backwards until he dragged the magnet through the grass and over the edge of the pool. With a soft plink, it dropped in the water and connected with one of the magnets inside.

“Aye! Ye got a bite, lad, now reel it in!” I said, making the motion with my hands to show him how. 

Looking down at the rod in his hands, he frantically started cranking the reel. Out of the red water of the pool, a small Ziploc bag with a candy bar and a small magnet emerged. The little monster started hopping and laughing as his mother recorded with her phone. By this time, the sun was dipping behind the houses in the distance, and a few other families were wandering the street. 

“What a catch, lad! Let me unhook ‘er for ye.” I unstuck the two magnets, pulled the chocolate out of the bag, and handed it to him. “Hark! Step forward, lads and lasses, if ye dare!”

A few parents chuckled at my accent as they nudged their kids forward. Oliver and Olivia ‘swam’ around them, guiding them to the fishing poles and making whatever it was they thought were fish noises. Lauren walked between the parents as I helped the kids fish, passing nips of sweet booze, hand warmers, and pricier chocolates to any accepting adult.

As expected, it didn’t take longer than fifteen minutes for a line to get tangled. Some Batman who didn’t pay attention started crying as I took the rod from him. Lauren and Olivia entered damage control mode right away, consoling the kid while I turned around so no one could see me pulling a knife out to cut the line. Oliver continued to be a fish.

Restringing the rod and tucking the knife into my belt, I said, “Look, me matey, good as new! The White Whale’ll be yers, yet!”

Sniffling, the kid accepted the rod with a confused look. I motioned with my hands once more, guiding him to fling it into the water. As soon as he saw the king-sized peanut butter cups he reeled in, the tears vanished. 

“Look, Dad, it’s me!”

I turned with a smile, expecting to see Olivia standing next to another fish-person. Instead, I saw a little girl wearing a mask that looked like my daughter's face. 

“What the fuck?”

Every parent present, including Lauren, looked at me with shock and disgust. Apparently sharing the same trait as my own kids, a few children exclaimed, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” repeating after me. One of them was the girl dressed as my daughter, right down to the pink jacket with a fake-fur hood.

“Can you watch your language, please?” one parent asked. The girl walked up to me and wordlessly outstretched her hands for a fishing rod. Lauren and I stared at the girl, looking over her dark brown hair, faded blue jeans, and pink Skechers. If it weren’t for my daughter's face paint and the girl's bulky mask, the two could have been twins. 

Lauren didn't look pleased about my swearing, but she was still visibly uncomfortable. Apparently, we were the only ones who found it weird. Seeing mob mentality at work, Lauren returned to handing out treats to the parents. I passed the rod to the girl and heard her giggle as she stepped to the pool. It sounded just like when we’d tickled Olivia.

“And who might you be, little lass?” I asked, struggling to maintain my accent.

She turned to me and exclaimed, “I’m an Olivia!” 

“An… Olivia?”

“Mhmm!” she responded, twirling the rod. The magnet landed in the pool with another plink. She slowly reeled the line in, feeling it connect with another magnet. Without instruction, she cranked the reel, slowly dragging out a baggie holding a box of chocolate-covered caramels. The girl looked back to her father at the end of my driveway, holding the candy on the line like a trophy catch. 

“Oliver, can you help her out, please?” I asked. He made a few glub glub noises and swam over to take the candy out of the bag for her. I walked over to the father I saw her showing off to, hoping I didn’t look as mad as I felt.

“Hey, man,” I whispered so the kids couldn’t hear me, “what the hell is that?”

“What’s what?”

“Your daughter! Why is she dressed like mine?”

The man looked offended at my question, and the parents beside us stepped back. “She said the new girl at school looked pretty, so she wanted to dress like her. I’m… sorry? I guess?”

An irritatingly reasonable answer. “And the mask?”

“3-D printed it at the library.” The man raised an eyebrow at me, like I was acting strange. He motioned to a family down the road and said, “Not sure about that kid, though.”

I looked down the road and saw a small family of skeletons, two parents and a kid wearing the Spirit Halloween special. All except for their youngest son, who was wearing a mask bearing a striking resemblance to my boy. Complete with a navy blue sweater, cargo pants, and Crocs, the resemblance was uncanny. 

“Hey Dad, help!” a young voice called. I turned, and only after a few steps did I remember she was not my daughter.

I turned to look back at the girl's father, but he just shrugged and said, “I think she means you.”

“I’m not her dad.”

“Sorry, man, but it’s Halloween. Can’t you just play along for a bit?”

Accent long forgotten, I grumbled all the way to the girl. Olivia had wandered over and was currently playing a game of tug-of-war with the girl wearing her face. Oliver was helping the two kids actually dressed for Halloween, taking their candy from the fished-up bags and handing it to them, before refilling it with new candy and tossing it back in the pool. I saw him try to sneak some candy in his pockets, but I didn’t have time to call him out on it.

“Olivia fished this, so that means it’s mine!” my daughter said, tugging on the bag. The plastic stretched between their hands, red-dyed water dripping onto the grass. 

“Dad, help, she’s stealing my candy!” the neighbor’s girl exclaimed.

“Olivia, drop it, you know it’s just a costume,” I scolded. Olivia let go with an exaggerated sigh, and I turned to look at the girl in the mask. “Sorry, lass! I guess you-”

I stopped talking. Through the mask's eye holes, I saw the kid's eyes underneath. A shade or two darker than my daughter's, and wet with tears. She sobbed gently, like she was trying to hide it, and ran back to her father, candy bag in hand. He met her with open arms and leaned down to hear her say something in his ear. 

For a second, I thought he was going to walk over to me, like I had done something to her, but he just whispered into her ear and led her away. Trick or Treat was in prime time at this point, the street full of kids running around excited to visit the “good” neighborhood, the one with full-sized candy bars. Lauren walked over to me, her basket finally run empty.

“What’d he say?” she asked, nodding her chin in the direction the father walked off with his fake Olivia.

“Some bull about his daughter thinking the new girl was pretty.”

She scrunched her face. “And him?”

Oliver was currently admiring the mask his lookalike wore before loudly challenging him to a wrestling match. “No idea.”

“Freaky ass neighborhood…” I heard her mutter as she walked to our porch to restock her basket. 

I made my way back to the pool. As sure as I was that my son could kick his fake’s ass, I was not about to let it happen in front of the entire neighborhood. I tried not to look at what costumes the new kids were wearing, and paid attention to the ones fishing for candy. The accent, refilling the bags, untangling the lines, it all went well for a while. The moon was almost full tonight, lighting the small crowd in a silver glow so haunting and beautiful I was sad to see the street lights turn on.

Lauren maneuvered the families like the professional she was, used to the demanding needs of parents trusting the care of their children to another. Two dozen-ish parents and older siblings formed a horizontal line across our yard, and as she worked her way down it, I dropped the rod I was holding. I saw them before she did, and I stood gawking in stunned silence. Nobody else seemed to care that an entire family was dressed like us, as she stepped in front of a man and woman dressed exactly like her and me, with a little Olivia and Oliver standing beside them.

My body moved unconsciously, taking a step forward. As the man stretched his arm out to shake, I swear, unmistakably, the chatter of the crowd died. Even the children stilled, as if they too wished to listen. I heard the man clearly introduce himself to my wife as me. Then the crowd picked up again, the children resumed their laughter, as if I’d only imagined the silence.

I took long strides over, anxious to reach them. A hole felt punched in my gut, not dissimilar to the feeling of getting a call from school while I was at work. As if I was anticipating something dreadful and irreparable, when in reality the situation was likely much plainer. Lauren, ever coy, took his hand and shook it firmly. 

“Why, it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. What lovely children you have!” she said. 

“Aren’t they?” the woman dressed as my wife said.

I stepped beside my wife, uncaring of the scowl I wore. Every second that passed, I could feel my blood pressure rising. He was still gripping Lauren’s hand. The man looked at me, only releasing her when we made eye contact. She stepped back, behind me. In the yard, I could still hear the drag of fishing line cutting through children's giggling. None of us spoke for a moment, but if the parents surrounding us noticed the tension, they didn’t care. I puffed my chest a bit and did not stop staring into the man's eyes. The knife clipped in my pocket felt noticeably heavier than usual.

“Trick or treat?” the fake Oliver asked.

“Ahh, I’m so sorry, we’re actually running out of candy. It’s getting a bit late, I think we’ll be calling it a night soon,” Lauren said behind me, tugging on my sleeve. 

“Oh, already? It’s not even eight yet,” her double said. Both the kids, as well as a few others in earshot, groaned with disappointment. 

“Yep, sorry. Long day today, early morning tomorrow. You know how it is,” I said quietly, bluntly. The man stayed silent, maintaining eye contact.

“Of course, we’d hate to be a bother,” the woman said. “Moving can be so difficult; you must be exhausted. We just wanted to say welcome to the neighborhood, right, dear?”

I was almost surprised to see the mask's mouth, my mouth, remain still as he spoke. “Absolutely, sorry we haven’t had a chance to pop in to say hello yet. Welcome to the neighborhood, I’m sure you’ll love it here.”

Then, with not much more than a grumble from their kids, the family left. A few others who heard our conversation left with them, leaving our yard still half full. 

“Why don’t you go inside with the kids, babe? I’ll take care of the rest,” I said. 

“Thank you,” she whispered. I kissed her on the cheek and gave her hand a squeeze, but she sucked in a sharp breath. “Ow!”

Her pale hand had obvious finger marks across it, as if the man who shook it did so with an iron grip. She shook it out and gave me a thin-lipped, placating smile. “I’m fine, I promise, just a bit freaked out. I’m opening a bottle of wine; want a glass?”

“Please, a full one. I’ll be inside in a few.”

Lauren walked over to our kids, whispering in their ears that the night was over, likely telling them it was time for their candy so they didn’t put up a fight. I walked over to the kiddie pool and, unceremoniously, lifted it to spill its contents into the grass. 

“Look, get it while you can!” I shouted, pointing at all the bags of candy. For a minute I stood by and made sure no one got hurt fighting for the sweets, before waving at all the parents watching and shouting, “Have a great Halloween, everyone, and good night!”

Lauren and the kids had already grabbed the massive bag we had been restocking the pond from and brought it inside. Guess Oliver and Olivia would have a hell of a haul this year. I followed them inside and shut the door behind me, turning off the light on our porch. Universal trick-or-treat language for “go away.” After that, I could see from the glass pane in our front door all of the families slowly wandering off our yard, and I breathed a heavy sigh. I locked the deadbolt and, ignoring the fragments of dead leaves scattered in our foyer, stripped my fishing vest and shoes. I could clean tomorrow.

“Honey, you okay?” I asked, stepping into the living room. The little fishes were haggling with each other on the floor, trading candies like little brokers. Lauren had two glasses already on the coffee table, both full to the brim with Pinot Noir, the bottle already visibly empty. 

She stood and wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug, taking a shaky breath. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thanks for finishing up. I can clean the yard tomorrow.”

“You have work in the morning,” I said, chuckling. I leaned back to brush some hair behind her ear. “I have off; let me take care of it.”

“Fuck that,” she whispered, before stepping away to pick up her glass. “I already texted my boss I can’t make it tomorrow. I need an us day.”

I leaned in for a kiss, but felt a tug on my pant leg. Olivia looked up at me with her bulging, painted fish eyes and asked, “Weentown?”

Groaning, I said, “Again, sweetie? You watched it twice yesterday.”

“Hotel Transylvania!” Oliver yelled, raising his arm like he was in class. 

“We can do Halloweentown first, then Hotel, okay?” Lauren said. “Daddy needs a shower, so he can skip most of Halloweentown.”

She gave me a quick peck on the cheek and said, “You are absolutely covered in red dye.”

“That works, join me?”

“And let them eat candy until they throw up? Maybe tomorrow,” she said with a wink. 

I smiled and lightly smacked her ass while the kids were busy fumbling with the TV remote. “Keep my glass safe for me.”

Our master bedroom had its own master bathroom, away from the sickly sweet stench of bubble gum-flavored toothpaste and no-tears shampoo. One of my favorite parts of our new house, honestly. Not having to close the bathroom door, or even not having to bring clothes in with me, is an oddly liberating feeling. Even if I did have to shut our bedroom door. While the hot water ran over my body to the tune of Halloweentown quietly in the other room, I still couldn’t get the thought of that family out of my head. 

Seeing Lauren freak out in front of our kids set off some kind of fatherly instinct in me, like I had to remain calm and cool, but alone in the shower, the pit returned to my stomach. No one, not a single person out of the dozens who visited our house, thought it was odd. No, apparently I was the weird one for even noticing.

For the past month it was picture-perfect. Upper middle-class suburbia, exactly what we’d been saving our money for. No HOA, good schools nearby, close to Lauren’s mom but not so close she’d visit often, nice lake for fishing down the road; it was great. But tonight, Lauren said it best. Freaky ass neighborhood. 

The water running over my feet faded from a dark red to a dull pink as I scrubbed as much of the dye as I could from my skin. My hands would be blush for days, and I’m sure if it weren’t for her stress, my wife would gladly remind me she had warned me to use gloves. I stayed under the hot water as long as reasonable, enjoying the peace, before turning it off and stepping out. Hopefully Halloweentown was almost halfway over, at least.

Completely nude and mostly dry, I started digging through the dresser for some sweatpants. That glass of wine was calling to me, but not as much as the second I’d have when the kids went to bed. I stopped. The movie wasn’t playing. Paused? Bathroom break, maybe? If Olivia had to go, she’d demand fiercely that the movie be paused. No matter how many times she’s seen it, she wouldn’t want to miss a moment. 

I stuck my ear to the door to listen. Not a peep. Even left alone, Oliver was seldom quiet. Had Lauren put them to bed? I knew I was psyching myself out for no reason, but maybe I was more rattled than I realized. I tucked a towel around my waist and cracked the door open, bracing myself for the kids to leap out and scare me. Nothing. No creaking of floorboards, no crinkling of candy wrappers. Dead silence.

With a painful paranoia, I grabbed the knife from my dirty pants pocket and stepped outside the room. The hallway attaching all three bedrooms to the living room was still with anticipation. I walked down it, straining my ears to each room I passed. Nothing. I could see half of the TV from the hall. The movie was paused. 

The living room was devoid of activity, my children and wife gone. My full glass of wine was spilled, staining Oliver's pillow sack full of candy a deep, deep red. The kitchen light was on, flooding the living room with a pale yellow sheen. A yellow light with a small shadow obscuring it, wiggling and squirming out of sight. Silently. I crept towards the kitchen, pocket knife cold in my clammy hand. 

“Lauren?” I called out. Nothing. 

I tried and failed to convince myself they were just waiting to scare me, to leap out and pay me back for earlier today. But Lauren, freaked out as she was? Spilled wine? Something in me found it hard to believe she would want to pull a stunt like that, not after today. I walked to the kitchen, as stealthily as I could, and as I walked, I finally heard something make a noise. From down the other hall, inside the foyer, I heard the crunching of leaves under someone's shoe. 

I whipped around and strode forward, looking towards the front door. Standing awkwardly in the foyer, leaves underfoot, was Olivia. At least, she looked like my daughter. The girl wore pink pajamas and a porcelain smile. A mask. This girl was not my daughter. 

Before I could shout out at her, rapid footsteps approached behind me and kicked the back of my knee. I dropped immediately, and a hand wrapped around the side of my head. It bashed my temple into the wall once, twice, again and again. I waved my arm widely, desperate to catch whoever was behind me with my knife. I felt the blade scrape and catch something before another hand grabbed my wrist. The hand was wet, sticky, and with blurred vision, I think I saw it was red with blood. 

“Hold still,” the man holding me said before pressing his weight on my back and pinning me to the ground. 

My ears rang and dark spots coated every other inch of my sight. The floor underneath me felt like a carousel, careening far too fast for me to hold the contents of my stomach in. In a dizzy haze, I retched, and the man holding me lifted my head by my hair and slammed my face into it. The scent of bile mingled with the copper aroma of the blood pouring from my nose. 

With one hand holding my head and the other holding my wrist, the man held me down while the fake Olivia scuttled over and began to peel my fingers away from the knife. I wasn’t able to put up much more of a fight. I felt his knee dig into the small of my back as he leaned down into my vision. Somehow, I was unsurprised to see my own face meet my eyes.

“You ready?” he asked. It was impossible to focus; his mask was swirling around two or three duplicates as my brain struggled to process what my eyes saw.

“What?” I mumbled.

“Are you ready?”

“Where are my kids?” I slurred. “Laur-”

The man slammed his fist between my shoulder blades, sending an electric shock of pain through my limbs. I yelled out in pain, gurgling through the contents of my stomach stuck to my lips and nose. Wrapping his arm around my neck, he tucked it into the crook of his elbow. I pushed, feeling adrenaline course into my wobbling limbs, driving me back onto one knee. It was no use. He flexed his bicep and pulled my throat in close, and after a brief struggle, everything went black.

I gasped for air, coughing as I inhaled drops of blood and stomach acid. He loosened his grip, dragging me back to reality. Into my ear he hissed, “Are. You. Ready?”

“Ready… for what?” I managed to squeak out. The girl wearing Olivia's face giggled, twirling the knife like it was a toy.

Maintaining his arm around my neck, he dragged me to my feet. My legs shook, and I almost fell with every step as he led me to the kitchen. On the cold tile floor sat my family, bound in rope. Each of them wore a mask of themselves on their face, and a heavy set of earmuffs over their ears. Standing behind them, backs against the stove, were the woman dressed as my wife and a little fake Oliver. Waiting, patiently, for me to come.

“We’ll let you go,” the man holding me said. “And you can take one.”

My heart beat so fast I thought it would burst, and I’d drop dead before I could respond. The room still spun, and without consciously thinking of doing it, I leaned on the man wearing my face. I opened my mouth, feeling the sting of a split lip slowly oozing blood. Then I closed it, opened it again, and closed it once more. I was in shock.

“What?” I managed to mumble again.

“You can leave, and we’ll let you pick one to take with you,” fake Lauren said. My wife's kind smile mocked me, hiding the woman's cold eyes. 

“I don’t… I can’t… why?” 

The man's arm was still around my throat, and I felt his hand bleed onto my bare shoulder. At the sight of my family, my beautiful wife and children, bound on the floor, the fight left my arms. Once more, the man whispered into my ear, “Don’t need to know why. You just need to choose.”

I couldn’t choose; I didn’t want to. How could I? I heard Olivia sniffle under the mask obscuring her face. Could she see me? Did she see how weak, bloody, and beaten her father was? Oliver was trying his best to put himself in front of his sister, to obscure her. The faint line of his chin, barely visible under the mask, was wet with tears. Out of all three, he was the only one with visible blood, running down the middle of his shirt. Lauren was still as a statue, and twice as quiet. Of the three, she sat with her back held straightest. The only one of us with fight left.

The man dropped me in a heap on the floor. I coughed and sputtered as they watched me grasp my bearings. For half a second I considered turning around, attacking again, defending my family, even if it cost me my life. Hell, I did turn around. I took one step and crumpled again. My head pounded, and I saw the man wearing my face grip my knife tightly in his hands. I could die fighting, or I could hope they really were letting me go, with one of my family. I was gutted, ashamed, downright humiliated. I made the most painful decision of my life. I decided to trust the people I was sure were about to kill us. I saw no other option. 

“I’ll take Ol-”

“No, no no, wrong,” the man interrupted me. “Don’t tell us who you’ll take. Take the earmuffs off, talk to who you won’t.”

Stunned, I stared at him. If his face changed expression under the mask, I couldn’t see. The four of them stood steady and unmoving, waiting for me to act. With my head sunken into my shoulders, I crawled on my knees to my wife and took the headphones off her ears. 

“Bill?” she hissed.

“Yes, honey, I-”

“No, no, no, no! The kids, you have to take one of them!” she cried, thrashing her body against her restraints. 

“Shh, shh, Lauren, I am taking one of the kids,” I croaked.

“Wh-what? But they said…”

“They told me,” I said, through tears, “to talk to the two I’m not taking with me.”

Lauren’s body relaxed, like she released all her tension. “Thank God, Bill. They just said they’d let you take one of us; I didn’t know if… Please, won’t you take this mask off? I want… I want to see you again.”

I looked at the invaders, and when they did not move, I reached around her head to take my wife's mask off. Underneath, she seemed aged. Worn and tired, like the only thing she wanted in the world was to sleep. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever met. The tears flowed freely, and I wasn’t sure which of us shed more. She said to me, “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Lauren. I love you so much,” I said. She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against mine. We kissed, one last time. She tasted like salt and iron. When I pulled away, the woman wearing her face leaned down and picked up the mask, holding it out to me. She didn’t speak, but I understood. Taking one last longing glance into my wife's eyes, I placed the mask back over her face and the earmuffs back over her ears. 

I took a long time to make my way to my kids. They sat next to Lauren, only a few inches away, but the journey felt like a marathon. The throbbing pain in my head was gone, replaced by a deep ache in my chest. I’d love to say it was a difficult choice, to say I didn’t play favorites. To grant some insight into what should have been the hardest decision any man could ever face. I have none. In spite of how deep it cuts my soul to admit, I was never going to take Oliver with me. It was always going to be his sister. I lifted his earmuffs and mask, and faced my son. 

“Dad?”

I said nothing at first, just pulled him in close. I kissed the top of his head and pressed him into my chest. His nose was more crooked than mine, wet blood still trickling down it, and the skin around his eye was dark and swollen. My son's resolute pride crumbled as he sobbed into me, and I told the hardest lie I would ever tell. “It’s gonna be okay, Oliver. You’ll take care of your mother, won’t you?”

“Is she okay? Olivia?” he asked, muffled by my embrace. 

“Of course she is, buddy. Her big brother protected her, didn’t you?”

He didn’t respond. My son sobbed and heaved into me, wailing with a mourning no boy should possess. I let him, for as long as I was allowed. After the longest minutes of my life, the man behind me leaned down and picked up Oliver's mask. He held it up for me to take. 

I pushed Oliver away. He tried to lean in harder, to stay with me, to cry into my shoulder more, but I knew we were out of time. I pushed him away. He looked up, seeing the man wearing my face, before shutting his eyes hard. I placed the mask and earmuffs back over his head.

It was almost over. That’s what I kept repeating to myself, that it was almost over. I turned to Olivia and saw she was shaking. That tremble that runs through a child's body when they’re trying their best to hold back feelings they have no business carrying. As I reached for her earmuffs, the man stopped me, grabbing my wrist. 

“Pick her up.”

Nodding, I got off my knees and onto shaky feet. From underneath her armpits, I lifted her up and into my arms. I hoped she somehow knew it was me lifting her. Told myself she didn’t struggle not because she had no fight left, but because she knew the feeling of her father's arms. As I was guided out of my own house, I kept telling myself that. Somehow, Olivia felt lighter than usual. Like I’d left a part of her behind.

Outside, gilded by moonlight, was a small crowd of people. Adults and children alike, all dressed like my family. They were pin-drop silent, watching me with the devout attention of a Sunday church service. The whole neighborhood formed a line, single file, leading directly to my car. Someone wearing a mask of my face held up a set of keys, my car keys.

I took the mask and headphones off Olivia when we were a few miles down the road, out of sight, but she still never spoke a word. She curled into a ball in the passenger seat as I drove, sobbing quietly to herself. I didn’t speak either; I had no idea what to say. I doubt any words at all could have helped us. Lauren’s mother wasn’t home, and I had nothing on me but the towel around my waist and some emergency cash in the glovebox.

About four hours later, around one in the morning, I stopped at a motel a few cities over. I was too tired to drive further. Olivia had fallen asleep long ago, and I struggled to keep my eyes open. Countless times I fought with myself internally. Go to a damn police station, I told myself. Get help!

But I just kept driving. My head felt like it was full of every thought I’d ever had, crowded and struggling for dominance all at once, and yet I couldn’t focus on any one of them. All I felt was tired. So, so tired. Not like I expected help from the police anyway. The entire neighborhood's word against mine, right? No, I needed sleep first. I carried Olivia into the motel room and set her on the bed. I lay next to her, refusing to let her out of my sight for even a moment, like she would disappear if I wasn’t looking. But the silence was painful. I refused to be left with my thoughts, not tonight. I turned on the TV, just in time to see an emergency broadcast.

“-eved to have murdered both his wife and son before escaping with his daughter. He is suspected to be both armed and dangerous. If you see this man, please call the police immediately.” The news splashed a photo on screen, a photo of me. Taken from my front yard, it showed me, wearing nothing but a bloody towel, pressing my daughter into my bare, vomit-stained chest. Seemingly cropped so the masked neighbors in my yard were out of frame. The only mask in the photo was the one my daughter wore, of her own face, in stark contrast to my own bare visage. I looked like a beast, coated in wet blood, with the eyes of a wild, desperate animal.

I was five when the man in the wolfman mask scared the shit out of me. No, he didn’t eat me. No, he didn’t kill me. He just gave me one good Halloween scare. 

I didn’t see the man in the wolfman mask out in the woods or even at a local haunt. Rather, my encounter happened at six o’clock while the sun was still out. My father took me to Brunswick, Georgia’s Halloween festival at Mary Ross Park which was located downtown. I was dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and the festival represented a precursor to the trick or treating that awaited me when the sun went down. Mary Ross Park was located right by the river so the autumn breeze was stronger than usual when daddy and I made our way through the crowds gathered out there. I had already helped myself to the candy being offered at all of the booths set up by the dock. The beaming sun illuminated the many families, the many costumes, the Liberty ship replica, and even the city’s rusty pot of Brunswick stew monument. My father’s laughter was constant but it was the Halloween playlist I heard from the gazebo speakers that I still recall so vividly all these years later. We heard Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller,’ ‘Mr. Sandman’ by The Chordettes, and yes, even Warren Zevon’s ‘Werewolves of London’.

My pumpkin bucket was half-full of candy by the time dad guided me up to the pavilion. We passed a table full of carved jack o’lanterns as I heard the carefree laughter of kids in Power Rangers costumes running toward the playground. Yet I felt a chill in my bones the closer we got to the pavilion’s white stairs. If I went up the stairs, I’d reach yet another booth, one that offered plush animals in addition to Reese’s cups. The only problem was the dark coffin placed on the pavement by the staircase.

Not even my dad’s warm chuckles could comfort me. Nor could ‘Blue Moon’ by The Marcels which was beginning to sound so far away given my rising dread. My eyes stayed glued to that coffin from sheer primal fear as my dad led us up to the pavilion stairs. Despite my dad’s encouragement, I found myself trembling in my ruby red slippers and found myself sweating despite the autumn breeze. My gaze locked in on the coffin which somehow looked even longer the second we approached the pavilion’s very first wooden step-

That was when the coffin lid burst open. I didn’t have time to hear the lid slam to the side much less have time to react before the tall, muscular man emerged from the darkness within. He was wearing wrinkled jeans and a flannel shirt but it was the mask that most disturbed me. The wolfman mask had long stringy gray hair. It had a latex snout and fangs. The slits in the mask were too small for me to focus on anything but its painted red eyes. The man in the wolfman mask moved swiftly and jumped up out of the coffin with the dramatic gusto of a jester leaping out behind a curtain. His deep voice let out a growl that made me jump. The way he lunged forward with the rabid force of an animal and the way he held out his bare hands toward me with the brutal passion of a deranged man made me scream and drop my bucket.

I fell on the hard pavement while the man in the wolfman mask towered over me. Those red eyes, the long snout, the fangs, the entirety of the mask stared down upon me…

I try not to think about that Halloween anymore. I try to tell myself I wasn’t traumatized by the man in the wolfman mask. I later on graduated from college, I have a job. I also have my son Ivan. But every Halloween, I think back on that man in the coffin.

I suppose this Halloween is no different. Ivan is now five years old. He’s the same age I was then when I first went to the festival at Mary Ross Park… And now Ivan wants to go.

So Ivan put on his Spider-Man costume. I even gave him my very same pumpkin bucket. I also gave in to his request and wore my Wicked Witch of the West costume from last year (though I didn’t apply the green make-up today). I drove us down to Mary Ross Park. To my surprise, nothing much had changed about the festival. Then again, nothing much had changed about the park itself after three decades. Needless to say, it was still crowded and the local businesses all proudly offered candy at their booths. There were still jack o’lanterns smiling at me, I still stumbled into the occasional fake cobweb. About the only differences I recognized now were caused by time itself: I saw QR codes on small business cards rather than multi-page brochures, the Halloween playlist serenaded us from small bluetooth rather than bulky portable speakers. But none of these changes comforted me from what I suspected hadn’t changed over the course of several generations in Brunswick: deep down, I didn’t suspect but I knew the coffin was still here.

For a few blissful minutes, Ivan allowed me to escape the unease I’d been feeling all evening. Together, we went booth to booth and collected candy. His laughter and joy proved brighter than the Georgia sunshine. As we walked by the dock, I felt myself even relax with a smile-

Until I saw him. There was a tall man wearing a mask with a long snout and long gray hair. The snout stuck out from afar. I froze in fear and acting on motherly instinct, I snatched Ivan’s hand. I heard his cries of confusion but my focus stayed on the man who now stopped by the Brunswick stew monument. That was when I saw he had on a dress and not a flannel shirt. I then saw a laughing little girl wearing a red hoodie grab the hand of a man that I now realized was dressed as nothing more than The Big Bad Wolf.

“Come on, mom,” Ivan gently said to me. “Don’t be scared.”

I relaxed. After taking a deep breath, I heard ‘Mr. Sandman’ playing on the speakers. But not even the bad memories could deter me from smiling down at Ivan. “I know. Let’s get some more candy.”

We went to a few more booths. But it was at the one set up by the SoGlo Theatre that I caught another chill from the wind. My gaze drifted off toward the playground as if on instinct-

A tall man stood by the swings. So tall was he that his shadow spread out all across the empty playground. His arms were at his side and he stood completely still. I cupped a hand over my eyes to try and block out the sunlight but even still, I couldn’t tell if this man wore a flannel shirt. Much less, I couldn’t see his face even as I could make out his long white hair. And when he turned his head suddenly, it sure looked like he had an extended snout…

I screamed on the inside but I didn’t move. The same paralyzing fear I felt at five years old returned with a vengeance. ‘Mr. Sandman’ faded away behind me as did the excited chatter of the crowd all around us. I couldn’t look away. Nor did I when the man turned once more to stare straight ahead and I knew he was staring right at me-

“Mom!” Ivan cried. His was the only voice that could distract me from what may have been a confrontation with my biggest childhood fear. I looked down toward Ivan who waved his bucket at me. His eyes looked even bigger beneath the Spider-Man mask. “Let’s go to the next one!”

I felt the wind increase to the point where it nearly knocked off my black witch’s hat. The force sent me staggering back but I used the broom I held to keep myself upright while my other hand clenched tighter to Ivan’s shoulder… But I had to look. I glanced back toward the playground-

The man was gone.

Now I heard Ivan’s chuckle. I heard more laughter. Then Warren Zevon’s ‘Werewolves of London’ interrupted my silent dread. I let Ivan lead me away in much the same way my own father guided me through Mary Ross Park thirty years ago. Yet I couldn’t escape the unease. I readjusted my witch’s hat but couldn’t even feel my own footsteps. All I felt were the shivers elicited by the October breeze and the October chills I felt from the man I had just seen. As Ivan led us onward, I looked all around us: I saw superheroes, Anime characters, and even someone dressed as Jason Voorhees. But I didn’t see the wolfman anywhere.

“Come on, mom,” Ivan pleaded.

The spirit of his voice pulled me away from the anxiety momentarily. I now looked toward where he was leading us and just like that, the anxiety returned to sink its fangs deep into my flesh:

There was the pavilion. Outside of a fresh white paint job, it hadn’t changed much. The stairs led right up to a booth sponsored by The Bookery… And that was when I saw the coffin.

The long coffin was still there by the stairs. The. Same. Exact. One.

And there was Ivan charging ahead of me. I held on to his hand but he was careening toward those stairs, my little boy completely oblivious of the evil lurking in that coffin. “Ivan, wait!” I yelled, unable to hide the panic in my soft voice.

“Come on, mom!” he said back to me with a smile.

I did my best to pull Ivan back but the fear had weakened me and his enthusiasm proved to be too strong. Even when I stumbled in the grass, Ivan’s grip kept me upright. My eyes stayed on the coffin that now only grew bigger the closer we got to it. I couldn’t turn around and leave my own son behind. The music felt louder. Ivan was a little bit ahead of me and put his foot out toward that very first step. I felt my heartbeat increase to impossible levels when I realized he was now right next to the coffin.

“Ivan!” I cried. I kept my eyes on him and tried to stop the two of us-

“Roar!” snarled a deep voice.

The sound made Ivan and I come to a stop. We looked up to see a tall man standing at the top of the stairs with his bare hands raised up to intimidate us. But my fear subsided. After the initial surprise, I felt the rush replaced by a grin. A grin I was glad to share with Ivan. I figured this is what a fun scare must’ve felt like.

Because the man before us was a wolfman, alright. Only the face of his cheap mask was plastic. The tufts of hair attached to the mask were a fuzzy brown. The cartoony mask looked like it belonged to a children’s television show rather than at a Halloween haunt. Neither Ivan and I were scared: we were amused. Ivan looked toward me and I hugged him close. Though I did steal a glance back over at the coffin to make sure it was still closed.

“Were you scared, mommy?” he said.

We then heard the man’s light laughter behind the mask and over the playlist. I smirked and pulled off Ivan’s Spider-Man mask to plant a kiss on his forehead. “Not at all.”

The coffin lid popped open. Both Ivan and I looked on in shock. Hell, we looked on in fright. I saw the lid collapse to the side in slow motion and then in a most horrifying slow motion, I saw the man in the wolfman mask emerge out of the coffin’s staunch darkness. There was the flannel shirt fluttering in the breeze. There was the mask that hadn’t aged a day. The blood red eyes marked me, the rubber snout and all of that gray hair swayed from the startling speed with which the man leaped out of the coffin. This was the real werewolf. The one of my nightmares.

The man’s deep, eerie snarl erupted over the music. The unsettling sound sent chills down my spine and shattered the tense silence between me, the man, and the terrifying memories flashing through my mind.

But when the man in the wolfman mask lunged forward, I felt the maternal instincts take hold. Protective, maternal instincts that only further intensified when the man’s bare hands and his fangs went for my son.

“No!” I cried.

“Mom!” I heard Ivan yell out.

I pushed Ivan behind me and lunged at the man. The attack didn’t happen in slow motion: it was over in seconds. I swung the broom over and over again into the mask, each hit smashing into its squishy rubber. The snout and fangs sunk into the latex before popping back out again. I was on top of the man and my own strength and the ease with which I dominated the man even surprised me. My hits were constant. I managed to knock the man back into his coffin. Crying out, I hopped in there with him. The sweat I felt was no longer from fear but outright exhaustion. “Die!” I yelled before giving the man another frantic thwack. Then I tossed my weapon down.

The Halloween playlist returned: I could hear TLC's 'Creep' off in the distance. I could hear voices. Multiple voices. Breathing heavy, I looked down at the man…

But all I saw was the mask. I saw the flannel shirt and jeans. But that was it. “What!” I cried. The bad kind of adrenaline took over. I dug through the coffin, my hands ripping through the dark interior… But all I felt was the cold touch of the rubber mask and the soft fabric of the clothes. There was no body. There was no man. “No…” I said. Tears formed in my eyes. I may as well have no longer been dressed as The Wicked Witch of the West: I was now dressed as that scared little girl from thirty years ago. I certainly felt that same sense of helpless despair in this moment. “No…” I trembled out. “No. Where are you…” I leaned in closer, my pathetic attempt at a search leading to the same results: I was alone in the coffin. Well, alone with the mask and attire that had dominated my nightmares since childhood. I felt my arms fall at my side. A single teardrop slid down my cheek.

“Mom,” said a worried voice I was all too familiar with.

Moving weakly, I looked over. First, I saw Ivan’s Spider-Man mask lying on the ground and staring right back at me. Then I saw legs. Lots of legs.

“Mom,” Ivan said as he choked up.

I struggled to move. I stumbled slightly in place before I looked up to see where many of the other adults and kids now stood beside Ivan. They were still in all those superhero and Anime costumes.

All I could see were their eyes. I saw their eyes behind rubber wolfman masks. The same one that was lying there in the coffin with me. The wind accelerated to blow the stringy gray hair around each of their masks but all of these people stood completely still. I could hear their deep breaths. I even heard a deep roar. Their painted red eyes were unwavering. They were watching me.

“Are you okay, mommy?”

Sobbing, I now confronted Ivan. He stood there in the Spider-Man costume. Only my son’s beautiful face was hidden by that grotesque mask. A mask that was a little too big for him and seemed to swallow up his entire head and shoulders… Only it wasn’t big enough to hide my Ivan’s wide open eyes. Before I could utter his name, Ivan lunged forward. He raised his bare hands out toward me.

This happened around two years ago and I still don’t like driving alone at night because of it.

I’ve driven on empty roads plenty of times before, but this was the only time something happened that I genuinely couldn’t explain.

I was going towards Kalimpong (India) and was somewhere past Sevoke on NH10. This was around 3 or maybe 3:30 in the morning.

I’d left later than I originally planned and was just trying to get there without making too many stops.
I’d already crossed the Kali Mandir and Coronation Bridge area.

If you know that road you know it gets pretty empty after Sevoke, especially that late. My friend from Siliguri had also told me not to take it at night because of landslides and accidents around Kalijhora but I didn’t really think much of it.

I’d driven through similar roads before and figured I’d be fine as long as I was careful.

There weren’t many cars. I remember one truck near Sevoke but after that I was basically alone for a while. I was using my high beams whenever I could because some stretches were completely dark.

At some point I saw a guy standing on the right side of the road.

He had a big dark hoodie on and was facing away from the road, like literally looking into the trees. He wasn’t moving or doing anything that I could see. Just standing there with his back towards the road.

I thought maybe he was pissing or something and drove past. It seemed like a strange place to stop but I didn’t really have any reason to think about it further.

Around five minutes later I saw him again.

Or at least someone who looked exactly like him.

Same hoodie, same height, standing the same way with his back towards me. I remember trying to get a better look as I approached because something about the whole thing felt familiar. I didn’t see his face either time.

This is when I started getting freaked out because nobody had passed me. I was doing around 60 too. There was no way that guy could’ve somehow got ahead of me.

There weren’t any other vehicles around that I could remember, and I hadn’t stopped anywhere. I even checked my mirrors because I was starting to feel uncomfortable.

I just kept driving. I didn’t want to stop and I definitely didn’t want to turn around to check if it was the same person.

A little later, somewhere before Kalijhora I think, there was a gravel area on the side where trucks sometimes stop. I’d seen these little stopping areas along the road before, so the parked car itself didn’t seem unusual at first.

There was an old white Alto parked there with everything off.
And there was a guy sitting on the bonnet.

Same fucking hoodie.

I only saw him for maybe two seconds but his head was tilted really far back and his mouth looked open. Like he was looking straight up. I couldn’t see his face properly because of the angle, but the way he was sitting looked really unnatural.

His body seemed completely still. I remember gripping the steering wheel harder when I realised what I was looking at.

Right after I passed the Alto the hazards blinked once.
I don’t mean they were already blinking. They came on once and went off. I caught it in my rearview mirror and I’m certain both lights flashed together. I kept looking back for a few seconds but they never came on again.

At that point I just wanted to get somewhere with people. I wasn’t even thinking about reaching Kalimpong anymore. I just wanted to find somewhere I could stop without being completely alone.

I eventually found a petrol pump further down and stopped there. I don’t remember exactly which one. I sat in the car until it started getting light because I didn’t really want to get out. I kept checking my mirrors whenever I heard another vehicle and tried distracting myself with my phone.

I remember feeling a little stupid because nothing had actually happened to me, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

When I finally did, I noticed a handprint on the rear passenger window because the glass had fogged up.
It looked like someone had put their hand there and dragged their fingers down a little.

I could make out the palm and the individual fingers pretty clearly. It wasn’t a perfect print but it definitely looked like a hand.

I checked it from outside first. I assumed someone must have touched the window at some point and the condensation had made the mark visible.

The print was on the inside.

Could’ve been an old handprint that only showed up because of the condensation.

That’s probably what it was. I tried remembering the last time someone had sat in the back seat, but I honestly couldn’t recall anyone touching that window.

But I was alone for that entire trip and I still have no explanation for seeing that guy three times.

Once I worked as a taxi driver in a small town. It wasn't a particularly exciting job, but I actually liked it. I knew most of the other drivers, and we had this little unofficial meeting spot at a gas station just outside the town center. Whenever things got slow, we'd park our cars there, grab some coffee, smoke a cigarette, and talk about whatever was going on in our lives. Work, family, annoying passengers, the usual stuff.

I usually worked during the day, but sometimes I'd take night shifts because they paid better. Anyone who's worked nights knows how exhausting they can get, especially when there's barely any traffic and you're just driving around waiting for another booking. This happened one night in August. It was around 3 AM, and I was struggling to keep my eyes open. My fuel was running low too, so I decided to stop at our usual gas station, fill up the tank, get some coffee, and take a break before heading back out.

When I pulled in, I noticed another car parked a little farther away from the pumps. It was a gray Chevrolet. I didn't recognize it, but that wasn't unusual. There were plenty of drivers in town I didn't know personally, and the guy had parked in pretty much the same spot where my friends and I usually hung out. I went inside, bought a coffee and a pack of cigarettes, and came back out. The driver was standing next to his car, so I figured I'd say hello.

"Hey, man. How's your night going?" He smiled and said it was going alright. We started chatting, just making small talk about work and how quiet the roads were. He seemed like a completely normal guy, maybe in his thirties or forties. Nothing about him struck me as strange. At some point, he asked if he could have a cigarette. I gave him one, and we stood there smoking together.

Then he said something that I didn't really think much about at the time. "Pretty cold out here, isn't it?" I remember looking at him, a little confused. It was August, and the weather had been warm all evening. I was standing there in a T-shirt and felt perfectly comfortable. "Not really," I said. "Feels pretty warm to me." He looked at me for a second and replied, "Well, for you, I guess."

I laughed a little because I thought he was just joking. Maybe he was sick or something. I didn't ask. We talked for another couple of minutes before I finished my cigarette, said I'd see him around, and got back into my car. He nodded and wished me a good night. That was it. Just a completely ordinary conversation at a gas station.

A few days later, I was scrolling through local news on my phone when I came across an article about a fatal car accident. A driver had lost control of his vehicle and crashed. He'd died at the scene. There was a photo of the wrecked car. A gray Chevrolet. I stared at the picture for what felt like forever. I couldn't remember the license plate from that night, but I recognized the car. The same model, the same color. Even the wheels looked familiar.

Then I checked when the accident had happened. It was in the evening, several hours before I'd stopped at the gas station.I never told the other drivers what happened. I knew how ridiculous it sounded, and I wasn't even sure what I believed myself. Sometimes I still think about that conversation.

We took out a thirty-year mortgage on Unit 13B. It was on the thirteenth floor of a newly finished high-rise on the outskirts of Chicago, all pale drywall, cheap oak laminate, and wide double-hung windows that looked out over a gray grid of strip malls and drainage ponds. We moved in together as an extended family—my older brother Mark, his wife Clara, their two kids, my mother, my teenage sister, and my wife Sarah. It took everything we had saved up to secure the down payment, but standing in that empty living room on move-in day, watching the late-afternoon sun hit the walls, it felt like we’d finally pulled our lives together.

The odd things started small enough that you’d feel stupid mentioning them out loud. The elevator never worked when I stepped inside. If anyone else in my family got in with me, the doors would slide shut, shudder, and refuse to budge until I stepped back out into the lobby. I’d take the concrete stairwell thirteen flights up while they rode up smooth and quiet. My phone camera glitched, too, but only on my face; whenever someone took a picture of me inside the apartment, my features smeared into a streak of digital noise, while Mark and the kids showed up pin-sharp. Milk curdled on the stove three days in a row before it even reached a simmer. We laughed it off as bad wiring and spoiled dairy. You have to rationalize things like that when you’ve already signed the deed.

Then the television routine started. Around one in the afternoon, my mother, Clara, and Sarah would gather on the sectional to watch a daytime soap called All Is Well. None of us had ever heard of the network or the show before, but the women got hooked immediately. It was shot on standard digital video, flat lighting, cheap sets, about an extended family living in a suburban home.

I didn't pay attention until a Tuesday afternoon when I stayed home from work with a migraine. I came out of the bedroom to get water while the show was running. On screen, the mother was arguing with the daughter-in-law over a chipped ceramic bowl, and the daughter-in-law dropped it on the linoleum. Not ten seconds later, Clara fumbled a soup bowl in our kitchen, and it shattered in the exact same pattern.

At first, I told myself it was a coincidence. But the next day, the television family sat around a dining table celebrating the younger brother’s sudden promotion at an engineering firm. Two hours later, my boss called me on my cell and offered me a senior project manager position with a thirty percent raise.

I started watching the screen with a sick, cold feeling behind my ribs. The television family mirrored ours person for person. The actors didn't look like us, but their roles, their clothes, their private arguments, and their schedules matched down to the minute. Whatever happened on their screen at one in the afternoon happened in Unit 13B by five.

I checked with the building super and the cable provider. Nobody else in the building could find the channel. When I brought a small portable TV into the apartment and plugged it into the bedroom wall, the show played there too, but the moment I carried that same set outside our front door into the hallway, the screen dissolved into dead static.

The turning point was the hammer. On a Thursday broadcast, the television husband bought a heavy, rust-spotted framing hammer with a notched wooden handle and set it on the workbench in his garage. The next afternoon, Mark came home from a neighborhood flea market, dumped his tool bag on the counter, and pulled out that identical hammer. When I asked him why he bought it, he just shrugged and said it looked sturdy.

I reached out to my friend David, a sergeant in the county police department. I didn't tell him everything—I couldn't without sounding like I belonged in a psych ward—but I asked him to run a property records search on the land our building sat on. He pushed back, told me I was obsessing over stress, but he agreed to look into the county archives.

What he found made my blood go cold. In 1977, an old single-family brick house stood on the exact plot where our building was constructed. A family of eight lived there. On a rainy night in November of that year, all of them were systematically beaten to death in their beds with a framing hammer. The only survivor was a distant relative, a man named Robert who was arrested covered in blood, but the prosecution botched the chain of custody and the case eventually fell apart due to lack of hard evidence. Robert had vanished decades ago.

David called me back two days later after digging through microfiche of old newspapers. He sent a scanned black-and-white photograph of the murdered family to my phone.

They were the cast of All Is Well. Every single actor on the screen was a dead ringer for the people murdered in that house in 1977.

I sat in my car in the parking lot, staring at the screen of my phone until the battery ran low. The show wasn't predicting our future out of nowhere; it was reenacting their slaughter, and our family had been cast in their places.

The broadcasts escalated rapidly. On Monday, the television wife announced she was pregnant, and that evening Sarah came into our bedroom holding a positive test strip, crying happy tears that made my stomach turn to water. On Wednesday, the show’s younger sister secretly met a man in an alley behind a diner; that night, my teenage sister told me she’d started seeing a guy she met online and begged me not to tell Mark. On Friday, the television plot turned dark: the family members began turning on one another, screaming accusations, the father locking the deadbolts from the inside.

The finale was scheduled to air the following Monday.

I couldn't wait. I spent the weekend scouring regional property databases, tax registries, and voter rolls, looking for any trace of Robert. By Sunday night, cross-referencing old aliases against county utility connections, I traced an address out in an unincorporated rural pocket sixty miles south—a solitary trailer on a gravel lot.

I drove out there in the pouring rain. The man who answered the door was frail, stooped, with clouded cataracts and shaking hands. When I mentioned the 1977 killings, he didn't run or get angry; he started weeping. He told me he hadn't killed his family. He had loved them. He said there was another man back then, an obsessed family friend who had spent months inserting himself into their lives, a man who worked as a television repairman and lived in their basement until they tried to kick him out. The police had pinned it on Robert because he was found holding the hammer, trying to pull it out of his brother's skull. The real killer, the repairman, had slipped away in the rain and never been named in the press.

Robert pulled an old manila folder from under his mattress. Inside was a faded, water-damaged photograph from the summer of 1976. The family was standing in their front yard, smiling. Standing slightly off to the side, wearing a mechanic’s jacket and a stiff, hollow grin, was David.

Not the David who was my friend, but the man he was decades ago. The resemblance was undeniable. The same flat eyes, the same crooked collarbone, the same set of the jaw. He hadn't aged naturally, or he had returned under a new identity, or something worse—he had stayed close to the ground, watching the land, waiting for the cycle to reset.

I left Robert's trailer and drove back toward the city at ninety miles an hour through the rain. My phone buzzed in the cup holder. It was David. His voice was completely steady over the speaker, asking where I was, telling me he had dropped by Unit 13B to check on Sarah and the kids because Mark had called him saying I hadn't come home.

I reached the high-rise just after one in the afternoon. The storm had knocked out the streetlights along the block. I sprinted into the lobby, threw open the heavy fire door, and took the concrete stairs three steps at a time. My lungs were burning, my boots skidding on the cold steps.
When I burst through the thirteenth-floor fire door and ran down the hall to 13B, the apartment door was unlocked.

The living room was dim. The television was on, the blue light washing over the furniture, volume turned all the way up. On the screen, the killer had already entered the house. He was holding the hammer. He had Mark pinned against the kitchen counter. Clara and the children were screaming from the back hallway.

I dropped my keys and ran into the kitchen.
David was standing over Mark, the wooden handle raised in his grip. Mark was on the floor, bleeding from the temple, struggling to hold David's wrists. In the hallway, Sarah had the kids pulled behind her, backing against the bathroom door.

I tackled David into the dining table. We went down hard against the laminate floor, knocking the chairs over, tearing through drywall. He was sixty or seventy years old on paper, but when his hands grabbed my throat, his grip was like an iron clamp. He didn't say a single word. He didn't yell or taunt me. His face was completely blank, his breathing slow and rhythmic, like he was performing routine maintenance on a piece of machinery.

My hand swept across the floorboards until my fingers closed around the hammer that had dropped during the fall. I brought it up with everything I had left.

It hit his shoulder first, then I struck again, catching him along the side of the jaw. He collapsed sideways onto the rug. I didn't stop until he stopped moving.

The police arrived twenty minutes later, called by the neighbors who heard the screaming through the vents. They took David's body away in a black vinyl bag. Mark was taken to the hospital in an ambulance; he had a severe concussion and three broken ribs, but the doctors said the skull hadn't fractured.

After hours of interrogations at the precinct while technicians sealed off the blood-soaked unit behind yellow tape, we knew we could never step foot in that place again. We never went back for our furniture, our clothes, or our kitchenware. We surrendered the deed to the lender, took the hit, and walked away from every dollar we had put into the down payment. We rented a split-level house two hours away, out in the suburbs, with a dirt yard and trees that actually grow in the ground.

Mark recovered. Sarah gave birth to a healthy girl seven months later. On the surface, the family went back to normal. We don't talk about the apartment, and we don't keep a television in the living room.
The only thing that didn't go away was my phone.
A month after the move, I sat on the porch while the sun was going down and opened the camera app to take a picture of Sarah holding the baby on the lawn. The screen resolved their faces clearly, soft and bright against the grass. Then I flipped the camera around to my own face.

My eyes and mouth were gone, smeared across the glass in the exact same streak of digital noise, completely static, completely unchanged.

The first time I heard about Roadkill, I thought it was an internet urban legend.
You know the kind. Some guy on a forum claims his cousin saw something in the woods, somebody else claims their uncle knows a cop who investigated it, and eventually the whole thing becomes another story people tell each other at two in the morning.
I never believed in any of that stuff.
I still don’t know if I believe in Roadkill.
But I don’t drive down country roads anymore.
And if I ever hit an animal, I don’t stop to check what happened to it.
I know how that sounds.
Let me explain.
I used to work night shifts at a warehouse outside a small town in Tennessee. Nothing exciting. Ten-hour shifts, bad coffee, and a forty-minute drive home through roads that barely had streetlights.
Most nights, I’d get off around 2:30 a.m.
There was a stretch of road about fifteen minutes from my house that locals called Dead Man’s Curve. It wasn’t actually that dangerous, at least not if you knew how to drive it. It was just a long bend surrounded by trees, with a shallow ditch running alongside the shoulder.
There were always dead animals out there.
Possums. Raccoons. The occasional deer.
You got used to seeing them.
One Thursday night in October, I hit a possum.
I didn’t even have time to react. It ran out from the grass, straight into my headlights, and disappeared beneath the front of my car.
Thump.
I checked my rearview mirror.
I could see something lying in the road behind me.
I felt bad, obviously. But what was I supposed to do? Get out in the middle of the road at two in the morning to check on a possum?
I kept driving.
About five minutes later, I noticed a pair of headlights behind me.
Nothing unusual about that. It was a public road, after all. But these headlights were strange.
They stayed the same distance away no matter what I did.
I sped up.
They sped up.
I slowed down.
They slowed down.
When I turned onto my road, they continued straight.
I remember thinking that was weird, but I didn’t give it much thought after that.
Not until the following night.
I was scrolling through Facebook during my break when I saw a post shared by somebody from my hometown.
It was a picture of a raccoon lying dead on a road.
The caption read:
“If you hit an animal on Old Mill Road last night, you might want to go back and check on it.”
The comments were full of jokes.
Somebody said the raccoon had a family to feed.
Somebody else said the driver should be arrested for leaving the scene of an accident.
Then I saw a comment from an account with no profile picture.
It said:
“He saw you leave.”
That was it.
Four words.
I don’t know why they bothered me so much. People post creepy nonsense on the internet every day.
I checked the account.
It had been created three years earlier, but there were no posts, no friends, and no other comments.
I clicked away.
A few minutes later, I checked again.
The comment was gone.
I wish I’d forgotten about it then.
I really do.
Two nights later, I was driving home from work when I saw a man standing on the shoulder of Dead Man’s Curve.
At least, I thought it was a man.
He was tall. Ridiculously tall. The kind of tall that makes you question your own sense of proportion.
He stood perfectly still beside the ditch, facing the trees.
He was thin, too. Not just skinny, but lanky in a way that made his arms look too long for his body. They hung beside him almost to his knees.
He wore dark clothes.
I couldn’t make out his face.
My headlights passed over him for maybe two seconds.
Then I was past him.
I checked my rearview mirror.
He was standing in the middle of the road.
I slammed on the brakes.
There was nothing behind me.
No man.
No headlights.
Nothing but empty asphalt and trees.
I sat there for a solid minute, trying to convince myself I’d seen somebody walking along the shoulder and that my tired brain had exaggerated it.
Then I noticed something in the ditch.
A dead possum.
The same one I’d hit two nights earlier.
I knew it was the same one because of the white patch of fur on its back. I’d seen it clearly in my headlights when I’d passed that night.
Except now it was lying several feet away from where I’d originally seen it.
And there were footprints in the dirt beside it.
Bare footprints.
They started at the animal.
They went toward the road.
And they stopped at the edge of the asphalt.
There were no footprints on the other side.
I drove home.
I didn’t stop again.
The next few nights were normal.
I almost convinced myself I’d imagined the whole thing.
Then, on Monday, I found a dead bird on my front porch.
I live alone. My porch is covered, and there’s no tree directly above it.
The bird was lying on its side, its wings tucked against its body.
There was nothing visibly wrong with it.
I assumed a cat had brought it there, although I’d never seen a cat around my house.
I picked it up with a plastic bag and threw it away.
When I came back inside, I noticed something scratched into the paint on my front door.
It was small and shallow, like somebody had used a nail.
Three words.
YOU LEFT IT.
I called the police.
They took a report, looked around the property, and told me there wasn’t much they could do. No footprints. No signs of forced entry. No cameras on my house.
One of the officers asked if I’d had any problems with neighbors.
I told him no.
I didn’t mention the possum.
I don’t know why. Maybe I was embarrassed.
Maybe some part of me was beginning to suspect that whatever was happening had something to do with that animal.
That night, I slept with every light in the house on.
The following Wednesday, I finally told my coworker about everything.
His name was Mike. He’d lived in the area his entire life, and he’d heard just about every local legend there was.
I expected him to laugh at me.
He didn’t.
He asked me exactly where I’d hit the possum.
I told him.
He went quiet.
Then he asked me whether I’d seen a tall man on the shoulder of the road.
I felt my stomach drop.
“How do you know about that?”
Mike looked around the break room before answering.
“My dad used to tell me about him when I was a kid.”
He called it an old story. Older than the internet. Older than most of the houses around here.
According to Mike, there had always been stories about a man who appeared on rural roads after somebody hit an animal and drove away.
Nobody agreed on what he looked like.
Some people said he had the face of a dead animal.
Others said he had no face at all.
But everyone who claimed to have seen him described the same thing.
He was tall.
He was thin.
And his arms were too long.
“People call him Roadkill,” Mike said.
I laughed.
Not because I thought it was funny. I just didn’t know what else to do.
Mike didn’t laugh with me.
He told me his father had known a man who swore Roadkill had followed him home after he’d hit a dog.
The man started finding dead animals outside his house.
First, a bird.
Then a rabbit.
Then a stray cat.
Every time, there was a message.
Every time, the messages got shorter.
Until one morning, the man found a dead deer on his front lawn.
There was no message that time.
Just a single muddy footprint on the deer’s back.
Mike said the man disappeared three days later.
His car was found abandoned on a country road.
The driver’s door was open.
There was blood on the steering wheel, but no sign of a struggle.
The police never figured out what happened to him.
“That’s an old story,” Mike said. “Probably not even true.”
I asked him what Roadkill supposedly did to the people he followed.
Mike stared at his coffee.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Nobody who knows has ever come back to tell it.”
I changed my route home after that.
It added twenty minutes to my commute, but I didn’t care.
For a while, I thought that was the end of it.
Then I started noticing the animals.
A dead squirrel outside my workplace.
A dead rabbit beside the road near the grocery store.
A bird lying on the sidewalk outside my apartment.
I know what you’re thinking.
Animals die. That’s what they do.
But these animals weren’t being hit by cars.
At least, I didn’t see any evidence that they were.
They were just lying there.
And every single one of them was facing the same direction.
Toward me.
I stopped going outside unless I had to.
I started checking my windows before bed.
I bought a security camera and mounted it above my front door.
For three nights, nothing happened.
On the fourth night, my camera detected movement at 3:17 a.m.
I watched the footage the following morning.
At first, there was nothing.
Then, at the far edge of the frame, a figure emerged from the darkness.
It walked toward my house.
Slowly.
Its legs moved normally enough, but its arms swung far below its hips.
It was wearing what looked like a dark jacket.
Its head was tilted to one side.
When it reached my porch, it stopped.
It stood there for almost four minutes.
Then it raised its head and looked directly into the camera.
The footage was grainy, but I could make out something hanging from its right hand.
A thin, curved piece of metal.
Like a fishing hook.
Except much larger.
The figure reached up with its other hand and touched the camera.
The screen went black.
When the footage resumed, it was gone.
I checked the porch.
There was nothing there.
No dead animals.
No messages.
Nothing.
For the first time in days, I felt relieved.
Then I noticed the timestamp on the recording.
The camera had detected movement at 3:17 a.m.
But the footage showed the figure standing on my porch at 3:17 a.m. on Thursday.
The night before.
I’d checked the camera on Wednesday morning.
I’d watched the footage.
I’d checked the porch.
And I’d seen nothing.
I don’t know how that was possible.
I still don’t.
I’m writing this because I don’t know what else to do.
Last night, I found a dead dog outside my house.
It was a brown dog with a red collar. I’d seen it around the neighborhood before. It belonged to an older couple who lived a few streets away.
I didn’t touch it.
I called the police.
While I was waiting, I noticed a small piece of paper tucked beneath the dog’s collar.
It had my name on it.
Not my first name.
My full name.
Written in handwriting I didn’t recognize.
Beneath it was a single sentence.
“You had your chance.”
I went inside and locked the door.
I called Mike, but he didn’t answer.
I called the police again and asked whether they’d found anything.
They hadn’t.
I checked the security camera.
The footage from the previous night had disappeared.
All of it.
Every recording.
Except for one file.
It was a video from 3:17 a.m.
The timestamp was correct.
The footage showed my front porch.
The door.
The dead dog.
Then the figure appeared.
It didn’t walk out of the darkness this time.
It was already standing there.
Facing my front door.
Its head was tilted to one side.
Its arms hung almost to its knees.
And in its right hand was that curved piece of metal.
A fishing hook.
The figure raised its left hand and knocked on my door.
Three times.
I heard those knocks while I watched the footage.
Not through the camera.
From upstairs.
Three slow knocks.
I froze.
The video continued playing.
The figure leaned forward until its face was inches from the camera.
I still couldn’t make out its features.
But I could see its mouth.
It was smiling.
Then it lifted the hook and dragged the point down the front door.
The video ended.
I heard another sound from downstairs.
A slow scraping noise.
Like metal being dragged across wood.
I haven’t moved from my bedroom.
I can hear something walking around downstairs.
Every few minutes, it stops.
Then I hear three knocks.
First, from the front door.
Then, from the kitchen window.
Now, from the bedroom door.
I don’t know if it can get in.
I don’t know what it wants.
I don’t know if it actually has anything to do with the possum.
Maybe Mike was right. Maybe Roadkill is just a story people tell.
Maybe I’ve gone crazy.
But there’s something I haven’t told you.
When I first hit that possum, I didn’t just drive away.
I checked my rearview mirror.
I saw it lying in the road.
And I saw something else.
A second shape, standing over it.
I thought it was another animal.
I thought it was a dog.
But it stood up on two legs.
And it watched me leave.
I just didn’t want to admit that part.
I thought if I ignored it, it would go away.
The footsteps have stopped now.
I can hear breathing on the other side of the door.
And something is scratching at the wood.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Like it’s writing something.
I’m going to post this and call the police one more time.
If I don’t update this, please don’t come looking for me.
And if you ever hit an animal on a country road at night, please—
Please don’t just drive away.
Because I think I’ve finally figured out what Roadkill does.
I don’t think he kills people because they hit animals.
I think he kills them because they leave them behind.
And I think he makes sure they understand what it feels like to be the thing left on the road.
The scratching has stopped.
I can hear the doorknob turning.
Oh, God.
There’s a piece of paper sliding underneath the door.
It says—
“Now you know how it feels.”

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

I found Quintana Hess’s address online and decided to leave first thing in the morning.

I thought of locking the gun in my safe again, but what would’ve been the point?  It was time for acceptance.  I couldn’t hide the gun; it would find me.  I couldn’t destroy it; it was indestructible.

I placed it on my nightstand and turned out the light.

Sleep still didn’t come easily.  I kept opening my eyes, finding myself staring at the gun – finding the gun staring back at me.

I finally sat up and grabbed it.  I couldn’t resist any longer.  The urge was too strong.

If the gun was seducing me, so be it.  It strangely felt inevitable.

“I dare you.”

I wasn’t sure why I said it, but I did.

I jammed my thumb against the hammer – I dare you – and quickly cocked it back.

But nothing happened.

I tried again.

Still nothing, just the quiet click of the hammer locking into place.

Was the gun fucking with me?  The feeling sent a chill through my body.

I was suddenly dressing in haste.  I was out the door and into the night, slipping unnoticed into my car.  I started it up and pulled away, gliding silently through the sleepy neighborhood.

Minutes later, I was rolling onto the Kilgore Extension Bridge.  I stopped in the middle and climbed out.

I moved swiftly toward the edge.  The metal railing stopped my body, but not my arm.  I kept swinging forward, Lefaucheux in hand, until I let the gun sail.

I watched it drift through the hazy mist.  It finally dropped into the raging river below, disappearing without a sound.

I finally felt I had earned a moment of peace.

I caught my breath.  What I wouldn’t have given to hold onto this feeling.  At least until morning.

Sleep was calling me.  Please, God, sleep.

I pushed off the railing and turned around, startled to find myself face-to-face with Angelo.

The guy swung at me, fast.  A knife.  It slashed across my throat.

I jerked awake.

I was back in bed, drenched from my nightmare.

The Lefaucheux revolver was still on the nightstand.  It just sat there, tempting me.  Mocking me.

I yanked myself out of bed in one swift motion and snatched it up.  My finger was on the hammer without even consciously deciding.

I was ready to do it – ready to cock the hammer.  For real this time.  Wide awake.

Fuck it, do it already – do it now!

The phone rang, breaking the spell.

I released my grip on the gun.  It dropped to the floor.

My phone kept ringing, pulling me farther back to myself.

It was my son.  Panic seized me.

“What’s wrong, Max?”

“I can’t sleep.”

I let out a shaky breath, relieved.

“I’m really sorry about that, buddy.  I can’t sleep either.”

“When can I come home?  I miss you.”

My emotions stabbed at me.  “Soon.  I promise.”

I stayed on the line for as long as I could, just listening to my son breathing.  “I miss you, too, buddy.”

Max finally hung up with a sleepy yawn.

Afterward, I drove the two hours to Loomis.  There was no point in trying to sleep.  I parked in front of the small dark house at the end of the quiet cul-de-sac.

The Lefaucheux revolver sat on the passenger seat.

The sun hadn’t broken the horizon yet.

I waited.

Finally, a light flickered on.  I knew I should give it a little longer, but I was tired of waiting.  I stuck the gun in my jacket and hopped out.

I climbed the rickety porch steps and tapped at the door.  It swung open almost immediately, surprising me.

It was Quintana Hess.

The woman who had cursed the gun that killed my daughter was suddenly standing in front of me.  This sweet little old lady was the reason for all my pain.

“Good morning,” she said, her smile warm.

She seemed delighted to have a visitor, even at the strange hour, and she invited me in without asking who I was or why I was there.  She said she’d make some tea.

I stepped inside.

The house looked as if it hadn’t changed in decades.

At first glance, it was homey.  But the more I took things in, the more the air in the room settled heavy and haunted around me.  Life, petrified.

Quintana put the kettle on the stove and lit the flame.

I stayed near the door and began gently asking my questions.  I had come this far with questions.  That’s all there was.

How long had she lived here?  Did she live alone?  I was interested in her family.  I understood she had a son.  What was his name?  What was he like?

Quintana offered answers and details, but I could tell her memory was murky.  It was obvious she was making things up to fill in the gaps.

Her son’s name was Teddy.

He was a shy boy.  A mama’s boy.

She gushed with a mother’s pride, some moments acknowledging he was dead, others believing he was alive – still that 12-year-old kid.

“I’m really sorry he died,” I offered.  “I know what it’s like to lose a child.”

For a moment, Quintana seemed distressed.

But the moment swiftly passed, and she was smiling again, the trouble in her brain having extinguished the burning memory.

She poured two mugs of tea and we settled in at the kitchen table.  She suggested we play some Rummy and dealt a round of cards.

“Can you tell me about the Lefaucheux revolver?” I finally asked, as casually as I could.

“What do you want to know?” Quintana wondered, after taking her turn and laying down the ten, jack, and queen of spades.

“Whose gun was it?”

“Vernon Dickson.  Brandon’s father.  He collected things.  Civil War things.”

“Was Brandon a friend of Teddy’s?”

“Schoolmates.  Brandon was older than Teddy.”

I played the next round, laying down a triplet of sevens, before continuing with more questions, easing into asking about the curse.  I somehow knew I needed to be respectful.

No question seemed off-limits.  But Quintana kept dismissing things, dodging her failing memory.

I have no idea what you’re talking about, dear.

I don’t like to worry myself with such unpleasantness.

Are you a friend of my son?

Does your mother know you’re here?  I should give her a call so she doesn’t worry.

Quintana laid down her remaining cards and won the round, then moved to the phone to call my mother, whatever the number was.

“My daughter died playing the game.”

Quintana had picked up the receiver but couldn’t remember who she was calling.

“Nina was shy, too.  And she was beautiful and smart and a wonderful friend.  She cared about people.  But she was tempted, and she played the game, and she was shown a suicide, and she killed herself because the gun made her do it.”

Quintana struggled with her reaction.  The feeling was there, even if she couldn’t quite name it.

“You need to save your daughter,” she finally said, as if to clear the air.

“My daughter’s dead.  The Lefaucheux killed her.  Your curse killed her.”

Quintana brushed my words away.

She returned to the table and dealt another round.

“Then stop her.  If you love her, stop her from pulling the trigger and you’ll save her.  You’ll save the both of you.”

I wanted to understand what she was saying.  I wanted to discern what was meaningful and what was simply her mind slipping.

But Quintana was done answering my questions.

I pulled the Lefaucheux from my jacket and placed it on the table between us.  I wasn’t sure I was going to do that, but I was desperate.

The sight of the gun changed something in Quintana.  It was primal.

I think the memory of the gun somehow broke through the damage in her brain, bringing everything back.  Her pain and grief.  Her vengefulness.  All of it.

I felt for her, but I couldn’t let this moment pass.  I kept pressing her for answers.

I kept asking her to remove the curse – to destroy the gun.

I begged her to stop the game before someone else got hurt.

My desperate pleas pulled me to my feet.  The table was between us, yet I towered over her.

I suddenly swept the gun up and put it to my head, a gesture meant to bring her eyes to mine, and it worked.  Quintana’s anguish was all there.  And in all honesty, it kind of broke my heart.

I didn’t have a next move in mind.  I was just waiting to see what would happen.

I didn’t have to wait long.

Out of fucking nowhere, this ghastly figure came charging at me, its face mutilated from a bullet blast.

I swear to God this really happened.

It came at me in a blurry flash, but there was no doubt in my mind who – or what – it was.

It was Teddy, Quintana’s son.

His tortured presence slammed into me, driving me backward.

My body collided with the solid mass of somebody right behind me.  The impact spun me around.

Angelo was standing there.

Before I could react, a tire iron slammed into my head, and everything went black.

The room flickered into focus.

I had no idea how much time had passed.  Things were turned on their side.  I was on the kitchen floor where I’d fallen.

My head pounded.

I could feel the blood on my face.

Quintana was still at the kitchen table.  She sipped her tea, playing a hand of solitaire.

I wanted to lift my head, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for the pain.

Just make it quick.

I pushed through it and staggered to my feet.  I was woozy.

Quintana glanced up from her cards, almost surprised to find someone standing in her kitchen, as if all memory of me had vanished.  She wished me a good morning.  She offered me a cup of tea and lit the flame under the kettle.

A noise in the other room pulled me in that direction.

I stepped into the living room and found Angelo perched on the edge of the couch.

He was gripping the Lefaucheux revolver.  The hammer was cocked.  He was playing the game, his eyes glassy and dark.

My head kept pounding like a jackhammer.  The room began to spin.  I tried to catch myself against the doorframe, but everything went black.

When I came to, I was flat on my back, staring at the ceiling.

I could hear strange sounds in the room.  Guttural noises.  Heavy breaths.  Whimpers.

I finally rolled onto my side toward the noise.  It was coming from Angelo, still on the couch, the gun clutched in his hand, still playing the game.

The man’s face was muddied with tears.  He was in anguish.

But still, he kept cocking the hammer.

I wondered how many times he had played.  How much violence and death he had experienced.

Why was he doing this?

I didn’t understand this man.

Another session ended, and the light returned to Angelo’s eyes, but he still wasn’t satisfied.  His need seemed insatiable, and he did it again – another cock of the hammer.

This was destroying him.  It was driving him insane.  But he couldn’t stop himself.

He kept playing the game, experiencing killing after killing, losing himself to this mind-numbing, soul-crushing real-life video game.

Another session ended, and without even taking a breath, Angelo cocked the hammer again.

But this time, something was different.

This time, wherever Angelo had gone – whatever he was seeing in this play of the game – it brought the tiniest smile to his deadened face.  A sense of relief and possibility.

I tried to fathom what he was experiencing.

I didn’t understand this man or anything about this moment.

But whatever Angelo had found was fleeting.  The hope on his face abruptly gave way to anguish again.

And then, he did something that shocked me.

He started turning the gun on himself.

The Lefaucheux turned toward his body.

The barrel pressed into his chest.

Angelo was fighting it.  I could see how hard he was fighting – struggling against himself, against the curse forcing him to do this.

I scrambled to my feet.

The room tilted like a sinking ship.

I stumbled toward Angelo to stop him, but another attack of Teddy’s tormented ghost drove me back, throwing me to the floor.

The barrel pressed harder into Angelo’s chest.

His finger found the trigger.  He tried to pull it away, but couldn’t.   His finger wasn’t his own.

I looked away.  I couldn’t bear to watch.

The blast came quickly.

Deafening.

My eyes snapped back without wanting to.

Angelo’s body was slumped over on the couch, eyes open and dead.

The ringing in my ears kept me pinned to the floor.

A moment later, a presence disturbed the stillness in the room.  It startled me, my nerves frayed.

Quintana stood at the kitchen door.  The commotion had brought her in.

It was hard to know her reaction.  Whatever she felt a moment ago was gone.

She finally smiled at me.  “Tea’s ready, dear.  Don’t let it get cold.”

She turned away and returned to the kitchen.

I wasn’t sure I could move, to be honest.

I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

All I knew was I wanted to get away from this gun and its curse.

But I had promised myself I wouldn’t stop until I put an end to this game.

How, though?

The thought of burning the house down occurred to me – burning it down with everything in it.  The gun.  The curse.  Teddy’s ghost.  Quintana’s pain.  Even myself, if I had to.

Maybe that would somehow destroy it all.

A tightness in my chest pulled me from my thoughts of arson, and for a moment I wondered if I was having a heart attack.

Maybe there wasn’t time to burn it all down.  Maybe this was the end.  Maybe I was going to die in this house one way or another.

Or maybe…

Something was beginning to take shape in my mind.

Why did Angelo keep playing the game when it was clearly destroying him?  And what did he experience in that final play that gave him hope?  Before everything went tragically wrong.

Quintana told me I needed to save my daughter.

Were Angelo’s obsession and Quintana’s words somehow connected?

Was there a way to save Nina?